NEWS

{mosimage}Toronto - Four historic residences on the campus of the University of St. Michael’s College will be getting much needed renovations, decades overdue, which will bring them into the 21st century. 

OTTAWA - An all-party Senate report on children’s rights that recommends creating a children’s commissioner and abolishing spanking has raised concerns among some traditional family advocates.

{mosimage}BEIJING - He’s known as “the black pope of China” — a play on the “black pope” title given to the powerful head of the Jesuits — and whether or not people like his methods, they all agree that he is one of the most powerful laymen in China’s Catholic Church.

{mosimage}TORONTO - In the new year a young Chinese man approached Redemptorist Father Peter Chin and asked him whether he was a Catholic priest. When Chin said “Yes,” the young man was ready to unburden himself of a secret he had carried across an ocean and through 12 time zones.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - After several years of study, the Vatican’s International Theological Commission said there are good reasons to hope that babies who die without being baptized go to heaven.

OTTAWA - Will Catholic schools continue in Ontario? That is among the questions Saint Paul University’s first holder of The Mercy and Presentation Sisters of Newfoundland Chair in Religious Education and Catechetics said she faces as she assumes her new role.

{mosimage}Calgary Bishop Fred Henry has withdrawn his support from the Calgary-based Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform.

TORONTO - Prayers and peace have been linked for as long as soldiers have marched off to war. A couple hundred people gathered at St. James Anglican Cathedral April 22 to take Canada’s turn at praying for peace, for endangered Canadian soldiers and for the men trying to kill them.

{mosimage}Toronto - St. Clare’s parish is seeing new faces these days, demonstrating how an aging inner-city parish community can find new life within its young, diverse parishioners.

WINDSOR, Ont. - Next year’s 49th International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City will allow a renewal of faith by connecting with the “source and summit” of Christian life, the Eucharist, said Cardinal Marc Ouellet.