NEWS

OTTAWA - Changes in the no longer mandatory long-form census have prompted the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops to examine new ways to fund their Ottawa-based secretariat.

“The bishops are becoming more and more aware that the CCCB has important financial challenges,” said CCCB general secretary Msgr. Pat Powers in an e-mail. “These include revenues and expenses, as well as how these have been reported in the past.”

Powers noted the CCCB “used to rely on Statistics Canada to provide data on the Catholic population of each diocese.” The census will no longer be asking for religious affiliation. The CCCB and the Catholic Civil Rights League were among many groups that opposed the changes last year.

GATINEAU, Que. - Hundreds packed the Gatineau cathedral on All Saints’ Day to bid farewell to Archbishop Roger Ébacher, who is retiring after having served the diocese for 23 years.

“Brothers and sisters, during these years of walking with you, I have received much from you,” Ébacher said in his homily, flanked by the bishops of Ottawa and Gatineau’s suffragan bishops from Amos, Mont Laurier and Rouyn-Noranda. “Every service in the Church is an exchange: we give and we receive.

“I received from you so many inspiring examples, encouraging support, generous solidarity, as well as challenges,” he said. “For this, I thank you with all my heart.”

OTTAWA - The fifth Ottawa 40 Days for Life prayer vigil ended Nov. 6 with signs the movement is stronger than ever.

Twenty-six parishes or groups participated in the vigil outside the Morgentaler abortion facility on Bank Street, a 20-per-cent increase over the last campaign. It also marked the first time the Bible was read out loud during the campaign.

Each day, for two hours straddling the busy noon hour, the Bible was read out loud with the help of a microphone and speaker set up at the site. 

TORONTO - The Commonwealth decision to let Catholics marry into the Royal Family but still exclude them from the throne doesn’t much impress Tony O’Donoghue.

“Big deal,” said an underwhelmed O’Donoghue as he works away on a book about everything that’s wrong with Canada’s constitutional monarchy. “Just allowing whoever is in line for the throne to marry a Catholic, is that a big deal? I think that’s a lot of B.S.”

O’Donoghue managed to get the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in 2003 to rule on the constitutional validity of the 1701 Act of Settlement, one of several laws that determine who may or may not be monarch. He wanted the Act of Settlement, which forms part of Canada’s Constitution, declared unconstitutional and invalid.

TORONTO - They won’t all agree, but they will acknowledge the common ground, if only because they’ve walked it together.

Franciscan Friar of the Atonement Father Damian MacPherson, Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl, Rev. Dr. Karen Hamilton and Imam Abdul Hai Patel travelled together with an interfaith band of pilgrims to the Holy Land in September. Now they’re ready to report back.

The four leaders will present a panel discussion called “Walking the Path of Abraham” at the Scarboro Missions headquarters, 2685 Kingston Rd., in Toronto Nov. 29, at 7 p.m. 

HANOI, Vietnam - Redemptorists at a Hanoi parish have urged local Catholics to keep calm after a mob led by government officials attacked a convent and church in early November.

The Asian church news agency UCA News reported tens of thousands of people attended 10 special Masses celebrated Nov. 5-6 at Thai Ha Church in the capital. Each Mass was attended by an estimated 3,000-5,000 people.

VATICAN CITY - New biotechnologies raise questions in the fields of medicine, economics, ethics and philosophy, and the Vatican plans to look at all of them during a three-day conference devoted to adult stem-cell research, officials said.

The Pontifical Council for Culture partnered with NeoStem, Inc., a U.S. company researching and marketing adult stem-cell therapies, to sponsor the Nov. 9-11 international conference, "Adult Stem Cells: Science and the Future of Man and Culture."

TORONTO - Pro-life activist Linda Gibbons was freed from a maximum security Ontario prison on Nov. 4 after charges of disobeying a 17-year-old temporary court injunction prohibiting protests at several downtown Toronto abortion clinics were dismissed.

Gibbons’ lawyer, Daniel Santoro, told The Catholic Register the charges were dismissed by Ontario Justice Alphonse T. Lacavera because the sheriff read an outdated injunction to Gibbons when he arrested her on Aug. 4 for breaching the 1994 temporary injunction.

VATICAN CITY - After the Nazi atrocities of the World War II, Germany's new constitution recognized the dignity of each human being, a value that is starting to be questioned in the country, Pope Benedict XVI said.

"Only a society that respects and unconditionally defends the dignity of every person from conception to natural death can call itself a humane society," the Pope said Nov. 7 as he welcomed Reinhard Schweppe as Germany's new ambassador to the Holy See.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI appealed for an end to violence in Nigeria and prayed for victims of the most recent wave of civil conflict there.

"I am following with concern the tragic incidents that have occurred in recent days in Nigeria. As I pray for the victims, I call for an end to all violence, which never solves problems, but only increases them, sowing hatred and division even among believers," the Pope said.