TORONTO - Christmas stars, known as Filipino Christmas lanterns, adorn Our Lady of the Assumption Church this Advent season.

Our Lady of Assumption, the archdiocese’s Filipino Catholic Mission, is home to about 7,000 Filipino Catholic families.

TORONTO - This Christmas, Christina Panzini is going to be making Christmas gifts for her grandparents using the nicest beads she can find. But she won’t be making bracelets or necklaces. This year, Panzini will be making homemade rosaries.

“I never know what to buy my grandparents and I want to give them things that are sentimental,” she said. “Something they’ll use and appreciate.”

Panzini, a third-year geography student at York University, said it’s easy to make beautiful rosaries at reasonable prices. She buys all materials at art supply stores, like Michaels, which stock all the required parts.

TORONTO - There’s no mention of a donkey loaded with pomegranates, windmills or a group of musicians playing the zaqq, the tanbur and the safzava in Gospel stories of the birth of Jesus. But for the Maltese it just wouldn’t be Christmas without them.

Traditional Maltese Christmas nativity scenes, called presepju, contain all these Maltese elements and more. At Toronto’s Maltese parish, St. Paul the Apostle, the Maltese tradition is on display in a big way.

TORONTO - With Christmas coming, it’s socks, not Christmas stockings, that the Sisters of St. Joseph are hoping will come by way of gifts for people living on the streets.

“On Holy Thursday, when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet and said, ‘Do likewise,’ it’s always a privilege for us to do that. It reminds us of who we’re called to be,” said Sr. Gwen Smith, director at Mustard Seed, the Sisters’ ministry to help the homeless and individuals at risk.

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - Amid the sights and smells of death and tragedy, volunteers from the Dufferin Peel Catholic District School Board found hope and resilience in the people they met in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Maria Masucci told The Catholic Register that the volunteer trips by a team of teachers, university students, plus a doctor and dentist from Woodbridge’s St. Peter’s parish to Haiti in April and then again in July were inspired by the Gospel of Matthew about feeding and clothing the poor, welcoming strangers and visiting prisoners. They were helping in the aftermath of the January earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people and left millions homeless.

OTTAWA - Roxanne’s Law may have gone down to defeat, but Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge sees signs a version of his anti-abortion coercion bill might succeed some day.

“I was not too disappointed,” said Bruinooge, who chairs the Parliamentary Pro-life Caucus, after the 178-97 defeat Dec. 15 of Bill C-510.

Roxanne’s Law would make it a crime to coerce a woman into having an abortion. It was named for a constituent in Bruinooge's Winnipeg riding who was beaten with a hockey stick by three men and left to die in a snow bank because she refused to have an abortion. Bruinooge said he “learned a lot about Canada” in telling her story, which also attracted international interest.

TORONTO - The new ad campaign from the atheist group behind last year’s “there’s probably no God” campaign suggests that Christ and Allah have the same amount of credibility as UFOs, Big Foot, psychics, Zeus and homeopathy.

“Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence” reads the new campaign poster set to run on TTC vehicles in Toronto. While the ads are still pending approval, they are expected to make their debut on streetcars in January, said Justin Trottier, national executive director of the Centre for Inquiry, the group behind the campaign. If all goes according to plan, Trottier said the ads will then run in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal.

“Broadening our focus from just God, we’ll now call for skepticism and rational inquiry into any conceivable extraordinary claim,” said Trottier.

OTTAWA - Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff stunned many pro-family Catholics when he threw his support behind the so-called transgender “bathroom” bill now before the House of Commons.

Party leaders do not generally vote for private members’ business, but Ignatieff rose to vote “Yea” for  Bill C-389, which passed report stage 143-136 on Dec. 8.

“Well, you know, we’re the party of the charter,” Ignatieff told journalists afterwards.

TORONTO - For the sixth year in a row, vandals have taken a shot at the Christmas creche in front of Old City Hall in downtown Toronto.

Passersby noticed the plexiglass window which encases the statues of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus had been smashed on Dec. 5. Suresh Dominic of Campaign Life Coalition's Catholic wing was preparing to replace the broken pane on Dec. 8.

TORONTO - Long-time special education advocate Ashleigh Molloy credits Jean Vanier with showing him the way.

It is Vanier, the founder of the worldwide L’Arche movement, and his message that working with people with special needs is a blessing, not a burden, that Molloy has carried throughout his more than two decades of work as a Catholic school teacher and father of a daughter with Down Syndrome.