{mosimage}OTTAWA - The Anglican Catholic Church of Canada College of Bishops has sent a formal letter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome asking that the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus be implemented in Canada.

Released last November by the Vatican, the Apostolic Constitution opened the door for Anglicans to become Catholic while retaining aspects of their liturgical and spiritual patrimony. In asking that a personal ordinariate be established in Canada, the Anglican Catholic Church is following similar requests from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Toronto’s Chaldean Catholic community continues to pray for peace in the wake of further violence affecting Christians in Iraq.

“We go with prayer and in this Holy Week, we ask our Lord Jesus Christ, King of Peace, to make peace in this country. All our hearts go to the (people in Iraq),” Chaldean Archbishop Hanna Zora told The Catholic Register.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde made yet another pitch for euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in the House of Commons March 16 with her private member’s Bill C-384.

Only about 10 MPs were in the House for the debate. It will have one hour of debate before a vote on second reading. If it passes it will be sent to committee for further study.

{mosimage}TORONTO - A window on the Kingdom of God now hangs in the chapel at the archdiocese of Toronto’s Catholic Pastoral Centre.

Icon painter Janusz Charczuk donated the painting of the archangel Michael to the archdiocese. The icon of the patron saint of the archdiocese of Toronto took three months to paint using traditional materials and techniques, including a base of 16 layers of gesso made from marble dust, and hand-mixed colours in egg tempura.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The University of St. Michael’s College will host a conference March 26 on “Evangelization in the Media.”

The main topic  is the role of evangelization in television, movies and music.

“This was not supposed to be a media conference, but an ethics conference,” said Daniel Gibson, president of Compass Catholic Fellowship , which is organizing the event.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Two hundred people gathered to network and talk about fostering a culture of vocations at the National Association of Vocation and Formation Directors bi-annual conference March 14-17 in Toronto.

The “Let our Lives Speak” Vocations Alive Conference welcomed representatives from close to 150 religious groups and several lay groups — namely the Serran Foundation of Canada , the Catholic Women’s League , Canadian Catholic Campus Ministry and Catholic Christian Outreach . NAVFD’s focus in the past two years has been on encouraging its members to help young people discern not only the priesthood and religious life but also the married and single life.

TORONTO - Food forms a relationship between people, the Earth and God and thus should be a spiritual experience from production to consumption.

Fr. Jim Profit, S.J., underscored this message during an evening of Lenten reflection hosted at the Newman Centre by the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace and Faith Connections March 8.

{mosimage}TORONTO - At almost $3.7 million, Catholics in the archdiocese of Toronto collectively made one of the largest donations from a North American diocese for Haiti earthquake relief.

It is the largest donation from a Canadian Catholic diocese.

{mosimage}MONTREAL - When I learned of a new exhibit — The Irish O’Quebec — at Montreal’s prestigious McCord Museum , I knew I had to see it. The reasons were obvious: my maiden name was O’Donnell (the Irish part of me). My great-grandfather John Patrick O’Donnell had immigrated to Quebec in the 1860s so stories like his would be represented somewhere in this exhibit. My mother’s maiden name was La Branche (the French Canadian part of me). I had the perfect dual heritage. To top it off, I learned the guest curator of this exhibit was historian  Dr. Lorraine O’Donnell.

The exhibit is mounted with the usual creativity found in Quebec museums. McCord Museum, originally one of Montreal’s grand old mansions now added on to and owned by McGill University, has a strong link with Montreal’s past. Any museum exhibit has to have a rationale and the one behind this one is obvious: how did two distinct cultures — the French Canadian settlers and Irish immigrants — manage to blend so seamlessly in French Quebec? This exhibit provides the answers, as we move through the 17th century onward learning of both famous and ordinary folk of this mixed culture.

In the next 20 years Canada is expected to be less Christian, and a little less religious.

According to Statistics Canada, the most dramatic change in Canada’s religious landscape will be an increase in the number of Muslims. Muslims currently make up 35 per cent of all non-Christians. By 2031 they will be half of the non-Christian population.