AJAX, Ont.- A crisis response team is helping students at Ajax’s St. Francis de Sales Elementary School cope with the news that one of their teachers has been accused of trying to kill his wife while on a pre-Christmas Jamaican vacation.

Tracy Barrill, superintendent of education for the Durham Catholic District School Board, visited the school Jan. 3, the first day of classes for students returning from the Christmas break, along with the board’s crisis response team led by the board’s chief psychologist, Dr. Ian Brown.

“This is a type of situation that no one can anticipate. We certainly are shocked and saddened by what has occurred and are praying for them, praying for everybody who has been affected,” Barrill said.

TORONTO - Toronto’s Catholic Copts are just as worried as their Orthodox brethren about Internet threats of an Al Qaeda operation in North America.

The much larger Coptic Orthodox community has initiated meetings with police to discuss security in the wake of a New Year’s Eve bombing in Alexandria, Egypt, that killed 21 and wounded about 100. Fr. Bishoy Y Anis of Toronto’s Holy Family Coptic Catholic Church, however, is just as worried about the safety of the 250 to 300 families in his Catholic parish.

“Now I don’t think there is empty talk,” Bishoy told The Catholic Register. “They talked before in Alexandria and they did it. They talked in Iraq and they did it. They talked in Nigeria and they did it.”

Though the archdiocese of Toronto has yet to receive a request for additional security from the Coptic parish (without a bishop of its own, Toronto’s Catholic Copts fall under the authority of the Roman rite archbishop), it plans to provide Holy Family with whatever security may be necessary.

TORONTO - Spiritual leaders, agency directors, government officials, community leaders, educators and corporations will be some of the groups gathering together for the Jan. 12 launch of the Canadian Augustinian Centre for Social Justice.

Spearheaded by the theology and spirituality of St. Augustine and sponsored by the Order of St. Augustine, the goal of the centre is to open up dialogue between community groups and leaders to make social justice a reality, said Brian Dwyer, director of the centre and a parishioner at St. Brigid’s parish in Toronto.

“We believe that through partnerships and collaboration between groups in the community and the decision makers that a dialogue and agreement (on social justice issues) could occur,” said Dwyer.

The launch is an effort to get the dialogue started and establish partnerships with community leaders. In addition, the centre wants to get community groups that are interested in similar social justice issues working together to approach decision makers.

TORONTO - Fr.  Sauveur Content remembers the day of Haiti’s devastating earthquake last January. One year later, he says an investment in education will help Haiti rebuild from the tragedy that destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, including a Catholic university in Jacmel serving the “poorest of the poor.”

“Even before the earthquake, the situation in Haiti was terrible. Now, after the earthquake, Haiti is on its knees,” the dean of the University of Notre Dame in Jacmel told The Register through an interpreter during a late December visit to Toronto.

“We realize that if there is something we need in Haiti, we need to focus on education, the education of the youth. They can provide the new generation of leaders in Haiti.”

OTTAWA - A new Quebec policy that prohibits religious instruction, prayer, singing or ritual in state-funded daycares is imposing the state’s ideological approach to religion on religious education, warns a Catholic parents’ group.

Catholic-run daycares will no longer be allowed to have “specific Catholic teachings, which in itself is a great deprivation to the children,” said Jean Morse-Chevrier, chair of the Association of the Catholic Parents of Quebec (APCQ).

Children who believe in Jesus love to say prayers or sing songs to Jesus, she said. “They won’t be allowed to do that. They can’t say grace together.”

“Children spend a lot of time in daycare, but they can’t sing little Christmas songs. At Easter they can’t talk about Jesus rising from the dead, nothing, even if the parents want that,” she said.

After more than 30 years of official dialogue and 60 years of nurturing a genuine bond, Christians and Jews in Canada may be looking at a new relationship as the organization which has represented the Jewish side in the dialogue is either phased out of existence or significantly reorganized.

The Canadian Jewish Congress, the 91-year-old organization that represents the interests of most Canadian Jews, could cease to exist as early as June. That doesn’t mean Catholics won’t have a Jewish partner in the dialogue next year, but it may mean a more limited focus on Israel and related political issues, Catholic and Jewish dialogue partners told The Catholic Register.

Dr. Victor Goldbloom, who has participated in official Christian-Jewish dialogue in Canada since the first body was established in 1977 — and unofficially since he became a friend of Cardinal Paul-Emile Leger in Montreal in the 1950s — said there’s no indication a new Jewish organization would seek to replace Jewish representatives in Christian-Jewish dialogue.

Though Goldbloom fears a more narrow and partisan organization may replace the CJC, he doesn’t believe a more intense focus on lobbying and advocacy will change interfaith relationships. Goldbloom praised the Catholic side in the dialogue as “rock solid” despite the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. 

TORONTO

Toronto’s Catholic Copts are just as worried as their Orthodox brethren about Internet threats of an Al Qaeda operation in North America.

The much larger Coptic Orthodox community has initiated meetings with police to discuss security in the wake of a New Year’s Eve bombing in Alexandria, Egypt, that killed 21 and wounded about 100. Fr. Bishoy Y Anis of Toronto’s Holy Family Coptic Catholic Church, however, is just as worried about the safety of the 250 to 300 families in his Catholic parish.

AJAX, Ont.

A crisis response team helped students at Ajax's St. Francis de Sales Elementary School cope with the news that one of their teachers has been accused of trying to kill his wife while on a pre-Christmas Jamaican vacation.

Tracy Barill, superintendent of education for the Durham Catholic District School Board, visited the school Jan. 3, the first day of classes for students returning from the Christmas break, along with the board's crisis response team led by the board's chief psychologist, Dr. Ian Brown.

TORONTO - Toronto agencies that teach new immigrants English and help them find their first job in Canada will be forced to close their doors or significantly curtail services to accommodate a $53-million nationwide cut in funding, say local Liberal MPs.

This could mean churches and other community groups may have to take up the slack and provide these services on an ad hoc, volunteer basis, Toronto Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy told The Catholic Register.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told the CBC cuts to Toronto settlement agencies are necessary because Toronto is now receiving fewer immigrants, as the share of immigrants landing in the western and Atlantic provinces increases.

TORONTO - When 13-year-old Calvin Asare of St. Jane Frances Catholic School wrote a Christmas letter thanking Canadian soldiers for serving in Afghanistan, he was also thinking of the day when he might one day wear the same uniform.

Asare was one of 5,000 Toronto school students who prepared Christmas cards and boxes of homemade cookies for the soldiers and attended a Dec. 16 ceremony handing over Christmas gifts at the Toronto Emergency Medical Services (EMS) headquarters on Dufferin Street.