NEWS

{mosimage}WASHINGTON - More Americans are losing jobs, and Catholic agencies are trying their best to tide them over until they find new work.

The United States shed 533,000 jobs in November, the most in any single month in 34 years. The national unemployment rate climbed to 6.7 per cent in December, a 15-year high, up from 6.5 per cent in October.

{mosimage}TORONTO  - The country's economic woes are causing more Canadians to seek counselling in recent months, says the Canadian Mental Health Association .

Catholic Family Services of Toronto — one of several agencies across the country at the frontlines in helping people cope with individual or family breakdowns during the economic crisis — has seen the number of people seeking counselling increase, especially as people are faced with holiday and post-holiday stress.

{mosimage}CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe must be forced to step down, said the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference.

"It is now time to isolate Mugabe completely and to remove all forms of moral, material or tacit support for him and his party," the conference said in a Dec. 18 statement issued by Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, conference spokesman.

{mosimage}TORONTO - It’s been three years since Lynne Fisher moved out of a shelter and into her own apartment.

The 49-year-old marital abuse survivor was on the brink of homelessness and credits the Independent Living Account program for helping her regain her independence.

The Social and Enterprise Development Innovations , or SEDI, started the $146,000 financial literacy program in 2005. It currently teaches shelter residents how to save money, pay bills and prepare to move out on their own. The program also offers a matched saving incentive of $3 for every $1 deposited into a savings account with TD Bank Financial Group. TD and the National Club of Toronto are donating the matched funds for the 61 residents in the program, each of whom can save a maximum of $400 and have those savings matched up to $1,200.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Missionary work seldom evokes the thought of spiritual direction at a seminary, yet that is exactly what Fr. Locky Flanagan is preparing to do in Malawi in the new year.

The Spiritan priest from Ireland has served two stints as a missionary in the southern African country, both in the early 1980s and then again in 2000 — a total of 10 years. When he wasn’t serving in Malawi, Flanagan was based here in Toronto. But his recent decision to spend at least the next six months again in Malawi to spiritually guide the seminarians has also extended to a desire to help out financially.

{mosimage}TORONTO - He may not be the Christmas angel but St. Michael has spent many Christmases with patients’ loved ones during the holidays at St. Michael’s Hospital in downtown Toronto.

The full-sized marble statue of the angel has been sitting in the hospital’s Victoria Street entrance since 1997. Before that it quietly guarded the older Bond Street entrance after its rescue from a second-hand store on Queen Street some time in the late 1890s by members of the hospital’s founders, the Sisters of St. Joseph.

{mosimage}Material, economic poverty is certainly not a blessing. Yet it is often those who are poor economically who are more trusting in God, more generous in sharing with others and more hopeful in the future. Although material riches are meant to help us, so often they burden us with false hopes, turning our eyes away from the needs of others and making us less confident in the power and graciousness of God. Even worse, material riches can blind us from seeing how the worst forms of poverty are not lack of wealth or possessions, but lack of dignity, acceptance and love.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - Two nuns, the founder of the Reform Party and the first Reform Party MP were inducted into the Order of Canada at a Rideau Hall ceremony Dec. 12.

They chose to receive Canada’s highest civilian honour, despite the controversy over abortionist Henry Morgentaler’s appointment last July 1 that has led about a dozen Canadians, including Montreal Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte , to return their awards. Earlier this month  the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate — Assumption Province returned the Order of Canada honouring two of its deceased members.

{mosimage}TORONTO  - One way to stimulate the economy, according to some poverty advocacy groups, would be to increase welfare rates.

Clarence Lochhead, executive director of the Vanier Institute of the Family , said as politicians and economists consider ways of dealing with the economic crisis, they should take a look at increasing social assistance payments.

{mosimage}WASHINGTON - Cardinal Avery Dulles, a Jesuit theologian who was made a cardinal in 2001, died Dec. 12 at the Jesuit infirmary in New York. A cause of death was not released but he had been in poor health. At 90, Cardinal Dulles had been the oldest living U.S. cardinal.

His death "brings home to God a great theologian and a totally dedicated servant of the church," said Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. bishops.