MISSISSAUGA - Despite representing just 2.3 per cent of the nation’s billion-plus population, India’s Christians are making an impact in the rapidly developing nation.

That was the message delivered by Cardinal Oswald Gracias as the Archbishop of Bombay concluded a Canadian tour at a March 19 banquet.

“We are breaking out from the Christian community to human communities,” said Gracias.

TORONTO - There’s nothing more Catholic than ecumenism, nothing more Christian than unity, nothing more urgent than the need to heal divisions in the body of Christ, but none of it will happen based on resentments, fears and identity politics, the head of the World Council of Churches told a couple hundred people in Toronto March 14.

On his first official visit to Canada, Rev. Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit laid out challenges to ecumenism which he said oppose the Christian mandate to fulfill the Lord’s Prayer — “Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.”

A bill to enable Canada to prosecute human-trafficking involving Canadian citizens or permanent residents overseas received unanimous approval March 15 by the Parliamentary Justice Committee.

Justice Committee members heard witnesses from anti-human trafficking groups, including a survivor of trafficking into the sex trade, speak in favor of MP Joy Smith’s Bill C-310 An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking of persons). In a rare consensus across party lines, MPs went through the Bill line by line before adopting it and sending it back to the House of Commons for third reading debate.

OTTAWA - A year after Quebec priest Fr. Raymond Gravel filed a $500,000 defamation lawsuit against LifeSiteNews (LSN), the online pro-life news service has filed a defence that argues the lawsuit is an attack on press freedom.

On its website, LSN wrote it is “now free to present many of the disturbing details about what we will argue is an abusive and politically-motivated lawsuit that amounts to an extreme attack on freedom of the press and freedom of speech.”

OTTAWA - A Conservative MP’s private member’s motion that critics charge will re-open the abortion debate has been officially declared votable and will have its first hour of debate on April 26.

MP Stephen Woodworth’s Motion 312 would set up a Parliamentary Committee to examine Canada’s 400-year old definition of a human being in subsection 223 (1) of the Criminal Code. He has asked the definition be examined in light of advances in modern medical science.

Calls for a right to after-birth “abortion” to kill newborns have added to the urgency of this debate, he says.

Clean and potable water is a human right, not a for-profit commodity dependent on market logic, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace told the sixth World Water Forum in Marseille, France.

Canada, on the other hand, stands in contrast to the Vatican position, according to Council of Canadians chair Maude Barlow.

Canada’s Catholic bishops are pulling out of a national interfaith dialogue they helped establish.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has informed the Canadian Council of Churches it will not participate in an ongoing interfaith conversation with representatives from major Christian churches and non-Christian faith bodies.

The CCC’s interfaith conversation began as the Interfaith Partnership in the run-up to the 2010 interfaith leaders’ summit in Winnipeg. That body was established to engage with world political leaders coming to Canada for the G8/G20 summit. Parallel faith leaders’ summits have been a feature of G8 meetings since 2005.

OTTAWA - Despite a “surprising” Supreme Court decision that won’t allow parents to exempt their children from Quebec’s mandatory Ethics and Religious Culture program (ERC), constitutional lawyer Iain Benson urges religious groups not to overreact to signs that parental rights are under threat.

On Feb. 17, Canada’s highest court ruled the ERC program doesn’t violate the religious freedom of Catholic parents because the parents — known as L and J in the decision — were unable to prove the course harms their children.

OTTAWA - The Catholic identity of Caritas Internationalis has “never been put into doubt” and the influence of the international federation of Catholic charities has continued to grow on the world stage, said general secretary Michel Roy.

“In this present globalized world it is important to carry the voices of the poorest that come up through the Caritas network to the right people in the international organizations,” Roy said during a recent visit to Ottawa. These organizations include UN organizations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the International Labour Organization, governments and various private sector actors.

Overall, Caritas represents Catholic charities operating in 164 countries.

TORONTO - Parishes looking for a green path to God, or even just lower heating bills, can explore the possibilities at the fourth annual Green Choices for Faith Communities Forum March 25.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May will be the keynote speaker at this year’s event, organized by the Green Awakening Network and Greening Sacred Spaces. The noon to 5:15 p.m. conference costs $35 per participant with the deadline for pre-registration falling March 21.