Aggrieved North Bay parishioners claim their attempt to overturn a decision to close and sell their churches was turned down “on procedural grounds.”

Former St. Rita’s and Corpus Christi parishioners are appealing a Congregation for the Clergy decision to the Vatican’s highest court, the Apostolic Signatura. The parishioners hope to get the Apostolic Signatura to rule “on the substantive merits of our two cases,” said former Corpus Christi parishioner Phillip Penna in an email to The Catholic Register.

Decrees issued by the Congregation for the Clergy Jan. 13 disallowed the former parishioner’s attempt to overturn Sault Ste. Marie Bishop Jean Plouffe’s decision to reduce the two churches “to profane but not unbecoming use” because their petition was launched too late under the Code of Canon Law.

The Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition is telling Ontario’s Liberal government what it didn’t want to hear from economist Don Drummond — raise taxes.

The McGuinty government mandated the Drummond Commission to come up with ways to balance the province’s books but forbade the former bank economist from considering more taxes. ISARC makes no bones about urging action on the revenue side of the equation.

The St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Ursuline Sisters in Chatham, Ont., are not likely to make a dent in Canada’s $2 billion per year payday loan industry, but in their own small way will be taking them on.

On May 1, 2010 the Ursuline Sisters used $20,000 to launch a microfinance venture they call Angela’s Pocket. With close ties to The Women’s Centre and the local United Way, Angela’s Pocket has lent out about $8,000 in small loans to women who otherwise couldn’t raise money. The loans are for everything from a return to school to basic household appliances.

Development and Peace is facing significant program reductions and staff cuts after the 45-year-old Catholic lay movement was hit by a 65 per cent cut in government funding.

“It’s going to be a very difficult period for the organization,” said D&P executive director Michael Casey. “It’s not just staff here or the institution here in Canada. You look at the impact it’s going to have on the partners.”

TORONTO - There’s nothing more Catholic than ecumenism, nothing more Christian than unity, nothing more urgent than the need to heal divisions in the body of Christ, but none of it will happen based on resentments, fears and identity politics, the head of the World Council of Churches told a couple hundred people in Toronto March 14.

On his first official visit to Canada, Rev. Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit laid out challenges to ecumenism which he said oppose the Christian mandate to fulfill the Lord’s Prayer — “Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.”

TORONTO - Though they’ve watched from a distance, Toronto’s Japanese Catholic Community has prayed with intensity for Japan as the country continues to rebuild following the devastation of the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that struck March 11, 2011.

The small group gathered on the first anniversary of the disaster for its regular monthly Mass, and special prayers for Japan.

Many of the Japanese Catholics at Mass had come from an ecumenical and interfaith prayer service earlier in the day at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre.

Clean and potable water is a human right, not a for-profit commodity dependent on market logic, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace told the sixth World Water Forum in Marseille, France.

Canada, on the other hand, stands in contrast to the Vatican position, according to Council of Canadians chair Maude Barlow.

Jesus was a Jew. Mary and Joseph were Jews. All 12 apostles were Jews. The first ecumenical council of the Church was held in Jerusalem in about 50 AD and everybody there was Jewish — even if they were there to decide what to do about non-Jewish followers of Jesus.

Very few of the people you meet at Sunday morning Mass are Jewish. Still, all these gentiles who surround us in church want nothing more than to know Jesus better. The Jewish Annotated New Testament is an invitation to do just that — know Jesus better.

TORONTO - Every reporter wants what Martin Himel has — a story that could shift how people think and talk about global politics, a story rich with human drama, suffering, heartbreak and redemption.

Himel found that story among Christian refugees in Toronto and among the huddled and fearful Christians of Cairo and Baghdad where he filmed Persecuted Christians. The hour-long documentary will get its world premiere on VisionTV March 14.

Vilmos Csikja, his wife Beata and their four children from Hungary are the kind of people Immigration Minister Jason Kenney calls “bogus refugees.”

They have been in Canada three years. Their application for refugee protection was denied by the Immigration and Refugee Board, an appeal to the federal court was unsuccessful, the IRB’s appeal division turned them down and the Federal Court has now declined to overturn that decision. Their last hope is an appeal to stay in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

Only about three per cent of Hungarian Roma refugee applications are successful at the IRB. Roma refugee cases have exploded over the last five years. In 2007 there were just 34. In 2011 there were almost 5,000. The Roma refugee boom coincides with two factors — the 2007 lifting of visa requirements for Hungary and increasing prominence of the extreme right wing Jobbik party in the Hungarian parliament.