{mosimage}TORONTO - Leaving behind the largest city in Canada, Toronto Auxiliary Bishop Richard Grecco will soon join Catholics on the east coast as the new leader for the Charlottetown diocese.

Grecco made his very first visit to the island in mid-July, with much anticipation for his Sept. 21 inauguration.

{mosimage}TORONTO - A barbecue, held at St. Norbert’s Catholic Church Aug. 9 to mark the one-year anniversary of a massive propane explosion that rocked the surrounding Toronto neighbourhood was bittersweet.

“Even though people are (still) going through hard times, we have to consider ourselves lucky — in a way it could have been a lot worse,” said Tony Desanto, one of the barbecue organizers.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Despite falling $500,000 shy of its goal during this year’s fund-raising campaign, ShareLife has pledged that charitable agencies will still receive the funding they need this year.

“The reality is we’re down (from last year), but given the economy and the way things are, we have still raised a significant amount of money,” said Arthur Peters, director of ShareLife, the charitable fund-raising arm of the archdiocese of Toronto.

{mosimage}TORONTO - As a 23-year-old, it wasn’t easy having to leave war-torn Lebanon to settle in Toronto. As he struggled to get a job and get over the culture shock, Fr. Mounir El-Rassi, who was ordained Aug. 15 at St. Michael’s Cathedral, said the challenges of a new life in Canada initially gave his faith a hard slap.

“I felt a spiritual darkness or desolation, and I thought I made the wrong decision coming to Canada,” said the now 42-year-old El-Rassi. “I was assessing everything and I was praying, but I was kind of in a dry mode.”

{mosimage}TORONTO - Auxiliary Bishop Richard Grecco said his final goodbyes to the archdiocese of Toronto at a  Sept. 1 Mass as he prepares to accept his new appointment as bishop of Charlottetown.

His fellow bishops, parishioners, more than a hundred priests and deacons from across the diocese and staff from archdiocesan offices packed St. Paul’s Basilica to hear his homily of thanksgiving for time spent in Toronto, which centred on St. Paul’s message in the reading about encouragement.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Christopher West, a popular speaker on Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, will be in Toronto Oct. 16-17 for a presentation on “discovering the master plan for your life.”

Invited by the God, Sex and the Meaning of Life Ministry, West hopes to crack open difficult theology, as he usually does, for the average person.

“My goal is to stir hope that there is a banquet that corresponds to the hunger of the human heart,” West said. “Every human being has this ache, this yearning, this longing. We’re looking for something and what this seminar does is it taps into that hunger and awakens us.”

{mosimage}TORONTO - The Ten Commandments will take the spotlight at the Royal Ontario Museum this month.

Visitors to the ROM Oct. 10-18 will be able to see the world’s oldest and best preserved parchment scroll of the Ten Commandments in a display separate from the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition. The display will only be open a total of 80 hours over the eight days.

“I doubt these will come to Canada again,” said Dan Rahimi, a ROM curator. “The scrolls are very sensitive to light and that’s why we have it for such a very short time.”

Like the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are being displayed on rotation every few months — eight at a time — the age of the scrolls makes them prone to deterioration the longer they are open to the public eye.
The Ten Commandments, the largest of the Hebrew scrolls found, is a must-see document during a ROM visit, Rahimi added.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Widowed, separated or divorced Catholics can find hope again through New Beginnings, a ministry founded and operated in Toronto since the late 1970s.

Often mistaken for a dating service, the ministry actually aims at guiding its participants through their grief, anger, confusion or guilt, while helping them on a spiritual level.

The ministry’s director, Fr. Rudy Volk, said numbers have declined since its original retreat headquarters, St. Joseph’s Morrow Park, was sold three years ago, and he hopes the word will spread New Beginnings is still dedicated to the retreats and discussion groups via new locations.

A group of leader-volunteers brings years of experience and expertise to the ministry.

TORONTO - The demand for eucharistic adoration appears to have grown in Toronto, thanks in part to a Serra Club of Downtown Toronto member who discovered a calling to promote it.

Zinnia Milburn has been praying for both an increase in vocations and a stronger devotion to eucharistic adoration since becoming a Serran in 2002. The Serra Club is an organization that promotes and fosters vocations to the priesthood and consecrated religious life.

“Adoration is very important,” Milburn said. “He is there body, soul and divinity. You are talking right there to Him.”

{mosimage}TORONTO - It’s a place where priests can shop and feel at home and even get a nice cup of espresso while they discuss their purchases.

DiCarlo Religious Supply Centre Inc. , which recently celebrated the grand opening of an 11,000 square-foot outlet that includes a 5,000 square-foot showroom, is well-known as a friendly place for clergy and the public to find what they need.