OTTAWA - REAL Women of Canada has been granted leave to intervene before the Supreme Court of Canada in the Vancouver safe drug injection site case to be argued May 11.

The pro-family, pro-life women’s organization is the only group among nine interveners that will argue on behalf of the federal government’s position that Ottawa has jurisdiction to control illegal drugs and that those laws should have a moral basis.

The federal government is appealing a 2010 B.C. Court of Appeal ruling, which dismissed an earlier government appeal, to close InSite, the supervised safe-injection site in Vancouver. InSite opened in 2003 under a temporary exemption from national drug laws and offers drug addicts a place  to inject drugs while connecting to health services. When the temporary exemption was set to expire, InSite went to the B.C. Supreme Court and won a permanent exemption.

TORONTO - Twenty theology professors and librarians at Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College have won a slam-dunk ruling from the Ontario Labour Relations Board unionizing the faculty and obliging the college to negotiate a first contract.

The ruling not only recognized the St. Michael’s College profs as unionized workers seeking a contract, but ruled that all 2,600-plus faculty at the University of Toronto are in fact union members.

Before the March 17 ruling, the University of Toronto Faculty Association wasn’t formally a union, even though it negotiated minimum work conditions for university teachers and librarians, including pay, academic freedom, research and study leaves, workload, etc.

“What the board is really saying is that the nature of the relationship between the parties has the essential characteristics of a relationship between an employer and a union,” said Canadian Association of University Teachers executive director James Turk.

TORONTO - Catholic scholars will gather at Regis College March 31 and April 1 to discuss Pope Benedict XVI’s Verbum Domini, the results of the October 2008 General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome.

The apostolic exhortation was dedicated to the Word of God in the life and the mission of the Church.

Sponsored by Regis College and Salt + Light Television, “Word of God: Light of Love” will include keynote speakers Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J., London Bishop Ronald Fabbro, Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl and Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus.

ANTIGONISH, N.S. - The settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed against the diocese of Antigonish on behalf of victims of sexual abuse remains on track and is meeting its timelines.

“It is going the way we anticipated it going,” said diocesan spokesman Fr. Paul Abbass.

“The response of the parish and the generosity of the parishes in this pooling, albeit very difficult for them, has been very good.”

In August 2009, the diocese agreed to pay $13 million relating to sexual abuse cases dating back several decades. Then-Bishop Raymond Lahey announced the deal, shortly before being charged himself with importing and possessing child pornography. Lahey will be in court to face these charges next month.  

TORONTO - The Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association conference takes place April 28 to 30 at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto.

Ontario Minister of Education Leona Dombrowksy will be a keynote speaker at the conference on the opening day of the annual conference.

Among the topics conference speakers and participants will discuss will be the Ontario government’s equity and inclusive education strategy and how it applies to Catholic schools and how the strategy will be implemented in Catholic schools. The issue has caused controversy as Catholic school boards try to implement the strategy while staying true to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

TORONTO - The Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association conference takes place April 28 to 30 at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto.

Ontario Minister of Education Leona Dombrowksy will be a keynote speaker at the conference on the opening day of the annual conference.

Among the topics conference speakers and participants will discuss will be the Ontario government’s equity and inclusive education strategy and how it applies to Catholic schools and how the strategy will be implemented in Catholic schools. The issue has caused controversy as Catholic school boards try to implement the strategy while staying true to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

OTTAWA - The apparent disconnect between the Conservative government and CIDA public servants over funding of the ecumenical social justice group KAIROS may expose a much deeper underlying issue about overseas development.

“It would be helpful if the real reasons were put on the table,” said KAIROS executive director Mary Corkery March 18 after she testified before the House of Commons procedure and house affairs committee.

Corkery’s testimony followed a two-hour grilling of CIDA Minister Bev Oda on whether she had deliberately misled the House of Commons. Oda changed the recommendation to grant funding to KAIROS after CIDA officials had given their approval.

One of the key signals of an ideological shift is the government’s criticism of KAIROS for funding advocacy. Corkery said the Latin roots of the word “advocacy” mean the bringing forward of “the voices of the poor and the marginalized and those who are suffering human rights abuses from our point of view.”

Doctors at a St. Louis hospital performed a tracheotomy March 21 on Baby Joseph, the seriously ill 14-month-old who has been at the centre of an international tug-of-war over end-of-life care.

It's a procedure the Maraachli family has fought for ever since the Ontario Superior Court ordered them to give their consent to remove their child's breathing tube on Feb. 18. He has a neurodegenerative disease and needs a breathing and feeding tube to survive.The family defied the legal order and the advice of London Health Sciences Centre doctors who said his condition would not improve with the procedure, would be "invasive" and futile.

“Following a thorough examination by a multi-disciplinary medical team of specialists from SSM Cardinal Glennon and Saint Louis University School of Medicine, along with extensive consultations with Joseph's parents and the SSM Cardinal Glennon ethics committee, we concluded that a tracheotomy was medically appropriate,” said the SSM Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Centre in a statement.

OTTAWA - The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace launched its annual Share Lent fundraising campaign here March 16 with the goal of raising $10 million.

Under the banner Building a World of Justice, the Canadian bishops' overseas development agency aims to collect $10 million across Canada to go towards more than 200 sustainable development projects it supports in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

The theme for this year’s campaign expresses the collective work of the many local organizations that D&P has supported over the last 40 years.

OTTAWA - The headline speaker at an historic conference March 24-26 in Mississauga, Ont., hopes Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans will flourish in the Catholic Church through an emphasis on mission and unity.

But Fr. Aidan Nichols, a Dominican priest and scholar who is an expert on Anglican Church history and patrimony, would have preferred the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus had gone further than the Personal Ordinariate structure it calls for and instead created “the Western equivalent of a Catholic Eastern Church.”

“That would have been my preferred option, chiefly because it would be better able to resist assimilation to the parishes of the Latin dioceses,” he said in an e-mail interview. “But if the ecclesial arrangement offered enables the 'patrimony' to be transmitted, that is the main thing.”