News/Canada

OTTAWA - The Ottawa archdiocese confirmed it had launched an audit of the finances of Blessed Sacrament parish “some weeks” before two front-page stories appeared in the Ottawa Citizen April 16-17 raising questions about the lifestyle of its popular pastor.

The Citizen reported that Fr. Joe Le Clair had cash advances from the Lac-Leamy Casino across the Ottawa River in Quebec of more than $137,000 in 2009-2010, and incurred a credit card debt of more than $490,000 in that time period. It reported Le Clair had repaid Visa $424,000. 

“How he could afford to repay that much is not known, other than the fact that as a Church pastor, Le Clair earns a net salary of $24,400,” journalists Meghan Hurley and Andrew Duffy wrote.

Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J., in a statement issued April 16, said stories about Le Clair’s “lifestyle” were brought to the attention of diocesan authorities in late 2010 and early 2011. He instructed his Vicar General, Msgr. Kevin Beach, to “clarify the issues raised by the stories.”

If you strip life down to its essentials you don’t strip out beauty. You produce lives entirely devoted to beauty.

In This Side of Eden we’re invited into the lives of Benedictine monks at Westminster Abbey in Mission, B.C., during Holy Week. The simplicity of their daily round of work and prayer feeds into the most solemn and significant liturgies of the Christian calendar — Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil.

All this unfolds before the camera in one of the most extraordinary settings. Surrounded by mountains and nestled into the temperate rain forest of the B.C. coast, Westminister Abbey Church is a modern architectural gem constructed in the early 1980s with 7,000 square feet of stained glass. The church and abbey are filled with contemporary frescoes, paintings and sculpture — much of it by one of Mission’s monks, Fr. Dunstan Massey.

OTTAWA - Pro-family groups are delighted to see a focus on family issues in the election campaign platforms of all three national parties.

But some social conservative leaders have expressed disappointment that Stephen Harper refuses to reopen the debate on abortion or marriage even if the Conservatives win a majority.

Past elections have seen the “odd snippet” of platform policy directed at family issues so it’s encouraging to see the major parties addressing family matters in this campaign, said Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC) executive director Dave Quist.

“It’s good,” he said. “It’s time they looked at the foundation of our society and that is the family.

“We may disagree on the solutions, that is what democracy is all about, but it’s important that we be discussing these things.”

TORONTO - Ongoing controversy over abortion and the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace may be having a negative effect on overall fundraising for ShareLife.

Each time Development and Peace faces public allegations that some of its partners are linked with organizations advocating legal access to abortion, ShareLife is contacted by angry donors threatening not to give, said ShareLife spokesman Bill Steinburg.

“Whenever they call we always remind them that by doing so they’re having an impact on the huge family of more than 40 agencies that do a lot of work here on the ground, helping our own communities,” Steinburg said.

Early this month, speaking engagements by a Mexican priest to promote Development and Peace’s overseas work were cancelled in Ottawa and Cornwall following allegations that the Jesuit priest’s human rights centre is associated with an organization that supports decriminalization of abortion. In cancelling the Ottawa events, Archbishop Terrance Prendergast said that support by Fr. Luis Arriaga’s centre for groups sympathetic to abortion is “incompatible” with Church teaching.

TORONTO - An apology is not the end of it and treaties are not dusty history for Canada’s native people is the message Marie Wilson has for Canadians who would rather not talk about what happened in residential schools.

Wilson is one of three commissioners who make up the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The trio have five years to document the history of the national network of schools mandated by the government but mostly run by churches.

There may be truth but there won’t be any reconciliation if mainstream, urban Canadians don’t acknowledge the legacy of the schools, Wilson told about 70 people at Toronto’s Regis College April 6, where she delivered the annual Martin Royackers Lecture.

Peterborough, Ont. - The faith of Catholic youth in Peterborough, Ont., will be out in the open during Good Friday’s seventh annual Way of the Cross on April 22 with a re-enactment of Christ’s Passion.

“It’s a way of evangelizing in a unique way,” said Mary Helen Moes, program manager for youth for the diocese of Peterborough and director of this year’s re-enactment.

“They’re certainly not pushing their faith on top of anybody. They’re just demonstrating their faith in a very public way and I don’t think there’s many opportunities for that any more.”

Run by the diocese of Peterborough’s Vocations, Evangelization and Youth Office, the Way of the Cross has about 100 youth participating this year, up from the 30 participants of seven years ago when it originated, said Moes.

TORONTO - In the face of cultural pressure to accept abortion, contraception and euthanasia, Catholic doctors can respond by affirming the inherent human dignity of the person and appealing to human reason in explaining the “culture of life,” Catholic experts said at the third annual conference of the Canadian Federation of Catholic Physicians’ Societies.

This year’s gathering was organized by the St. Joseph Moscati Catholic Doctors Guild and held at Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College April 8-10.

“If we allow abortion, suicide and euthanasia, the ‘culture of death’ means death is a way to solve problems,” Prof. Janet Smith, the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit and consultor to the Pontifical Institute of the Family, told more than 120 doctors and medical students in her keynote speech.  

The number one demand churches are making from campaigning federal politicians is a concrete plan to reduce and end poverty in Canada.

The Canadian Council of Churches reiterated the ecumenical priority in a letter to all the national party leaders March 31.

"The issue of poverty, certainly our Scriptures call us to that over and over and over again," Canadian Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr. Karen Hamilton told The Catholic Register.

The eight priority issues listed in the CCC letter largely repeat the priorities laid out last year by international faith leaders gathered in Winnipeg just before the G20 Summit in Toronto.

TORONTO - Domenico Pietropaolo has been appointed the new principal at Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College. His five-year term is effective July 1.

“St. Michael’s already has a very distinguished history of scholar- ship and students,” Pietropaolo told The Catholic Register. “And I hope to be able to continue to develop that further to help the St. Michael’s community reach a higher level of excellence than they already enjoy.”

Pietropaolo said he’s very pleased to be taking on the position.

“For me, I’ve never really left the college,” he said. “I’ve always been a member of it. I was a student there and I have been teaching on the campus of St. Michael’s College for many years.”

OTTAWA - A delegation with members from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, East Timor and Sierra Leone have embarked on a tour of Ontario and Quebec cities to tell Canadian Catholics how much their nations have benefited from Canadian generosity.

Among them was the president of the National Episcopal Conference of Congo, Tshumbe Bishop Nicolas Djomo, who spoke of the work the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (D&P) has done in his country.

“Development and Peace has been helping us a lot,” said Djomo, who spoke of the work the Canadian bishops’ development agency did first in addressing emergency needs in the aftermath of the country’s civil war, and now in helping the central African nation address justice and human rights, fair elections and concerns over mining.