MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - Amid the sights and smells of death and tragedy, volunteers from the Dufferin Peel Catholic District School Board found hope and resilience in the people they met in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Maria Masucci told The Catholic Register that the volunteer trips by a team of teachers, university students, plus a doctor and dentist from Woodbridge’s St. Peter’s parish to Haiti in April and then again in July were inspired by the Gospel of Matthew about feeding and clothing the poor, welcoming strangers and visiting prisoners. They were helping in the aftermath of the January earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people and left millions homeless.

OTTAWA - Roxanne’s Law may have gone down to defeat, but Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge sees signs a version of his anti-abortion coercion bill might succeed some day.

“I was not too disappointed,” said Bruinooge, who chairs the Parliamentary Pro-life Caucus, after the 178-97 defeat Dec. 15 of Bill C-510.

Roxanne’s Law would make it a crime to coerce a woman into having an abortion. It was named for a constituent in Bruinooge's Winnipeg riding who was beaten with a hockey stick by three men and left to die in a snow bank because she refused to have an abortion. Bruinooge said he “learned a lot about Canada” in telling her story, which also attracted international interest.

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.