NEWS

TORONTO - More than 20,000 pamphlets were dropped in mailboxes at homes across Ontario as part of the “De-Fund Abortion Pamphleting Blitz” on Jan. 14.

The aim was to raise awareness among taxpayers that their tax dollars are providing abortion services in the province.

“It works at the grassroots level to spread awareness about… abortion funding to motivate and activate the everyday person to contact their MPP,” said Alissa Golob, youth co-ordinator at Campaign Life Coalition, who ran the event.

Edmonton - Alberta’s newest member of the Canadian Senate is a board member of the Western Catholic Reporter and a long-time leader in St. Joseph’s Basilica parish.

Betty Unger, named to the Senate Jan. 6 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has served as chair of the WCR board and is currently in her seventh year as a board member. Unger has also been the chair of the parish pastoral council at the basilica parish and currently serves on its finance and administration, and human resources committees. She is also a member of the parish Catholic Women’s League and a Sunday lector.

Edmonton - In the eyes of Fr. Jack Gallagher, sociologists have proven Catholic teaching on sexuality and marriage right.

“Study after study” shows that the ideal place for children to be raised is with their two birth parents, said Gallagher.

“It’s astounding to me that the empirical evidence is so clear,” he said. “I thought there would be general evidence in favour of the Catholic teaching. On point after point, the sociologists have simply proven it true.”

CALGARY - Young pro-lifers from Calgary are petitioning the Alberta government to bring a halt to provincial funding for abortions.

The campaign to Defund Abortion in Alberta is a grassroots initiative started by university and college students, mostly from Calgary, seeking to eliminate public funding for abortion and to support conscience rights for taxpayers.

“A defunding campaign will also focus on uniting Albertans who often disagree about tactics in the abortion debate, but who would generally agree that tax dollars should not fund abortions,” said Amanda Achtman, a University of Calgary student active in the group.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican's highest-ranking Chinese official called on Beijing to release nine arrested Catholic bishops and priests, saying their continued detention "damages China's international image."

Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-fai, secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, made his remarks in an interview published Jan. 17 by AsiaNews, a Rome-based missionary news agency.

While official, political debate over plans to put an outdoor recycling yard across from Canada’s national shrine has been delayed until Feb. 1, ongoing discussions among lawyers may lead to a new home for the industrial facility before the end of this month.

Midland, Ont., Mayor Gord McKay told The Catholic Register he believed lawyers for the Jesuits, Recycling Specialties Inc. and the Town of Midland may be able to find an agreement on how to get out of plans to recycle metal, wood, cardboard, plastics and other materials on the banks of the Wye River within sight and earshot of pilgrims to Martyrs’ Shrine.

“All three parties are talking to one another through their lawyers. There’s something happening there,” said McKay. “It’s one of those things where if we’re not coming to meetings I think good things are happening.”

VATICAN CITY - Bishops make their "ad limina" visits to the Vatican to report on how well they have cared for their faithful, but also to give thanks to God for their bonds with the Pope, the successor of the Apostle Peter, said Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington.

Presiding at Mass Jan. 16 at the tomb of St. Peter, the cardinal led his fellow bishops in singing the creed in Latin and thanking God for the gift of apostolic faith that lives through the ministry of the Pope.

"Our celebration is a visible sign of the communion of faith spread throughout the whole world and how it is anchored here in Rome, where Peter lives now, bearing the name Benedict XVI," the cardinal said.

OTTAWA - Dan McTeague, one of about a dozen staunchly pro-life Liberals who lost their seats in the May 2011 federal election, looks forward to the revitalization of the once powerful Liberal Party.

As one of more than 3,100 delegates at the Liberal Biennial Convention here Jan. 13-15, McTeague said he hoped the party will be able to reach out to all Canadians, including the Catholic and ethnic voters who were the former pillars of party support.

Political scientists have credited the Liberal defeats in 2006 and 2008 to a growing collapse of Catholic and ethnic voter support. Last May, the Liberals were demoted to third party status behind the NDP and the governing Conservatives. The Liberals elected only 34 MPs, though their numbers have grown by one with the recent defection of a Quebec NDP MP to the Liberal ranks.

OXFORD, England - Belgium's Catholic bishops pledged a "culture of vigilance" against future sexual abuse by priests and said guilty clergy must compensate their victims even if their crimes are no longer punishable by law.

"We cannot repair the past, but we can take moral responsibility by recognizing sufferings and helping victims recover," Bishops Guy Harpigny of Torunai and Johan Bonny of Antwerp, the church's delegates for abuse, told a Brussels news conference Jan. 12.

"Above all, we ask forgiveness for the suffering we weren't able to prevent, and we commit to treat this problem differently in future."

WASHINGTON - Picking up from efforts to stem sex trafficking at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, 11 women's religious orders from Indiana and Michigan are working to stop sex trafficking at this year's Super Bowl.

The orders are members of the Coalition for Corporate Responsibility for Indiana and Michigan, established in the early 1990s. The coalition is a member of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, which spearheaded the anti-sex trafficking efforts two years ago in South Africa.

The nuns aren't always the biggest football fans, but they've picked up some of the terminology.