OTTAWA - A call by an influential Saudi sheikh to destroy all churches on the Arabian Peninsula has led the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Human Rights Committee to voice its concern to the government of Saudi Arabia.

In a May 30 letter to Saudi Ambassador Osamah Al Sanosi Ahmad, Bishop François Lapierre, chairman of the CCCB’s Human Rights Committee, referred to a March 12 statement by Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, who said: “only one religion,” Islam, “should exist in the Arabian Peninsula” and thus “it is necessary to destroy all churches in the region.”

OTTAWA - A looming humanitarian crisis in West Africa’s drought-ravaged Sahel region has prompted Canada’s Catholic bishops to join forces with the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace in an appeal for donations.

D&P executive director Michael Casey called the growing food shortages “a major crisis,” but one that has received little to no media attention.  

“The needs are extensive and will only increase,” he said.

OTTAWA - The head of the London-based World Community for Christian Meditation, Benedictine monk Fr. Laurence Freeman OSB,  was made an Officer of the Order of Canada May 25.

Freeman was recognized for “a lifetime of achievement and merit of a high degree, especially in service to Canada or to humanity at large” as an “an internationally recognized spiritual leader and proponent of peace and interfaith dialogue and understanding.”

Freeman said he was “astounded” and “honored” to be named, but he said he would receive the award “on behalf of the Canadian Christian meditation community.”

OTTAWA - The father of suicide victim Jamie Hubley made an emotional plea for the Ontario government to stop focussing on same-sex bullying and draft an anti-bullying law that does not single out any group for special treatment.

“I ask you to protect every child equally,” said Ottawa City Councilor Hubley.

He was speaking May 22 at an Ontario government social policy committee hearing on two proposed anti-bullying bills, the government’s Bill 13 and the Conservative’s Bill 14 (renamed Bill 80).

OTTAWA - Consumers should ensure products they buy are not produced by modern-day slaves, said the American Ambassador-at-large who monitors and combats human trafficking.

“It takes a cultural shift,” Ambassador Luis CdeBaca told a gathering of MPs, senators, diplomats and NGOs on May 17.

CdeBaca, who works under U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said consumers must ask themselves: “Where did the shrimp come from that I’m eating? Where did the chocolate come from that I’m eating?”

OTTAWA - The Catholic Organization of Life and Family (COLF) has called the status quo on abortion “intolerable” and calls not only for “legislative reform” but also a “great cultural renewal.”

In its latest publication, “The Unborn Child: a gift, a treasure and a promise,” COLF describes respect for life as a “gauge of civilization” and warns that when the right to life is not fully protected “other rights are sooner or later mocked.”

It points out that in Canada there is no legal protection for the unborn child.

OTTAWA - Pam Stenzel has made it her mission to make sure no teenager or young woman ends up with a sexually transmitted disease or unwanted pregnancy.

She told the more than 800 high school-age participants in the Youth Conference associated with the National March for Life that she did not want any of them leaving saying “Nobody told me” about the consequences of sex outside marriage.

OTTAWA - The Catholic Civil Rights League has written to the Canadian Heritage Minister to ask him to review the funding of a controversial sex exhibit aimed at adolescents at the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology.

Sex: A Tell-all Exhibition, opened May 17 at the Ottawa museum and runs till year’s end.

“Based on information from the museum’s own web site (www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca), as well as on information provided to a local contact during a preview, I find this material is far too advanced and detailed for the age group for which it is intended, and in any case has little if anything to do with the museum’s stated mandate ” wrote League executive director Joanne McGarry to Heritage Minister James Moore.

OTTAWA - Canada's Catholic bishops have published a defense of freedom of conscience and religious freedom as these universal rights come under increasing threat around the world.

The Catholic community and other religious groups are "experiencing a worrisome erosion" of these freedoms, said Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops president Archbishop Richard Smith in an open letter introducing the "Pastoral Letter on Freedom of Conscience and Religious freedom" published May 14 at www.cccb.ca.

(Right-click and save-as to download the letter as a PDF)

OTTAWA - Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast blasted the false sense of personhood that results in abortion on demand in Canada.

“We need to challenge the false idea that abortion is merely a private, personal decision,” the archbishop said in a homily at one of several Masses in conjunction with the National March for Life May 10. “The truth is, abortion hurts everyone — the developing child in the womb, the mother, the father, the extended family, the community and even our culture.