All of us at Salt + Light Television rejoice with the Church in Canada, the Church in Quebec and especially the archdiocese of Montreal over the upcoming canonization of Blessed Brother André.  

I have had a personal devotion to Brother André ever since my first visit to the Oratory in 1976 as a high school student. Brother André taught me back then: “Ite ad Joseph” (Go to Joseph) and entrust to the Holy One of Nazareth your projects and dreams, that he may protect you and give success to the work of your hands. Over the past 34 years, I have been a regular visitor to the house that Brother André built for Joseph on Mount Royal. In May 1999, on the day I was named National Director and CEO of World Youth Day 2002, I took the train to Montreal and spent the night at the Oratory. I placed World Youth Day 2002 in the hands of Blessed Brother André, asking him to bless our humble efforts in allowing Christ to touch the hearts and minds of young people of Canada and the world.

Thousands of people during Brother André’s lifetime and more since his death in 1937 have claimed the humble brother’s prayers healed them, cured them, made them whole. There are racks of abandoned crutches, canes and wheelchairs on display in St. Joseph’s Oratory.

The problem for the postulator of Brother André’s cause was how to decide on just one miracle to present to medical and theological experts. When Andrea Ambrosi became postulator of Brother André’s cause in 2002, he had to find the right miracle to move the cause forward.

Canada’s next saint has always simply been known as Brother André, nothing more. But when Pope Benedict XVI declares him a saint in Rome Oct. 17, what title will he be given?

“We don’t know,” said Danielle Decelles, a spokesperson for St. Joseph’s Oratory. “For us in Montreal, he is St. Brother André.”

Rome has not revealed to the archdiocese of Montreal or St. Joseph’s Oratory what title Brother André will be given in the document proclaiming his sainthood. That will be revealed Oct. 17, said Decelles.

It is probable that Brother André would not approve of being made a saint. Or perhaps not even comprehend it.

Once on a tour of the exile Quebecois towns of New England, the already famous Brother André arrived in a place where the priest and the whole French-speaking community anxiously waited. He was already known as the “Miracle Man of Montreal.” The Connecticut pastor had organized a procession and the people greeted Brother André with a great feast. The whole community turned out to pray the rosary.

Take a look at Za Aytiryya, the neighbourhood where Iraqi Christian refugees live in Beirut. Or take a tour the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus for a glimpse of a Muslim world. Or meet the child refugees whose lives are also on hold, waiting for resettlement.

These three slide shows give another view of the shrinking world of Iraqi refugees.

 

 

 

The 10,000-plus Iraqis in Lebanon have no legal status. Lebanon never signed the United Nations Convention on Refugees. The country has no legal or administrative mechanism to deal with a person seeking asylum of any kind. While it does recognize Palestinian refugees, they are an exception.

The police are not actively trying to round up refugees and put them in jail or send them out of the country. As long as they don’t wander out of the Christian neighbourhoods of Beirut or otherwise draw attention, authorities are willing to pretend they’re not there.

The biggest and best story of Deborah Amos’s 28-year career as a Middle East correspondent comes in the form of an eminently readable, fast-paced book about the Iraqi refugee crisis — Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile and Upheaval in the Middle East.

Amos spent five years among Iraq’s two million exiles, sipping tea with them in tiny, crumbling, empty apartments in the poor Geramana neighbourhood of Damascus, retracing their journeys from Baghdad by taxi, tracking them down after they resettled in the United States. Out of the whirlwind of “shock and awe” attacks on Baghdad in 2003, and the confusing rhetoric about weapons of mass destruction and regime change and democratizing the Middle East, Amos discovered that the key to understanding what was happening in Iraq was in the people streaming out of Iraq.

Mississauga, ON. - In Iraq, they lived under the threat of bombs and bullets. In Canada, Fawaz Fatohi says his daughter Dana is free to play in the park as any five-year-old should.

Fatohi’s family was sponsored last year by St. Dominic’s parish in Mississauga, Ont. They had been living as refugees in Syria after fleeing Iraq.

St. Dominic’s parishioners say helping refugee families come to Canada is just part of who they are as a faith community. The experience, from both sides, has been rewarding.

TORONTO - Helping refugees is a prime example of what it means to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” says Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, and through the archdiocese’s Office for Refugees (ORAT) Catholics have been able to follow Christ’s example in caring for others.

“It is a tremendous blessing to have the Office for Refugees working in our archdiocese,” Archbishop Thomas Collins said in a written statement. “We have seen countless examples of our parishes embracing strangers from foreign lands and journeying with them as they begin life in a new country and community.”

Canada is either the number two or number three country after the United States in terms of taking on Iraqi refugees, depending on how we measure it.

From 2007 to 2009 the UNHCR in Syria submitted 3,280 applications from verified Iraqi refugees for resettlement in Canada. That’s second to the 27,406 who were submitted for resettlement in the United States.