{mosimage}The moment for Canada to beat its own swords into ploughshares, to transform its own spears into pruning hooks and to work so that nation shall not lift up sword against nation may have finally arrived with the defection of a former chair of Amnesty International into Canada’s nascent Catholic peace camp.

TORONTO - In July 1964, young Carmelina Tarantino arrived in Toronto from Liveri, Italy, seeking medical treatment for an aggressive form of cancer. When she was permanently admitted to Toronto’s Riverdale Hospital in 1969, her prognosis was grim: she was expected to live six months. Eight years later, Carmelina made her profession of faith and became Sr. Carmelina of the Passionist Sisters of the Cross.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - A recent Canadian Press-Decima Research Poll shows Canadians are divided on the role God played — or did not play — in the creation of humans. But that does not mean the evolution vs. creationism controversy raging in the United States will come to Canada.

John Paul II was a bridge to young people

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I will never forget the scenes in Rome surrounding the death of Pope John Paul II in April 2005. More than half the crowd of four million-plus people that descended upon Rome were young people from every part of the world. Such a thing would have been unthinkable 25 years ago.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Canada’s biggest bank has just crashed the socially responsible investing party as lining up investments with values goes more mainstream.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - Early in May, when James Doak of Ottawa booked a hotel room for the 2008 International Eucharistic Congress next June 15-22 in Quebec City, he discovered the hotel he chose was already 90-per-cent full.

TORONTO - For Toronto’s Archbishop Thomas Collins, more diversity equals less controversy in Canada’s Catholic community over liturgy.

“We celebrate Toronto as the most diverse diocese in the world. We’ve just been enriched. I think the whole church has.” Collins told The Catholic Register following the release of Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum, which declared the 1962 Latin Missal one of two approved forms of the Mass. “This is a great thing, and it solves all of this disputing and all this stuff.”

{mosimage}OTTAWA - The wish to abolish abortion in Canada topped the CBC’s Great Canadian Wish List on Facebook with 9,543 votes.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Across the city of Toronto in late June, flags were flying at half mast. Outside of Jean Vanier Catholic Secondary School in Scarborough, the lowered flag was accompanied by a photographic memorial set up in honour of former student and fallen soldier Cpl. Stephen Bouzane. Cpl. Bouzane, 26, died alongside two comrades, Sgt. Christos Karigiannis and Pte. Joel Vincent Wiebe, when their unarmoured vehicle hit a roadside bomb southwest of Kandahar on June 20.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Hundreds of people crammed into Toronto’s St. Michael’s Cathedral June 20 to attend a Mass marking 50 years of Opus Dei’s presence and work in Canada.