News/Canada

{mosimage}QUEBEC CITY - The Knights of Columbus have vowed to continue speaking out against elected government representatives who challenge life from conception to natural death.

The Knights made this resolution Aug. 7 at the fraternal order’s 126th annual Supreme Convention in Quebec City Aug. 5-7. Two thousand Knights and their families attended the convention, with Knights from across Canada and the United States, as well as from Mexico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Guam, Philippines and Poland.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - Dr. Rene Leiva may have to leave his family practice in Ontario if the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario takes away his conscience rights.

{mosimage}TORONTO - As the Taliban issued an explicit threat against Canadian aid workers and killings of NGO staff reached record levels in Afghanistan, the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace said it remains committed to its work with women’s groups straddling both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in the zone of conflict.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - The CNEWA Canada is appealing for emergency funds to help families in western Ukraine displaced by floods described as the worst in a century.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The saga of Catholic Insight's trouble with the Canadian Human Rights Commission is not over. After having a complaint against the small magazine dismissed in early July, it has now learned that it faces a judicial appeal of that decision.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Administrative backlogs, a marriage of convenience with the United States and compromised due process in Canada's refugee system have churches taking Canada's government to the Supreme Court and refugee advocates pushing politicians to live up to a law Parliament passed in 2001 and then re-passed this summer.

The Canadian Council of Churches, Amnesty International and the Canadian Council for Refugees will challenge Canada's Safe Third Country agreement with the United States at the Supreme Court of Canada.

{mosimage}PICKERING, Ont. - As he accepted the blessing of Jesuits and their friends at the end of a St. Ignatius Day Mass in Pickering, Ont. July 31, Fr. Jim Webb took up a "heroic, humble task" in imitation of the man who founded the Jesuits 474 years ago.

Webb officially became the provincial superior for the Jesuits of English Canada, taking over from Fr. Jean-Marc Laporte.

{mosimage}TORONTO - For the second time in just over a year, Montreal-born philosophy professor Charles Taylor is being honoured for a lifetime of thinking about modern life, multiculturalism and morality. Along with University of Toronto molecular biologist Anthony Pawson and University of California computer scientist Richard Karp, Taylor has been tapped for this year's Kyoto Prize, worth $460,000.

Last year Taylor, 76, was granted the $2-million Templeton Prize for Progress or Discoveries in Spiritual Realities. The Kyoto Prize is awarded by the Inamori Foundation for significant contributions to science, culture and the spiritual development of humanity.

{mosimage}TORONTO - More than 60 religious organizations, many of them ecumenical and many of them Catholic, have backed a petition asking Ottawa to halt deportations of U.S. soldiers who have come to Canada to avoid serving in Iraq.

The online petition sponsored by the Quakers asks Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley to create a policy to allow conscientious objectors to stay in Canada. The petition cites the June 3 advisory vote of Parliament which would have allowed American soldiers to stay in Canada as permanent residents.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Toronto’s Catholics are on pace to double the number of refugees they sponsor in 2008, but they face increasing frustration over Iraqi refugees tangled in red tape in Damascus.

It now takes the better part of two years for privately sponsored Iraqi refugees to be processed through the Canadian consulate in Damascus.