{mosimage}TORONTO - The need for foster care parents fluctuates with time and location, but financial hardships in Canada could result in a much greater demand for help, according to children’s aid societies in Toronto.

“There’s a shortage of foster homes in general,” said Bervin Garraway, supervisor of foster care development for Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto . “We have not seen (a huge drop) but anticipate there will be.”

{mosimage}TORONTO - Toronto’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Mass will be celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and organizers expect to fill St. Michael’s Cathedral to capacity.  

The March 17 service will be presided over by Archbishop Thomas Collins.

Collins, whose Irish ancestors settled near Guelph, Ont., in 1827, says the annual Mass has become an important part of his St. Patrick’s Day tradition. Although Collins can share a laugh about the many diverse and interesting ways people celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, he said it’s important to remember the day’s religious significance.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The Canadian government will be complicit with human rights violations being committed in Colombia if it proceeds with an already-signed free trade agreement, warned a church-sponsored delegation of Colombian activists that toured Canada in February.

Members of Colombia’s religious community are calling on Canadian churches to help prevent the ratification of the agreement between the two countries.

{mosimage}OTTAWA  - Five Canadian cities kicked off 40 Days for Life vigils of fasting and prayer to end abortion to coincide with Lent.

Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg and Edmonton have joined more than 175 American cities in maintaining prayer vigils outside abortion clinics and hospitals. The 40 Days campaigns began in the United States four years ago.

TORONTO - The Sisters of Life have spent the past year-and-a-half discerning their role in Canadian society. Now, they will be teaming up with parishioners across the Toronto archdiocese to assist pregnant women in need.

The religious order, founded in New York in 1991, first established a Canadian presence in August 2007. Like other orders, the sisters take the traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience but take a fourth vow to “protect and enhance the sacredness of human life.” Most of the sisters are young, between the ages of 28 and 45. The age range for postulants in formation in New York is 22-32.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition — Canada executive director Alex Schadenberg says euthanasia advocates see momentum on their side.

Washington State legalized assisted suicide in a plebiscite held during the last U.S. presidential election. Schadenberg pointed out this was the first referendum to pass of the many attempts in the 10 years since Oregon passed its assisted suicide law.  

{mosimage}OTTAWA - Three Catholic MPs from the New Democratic Party have written Pope Benedict XVI to express their “deep concern” over the “reinstatement” of Society of St Pius X Bishop Richard Williamson, who is a Holocaust denier.

“We respectfully question the wisdom of welcoming back into the College of Bishops a man who has both systematically denied and maliciously minimalized the atrocities committed by Hitler’s Germany against the Jewish inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe between the late 1930s and 1945,” wrote MPs Charlie Angus, Tony Martin and Joe Comartin in an e-mail to the Pope Feb. 5, followed up by a hard copy sent via the apostolic nunciature.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - Canada’s Catholic bishops will support the National March for Life , taking place May 14 on Parliament Hill.

“We want to support it because it is a good thing,” said Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops president Archbishop James Weisgerber.

Campaign Life Coalition president Jim Hughes welcomed the news.

{mosimage}The Supreme Court of Canada has turned back the Canadian Council for Churches , Amnesty International and the Canadian Council for Refugees , refusing to hear the organizations' arguments in favour of striking down Canada's Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States.

The Safe Third Country agreement between Canada and the United States stipulates that refugees who arrive first in the United States must make a refugee claim there and may not make a Canadian refugee claim at the land borders between two nations.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The people who run the church-sponsored food banks, shelters and social agencies in Ontario want a better budget out of Queen’s Park, and they’re willing to pray for it.

Starting March 2 and continuing until Finance Minister Dwight Duncan brings down the 2009 budget, the Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition will stage a prayer vigil on the front lawn of the provincial legislature. No date has been set for the budget, though it is widely expected in the third week of March.