{mosimage}TORONTO - Twenty-six per cent of Canadians between the ages of two and 17 are overweight or obese. That’s three times the obesity rate of 25 years ago. In 2004 eight per cent of kids were obese, as opposed to just overweight, compared with only three per cent in 1978.

{mosimage}What does it mean to be an Easter people? The Creed will give us some clues. Crafted as a testimony to the far-reaching significance of the presence in our midst of the Risen Lord, the Creed is our particular take on reality that in turn sets the course of our lives. It makes categorical claims about how we understand God, creation, humanity, the culmination of human history and the ultimate meaning of existence.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Though often portrayed as the far-out fringes of Catholic religious life, nuns and sisters who have dedicated themselves to ecological causes actually represent a new kind of traditionalism within the church, according to an American religious studies professor.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Jazz isn’t just the American art form. It’s also the art of the possible.

Nobody knows whether the Paulist Fathers got rhythm, but for 150 years this quintessentially North American community of priests has been riffing on themes laid down by St. Paul the Apostle 1,900 years ago. “It’s not I who live but Christ who lives in me,” wrote St. Paul. That nugget has led Paulists to conclude Christ expresses himself in the individuality of every Christian — that the charisms bestowed by the Holy Spirit are the essence of who we are.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Though there have been droughts and wars and corrupt governments, since the fall of the Berlin Wall millions have been lifted out of dire poverty, and millions more from moderate poverty into the middle class, by markets and globalization. Muhammad Yunis and the Grameen Bank bank have shown how a little capital and access to markets can transform lives and communities in the two-thirds of the world where poverty is normal. Indian economist Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for demonstrating that in democracies with open markets people do not starve.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Catholic doctors are scrambling to have an influence nationally in coming debates over pro-euthanasia legislation.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Lining the sidewalk across from a crisis pregnancy centre and its abortion clinic neighbour in downtown Toronto April 18, 24 people held signs up to passing traffic with messages related to abortion.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The Earth needs to be treated as a sacrament given to each other because “time is running out,” said Fr. Pier Giorgio di Cicco.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Andrea Duffield, mother of three and raising them on her own the last five years, knows what poverty is. She’s suffered the humiliations and frustrations of not being able to send her kids on class trips, having to quit a job because it pays less than it costs to keep her kids in day care, having to quit a college nursing program that might have led to a good job but the combination of day care and text books left her with no money for groceries.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Ever since the risen Christ asked “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” and the blinded young Pharisee answered “Who are you, Lord?” the church has had to deal with the difficult Saul of Tarsus, St. Paul the Apostle.

To mark 2,000 years since his birth in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), Pope Benedict XVI has designated June 28, 2008, to June 29, 2009, the Year of St. Paul.