News/Canada

OTTAWA - Bill Whatcott will be before the Supreme Court of Canada in October hoping to strike down the laws that allow human rights commissions to limit freedom of speech and religious expression.

Three hundred Catholic women from across Ontario will meet from July 10-13 in Hamilton for the 64th annual Ontario Catholic Women’s League Provincial Convention.

Three hundred Catholic women from across Ontario met from July 10-13 in Hamilton for the 64th annual Ontario Catholic Women’s League Provincial Convention, where Marlene Pavletic of Thunder Bay was chosen as the new provincial president.

This year’s four-day conference, which concluded with the election of a new provincial executive including Pavletic, was themed “Centred on Faith & Justice — Led By The Spirit." Held at the Sheraton Hotel in Hamilton, the convention offered representatives of the CWL, which has 54,000 members in 13 dioceses across Ontario, a chance to reflect on the past year, deepen and celebrate their faith and set their goals for the future.

Those goals consisted mainly of this year’s three resolutions, each focused on health. The resolutions, submitted by Ontarian dioceses, aim to provide clean water for First Nations communities, limit sodium use in food and raise awareness of colorectal cancer. These resolutions, which were passed at the provincial level, will be submitted to the national CWL, which will gather Aug. 14-17. A final set of resolutions will be chosen at the national convention and set as initiatives for the CWL over the next year.

INUVIK, N.W.T. - The Church in the north can help native people recover their languages and cultural identity, but it won't be easy, said Oblate Archbishop Sylvain Lavoie at the conclusion of four days of testimony about the damage residential schools did to native families, communities and culture.

Justice Murray Sinclair, chief commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada with a five-year mandate to investigate the history of the schools, wrapped up the TRC's Northern National Event in Inuvik July 1 with a warning to aboriginal participants in the Commission's hearings that they will have to take responsibility for the future of native culture.

"The Church can't give you back your language. The Church can't give you back your culture," Sinclair told about 400 people who attended the closing ceremonies for the event.

Sinclair told churches they would have to tell people they don't have to be Christian if they really want reconciliation.

TORONTO - Dating is the farthest thing from nine-year-old Aramayah Ocol’s mind. She prefers walking to the ice cream store with her dad. No one matches up to “Daddy.”

That’s just how Noel Ocol hopes it will be, that is until Aramayah is old enough to be courted by potential suitors.

Ocol, a 39-year-old parishioner at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in downtown Toronto, started a blog “Like Father, Like Daughters” for Our Kids Media, an online magazine for private schools.

“So how can I as a dad be proactive against a world where modern pop-culture causes girls to see themselves as a sexual objects and packages love as something from a vending machine where you put your money in, get what you want and throw the rest out?” he asks in his blog.

INUVIK, N.W.T. - In the midst of a gathering which seeks reconciliation and healing from the 130-year history of residential schools in Canada, Catholic and Anglican bishops from the north took responsibility for the 400-year-old division between the churches and pledged continued dialogue, co-operation and reconciliation.

"This is a road we're on and there are no exits," said Bishop Gary Gordon of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.

The gesture of reconciliation and healing came on June 29, day two of the five-day Northern National Event of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in Inuvik. About 1,000 native people from all over the far north have gathered with Church and government officials to review the history of the residential schools, hear the stories of school survivors and imagine a new future for native Canadians.

Anglican and Catholic missionaries brought their rivalry with them to northern communities, often dividing communities and families along denominational lines. Catholics couldn't attend the funerals of their Anglican family members. Anglican and Catholic residential school students fought each other on the basis of religious labels.

"These are things we offer regret for, and we want to put them in our past," said Bishop Murray Chatlain of Mackenzie-Fort Smith, N.W.T.

INUVIK, N.W.T - It was a day of tears in Inuvik as Inuit, Dene and Metis gathered to remember and count their losses from years spent in residential schools.

"For the life of me, I can't remember the years from five years old to ten years old," said John Banksland, a representative of the northern survivors committee.

The second major hearing in the Truth and Reconciliation process opened on June 21 with approximately 1,000 survivors of residential schools turning out to tell their stories or listen to others tell theirs.

The federally funded commission is crossing the country to document the abuse that was rampant in the Indian residential school system that ran in Canada for more than a century.

Banksland's hope for the four-day meeting of residential school survivors, church representatives and government officials was for a better future.

"We've had 130 years of this stuff," he said. "It's time to let it go."

OTTAWA — The union representing Development and Peace employees says tighter supervision by the Canadian bishops threatens the democratic nature of the lay-run organization and undermines the prophetic vision that motivates their work.

The union report, prepared for a recent meeting of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace’s (D&P) National Council in June, said the world “ is increasingly turning towards a conservative ideology.”

“There is clearly a turn to the right in several societies, as well as in the Universal Church,” it said.

The 7-page document, published June 25 on the blog Soutenons Developpement et paix (soutenondetp.wordpress.com), claims the shift “runs counter to the prophetic vision that gave rise” to D&P’s creation 45 years ago.

TORONTO - About 80 young Catholics attending this year’s Teopoli Summer Experience will be doing more than outdoor sports, making new friends and the usual summer camp fare.

They’ll also be introduced to Sr. Carmelina Tarantino of the Cross, the late Passionist Sister of St. Paul whose cause for sainthood is underway.

At the Teopoli camp in Gravenhurst, Ont., students will learn about Sr. Tarantino’s story “in a gentle way” and how she was able to endure her trials through her faith in God, says Luca Mirenzi, a Teopoli youth minister. Sr. Tarantino suffered unexplained illness but maintained a devout life of prayer through it all. For 24 years, she was bed-ridden at Toronto’s Riverdale Hospital (now known as Bridgepoint Health) and was visited by thousands of people seeking spiritual direction. She died in 1992 at the age of 55. The official inquiry into her cause for sainthood began two years ago.

Youth will also visit the memorial at the camp built in Sr. Tarantino’s honour, said Mirenzi.

OTTAWA - Bishop Raymond Lahey’s sentencing hearing for importing child porn has been postponed to Aug. 4 and 5.

The sentencing hearing had been scheduled for June 24, but the Crown had not received the report from forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Bradford, who assessed the former Antigonish bishop.

Lahey, 71, the former bishop of Antigonish, N.S., faces a minimum of one year in prison and could receive up to 10 years. In August, Bradford will be cross-examined concerning the bishop’s mental state and likelihood of reoffending.

Lahey pleaded guilty to importing child porn May 4, 18 months after a Canadian Border Services agent stopped the bishop at Ottawa airport and pulled him aside for a secondary search of his laptop. A more serious charge of possession for the purpose of distribution was dropped by the Crown. The bishop opted to go to jail immediately, pending his sentencing hearing.