{mosimage}TORONTO - It was a bad month for just about all investors, but a little bit worse for ethical investors in September.

The Jantzi Social Index of 60 Canadian stocks chosen for their environmental, social and governance performance plummeted 15.3 per cent in September, compared with a 13.76-per-cent drop in the S&P/TSX 60 and a 14.45-per-cent slide in the S&P/TSX Composite.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Women’s work is good work, it’s the work of faith and sometimes it involves power tools.

More than 30 women of all faiths came together to do one of the toughest, dirtiest jobs in house construction at a Habitat for Humanity site in the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto Oct. 16. They put up vapour barriers and drywall in six units on Kingston Road near Main Street.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Every year during the world’s largest Holocaust education event the links between Christians and Jews — both now and during the Second World War — are visible.

Of the 160 events that make up Toronto’s Holocaust Education Week starting Nov. 2, a dozen will be held in Catholic schools. Most of the presentations at Catholic schools involve Holocaust survivors telling their stories.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The rich are getting richer, poor are getting poorer and even the middle class is losing touch with wealthy Canadians, according to a new report from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

After 20 years of declining inequality from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s, the gap between rich and poor has risen sharply in Canada since 1995, the OECD said in Growing Unequal, released Oct. 21. Canada is now one of the more unequal countries among the 30 rich nations who make up the OECD.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - The sudden resignation of Truth and Reconciliation Commission chair Justice Harry LaForme has surprised and disappointed both Catholic and aboriginal leaders.

The commission was formed as a result of the Indian residential schools settlement agreement and has a five-year mandate to allow former students and others who participated in the schools to tell their stories.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Abbot Yvon Moreau of the Cistercian Abbey of Oka, Que., to the episcopate in Quebec.

Bishop-elect Moreau will succeed retiring Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière Bishop Clément Fecteau, who turned 75 in April. Canon law requires bishops reaching their 75th birthday to offer their resignation.

TORONTO - Just two days after being released from a prison in Milton, Ont., at the end of September, longtime pro-life activist Linda Gibbons was ready to return to jail.

And she did, a week later, on Oct. 8. She was to appear before a judge in October.

{mosimage}TORONTO - James Douglas calls himself one of the Good Shepherd Centre’s success stories, and it’s hard to argue with the man.

More than three years ago he arrived in Toronto with too much money in his wallet and a thirst much deeper than his pockets. The money was from an insurance settlement. He had left Los Angeles looking for a connection with his family, hoping for a new start. What he found was the downtown bars and soon realized just trading Toronto for Los Angeles wasn’t going to change his life. He had been drinking long enough to know it was the one constant.

{mosimage}TORONTO - If people of faith are serious about peace, they ought to be serious enough to read, understand and promote the United Nations’ doctrine for promoting peace in the post-9/11 world, retired senator and former United Church moderator Lois Wilson told an interfaith gathering at the University of Toronto Oct. 7.

“We have social and political responsibilities,” Wilson insisted to a small group that included imams, rabbis, priests, ministers and scholars of world religions gathered for a conference on “Religions’ Role in Keeping Peace: Responses to A Common Word Between Us and You.”

{mosimage}TORONTO - An Order of Canada recipient who founded an orphanage for girls in Haiti is continuing his legal challenge to the federal government over Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s award nomination, even though the controversial pro-abortion activist received the country’s highest civilian honour on Oct. 10.

Frank Chauvin, a retired police detective from Windsor, Ont., launched a judicial review application in late July to the Federal Court of Canada through lawyer Gerard Charette. Toronto lawyer Phil Horgan is also helping with the case.