TORONTO - The new ad campaign from the atheist group behind last year’s “there’s probably no God” campaign suggests that Christ and Allah have the same amount of credibility as UFOs, Big Foot, psychics, Zeus and homeopathy.

“Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence” reads the new campaign poster set to run on TTC vehicles in Toronto. While the ads are still pending approval, they are expected to make their debut on streetcars in January, said Justin Trottier, national executive director of the Centre for Inquiry, the group behind the campaign. If all goes according to plan, Trottier said the ads will then run in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal.

“Broadening our focus from just God, we’ll now call for skepticism and rational inquiry into any conceivable extraordinary claim,” said Trottier.

OTTAWA - Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff stunned many pro-family Catholics when he threw his support behind the so-called transgender “bathroom” bill now before the House of Commons.

Party leaders do not generally vote for private members’ business, but Ignatieff rose to vote “Yea” for  Bill C-389, which passed report stage 143-136 on Dec. 8.

“Well, you know, we’re the party of the charter,” Ignatieff told journalists afterwards.

TORONTO - For the sixth year in a row, vandals have taken a shot at the Christmas creche in front of Old City Hall in downtown Toronto.

Passersby noticed the plexiglass window which encases the statues of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus had been smashed on Dec. 5. Suresh Dominic of Campaign Life Coalition's Catholic wing was preparing to replace the broken pane on Dec. 8.

TORONTO - Long-time special education advocate Ashleigh Molloy credits Jean Vanier with showing him the way.

It is Vanier, the founder of the worldwide L’Arche movement, and his message that working with people with special needs is a blessing, not a burden, that Molloy has carried throughout his more than two decades of work as a Catholic school teacher and father of a daughter with Down Syndrome.

TORONTO - Spurred by the exodus of Iraqi Christians, the archdiocese of Toronto doubled the number of Iraqi refugee families it sponsored in 2010 to 190.

The boom in Iraqi refugee sponsorships was fueled by 40 new refugee sponsorship committees or initiatives aimed at rescuing Iraqi refugees. The Office of Refugees, Archdiocese of Toronto is currently handling sponsorship files for  approximately 250 refugees from around the world.

TORONTO - One year after losing its federal government funding and being accused of supporting anti-Semitic organizations, KAIROS has come out “stronger” and remains hopeful that its funding will be reinstated, says executive director Mary Corkery.

The challenges KAIROS faced over the past year have “renewed our passion to carry out a mission in support of social justice which is the root of peace, the heart of peace, the only way peace and development can happen,” Corkery told said during a Dec. 1 teleconference with four partners in Kenya, Colombia and the Philippines. KAIROS invited church media to the teleconference to provide an update on the funding cut.  

The Catholic Civil Rights League has strongly denounced a spaying and neutering campaign by an animal rights group that depicts Pope Benedict XVI brandishing a condom.

In a campaign launched Dec. 2 in the Vatican, representatives from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) began handing out their “Pope Condom campaign leaflets.” PETA said the campaign will be taken to cathedrals and churches across the United States.

OTTAWA - When Dr. Keith Martin recalls all that he has accomplished, he can't help but thank the priests who taught him at Toronto's Neil McNeil High School.

The retiring MP credits his Catholic education and the challenges created by some tough but caring priests with shaping the values of charity, compassion and kindness that have guided his life ever since.

“They taught us to look outside ourselves,” he said.

OTTAWA - Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has fired back at Canada’s bishops for a public letter criticizing his anti human-smuggling bill.

The letter reflects a “long tradition of ideological bureaucrats who work for the bishops’ conference producing political letters signed by pastors who may not have specialized knowledge in certain areas of policy,” Kenney said in an interview.

TORONTO - Christian-Jewish dialogue isn’t just about Christians and Jews. It’s about how human beings should conduct themselves, how we secure a future of peace, how we know God and how we repair the world, said one of the pioneers of religious dialogue in Canada.

Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Toronto, along with the Canadian Jewish Congress, put on a gala dinner to honour Rabbi Erwin Schild and his wife Laura Schild at the Liberty Grand banquet hall in Toronto Nov. 24. Bishops, rabbis, reverend doctors and theologians were among those gathered to honour him