{mosimage}TORONTO - The Canadian economy has tumbled this year but it hasn’t taken ShareLife down with it.

Heading into the final week of the annual campaign to raise essential funding for a host of charitable agencies, ShareLife organizers are heartened that parish donations are on par with last year.  There were fears the recession might cut into donations.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Leaving behind the largest city in Canada, Toronto Auxiliary Bishop Richard Grecco will soon join Catholics on the east coast as the new leader for the Charlottetown diocese.

Grecco made his very first visit to the island in mid-July, with much anticipation for his Sept. 21 inauguration.

{mosimage}OSHAWA, Ont. - For nine-year-old Noelle Irani, the joys of summer camp with Our Lady of Lebanon Church have been about friends, swimming and roasting marshmallows near the campfire.

But this year, amid the games, laughter in the pool and soccer balls in the air, the usual sounds and sights of summer have also been accompanied by moments of silence and tears of remembrance for fallen trooper Marc Diab.

Diab had been the camp leader for the last five years. He was scheduled to return home after a six-month tour of duty with the Canadian army in Afghanistan. But three weeks before his arrival, the 22-year-old was killed by a roadside bomb in Kandahar on March 8.

{mosimage}SAINT-BONIFACE, Man. — Bishop Albert LeGatt has been appointed the new archbishop of the archdiocese of Saint-Boniface.

LeGatt, who was bishop of Saskatoon when the appointment by Pope Benedict XVI was announced July 2, takes over from Archbishop Emilius Goulet. The Pope also accepted the resignation of Goulet, 76, who had been running the archdiocese for more than one year beyond the mandatory age of retirement for bishops.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The day peace-building became a professional goal for Dr. Sara Schleien, she was watching a soccer game at a leadership camp for teens from countries engulfed in conflict.

It took a minute for the reality of the moment to sink in, she said — a boy from Egypt had scored a winning goal and his teammates, from Israel, Gaza, Egypt, Afghanistan and India ran up to him, picked him up and twirled him around.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Ordinary holiness is the gift of Opus Dei to the church, Archbishop Thomas Collins told an overflowing assembly at Our Lady of Sorrows on the feast of Opus Dei founder St. Josemaria Escriva.

"It is in that sublime simplicity of ordinary life, in the business of our world, that we are called to holiness," said Collins in his June 26 homily at the west end Toronto parish.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Toronto Auxiliary Bishop Richard Grecco bishop of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

At the same time the Pope accepted the resignation of Bishop Vernon Fougere, Charlottetown’s bishop since 1992, for reasons of health.

“I am humbled by the announcement of the Holy Father and look forward with great joy to serving the people of the diocese of Charlottetown," said Grecco of  the July 11 announcement. "I send my thoughts and prayers to all those on Prince Edward Island and look forward to joining their community shortly.”

{mosimage}ROME  - Did Prime Minister Stephen Harper consume communion at the Catholic funeral of former Governor General Romeo LeBlanc on July 3? Or did he put it in his pocket as anonymous YouTube film of the funeral alleges?

Those were the questions that consumed journalists who followed Harper to the 2009 G-8 Summit in L’Aquila while colleagues at home tracked down the story.

{mosimage}It's almost as if Pope Benedict XVI had Canada and its controversies in mind as he penned the first social encyclical of the 21st century.

By updating Pope Paul VI's encyclical Populorum Progressio, and making an explicit link between church teaching on economic development and Pope Paul's teaching on human sexuality, abortion and contraception — Humanae Vitae — it was as though Benedict had the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace in mind, said Michael Casey.

"It will certainly inform our discussions on policies and on our orientation. It will be stuff to work on over the next few months," said Casey, executive director of Development and Peace.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - Receiving the woolen pallium from the Pope underlines an archbishop's unique ties to the vicar of Christ in Rome and to his own flock of parishioners back home, said a number of archbishops from Canada and the United States and Canada.

Archbishops J. Michael Miller of Vancouver and Pierre-Andre Fournier of Rimouski, Que., were among the 34 bishops from 20 countries who received the white, narrow circular band called a pallium during a special Mass in St. Peter's Basilica June 29.