News/Canada

OTTAWA - Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast blasted the false sense of personhood that results in abortion on demand in Canada.

“We need to challenge the false idea that abortion is merely a private, personal decision,” the archbishop said in a homily at one of several Masses in conjunction with the National March for Life May 10. “The truth is, abortion hurts everyone — the developing child in the womb, the mother, the father, the extended family, the community and even our culture.

A grassroots pro-life movement is hoping to spark a review of abortion laws in Canada through open debate with local MPs, all while maintaining a fair and open discourse for all sides on the issue.

“I’m pro-life from conception,” Mike Schouten, campaign director of the weneedalaw.ca web campaign, told The Catholic Register. “I also recognize that in the current situation in Canada there’s obstacles in our way that prevent us from having a law that bans all abortions. That’s simply just not going to happen right now.”

Schouten said the campaign aims to take an incremental approach.

A house is just a big container. It’s what you put in it that makes it a home. The St. Vincent de Paul Society at St. Kevin’s in Val Therese, Ont., knows the difference.

The Vincentians inspired parishioners at St. Kevin’s and their fellow Vincentians around the province to contribute $24,000 to help furnish pre-fab houses going to the native community of Attawapiskat, Ont.

HAMILTON, ONT. - Some 650 people paid tribute to 13 priests and religious who have a combined 650 years of consecrated service to the Church as the Serra Club of Hamilton held its annual Celebration of Priesthood and Religious Life Dinner May 1.

The 13 each marked 50 years since beginning their religious lives and have pursued greatly varied paths in ministry over that time. Three School Sisters of Notre Dame who were honoured, for example, are currently serving in Ghana, South Sudan and Fort Good Hope, N.W.T., while one priest has acted as a high school teacher and principal, and another as an advisor to the Retrouvaille marriage encounter ministry.

OTTAWA - Archbishop William Aquin Carew, who served in the Holy See’s Secretariat of State under Pope Paul VI and represented the Church in posts around the world until his retirement in 1997, died May 8 in St. John’s, Nfld. He was 89.

A St. John’s native, he was ordained in 1947. He pursued further studies at the Vatican’s college for diplomats in Rome, the Pontificia Academia Ecclesiastica.

His extensive diplomatic career began when he was assigned to serve at the Holy See’s Secretariat of State from 1953 to 1969. In 1969, he was named apostolic nuncio to Rwanda and Burundi, before Pope Paul VI sent him on a special mission to Bangladesh in 1972 as an extraordinary envoy.

His next assignment took him to the Middle East. Archbishop Carew’s last assignment took him to Japan as apostolic pro-nuncio from 1983-97.

As famine grips West Africa the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace is calling for donations so it can help its partners in the region distribute emergency food supplies and organize communities to prevent further deaths.

“This crisis has the potential to spiral into a major humanitarian catastrophe if we don’t act now,” said Development and Peace executive director Michael Casey.

OTTAWA - Fr. Bob Bedard, founder of the Companions of the Cross, was entombed in Ottawa’s Hope Cemetery May 6 in a mausoleum one admirer expects will become a pilgrimage site.

As the sun was setting, about 200 people gathered on the grass as Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast celebrated the Eucharist on the altar of Bedard’s mausoleum. The entombment’s date, the first Friday in May, also marked the anniversary of the order’s founding 27 years ago.

“Fr. Bob let the Holy Spirit energize his faith, and he was then able to proclaim the joy of our Risen Lord Jesus, as the apostles did in today’s first reading,” said Prendergast in his homily. “A breath of renewal became present in his life and ministry.

TORONTO - There’s only one union in Ontario demanding layoffs, willing to accept a wage freeze and hoping to be declared obsolete. The brand-new Freedom 90 Union of Food Bank and Emergency Meal Program Volunteers launched its demands at a downtown Toronto church May 7.

The Freedom 90 group of middle-aged and elderly veteran volunteers of Ontario’s food banks are asking Ontario’s government to “make Ontario’s food banks obsolete — before we volunteers reach the age of 90.”

OTTAWA - Contentious issues about human rights, even those of unborn children, can be discussed in public in a civil, intelligent way, said Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth. And you need look no further than the recent debate in the House of Commons on his private member's Motion-312 for proof.

On April 26, Woodworth was the only MP who spoke in favour of his motion that would establish a Parliamentary committee to examine the latest medical evidence on whether a child in the womb is a human being. Other MPs from across the political spectrum — including his own Conservative Party — spoke against it.

OTTAWA - Human rights activist and former beauty queen Nazanin Afshin-Jam MacKay told hundreds of religious leaders she felt blessed to be able to stand at a podium and share her faith without reprisals.

“This is not the case in all parts of the world,” she said, noting that in her native Iran, “we would be facing persecution for gathering like this.”