News/Canada

THORNHILL, ONT. - Every day Rami Kaai receives at least 50 phone calls from Christian refugees in the Middle East who plead for his help in coming to Canada.

The Knights of Columbus Sydney Council 1060 has brought the order’s prestigious Star Council Award to the shores of Nova Scotia.

OTTAWA - The fate of Andrew Bennett and the Office of Religious Freedom is up in the air as the office was not included in the Prime Minister’s mandate letter to the Foreign Affairs Minister. Government silence has advocates for religious freedom worried about where religious freedom stands with the new Prime Minister.

OTTAWA - Euthanasia opponents fear that the new Liberal government is “kowtowing” to the euthanasia lobby following new directions given to a federal panel that has been consulting Canadians on assisted suicide.

OTTAWA - Former Anglicans in the Ordinariates will celebrate according to their new missal, Divine Worship: The Missal, beginning the First Sunday of Advent.

MONTREAL - Quebec's new end-of-life care law will go into effect Dec. 10, and at least one of its 31 palliative care facilities announced that it will be offering medically induced death, or assisted suicide.

TORONTO - Toronto area Catholics are getting new destinations of pilgrimage with the designation of seven Holy Doors in parishes across the archdiocese for the upcoming Year of Mercy.

MONTREAL - New accounting practices at the Vatican under the supervision of an independent Auditor General will make fraud and financial mismanagement a thing of the past and help curb extravagant spending, according to Maltese banker and economist Joseph F.X. Zahra.

TORONTO - It’s been 17 years and the broadcast of well over 5,000 television Masses — marking the right moment for Barb and Mike McManus to pass the torch.

MONTREAL - Calling her a star in a “constellation of holiness,” Montreal Archbishop Christian Lépine has opened the cause for sainthood of a 17th-century Montreal laywoman.