TORONTO - The founders of St. Michael’s Choir School believed no boy should ever be turned away because of money.

That principle has endured to this day but what has changed since 1937 is an economic climate that makes implementing it a greater challenge than ever.

To address that, the school will mark its 75th anniversary by launching a new foundation to raise funds for bursaries, scholarships and other special projects.

TORONTO - Malaria kills an African child about every 45 seconds. But there’s a simple and cost-effective solution: bed nets. And students at Toronto’s St. Michael’s College School want to raise enough money to protect between 7,500 and 10,000 affected children.

As part of the Spread the Net Challenge, a program co-founded by business leader Belinda Stronach and television personality Rick Mercer in 2006, schools across Canada are competing to raise the most money for the cause. In addition to providing the highest number of bed nets, the winning schools at the elementary, high school and university levels will be featured on an episode of The Rick Mercer Report in March 2012.

TORONTO - Investing in social programs that tackle poverty makes “economic sense,” according to a new report by a federal advisory group on poverty.

“It is in the public interest for all governments in Canada’s federation to invest in preventing poverty and improving economic and social well-being,” said the National Council of Welfare in its report “The Dollars and Sense of Solving Poverty.”

According to the report, released in late September, the cost of poverty in 2007 was estimated at more than double the $12.6 billion “poverty gap” — the amount it would have cost to ensure that all Canadians had an income above the poverty line. In 2009, more than three million Canadians were living in poverty and the national poverty rate was 9.6 per cent.

OTTAWA - Canada’s Catholic bishops and its development agency have begun a new forum for dialogue on contentious issues that should go a long way to preventing controversial explosions like that which came down upon the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace last spring, said the agency’s executive director. 

“The meeting clarified that both CCODP and the CCCB mutually agree it is important to involve local bishops from the Global South in the dialogue, discussion and rapport that are part of development work,” said a joint communiqué issued Sept. 26. “It also agreed that when CCODP identifies questions or concerns about this, it will consult with the CCCB Standing Committee.”

TORONTO - A new study by St. Michael’s Hospital that makes a link between poverty and poor health is being endorsed by Catholic agencies.

The Toronto study indicates that people instinctively understand that poverty and income disparity are dangerous to their health, said epidemiologist Patricia O’Campo, one of the authors of the study.

“It really is inequities that are driving risk for adverse health and mortality,” O’Campo said.

OTTAWA - Throughout the developed world, lowered birth rates and family breakdown will have a devastating effect on the global economy and the welfare state’s viability, says an international study released Oct 3.

“On current trends, we face a world of rapidly aging and declining populations, of few children — many of them without the benefit of siblings and a stable, two-parent home — of lonely seniors living on meagre public support, of cultural and economic stagnation,” says the study, entitled “The Empty Cradle: How Contemporary Trends Undermine the Global Economy.”

Co-sponsored by the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC) and pro-family groups in the United States, the Philippines, Spain and Colombia, the study shows even developing countries such as Iran, Lebanon, Chile, Thailand and South Korea have seen their lifetime births per woman shrink to fewer than two from averages as high as six. Canada’s birth rate is only 1.5 children per woman.

TORONTO - Young Ontario pro-lifers are gearing up for Canada’s first “Defund abortion rally” on Oct. 22 at Queen’s Park.

Instead of controversial photos of unborn babies, ads for the Campaign Life Coalition Youth-led rally are highlighting a new approach: an appeal to taxpayers.

“Ontario taxpayers pay over $30 million annually to cover the cost of abortions in their province,” begins a YouTube ad created by Campaign Life Coalition Youth.

EDMONTON - The Bible should be part of the daily life of every Catholic, says Archbishop Terrence Prendergast.

“You need to feed on it,” the Ottawa archbishop said at ScriptureFest 2011 on Sept. 24.

Prendergast noted Catholics are not known for their appreciation of the Bible, but that has to change if we are going to evangelize the world.

“God wants the Word to be known by everyone,” he said. “All the baptized are called to make Jesus known.”

BARRIE, ONT - Depending on who he was with,  Deacon Ted MacDonnell was affectionately known as detective, sergeant, deacon, pastor, professor, Teddy, dad or papa.

He was a man of many names and even more friends, someone who always had time for people, whether it was in his role as an OPP detective or a deacon in the Church. Above all, though, he was a husband, father of two daughters and grandfather of five children whom he baptized.

“Everyone he came in contact with remembered him warmly and with a genuine smile because dad simply cared,” said his youngest daughter, Janet Small.

TORONTO - Fr. Edwin Platt, a well-known priest who served throughout his hometown of Toronto, died Sept. 17. He succumbed to the stroke that had felled him while he was saying Mass at Corpus Christi parish.

Fr. Platt was 89 and was in his 62nd year as a priest.

Fr. Platt had returned in his later years to the east end where he grew up. He was educated at St. John’s and Corpus Christi Schools before moving on to St. Michael’s College School. He entered St. Augustine’s Seminary and was ordained a priest in 1948.