Three hundred Catholic women from across Ontario met from July 10-13 in Hamilton for the 64th annual Ontario Catholic Women’s League Provincial Convention, where Marlene Pavletic of Thunder Bay was chosen as the new provincial president.

This year’s four-day conference, which concluded with the election of a new provincial executive including Pavletic, was themed “Centred on Faith & Justice — Led By The Spirit." Held at the Sheraton Hotel in Hamilton, the convention offered representatives of the CWL, which has 54,000 members in 13 dioceses across Ontario, a chance to reflect on the past year, deepen and celebrate their faith and set their goals for the future.

Those goals consisted mainly of this year’s three resolutions, each focused on health. The resolutions, submitted by Ontarian dioceses, aim to provide clean water for First Nations communities, limit sodium use in food and raise awareness of colorectal cancer. These resolutions, which were passed at the provincial level, will be submitted to the national CWL, which will gather Aug. 14-17. A final set of resolutions will be chosen at the national convention and set as initiatives for the CWL over the next year.

OTTAWA - Bill Whatcott will be before the Supreme Court of Canada in October hoping to strike down the laws that allow human rights commissions to limit freedom of speech and religious expression.

TORONTO - An Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that makes it harder for doctors to withdraw life support when such a decision goes against a patient's family's wishes is "fabulous" news to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the coalition, said the June 29 ruling in the case of Hassan Rasouli was exactly what the coalition was hoping for.

"Doctors were interpreting their power as being that they could withdraw treatment without consent and that they only required consent to treat," said Schadenberg.

The withdrawal of life support now requires the consent of a substitute decision maker — and if that's not satisfactory to the doctor, he or she must go to the provincial Consent and Capacity Board to try to have the decision overturned, said Toronto lawyer Gardner Hodder, who represented the Rasouli family.

INUVIK, N.W.T. - The Church in the north can help native people recover their languages and cultural identity, but it won't be easy, said Oblate Archbishop Sylvain Lavoie at the conclusion of four days of testimony about the damage residential schools did to native families, communities and culture.

Justice Murray Sinclair, chief commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada with a five-year mandate to investigate the history of the schools, wrapped up the TRC's Northern National Event in Inuvik July 1 with a warning to aboriginal participants in the Commission's hearings that they will have to take responsibility for the future of native culture.

"The Church can't give you back your language. The Church can't give you back your culture," Sinclair told about 400 people who attended the closing ceremonies for the event.

Sinclair told churches they would have to tell people they don't have to be Christian if they really want reconciliation.

TORONTO - Bo has a passion for food. And thanks to Cooking for Life, a new culinary arts program for homeless youth offered at Covenant House, he can pursue this passion.

"The program has got great potential for employment opportunity and it's helped me so much with my kitchen skills, my knife skills and safety in the kitchen," said the 24-year-old, a member of the program's first graduating class.

The program's public launch took place June 29 at the downtown youth shelter's newly renovated kitchen, which was made possible with the help of federal government funding. MP John Carmichael, David Garcelon, executive chef at Toronto's Fairmont Royal York Hotel, and Ruth daCosta, executive director of Covenant House, all addressed a crowd of about 50 people.

"Participants learn the professional conduct required to work in a fast-paced restaurant environment," daCosta said. "Graduates can earn a safe food handling certificate and receive support to find a job. They will be better equipped to cook for themselves when they move out on their own."

INUVIK, N.W.T. - In the midst of a gathering which seeks reconciliation and healing from the 130-year history of residential schools in Canada, Catholic and Anglican bishops from the north took responsibility for the 400-year-old division between the churches and pledged continued dialogue, co-operation and reconciliation.

"This is a road we're on and there are no exits," said Bishop Gary Gordon of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.

The gesture of reconciliation and healing came on June 29, day two of the five-day Northern National Event of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in Inuvik. About 1,000 native people from all over the far north have gathered with Church and government officials to review the history of the residential schools, hear the stories of school survivors and imagine a new future for native Canadians.

Anglican and Catholic missionaries brought their rivalry with them to northern communities, often dividing communities and families along denominational lines. Catholics couldn't attend the funerals of their Anglican family members. Anglican and Catholic residential school students fought each other on the basis of religious labels.

"These are things we offer regret for, and we want to put them in our past," said Bishop Murray Chatlain of Mackenzie-Fort Smith, N.W.T.

OTTAWA — The union representing Development and Peace employees says tighter supervision by the Canadian bishops threatens the democratic nature of the lay-run organization and undermines the prophetic vision that motivates their work.

The union report, prepared for a recent meeting of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace’s (D&P) National Council in June, said the world “ is increasingly turning towards a conservative ideology.”

“There is clearly a turn to the right in several societies, as well as in the Universal Church,” it said.

The 7-page document, published June 25 on the blog Soutenons Developpement et paix (soutenondetp.wordpress.com), claims the shift “runs counter to the prophetic vision that gave rise” to D&P’s creation 45 years ago.

OTTAWA - Bishop Raymond Lahey’s sentencing hearing for importing child porn has been postponed to Aug. 4 and 5.

The sentencing hearing had been scheduled for June 24, but the Crown had not received the report from forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Bradford, who assessed the former Antigonish bishop.

Lahey, 71, the former bishop of Antigonish, N.S., faces a minimum of one year in prison and could receive up to 10 years. In August, Bradford will be cross-examined concerning the bishop’s mental state and likelihood of reoffending.

Lahey pleaded guilty to importing child porn May 4, 18 months after a Canadian Border Services agent stopped the bishop at Ottawa airport and pulled him aside for a secondary search of his laptop. A more serious charge of possession for the purpose of distribution was dropped by the Crown. The bishop opted to go to jail immediately, pending his sentencing hearing.

TORONTO - Alan Yoshioka chose God over his homosexual inclinations.

Before his conversion to the Catholic Church, Yoshioka says he lived an “out and proud gay lifestyle.” The 48-year-old Toronto-based freelance editor says after many years of rejecting the Church’s views on homosexuality, he experienced a spiritual conversion leading him to “interior freedom” when he embraced a life of chastity.

“(I am) so grateful for having discovered what it is like to live a life of chastity because there is an interior freedom that I never knew during all my years seeking liberation, seeking freedom in a worldly sense,” he told The Catholic Register.

His blog, “The Sheepcat,” is “a Catholic commentary by a former gay activist and his wife” where Yoshioka writes of his spiritual and personal conversion.

INUVIK, N.W.T - It was a day of tears in Inuvik as Inuit, Dene and Metis gathered to remember and count their losses from years spent in residential schools.

"For the life of me, I can't remember the years from five years old to ten years old," said John Banksland, a representative of the northern survivors committee.

The second major hearing in the Truth and Reconciliation process opened on June 21 with approximately 1,000 survivors of residential schools turning out to tell their stories or listen to others tell theirs.

The federally funded commission is crossing the country to document the abuse that was rampant in the Indian residential school system that ran in Canada for more than a century.

Banksland's hope for the four-day meeting of residential school survivors, church representatives and government officials was for a better future.

"We've had 130 years of this stuff," he said. "It's time to let it go."