{mosimage}TORONTO - By giving back his Order of Canada, Montreal Archbishop Jean-Claude Turcotte is joining a group of more than 100 MPs whose opposition to Dr. Henry Morgentaler's nomination has shone the election spotlight on the abortion debate in Canada, says a leading pro-life group.

Campaign Life Coalition national organizer Mary Ellen Douglas said Turcotte's Sept. 11 annoucement comes just three days after a Campaign Life ad, which appeared in the Sept. 8 edition of The Hill Times, a political newspaper in Ottawa, where the names of 106 Conservative and Liberal politicians opposing pro-abortion doctor Morgentaler's nomination were published.

{mosimage}TORONTO  - Sarah Palin isn’t exactly the role model that American feminists were hoping for.

But she could be the face of a re-branded form of feminism, says a former Alberta journalist.

Pro-life activist and former Western Standard magazine reporter Andrea Mrozek said Palin’s nomination as Republican John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate in the upcoming American election indicates an increasing momentum for the pro-life movement being seen as a pro-feminist or pro-woman movement.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Defending doctors’ conscience rights, Catholic groups’ freedom of speech and the anti-euthanasia movement represent the next legal battlegrounds for the pro-life movement, said activists at an international pro-life conference held in Toronto in early October.

Dr. Jack Willke, president of the U.S.-based International Right to Life Federation, told more than 200 conference participants on Oct. 4 that the struggle of the pro-life movement is similar to the anti-slavery movement because of the hostility and opposition that both groups have faced.

{mosimage}TORONTO - A retired Liberal MP who resigned from his party over its position on same-sex marriage says pro-life politicians in Ottawa pay a political price for their outspoken views.

Pat O’Brien, a former parliamentary secretary for the minister of international trade, represented the London-Fanshawe riding in Parliament from 1993 until 2005. That’s when he quit the Liberal Party and sat as an independent MP because he opposed the Liberal’s support of legalizing same sex marriage.

{mosimage}TORONTO - An Order of Canada recipient who founded an orphanage for girls in Haiti is continuing his legal challenge to the federal government over Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s award nomination, even though the controversial pro-abortion activist received the country’s highest civilian honour on Oct. 10.

Frank Chauvin, a retired police detective from Windsor, Ont., launched a judicial review application in late July to the Federal Court of Canada through lawyer Gerard Charette. Toronto lawyer Phil Horgan is also helping with the case.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The roots of the recent anti-Christian violence in India have some links to the early missionary work of Christians in the country, says a British scholar of Christianity in India.

“The behaviour of the Europeans was seen as abhorrent by the population of southern India. Converting people was also seen as abhorrent,” said Anglican Rev. Paul Collins, an associate professor of theology at England’s University of Chichester, at an Oct. 30 lecture at the University of St. Michael’s College.

{mosimage}TORONTO - It wasn’t the kind of assignment he had been used to, but Capt. Joseph Nonato says his mission in Afghanistan so far has been an eye-opening spiritual journey.

“My favourite times are when we can have an open discussion about faith, prayer and belief,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Catholic Register from Kandahar.

{mosimage}TORONTO  - The country's economic woes are causing more Canadians to seek counselling in recent months, says the Canadian Mental Health Association .

Catholic Family Services of Toronto — one of several agencies across the country at the frontlines in helping people cope with individual or family breakdowns during the economic crisis — has seen the number of people seeking counselling increase, especially as people are faced with holiday and post-holiday stress.

{mosimage}TORONTO  - One way to stimulate the economy, according to some poverty advocacy groups, would be to increase welfare rates.

Clarence Lochhead, executive director of the Vanier Institute of the Family , said as politicians and economists consider ways of dealing with the economic crisis, they should take a look at increasing social assistance payments.

{mosimage}TORONTO - A Rwandan genocide survivor who has been denied entry into Canada is launching a final appeal so that she will be able to speak about reconciliation at aboriginal reserves in Manitoba and Ontario.

Having exhausted all of her options for a visitor's visa, Patricie Mukundiyukuri, 24, has now applied for a minister's permit, also known as a temporary resident permit.