OTTAWA - Representatives of 30 faith communities and organizations have asked politicians to mine the world’s religious traditions for the spiritual resources to meet the climate change crisis.

“Climate change is a global crisis and requires global solutions that put the well-being of all people first — especially the most vulnerable,” said the Canadian Interfaith Call for Leadership on Climate Change, issued after a meeting here Oct. 23 and 24 organized by Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ).

OTTAWA - Christian observers with an interest in Canada’s courts are pleased — so far — that the latest picks for Supreme Court of Canada justices have shown no record of judicial activism on the bench.

Justice Michael Moldaver, a former Ontario appellate judge, and Justice Andromache Karakatsanis, a former Ontario government civil servant, were sworn in Oct. 27. A public ceremony will take place Nov. 14.

“They don’t have a judicial history of being activists,” said REAL Women of Canada national vice president Gwen Landolt, a former Crown prosecutor. REAL Women frequently intervenes in cases involving moral issues. “They have been strictly interpreting the law in their decisions.”

TORONTO - In the hours before Pope Benedict XVI and world religious leaders gathered again at Assisi, in the name of St. Francis and in the name of peace, the Toronto Area Interfaith Council brought together Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Bahais, Zoroastrians, Protestants, Scientologists, First Nations and Roman Catholics to share songs, Scriptures and prayers dedicated to peace.

About 60 people were there Oct. 26 in the Anglican Church of the Holy Trinity behind the Eaton Centre for an interfaith service that included chanted readings from the Koran, a prayer for peace attributed to Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, a passage from the First Letter of St. Peter and the Peace Prayer of St. Francis.

"May there be peace in the celestial bodies, may there be peace on this little planet, may there be peace among us, may there be peace within us," said Hindu Institute of Learning vice president Chander Khanna, translating from the Vedas.

TORONTO - Women are not getting all the facts about the link between abortion and breast cancer, says Dr. Angela Lanfranchi.

"It doesn't matter if you're pro-life or pro-choice," she said, "women and the population just want the facts." 

And the facts are, simply put, abortion increases the risk of breast cancer, Lanfranchi told an audience of about 50 people gathered at the deVeber Institute's annual public lecture Oct. 26.

TORONTO - There are 29,000 Catholics held captive behind a rusty, two-metre high, chain-link fence in the middle of downtown Toronto. Mind you, they’re not clamouring to get out. They’re dead and buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery, a little south of St. Clair Avenue and hidden behind the stores on the west side of Yonge Street.

Martha Crean and Mary Egan want to get in. Each of them is related to early sextons (maintenance men) of the 156-year-old cemetery. They have relatives buried there and they would like to see the historic gem opened and advertised to Torontonians.

Vandalism, dog-walking, skiing, neighbourhood fireworks displays, baseball games and litter on the cemetery grounds forced Catholic Cemeteries, Archdiocese of Toronto to lock the gates in 2005, said executive director Richard Hayes in an e-mail to Crean and Egan.

CORNWALL, ONT. - Edmonton Archbishop Richard Smith is looking forward to serving “my brother bishops” in his new role as president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"It’s not something I was looking for, by any stretch of the imagination,” Smith said in a telephone interview Oct. 20, the day after he was elected CCCB president. “But it’s a unique privilege.”

The choice of Smith, 52, came as no surprise. He has been the conference’s vice-president the last two years and was unopposed in the election.

TORONTO - Hundreds of people gathered at Queen’s Park Oct. 22 to send a message to the newly elected provincial government: stop using taxpayers’ dollars to fund abortions.

“This is outrageous that we are forced to fund an elective, medically unnecessary procedure,” said Alissa Golob, the youth co-ordinator for Campaign Life Coalition and organizer of the Defund Abortion Rally.

In Ontario, abortions are funded by taxpayer dollars. That’s about $30 million for at least 30,000 abortions a year, at a cost of $1,000 each, Golob said.

Instead of asking for candy on Halloween night, students at St. Thomas More Catholic Secondary School in Hamilton will be trick-or-treating for non-perishable food items.

The school will be holding its 12th annual Halloween for Hunger campaign to raise money for the Neighbour to Neighbour Centre with a goal of collecting a record-breaking 70,000 pounds of food.

Hamilton’s Good Shepherd Refuge has passed the halfway mark of its $10-million fundraising goal to complete Good Shepherd Square, the city’s first complex of buildings that will house social services to combat poverty.

Alan Whittle, Good Shepherd’s director of community relations and planning, says it’s an innovative approach in tackling poverty that includes access to affordable housing and social services within the same vicinity.

The Jesuit priest who helped bring us Law & Order — the TV show as opposed to the socio-political ideal — received a medal for his efforts.

On Oct. 18, Fr. Jack O’Brien was awarded the Loyola Medal at Concordia University in Montreal.