FAITH/STORIES

{mosimage}Eleven days into a 48-day fast, Jesuit Father John McCarthy was feeling pretty good.

“I haven’t noticed anything yet, other than a bit of weight loss,” McCarthy told The Catholic Register from Corner Brook, Nfld. “But in terms of energy level and everything else — well, it’s only 11 days.”

That is 11 days living on nothing but water and juice. McCarthy never liked V8 juice, but he’s acquiring a taste for the low-sodium variety. The most substantial thing he drinks is Sunkist strawberry and banana smoothies. He’s going through a fair amount of cranberry juice. He doesn’t have a blender.

{mosimage}{mosimage}TORONTO - Finding peace amid the stress of a big city is not always easy. Cars honk and screech in rush-hour traffic, subways rumble beneath concrete sidewalks, cellphones ring with increasing regularity and the to-do list never ends.

“It’s a crazy and chaotic world,” said Lindsay Moore.

Moore, a youth minister at Toronto’s Holy Rosary parish, is the lead organizer of an event, however, which she believes will help people escape the chaos of urban life, if only for a few hours.


TORONTO - Between “rock concerts for God” and their work in integrating special needs kids with their peers, the members of the Blue Veil ministry have had a busy life the past two years, catching the attention of students and faculty at Ontario Catholic schools from London to Oshawa.

Blue Veil is a non-profit, non-denominational, Toronto-based charity — the creation of executive director Cris Smith and half of her eight children: Jeff, 28, Phill, 26, Donny, 24 and now David, 20.

Christians need to understand Jewish roots

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{mosimage}TORONTO - The Catholic Church officially repudiated anti-Jewish teaching and predatory proselytizing of Jews 43 years ago. While violence against Jews, graffiti on synagogues, Jewish schools and Jewish cemeteries are still realities in Toronto, such incidents cannot be associated with teaching — official or unofficial — in the Catholic Church. In today’s Toronto, the Muslim community is now about twice as numerous as the Jews and it’s both the integration of Muslims in Canada and armed conflict in Muslim countries around the world that grab headlines.

So who cares about Catholic-Jewish relations?

Fine line between politics and faith

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{mosimage}TORONTO - When he was 23, Liberal Party candidate Gerard Kennedy read Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, touted as the document marking the birth of Catholic social teaching.

In it, the pope wrote about the church’s duty to intervene in social matters and help the poor, as well as the state’s responsibility to help those who suffered the most from the economic system.

Ancient prayer draws new interest in Canada

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{mosimage}ACTON, Ont. - Lee Anne Berry calls herself a “lamb seeker.”

Berry, a retired special needs educational assistant, is a member of the contemplative prayer group the Intercessors of the Lamb and leads the group in Acton, west of Toronto. Berry said she named her group the “lamb seekers” because she and her group members want to bring those who are lost back to God through intercessory prayer.

Christian voice can be heard

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{mosimage}TORONTO - If they were not vowed to poverty, chastity and obedience most members of the Canadian Religious Conference’s Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation network would be retired, smiling, pleasant, mild-mannered grandparents.

Evangelization gets a (Second) Life

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{mosimage}Missionaries are all around us, on our streets, in advertisements and infomercials, during the occasional sermon or special parish appeals. And from time to time missionaries make the news. Sometimes dramatically as in the case of the Korean young adults seized off a treacherous highway in Afghanistan and only released after weeks of captivity and serial deaths.

In search of answered prayers

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Roman Catholic journalist James Risdon is launching a Canada-wide appeal for examples of answered prayers. He hopes that people will write to him with their testimonials, which will serve as material for the book he is writing.

TV Mass allows shut-ins a chance to participate

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{mosimage}TORONTO - For the past 21 years people from all walks of life in the Greater Toronto Area have enjoyed Sunday morning Mass from the comfort of their own home.

Changing paths on the road to the priesthood

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TORONTO - Two years ago Ignacio Pinedo was to be ordained a missionary priest with the Scarboro Missions religious community based in Toronto, but close to his ordination date the superior asked him to take some time off to discern his call.

Gratitude to the Lord feeds the priestly call

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TORONTO - When Jorge Lopez joined Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Toronto nine years ago he didn’t speak a word of English. Still, he left his family behind in Nicaragua to follow his call to the priesthood.

Seminarian feels the need to give back to the Lord

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TORONTO - It was an overwhelming sense of gratitude that  caused Giuseppe Scollo to give up his family and life in Sisley, Italy to follow his call to the priesthood.