NEWS

TORONTO - As the partisan rhetoric ramps up for the Ontario election, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association’s attempts at influencing the vote seem to be having little impact so far.

OECTA’s “Who Speaks for Children” campaign was launched on YouTube in March. It highlights the successes of Ontario students since 2003, when the Liberal government came to power. It lauds Ontario’s recent education successes and refers to the tumultuous period of the Mike Harris years when unions clashed constantly and bitterly with Harris’ Conservative government.

Billboard ads have also gone up across the province. In Toronto, the ad can be prominently found throughout Union Station where thousands of commuters from across the GTA pass through daily. At the end of August, the campaign moved into major shopping malls and is running in community newspapers.

TORONTO - The health of those who are “vulnerably housed” is just as poor as the homeless, says a recent study from researchers at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital.

The study found that more than 85 per cent of homeless people have chronic health conditions and more than half have a mental health problem. But those who are “vulnerably housed” — meaning they live in unsafe, unstable or unaffordable housing — have equally poor or worse health than those with no housing at all, found the study published in the International Journal of Public Health last month.

“It’s something that’s not as visible to us because we don’t see them on the street,” said Dr. Stephen Hwang, principal investigator of the study and a physician-researcher at the hospital’s Centre for Research on Inner City Health.

TORONTO - Noelle Munaretto knew it was time to find a full-time job after graduating from Ryerson University.

Influenced by the sudden media hype Twitter was attracting, she decided to sign up and, within 24 hours, was following about 300 people.

By following the people that her existing contacts followed, Munaretto, a Catholic, was led to a tweet advertising a position she was interested in. And by August, she had a job as operations manager at the Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance.

The Internet and social media are critical in the job hunt, said Friar Richard Riccioli, former pastor at St. Bonaventure Church in Toronto and current director of Francis Corps, a young adult volunteer experience in Syracuse, N.Y.

VATICAN CITY - Praying in the midst of suffering, Christians must remember how God has loved them all their lives and will rescue them, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Holding his weekly general audience Sept. 14 in the Vatican audience hall, Pope Benedict continued teaching about prayer and used Psalm 22, "one of the most prayed and studied psalms," as an example of how to cry out to the Lord from a basic position of trust.

The pope returned to the Vatican by helicopter from Castel Gandolfo to hold the audience with about 8,000 pilgrims and visitors -- too many to be accommodated at the papal summer villa, but few enough to fit in the air-conditioned audience hall.

SASKATOON - This fall, St. Thomas More College is celebrating 75 years of Catholic higher education as a federated college on the University of Saskatchewan campus.

The college was founded by the Basilian Fathers of Toronto in federation with the University of Saskatchewan, a relationship modelled on St. Michael’s College with the University of Toronto.

Established in 1936, the first school year saw a total of 39 students being taught by four faculty.

Local Catholics had been trying to establish such a college since 1913, but couldn’t get all Saskatchewan bishops to sign on. Early in 1936, with the province in the grip of drought and economic depression, the bishops of Saskatchewan finally gave their approval, although they also stated that action on the college was “absolutely impossible” at that time.

OTTAWA - Fr. Bill Burke notices a similar pattern in the workshops he has held over the past year on the new English translation of the Roman missal.

At first those attending greet the changes with anger, trepidation and fear the new translation will take back the reforms of Vatican II, he said. They’ve heard rumours from the blogosphere or elsewhere that the “translations is terrible.”

But as Burke exposes priests, music directors and diocesan staff to the new texts, they warm up to the richness of the new translation. He’s travelled to 27 dioceses so far, and plans to visit four more before the new missal is to be used everywhere in English-language parishes in Canada beginning the first Sunday of Advent, Nov. 27.

During his workshops, Burke gives attendees copies of the collects for Advent and Christmas according to the new translation and asks them to follow the new turns of phrase while he reads aloud the current translation.

ANCONA, Italy - Remembering the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Pope Benedict XVI appealed to government leaders and all people of good will to work toward a future marked by solidarity and peace.

The pope marked the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States after celebrating the closing Mass for the Italian National Eucharistic Congress in Ancona, on Italy's Adriatic coast.

Before leading the midday Angelus prayer with about 80,000 people gathered at a shipyard, the pope recalled the anniversary.

"In commending to the Lord the lives of the victims of the attacks carried out that day and their families, I ask leaders of nations and people of good will always to refuse violence as a solution to problems, to resist the temptation of hatred and to work in society, drawing inspiration from the principles of solidarity, justice and peace," the pope said.

VATICAN CITY - In the days leading to Pope Benedict XVI's visit to his homeland Sept. 22-25, German media were asking whether the pope would feel at home in the country he left 30 years ago.

Obviously, he visited Germany frequently while serving in Rome and kept up with friends and colleagues and with developments in church life, theology and politics. As pope, he traveled to Germany in 2005 to celebrate World Youth Day in Cologne and again in 2006 to visit Bavaria, the region where he was born and raised and served as a theology professor and bishop.

After interviewing key Germans involved in planning the upcoming papal trip, Vatican Radio's German program in early September said there's a bit of a sense that the pope and Germans are strangers to each other.

The country was still divided into East and West Germany when he moved to Rome as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and while the communists in the East had succeeded to a large extent in severely limiting Christian life and practice, church activity in the West still was lively.

DUBLIN - The Irish government has stood by comments by Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who charged that the Vatican attempted to "frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago."

In a one-page statement issued late Sept. 8, five days after the Vatican refuted the, the government also welcomed the Vatican's expression of regret over the suffering of abuse victims.

The government struck a less conciliatory note in its defense of Kenny, saying his comments in July "accurately reflect the public anger of the overwhelming majority of Irish people at the failure of the Catholic Church and the Holy See to deal adequately with clerical child sexual abuse and those who committed such an appalling act."

The government also reiterated that a 1997 letter to Irish bishops from Archbishop Luciano Storero, the apostolic nuncio at the time, "provided a pretext for some members of the clergy to evade full cooperation with the Irish civil authorities in regard to the abuse of minors."

WASHINGTON - A decade after the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, led to a backlash against Muslims, many Americans are still uncomfortable with followers of Islam and think its teachings are at odds with American values.

Slim majorities of the people polled this summer by the Public Religion Research Institute say Muslims are an important part of the U.S. religious community and that they are comfortable with Muslim women wearing burqas or Muslim men praying in public in an airport. Those majorities were less than 55 percent in each category.

The report released Sept. 6 by the Brookings Institution, which partnered with the religion institute for the study, noted similarities to how Catholics and Mormons were treated in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

"Throughout American history... immigrants professing faiths outside the existing mainstream have tested the commitment to religious liberty," said the report, "What It Means To Be An American."

It noted that Mormons' endorsement of polygamy was seen as an affront to marriage and a threat to democracy, leading to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints being "hounded" to "the brink of legal extinction by the 1890s."