TORONTO - A lot of people don't know that God is Brazilian, but Scarboro Mission priest Fr. Ron Macdonell has had 26 years of working with indigenous people in the Amazon River basin to learn just how Brazilian God can be.

"Deus é Brasileiro," is a popular saying among Brazilians.

"To me it says that the Brazilians are very close to God and God is their creator. God made them," said Macdonell.

God made Brazilians even if it's hard to say what exactly a Brazilian is. Brazilian identity is a constant puzzle that goes much deeper than soccer and samba, bikinis and coffee.

For a missionary, the question of identity is worked out in faith.

"You can be Catholic in Brazil. You can be Chinese Catholic. You can be Nigerian Catholic. You have to look at what's cultural and what isn't," said Macdonell. "Looking at Brazil, Brazil is a mishmash of all the world's cultures."

Macdonell has lived most of the last 26 years among Macuxi native people in the rainforests of the Amazon, straddling the equator.

Macdonell doesn't think of himself as a missionary to Brazil. Rather, he is a missionary with the Macuxi people. He was living with the Macuxi in the northern Brazilian state of Roraima until the Scarboro Missions called him back this year to serve on its leadership council. Though now based in Toronto, Macdonell will return to his Macuxi community a couple of times a year for extended visits.

The 54-year-old identifies himself as a child of Vatican II, but traces his vocation back to pre-Vatican Council roots in Antigonish, N.S.

"This vision of justice was one feature of the pre-Vatican Church in Nova Scotia — the Antigonish Movement, the co-op credit union movement, Moses Coady and Fr. Jimmy Tomkins. I heard about all that from my parents," he said. "Then the second experience that was formative for me was the Antigonish diocesan priests who were working in Honduras as part of the Church's call to aid Latin America. I would hear about them."

A talent for languages also en- couraged Macdonell's vocation. He isn't just fluent in English and Portuguese. He has of course learned the indigenous languages of Roraima — Macuxi and Yanumami. Japanese was fun to learn. And when he did his PhD in linguistics it just seemed more intreresting to do it in French at Université de Laval in Quebec.

In the context of the Brazilian Church, Macdonell has a very clear sense of the Second Vatican Council as a living and breathing force.

"In Brazil we have a very strong component of the Church that works along social lines and the social Gospel," he said. "Any study of the catechism is not just a call to personal conversion and learning about the Catholic faith. It is also a call to missionary involvement in the local community."

Which means he's not the only missionary when he meets with his Macuxi parishioners. They're all missionaries. The priest's job is to give them the tools and the confidence to be missionaries in their own communities, even their own families.

"So the importance of leadership training is vital. And this is with people who do not have a lot of schooling — perhaps four years of school," he said. "A lot of our work — the sisters and the other priests I work with — is to form teams that will give spiritual training in how to read and interpret the Bible."

Macdonell sees the 19th-century missionaries as driven by sheer numbers of baptisms and the establishment of new parishes. Around the Second Vatican Council the emphasis shifted to institutions — clinics, hospitals, schools, labour centres.

But today's missionaries are focussed on formation so that people can really take ownership of their faith.

"It's sort of an invisible, unmeasurable mission," he said.

There will be no neat statistics that show how confident and wise parish leaders have become. But in regions where there are few priests spread out over huge territory with many inaccessible communities, where Mass is celebrated as little as two or three times per year, lay leadership is essential.

There's more to leading an indigenous Church in Brazil than liturgies and Bible study. People expect the Church to be close to them in their lives.

"We're working with people in poverty, so we're trying to analyse what are the sources of this poverty," said Macdonell.

Whether the issue is local drinking water or rampant alcoholism tearing apart families, groups Macdonell works with expect their religion to help them live a better life. Meetings that start with prayer quickly move on to deal with health, employment and social issues.

Brazil's national conference of Catholic bishops encourages and supports the connections between societal challenges and religion with annual fraternity campaigns during Lent and some 30 pastoral commissions that work on land rights, homelessness, workers' rights, women, ecology and more.

"There's already a structure that has been created within the Brazilian Church that calls people to this engagement, so that their personal faith is lived out in some way," Macdonell said.

As he settles back into life in Canada for a while, Macdonell is aware that at 54 he's one of the younger priests in the Scarboro Missions. He also knows the hope Scarboro Missions once placed in lay missionaries who make three-year commitments has been hard to achieve, with few people able to abandon jobs, families and mortgages.

But he doesn't believe we're living through a twilight for missionary vocations.

"The Church will always produce missionaries and we look to where they are to find them," he said.

"We see people coming to Canada from Asia, from Latin America, from Africa to be missionaries here among us. Our Church is more and more universal. That's where the catholicity comes in. It's a common language."

(UPDATED 17/10/2012)

TORONTO - It’s not common knowledge the Catholic Church in Toronto originally owned a plot of land at the northeast corner of George and Adelaide Streets. At that time in 1806, Toronto, then called York, had a Catholic population of about 37 people. Nor do most people know the chapel built on this spot was taken over by soldiers during the War of 1812. The land was eventually sold in order to buy the property where St. Paul’s Basilica stands today.

“The only research is in the deeds to the land which was bought by a priest and it was recorded there to be left entrusted to the Roman Catholic Church,” said Paul Vaculik, a ROMwalks volunteer tour guide.

On Oct. 7, more than 60 people gathered to take part in the Sacred Stones & Steeples ROMwalks guided tour, led by volunteers of the Royal Ontario Museum. The two-hour walk covered landmark religious buildings in Toronto at the tine of the War of 1812, whose bicentennial takes place this year, as well as general historical factoids as time marched onwards.

Along with the origins of St. Michael’s Cathedral, the tour also stopped at St. James Cathedral, Metropolitan United Church, Mackenzie House, St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church and the First Evangelical Lutheran Church of Toronto.

St. Michael’s Cathedral, the oldest church on the tour, was built to accommodate the Catholic population which was growing along with the overall population of Toronto, said Vaculik. St. Paul’s, the first Catholic church in Toronto, was originally fairly small, unlike the basilica Torontonians know today.

“The population really grew because of the famine in Ireland,” he said. “The population of Toronto was 20,000 and, within five months, 38,000 Irish came over.”

Unlike the Anglicans, the Catholic Church’s main base wasn’t the affluent. It was the labourers.

“When they started building around 1847, it was like a barn-raising,” said Vaculik. “A lot of the labourers contributed their labour to building the church so they excavated the land and they started to build the church.”

The base material was ballast material from ships, he added. Bishop Michael Power received a lot of flak for choosing St. Michael’s location, Vaculik said. “It was at the northern end of Toronto and it was starting to get into the boonies, but now it’s well in the heart of Toronto.”

Vaculik also pointed out the often overlooked fact that the galero of Cardinal James McGuigan is hanging above the altar at St. Michael’s Cathedral.

“The tradition was that when the cardinal’s received their hat when they were made cardinals, when they died they would hang their hat up by the ceiling (until) it rotted and fell down.”

This practice has been discontinued, and so, the galero of McGuigan will be the last to hang in the cathedral, he said.

Amidst a backdrop of organ practice, the group was led into the Anglican St. James Cathedral, where a white bust of Bishop John Strachan greeted visitors.

A major influence in Toronto, Strachan played a role in the 1813 surrender of York, negotiating directly with the Americans despite having no official diplomatic authority. In the area of education, Strachan was responsible for establishing King’s College at the University of Toronto.

Unbeknownst to the average churchgoer, the Gothic architecture of the cathedral displays windows in groupings of three to represent the Holy Trinity, said Vaculik.

At Metropolitan United Church, another prominent name in post-secondary education in Toronto is mentioned: Methodist minister Egerton Ryerson.

“Ryerson laid down the framework for the educational system as we know it today,” said Vaculik, including the now standard notion that teachers must complete training colleges.

For more on ROMwalks tours, see www.rom.on.ca/programs.

WINNIPEG - Manitoba’s department of Healthy Living, Seniors and Consumer Affairs has released what it says is Canada’s first spiritual health care strategic plan.

Minister Jim Rondeau said the plan, entitled Health and the Human Spirit, “will promote opportunities for Manitobans to experience spiritual health through better awareness, understanding and healing.”

The four-year strategy was developed in sessions involving a range of community and professional stakeholders, including spiritual care providers, volunteers, counsellors, physicians, psychiatrists, policy analysts and individuals who have experienced spiritual care in a health care context. Rondeau said research has shown that higher levels of spiritual well-being, along with a sense of inner meaning and inner peace, are associated with better health outcomes, lower levels of depression and anxiety and a better quality of life.

Fr. Vince Herner, chair of the Manitoba Multifaith Council and director of spiritual care at the Misericordia Health Centre, said Manitoba “has taken an important step forward with the release of this plan. It sets out a vision and goals for Manitoba and recognizes the increasing awareness that spirituality is an important part of human wellness.”

The plan builds on the province’s previous strategies for spiritual health care, including a province-wide spiritual health care volunteer education course called the Spirit of Caring, core competencies for spiritual health care practitioners and the incorporation of traditional aboriginal healing spaces at a number of health facilities.

The new document states that there is a growing awareness that spirituality, or the way a person searches for and finds meaning, “is part of human wellness and spiritual health care must become part of health care theory and practice.”

It quotes from English authors Mark Cobb and Vanessa Robshaw’s 1998 book, The Spiritual Challenge of Health Care, which concludes, “there is what many people recognize as a spiritual quality to life, which, in suffering, confronts people with questions and possibilities that reach beyond the immediate dilemmas of physical insult.” Also in 1998, the World Health Organization endorsed a proposal to include the word “spiritual” in its description of overall health.

Health and the Human Spirit states that the connections between spiritual beliefs, practices and mental and physical health “are a growing area of research that is finding its way into practice. The discipline of spiritual health care brings together our thinking, beliefs, behaviour and culture to address the many ways human beings seek to be well in body, mind, relationships and soul.”

The authors of Health and the Human Spirit conclude that the four-year strategic plan “enables new understanding, relationships, connections and directions for health care providers to offer quality care based on leading practice.”

A copy of the spiritual healthcare strategic plan is available at the Province of Manitoba’s web site under Healthy Living.

Theology professors and librarians at the University of St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto have a new deal.

After a 10-day break in negotiations, unionized faculty and St. Michael's administration finalized their first-ever labour contract in early October.

"What we ended up with is something that reflects the uniqueness of the University of St. Michael's College and upholds the best of what we have in our sector across Canada," said theology professor Michael Attridge, who participated in the 18 months of negotiations on behalf of 18 members of the faculty association.

The sticking point in negotiations had been how and when the college would declare programs and courses redundant. The union feared a system which would allow administration to unilaterally cancel programs and lay off faculty without regard to tenure. The administration proposal was a threat to academic freedom, Attridge said.

"Tenure and permanent status guarantees the integrity of academic freedom," he said.

Under the new agreement, faculty members will sit on committees that decide when budget realities at St. Michael's require that programs be trimmed. They will also sit on separate committees that decide which programs should be cancelled. Faculty will not have a majority vote on either committee.

"What we've put back in place is the collegiality of the governance of the institution," Attridge said. "Members of our association will participate in that decision making."

Theological faculty association members primarily deliver courses to graduate theology students of the Toronto School of Theology, a consortium of three Catholic and four Protestant theological schools at the University of Toronto. The St. Michael's faculty also teach a small number of undergraduate classes.

A statement e-mailed to The Catholic Register from the St. Michael's College administration called the agreement "a solid working document within which the parties can continue to conduct their collegial relationship."

The agreement covers three years from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2014.

Millions of Africans have food today thanks to $1.8 million Canadian Catholics have given to their development agency.

The federal government will kick in about $1.3 million in matching funds to top up five months of fundraising by the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace.

As drought struck the six-country region in May, Development and Peace saw famine on the horizon and began raising money. By August Ottawa stepped in to announce a matching funds program. A final tally of how much of Development and Peace's Sahel region fundraising is eligible for matching funds is pending, but so far the organization has identified approximately $1.3 million that Ottawa should match.

The total Development and Peace commitment in the region comes to almost $8 million, including a $5-million food distribution program the Canadian bishops' development agency is working on with Canadian Foodgrains Bank in three Sahel countries.

In Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Chad and Senegal Development and Peace is working with longstanding partner agencies and the Caritas Internationalis network on seed and food distribution, cash-for-work programs, subsidized food sales and nutrition clinics.

The federal government matching program ended Sept. 30.

OTTAWA - To mark the Synod on New Evangelization taking place in Rome Oct. 7-28 and the beginning of the Year of Faith, the Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF) has released a leaflet urging families to spread the Good News.

In “The Gospel of Everyday Life: an Adventure Worth Sharing,” COLF explains the role of the family as a domestic Church as well as that of lay faithful in evangelizing in light of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and Scripture.

For decades, Catholic Church leaders have been calling for the new evangelization — “new in its ardour, new in its methods and means of expression” because “too many of the baptized live as if God does not exist,” COLF says.

“Their way of life, their opinions, their choices are aligned with an atheistic or relativistic vision of life.”

Not only baptized Catholics need to hear “Christ spoken of seriously” but so do those “with whom we rub shoulders at work, school or university, in the shopping mall, the subway or bus, in our leisure and volunteer activities."

Woven throughout with quotes from Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, the leaflet urges people to collaborate with Christ in introducing Him to family members, friends and others.

The leaflet suggests a gentle, humble approach rather than aggressive proselytizing or imposing one’s faith on others. COLF invites Catholics to deepen their personal relationship with Jesus Christ through prayer, study of the faith and more frequent participation in the Eucharist and the sacrament of Reconciliation.

COLF focuses on Jesus the Son of God, laying out the Gospel message in a way that makes it easy to share with others. Invite Catholics who have fallen away to come back to Church, and invite others to “come and see” and be prepared for when a friend might ask, “What must I do?” to know Christ.

Evangelization is not just for priests, bishops and those in religious life, COLF insists, but is part of the call of all the baptized. It’s also the call of families as domestic churches, the leaflet says.

“God is counting on us, as parents, to make our children apostles of the new evangelization,” it says. “Whoever speaks of evangelization is obviously speaking about relationships, because we must enter into relationship with another person to be able to share with him or her the secret of our happiness.

“By nature, we are relational beings, because we are created in the image of God — Father, Son and Holy Spirit, eternally in relationship,” COLF says.

Evangelization, especially in the family, is not composed of “great speeches or theoretical lessons but through everyday love, simplicity and daily witness.”

The leaflet has a section entitled “Riddle time!” that has a question and answer format that is easy to share with children. It also includes a page with discussion questions for adults that would be appropriate for small group discussion.

The document is downloadable from Colf's web site at www.colf.ca. A workshop guide is also available.

TORONTO - On the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi Toronto's Capuchin friars came courting "Lady Poverty" in Parkdale, where they've been courting her the past 25 years.

"Lady Poverty" was how St. Francis, in the courtly language of the 13th century, conceived of life with and among the poor. Today's Franciscan Capuchins serve "Lady Poverty" by dishing up ravioli, salad, chili con carne and bread with coffee and dessert for $2 at St. Francis Table in the heart of Parkdale, in the city's west end.

There were seven local Capuchins at St. Francis Table serving lunch on Oct. 4. They were there to share a Franciscan feast with the poor and to honour the 25th anniversary of the Franciscan restaurant.

Since it opened Christmas 1987 there's never been much doubt about the Franciscan and Christian foundations of St. Francis' Table, said provincial superior Fr. David Connolly. But "the neighbourhood is changing," he said.

It had always been the Franciscans' intention to hand St. Francis' Table off to lay people with the drive and the ability to sustain the work. That would free up the religious order to launch new ventures.

Watching new condo towers encroach and local businesses replaced with chi-chi restaurants, Connolly thinks that day may be coming soon.

"We would certainly consider moving where the poor move... when the time comes," he said.

In the meantime, St. Francis' Table is having no trouble filling the dining room with people who need a good meal, good company and some encouragement.

Robert Tait has been coming to St. Francis Table the last six months and describes it as "a good place to be."

"It grounds me. It helps me to stay strong in my faith," he said.

St. Francis' Table also has an important ministry to thousands of young volunteers, said Grade 10 religion teacher Mark Henry. On the Feast of St. Francis, Henry brought nine of his Our Lady of the Lake students from Keswick, Ont., to get a more realistic picture of poverty.

"It opens their eyes," he said.

Noting a couple with a child in a stroller who had come for lunch, Henry said he hoped his students understood that the poor are not so different from their own middle-class families.

"It's not the cliché thing. None of us are that far away from poverty," he said.