For many, the Christmas season marks a time of increased chaos as hectic scheduling and overwhelming agendas combine to make for one of the busiest times of the year. Yet for staff and students at Toronto's Newman Centre, the Christmas season is one of relative calm.

The Newman Centre Catholic Mission at the University of Toronto wasn’t going to let a province-wide stay-at-home order keep it from spreading the word on a religious vocation.

Even in the midst of a heavy ice storm, in the middle of exam season, more than 200 students and community members gathered together April 14 at University of Toronto’s Newman Centre for an Easter retreat. 

Amid a backdrop of the historical Christian village of Alqosh in the Nineveh Plains in Iraq, Athra Kado passionately talked about protecting his Assyrian people as a soldier of the Nineveh Plains Protection Unit.

The Newman Centre is encouraging a new generation of leaders to strengthen their faith in God.

TORONTO – In a way, it’s like Fr. Peter Turrone is coming home. As a student at the University of Toronto, Turrone saw the Newman Centre Catholic Chaplaincy as a second home, a spiritual oasis. Now, as he takes up his new position as Newman’s executive director and pastor, he is excited for the opportunity to serve the community that gave him so much.

TORONTO - Kaylee Moynihan is a true servant of the Church. At the young age of 19, she has already spent years working in parish communities. She said that volunteering and working in youth ministry has allowed her to grow in confidence and in her faith.

TORONTO - On a large campus like the University of Toronto’s St. George campus, it can be hard for students to feel a sense of community. So the Newman Centre’s Student Campus Ministry (SCM) team is going out to let Catholic students on campus know it is there for them.

TORONTO - A Catholic chaplaincy has begun at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus, the last of the university’s three campuses to receive its own permanent Catholic chaplaincy.

TORONTO - Matthew Sanders is calling the young and the Catholic to the Newman Centre for the re-launch of Catholic Singles Socials.

Fr. Chris Cauchi is raising funds to raise an 88-year-old church roof, and thanks to a major donation the heavy lifting has become easier. 

College students in Toronto are turning to local universities for what’s lacking on their own school campuses — Catholic chaplaincies. 

TORONTO - Tuesday nights at the Newman Centre are a time to pray and play.

TORONTO - Bright lights, booming music and large crowds — there is no party quite like Nuit Blanche. For one night each year, the streets of downtown Toronto erupt in celebration of the city’s rich arts culture. This year the city’s Catholic community joined the party.

The Newman Catholic Students Club (NCSC) from the University of Toronto facilitated an all-night adoration at St. Thomas Aquinas Church Sept 29. They called the event Nuit Benoit, which translates to “Blessed Night.”

“Something on your heart? Spend some time with Christ,” read a small whiteboard easel on a quiet corner at St. George Street and Hoskin Avenue, inviting passersby to enter the church from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.

“This is the Year of Faith, the year of evangelization,” said Christina Alaimo, NCSC president. “We want something that can draw people’s attention. We want them to be seduced by Christ.”

Nuit Benoit is NCSC vice president Natasha Milavec’s brain 

child to counter the events of Nuit Blanche as part of the group’s new initiative.

Milavec recalls hearing the creak of the church’s large wooden doors and watching an adorer step out.

“He looked like he was just filled with the Spirit,” said Milavec. “He said that if he had known that this was here, he would’ve come sooner. I think that is what is most satisfying about this event. People’s faces just looked other worldly when they came out.”

More than 100 people attended the event and adored the Blessed Sacrament throughout the night. Many also participated in praise and worship and received the sacrament of Reconciliation.

As Nuit Benoit worked to act as a retreat from the city, the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) saw the evening as a platform to display its message to the community. Four exhibits were featured over the night.

John Notten, a teacher at Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School, presented an art piece for the third year in a row. This year’s piece, The NeXt Desk, was displayed at the Distillery District as part of Thom Sokolsky’s project, Dada Reboot. It is a 13-foot wheel of 20 classroom desks. “It’s mobile, interactive and interconnected,” said Notten.

The NeXt Desk is a symbol representing a new vision to integrate 21st-century technology more seamlessly into the school system.

“The notion of traditional education has been unchanged since the Industrial Revolution,” said Notten. “But in the 21st century, technology is forcing us to re-examine how we educate our kids today.”

Notten’s students understood the state of change in their own way. They called it “the state of flux.” Each student took a piece of a car and transformed it into something that represented their experiences. These individual pieces were then reformed on Yonge and Gould Street as the Fluxmobile.

“It’s a huge honour for the students. I’m so proud of them,” said Notten. “It took my whole life to get my art featured at Nuit Blanche and these 16- and 17- year-olds already have one.”

A second installation from Mary Ward, supervised by Marissa Largo, was located at Wychwood Theatre. Paralandscape is an art piece where people were instructed to take hold of a white parachute as images from Google Earth are projected onto the cloth. As the images shift, they shook the cloth to skew the landscape for “an interactive globetrotting adventure.”

St. Joseph’s College also had its own art piece called the Magic Window. Students collected 35mm unused slides from across the school board and projected them through the windows of their school. This “stained-glass quilt” displayed 50 years worth of traditional curriculum against the modern frame of the building.

(Din, 21, is a third-year journalism student at Ryerson University in Toronto.)