OTTAWA - The Canadian government has recognized two outstanding defenders of religious freedom and human rights when awards were granted to the assassinated Pakistani Minister Shahbaz Bhatti and Argentinian anti-trafficking activist Susana Trimarco.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird presented the awards at the 2012 John Diefenbaker Defender of Human Rights Award ceremony Mar. 14 at the former Ottawa City Hall.

Raise taxes for common good: ISARC

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The Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition is telling Ontario’s Liberal government what it didn’t want to hear from economist Don Drummond — raise taxes.

The McGuinty government mandated the Drummond Commission to come up with ways to balance the province’s books but forbade the former bank economist from considering more taxes. ISARC makes no bones about urging action on the revenue side of the equation.

Montreal Auxiliary Bishop Christian Lépine succeeds Cardinal Turcotte as archbishop of Montreal

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OTTAWA - Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, who reached retirement age last June, and appointed Christian Lépine to succeed him as Archbishop of Montreal.

Named last July as auxiliary Bishop of Montreal, Lépine, 60, was ordained to the episcopacy last September with auxiliary Bishop Thomas Dowd. His installation will take place on April 27.

The archbishop-elect served as director of the Grand Seminary of Montreal from 2000 until 2006, and since 2006 as pastor for two parishes in the diocese before becoming an auxiliary bishop. With degrees in theology from the University of Montreal, and philosophy from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Lépine also served for a year in the Vatican's Secretariat of State and for a year in the Congregation for Divine Worship.

The two solitudes of family planning

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OTTAWA - The same week a student group came under fire for distributing condoms on the Saint Paul University (SPU) campus, a pro-life group hosted a panel on the benefits of natural family planning (NFP), revealing the contrasts between artificial and natural means of preventing pregnancy.

SPU administrators ordered the student group to stop leaving a bowl of condoms for free pickup by students. That prompted a student to write an open letter, backed by 100 others, that led to stories by the news media.

POWER Study tackles health equity

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If all Ontarians were as healthy as those with higher incomes there would be 231,000 fewer disabled people and about 3,300 fewer deaths per year, found a recent study from researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital.

The final chapter of the six-year long POWER Study examining health equity was released last month from researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). The POWER study (Project for an Ontario Women’s Health Evidence-Based Report) examined access, quality and outcomes of care across the province for the leading causes of disease and disability and how they varied by sex, income, ethnicity and where one lives. The 12-volume study cost $4.3 million and involved 60 researchers.

Vinnie’s Wallet to offer loans for men in need

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The St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Ursuline Sisters in Chatham, Ont., are not likely to make a dent in Canada’s $2 billion per year payday loan industry, but in their own small way will be taking them on.

On May 1, 2010 the Ursuline Sisters used $20,000 to launch a microfinance venture they call Angela’s Pocket. With close ties to The Women’s Centre and the local United Way, Angela’s Pocket has lent out about $8,000 in small loans to women who otherwise couldn’t raise money. The loans are for everything from a return to school to basic household appliances.

The Catholic Church plays catch up in Indian society

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MISSISSAUGA - Despite representing just 2.3 per cent of the nation’s billion-plus population, India’s Christians are making an impact in the rapidly developing nation.

That was the message delivered by Cardinal Oswald Gracias as the Archbishop of Bombay concluded a Canadian tour at a March 19 banquet.

“We are breaking out from the Christian community to human communities,” said Gracias.

A Church divided is not whole in God - Rev. Tveit

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TORONTO - There’s nothing more Catholic than ecumenism, nothing more Christian than unity, nothing more urgent than the need to heal divisions in the body of Christ, but none of it will happen based on resentments, fears and identity politics, the head of the World Council of Churches told a couple hundred people in Toronto March 14.

On his first official visit to Canada, Rev. Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit laid out challenges to ecumenism which he said oppose the Christian mandate to fulfill the Lord’s Prayer — “Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.”

Human trafficking bill passes hurdle

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A bill to enable Canada to prosecute human-trafficking involving Canadian citizens or permanent residents overseas received unanimous approval March 15 by the Parliamentary Justice Committee.

Justice Committee members heard witnesses from anti-human trafficking groups, including a survivor of trafficking into the sex trade, speak in favor of MP Joy Smith’s Bill C-310 An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking of persons). In a rare consensus across party lines, MPs went through the Bill line by line before adopting it and sending it back to the House of Commons for third reading debate.

LifeSiteNews responds in defamation suit

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OTTAWA - A year after Quebec priest Fr. Raymond Gravel filed a $500,000 defamation lawsuit against LifeSiteNews (LSN), the online pro-life news service has filed a defence that argues the lawsuit is an attack on press freedom.

On its website, LSN wrote it is “now free to present many of the disturbing details about what we will argue is an abusive and politically-motivated lawsuit that amounts to an extreme attack on freedom of the press and freedom of speech.”

Committee set to examine definition of a human being

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OTTAWA - A Conservative MP’s private member’s motion that critics charge will re-open the abortion debate has been officially declared votable and will have its first hour of debate on April 26.

MP Stephen Woodworth’s Motion 312 would set up a Parliamentary Committee to examine Canada’s 400-year old definition of a human being in subsection 223 (1) of the Criminal Code. He has asked the definition be examined in light of advances in modern medical science.

Calls for a right to after-birth “abortion” to kill newborns have added to the urgency of this debate, he says.