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.

OTTAWA - Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J., came with “attentive ears and discerning heart” as he conducted the first phase of an Apostolic Visitation to the Tuam archdiocese in Ireland Dec. 13-19.

Prendergast was one of four foreign cardinals and archbishops appointed by Pope Benedict XVI last spring as Apostolic Visitor to address the Irish clergy abuse scandal and its impact on the Church in Ireland. Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley visited the Dublin archdiocese in late November, Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins is expected to visit Ireland’s Cashel and Emily archdiocese in late January or early February and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Westminster’s archbishop emeritus, is scheduled to visit the Armagh archdiocese in mid-January.

In the 25 years since he became a priest, one accomplishment Fr. Pat Cosgrove looks back on with particular fondness is the establishment of Chalice.

“When I started doing this, I never thought that we needed another developmental organization in the world,” Cosgrove told The Catholic Register. “What I really thought we were doing was expressing God’s love and passion for the poor and I still feel that more than anything else. We try to give Catholics in Canada a way to express their faith and their love for Christ.”

TORONTO - Former mountain bike racer Leslie Greene isn’t your typical advocate for natural family planning. The United Church member is a natural family planning (NFP) practitioner with Toronto’s Marguerite Bourgeoys Family Centre who supports the Catholic Church’s teachings favouring natural methods of achieving or avoiding pregnancy, and is against birth control pills and artificial fertility treatments.

Greene prefers to steer clear of the NFP label. Instead, she says it’s more accurate to call it “fertility care,” a natural method of looking after a woman’s reproductive health.

TORONTO - For parishioners at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church on Queen Street West, the annual Christmas traditions include helping poor families and those who are ill in the community.

This year, the parish is raising money for St. Joseph’s Healthcare.

TORONTO - Christmas stars, known as Filipino Christmas lanterns, adorn Our Lady of the Assumption Church this Advent season.

Our Lady of Assumption, the archdiocese’s Filipino Catholic Mission, is home to about 7,000 Filipino Catholic families.

TORONTO - This Christmas, Christina Panzini is going to be making Christmas gifts for her grandparents using the nicest beads she can find. But she won’t be making bracelets or necklaces. This year, Panzini will be making homemade rosaries.

“I never know what to buy my grandparents and I want to give them things that are sentimental,” she said. “Something they’ll use and appreciate.”

Panzini, a third-year geography student at York University, said it’s easy to make beautiful rosaries at reasonable prices. She buys all materials at art supply stores, like Michaels, which stock all the required parts.

TORONTO - There’s no mention of a donkey loaded with pomegranates, windmills or a group of musicians playing the zaqq, the tanbur and the safzava in Gospel stories of the birth of Jesus. But for the Maltese it just wouldn’t be Christmas without them.

Traditional Maltese Christmas nativity scenes, called presepju, contain all these Maltese elements and more. At Toronto’s Maltese parish, St. Paul the Apostle, the Maltese tradition is on display in a big way.