{mosimage}An extra $45 million for the World Food Program plus $5 million more for the ecumenical Canada Foodgrains Bank in Winnipeg will help avert a disaster in much of the world where rising food prices are pushing the 850 million people who live on a dollar a day towards starvation.

"It is a step in the right direction," said Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace director of international programs Gilio Brunelli.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Caritas, an agency dedicated to the healing and recovery of patients with drug and alcohol addiction, had a significant increase in donors for its annual telethon April 27.

{mosimage}TORONTO — If there’s more to do, then Susan Tomenson is one woman who can be counted on. On April 16 the Jesuits honoured the Catholic activist for her willingness to do much more than the minimum.

{mosimage}TORONTO - When he first started working as an Oblate missionary priest in the diocese of Mackenzie-Fort Smith, retiring Bishop Denis Croteau went head-to-head with the elements.

{mosimage}TORONTO - One hundred years ago, Catholic missionaries in Canada travelled by horse and buggy and dog team, from east to west and up through the territories to the Arctic. Although their methods of travel have changed, their work continues in all directions, funded by Catholic Missions In Canada.

TORONTO - Archbishop Thomas Collins has made several new appointments in Toronto’s curial offices.

“Be assured of our ongoing commitment to be faithful and responsible stewards of all that has been entrusted to us by the people of the archdiocese,” Collins said in a letter to clergy, parish and diocesan staff.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Canada needs a new strategy if it wants to see peace and development in Afghanistan, the new secretary general of Brussels-based Pax Christi International told The Catholic Register.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Toronto is 14,000 kilometres from Sri Lanka, but the war between Tamils and Sinhalese on the island nation is never far away for Toronto’s 100,000-strong Tamil community.

Margaret Jegasothy found herself standing at the end of a memorial Mass April 26 to thank the community for their prayers for her brother, Fr. M.X. Karunaratnam. He was killed in a roadside bomb attack April 19.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - The newly appointed chair of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission plans wide-ranging public hearings that will hear from all sides.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The debate over how, when, where and whether scientists should be allowed to experiment on human embryonic stem cells should not be left in the hands of bureaucrats, academics and scientists, London Bishop Ron Fabbro said at a Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute conference for doctors April 27.