OTTAWA - The Ottawa archdiocese confirmed it had launched an audit of the finances of Blessed Sacrament parish “some weeks” before two front-page stories appeared in the Ottawa Citizen April 16-17 raising questions about the lifestyle of its popular pastor.

The Citizen reported that Fr. Joe Le Clair had cash advances from the Lac-Leamy Casino across the Ottawa River in Quebec of more than $137,000 in 2009-2010, and incurred a credit card debt of more than $490,000 in that time period. It reported Le Clair had repaid Visa $424,000. 

“How he could afford to repay that much is not known, other than the fact that as a Church pastor, Le Clair earns a net salary of $24,400,” journalists Meghan Hurley and Andrew Duffy wrote.

Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J., in a statement issued April 16, said stories about Le Clair’s “lifestyle” were brought to the attention of diocesan authorities in late 2010 and early 2011. He instructed his Vicar General, Msgr. Kevin Beach, to “clarify the issues raised by the stories.”

TORONTO - The life of slain Pakistan minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti is an inspiration to all Christians to live in the footsteps of Jesus, said Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins at an April 16 Memorial Mass at St. Andrew's Catholic Church.

"We look to the example of great heroes like Shahbaz Bhatti to show us the way, to share the light of Christ by what they say, how they live and their life of sacrifice," Collins told about 1,800 people, including some politicians and members of the Pakistani community from different faith groups, who packed the church.

The challenge is "not to be complacent but be inspired" by Bhatti's martyrdom, he said.

Bhatti was gunned down on March 2 by Taliban militants who claimed responsibility for the assassination because of Bhatti's vocal opposition to Pakistan's blasphemy laws. Bhatti spoke out against religious discrimination and openly supported the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy. He said the blasphemy laws are being used to prosecute innocent people from minority religious groups in the country.

TORONTO - Barbara Kowalski usually walks through the streets of Toronto without showing outward signs of faith. But that changed on Palm Sunday.

Walking in a procession from St. Paul’s Basilica to St. Michael’s Cathedral as part of the Office of Catholic Youth’s World Youth Day Palm Sunday event on April 16, she helped to carry the World Youth Day commemorative cross down Queen Street.

“It was nice to show others that this is my religion,” said Kowalski, 23, a legal communications clerk at a law firm in Toronto.

Palm Sunday is recognized internationally as the World Day of Youth.

TORONTO - Ongoing controversy over abortion and the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace may be having a negative effect on overall fundraising for ShareLife.

Each time Development and Peace faces public allegations that some of its partners are linked with organizations advocating legal access to abortion, ShareLife is contacted by angry donors threatening not to give, said ShareLife spokesman Bill Steinburg.

“Whenever they call we always remind them that by doing so they’re having an impact on the huge family of more than 40 agencies that do a lot of work here on the ground, helping our own communities,” Steinburg said.

Early this month, speaking engagements by a Mexican priest to promote Development and Peace’s overseas work were cancelled in Ottawa and Cornwall following allegations that the Jesuit priest’s human rights centre is associated with an organization that supports decriminalization of abortion. In cancelling the Ottawa events, Archbishop Terrance Prendergast said that support by Fr. Luis Arriaga’s centre for groups sympathetic to abortion is “incompatible” with Church teaching.

TORONTO - Hearing Col. Chris Hadfield’s space odyssey, students at a midtown Toronto high school say they were inspired to aim high to achieve their goals.

Seventeen-year-old Marshall McLuhan Catholic High School student Eric Zucchetto was one of more than 1,000 cheering students who heard about the Canadian astronaut’s adventures in space at an April 11 school assembly.

Zucchetto said he was struck by Hadfield’s determination to succeed. And just as Hadfield has made Canada proud through his achievements in space, the Grade 12 student said he wants to do likewise on the soccer pitch.

“I want to represent Canada, too, just like how he represented Canada as an astronaut,” Zucchetto said.

TORONTO - An apology is not the end of it and treaties are not dusty history for Canada’s native people is the message Marie Wilson has for Canadians who would rather not talk about what happened in residential schools.

Wilson is one of three commissioners who make up the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The trio have five years to document the history of the national network of schools mandated by the government but mostly run by churches.

There may be truth but there won’t be any reconciliation if mainstream, urban Canadians don’t acknowledge the legacy of the schools, Wilson told about 70 people at Toronto’s Regis College April 6, where she delivered the annual Martin Royackers Lecture.

MARKHAM, Ont. - The Serra Club of Markham and Scarborough has kicked off a travelling vocations chalice program aiming to shine the light on vocations.

“The one and only mandate is for families to pray for the vocation to the priesthood and religious life,” said Fran Pulumbarit, chairperson of the travelling vocations chalice program and vice-president of vocations of the Serra Club of Markham and Scarborough.

There will be two chalices involved in the program, which will serve as a reminder for families to pray for vocations. The first has been passed among families at St. Patrick’s parish in Markham since April 3.

The second chalice begins circulating at St. Barnabas parish in Scarborough next month.

If you strip life down to its essentials you don’t strip out beauty. You produce lives entirely devoted to beauty.

In This Side of Eden we’re invited into the lives of Benedictine monks at Westminster Abbey in Mission, B.C., during Holy Week. The simplicity of their daily round of work and prayer feeds into the most solemn and significant liturgies of the Christian calendar — Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil.

All this unfolds before the camera in one of the most extraordinary settings. Surrounded by mountains and nestled into the temperate rain forest of the B.C. coast, Westminister Abbey Church is a modern architectural gem constructed in the early 1980s with 7,000 square feet of stained glass. The church and abbey are filled with contemporary frescoes, paintings and sculpture — much of it by one of Mission’s monks, Fr. Dunstan Massey.

OTTAWA - The family of assassinated Pakistani Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti remains committed to its Catholic faith and the fight to improve the plight of persecuted Christians.

Though Bhatti’s family knew of the death threats their brother faced as an outspoken critic of Pakistan’s blasphemy law, his March 2 assassination still came as a shock, said his older brother Peter Bhatti, who lives in the Toronto area. The immediate reaction was a sense there is no place for us to live, and no hope, he said.

But his mother blessed him at the funeral service and told him, “Don’t worry, he lost his life for Jesus Christ. He chose a faith which our Jesus Christ chose. He is a martyr.”

Bhatti’s mother asked Peter and other family members to “please continue in his service and mission so our people will not lose their rights and be able to live in dignity and honour,” he said.

Peterborough, Ont. - The faith of Catholic youth in Peterborough, Ont., will be out in the open during Good Friday’s seventh annual Way of the Cross on April 22 with a re-enactment of Christ’s Passion.

“It’s a way of evangelizing in a unique way,” said Mary Helen Moes, program manager for youth for the diocese of Peterborough and director of this year’s re-enactment.

“They’re certainly not pushing their faith on top of anybody. They’re just demonstrating their faith in a very public way and I don’t think there’s many opportunities for that any more.”

Run by the diocese of Peterborough’s Vocations, Evangelization and Youth Office, the Way of the Cross has about 100 youth participating this year, up from the 30 participants of seven years ago when it originated, said Moes.