EDMONTON - The Alberta bishops will not participate in this year’s March for Life because organizers could not guarantee that placards displaying dead fetuses would not be present at the event.

Edmonton Archbishop Richard Smith, liaison bishop with march organizers, said the presence of images of aborted babies at the march is not consistent with the message the bishops want to portray about the dignity of human life. The graphic images “have started to become a predominant image in the march,” Smith said. Given that the Alberta bishops have been in the forefront of organizing the march, people could naturally assume that they have “given our blessing” to those images, he said.

This year’s March for Life is scheduled for May 12 and Smith said the bishops “will not stand in the way of anybody else participating.”

TORONTO - The ShareLife parish campaign kicked off Ash Wednesday with a goal of increasing donations by 2.5 per cent to help with the ever-growing calls for help.

Coming on the heals of last year’s record-breaking campaign, this year the fundraising arm of the archdiocese of Toronto’s annual campaign goal is to at least match last year’s total of $14.3 million, including $12.3 million from the parish campaign.

“The repercussions of the economic downturn are still being seen in the community,” said Bill Steinburg, communications manager at ShareLife. “There are a number of people who were able to get by for so long that are now in a position that they’re close to the end of their own resources — their safety net.”

Marie Wilson will be the keynote speaker at Regis College’s second annual Martin Royackers Lecture on April 6.

A commissioner with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission examining Indian residential schools, Wilson will speak on “Fostering Cultural Reconciliation in Canada: Healing Relations with Aboriginal Peoples through Truth-telling.” It takes place at 7 p.m. in Regis’ St. Joseph Chapel. Fr. Gordon Rixon, S.J., dean of Regis College, said Wilson was invited to reflect upon “what it means to go forward, prepare people in ministry in the Church, post-residential school in Canada.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in 2008 as part of the court-approved Residential Schools Settlement Agreement negotiated between legal counsel for former students, legal counsel for the government of Canada, the churches that ran the schools, the Assembly of First Nations and other aboriginal organizations. It is set to complete its work in 2013.

TORONTO - Not many people have been knighted for an act of remembering. Ontario Liberal MPP Dave Levac is one of the few, recently made a Chevalier of the Ukrainian Order of Merit for his efforts to have the genocide of Ukrainians in the 1930s officially recognized in Ontario.

In 2009 Levac pushed through the Holodomor Memorial Day Act, recognizing the fourth Saturday of each November as Holodomor Memorial Day. A Soviet government-engineered famine in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933, the Holodomor killed up to 10 million Ukrainians, as many as 25,000 a day at its peak in 1933.

Levac was presented with his Order of Merit medal at St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church in Brantford, Ont., Jan. 21. It’s the highest honour awarded by the Ukrainian government.

“It humbles me,” said Levac.

TORONTO - American Catholic YouTube sensation Michael Voris doesn’t mince words.

His direct, no-nonsense approach to hot-button issues like abortion and contraception may rub some the wrong way. But a dedicated following, including young Catholics like 24-year-old Therese Miller of Cambridge, Ont., has discovered him online and say they find his countercultural message inspirational as they live out their faith in their schools and workplaces.

Voris’ appeal is extending north to Canada, where he had recent exposure on the Michael Coren Show and he was scheduled to speak at a March 19 World Youth Day fundraiser in Kitchener, Ont.

Voris is an Emmy award-winning broadcaster who founded St. Michael’s Media in 2006. His YouTube show The Vortex averages thousands of viewers and has been downloaded more than five million times over the past two years.

OTTAWA - Scott Braunschweig sometimes wonders if the development work he is doing in Afghanistan is “in some ways very selfish.” After all, he finds it so personally gratifying.

Braunschweig works with Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the international development arm of the American bishops. He had worked in many other countries in overseas development previously, but often found it difficult dealing with bureaucracy to get things done. But in Afghanistan, “you get this immediate reward... you can see the physical health of the people improve when you put in a water project.”

Afghanistan had been on Braunschweig’s “no-go” list back in 2004 when he was looking at going overseas again. But despite his concerns about violence and negative perceptions about conflict, an intriguing position with the Tribal Liaison Office lured him there.

TORONTO - More than 500 members of the Toronto Irish community applauded Norita Fleming as she was chosen Irish Person of the Year at a Hilton Hotel luncheon on March 6.

“I was stunned when I heard — and felt very humble,” said Fleming.

Fleming emigrated to Canada in the mid-1960s where she soon met her husband, Bill. They went on to raise four children in Toronto.

She became one of the founders of the County Cork Association Toronto. As an active member of St. Cecilia’s parish in Toronto, she worked on the St. Patrick’s Day Mass Committee. She headed up the World Youth Day committee at her present parish, St. Luke’s in Thornhill, where she arranged billeting for large groups of pilgrims arriving in Toronto. As one speaker put it, “After that there was no stopping her.”

OTTAWA - An interfaith coalition is calling for “inspired leadership” from the federal government in addressing poverty in Canada.

It also expressed dismay over the Conservative government’s March 7 response to the poverty-elimination plan proposed last November by the Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of People with Disabilities (HUMA).

“We were disappointed that the federal government response did not take advantage of the consensus for co-ordinated action reflected in the HUMA report and did not respond substantively to the recommendations,” said the March 8 Interfaith Declaration from the Canadian Council of Churches (which includes Canada’s Catholic bishops), the Canadian Interfaith Delegation — World Religions Summit 2010, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and Dignity for All.

Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ) released a more critical statement, saying that its “hope for Ottawa to meaningfully engage in poverty reduction efforts evaporated” when the federal government released its response to the HUMA report.

OTTAWA - Three pro-family groups have been granted leave to make a joint intervention in an appeal to a ruling that struck down prohibitions against prostitution, which is to be heard by the Ontario Court of Appeal later this spring.

“We’re very pleased an intervention in support of the dignity of women and of family will be heard in the appeal,” said Catholic Civil Rights League executive director Joanne McGarry. 

The league is making a joint-intervention with REAL Women of Canada and the Christian Legal Fellowship. The three groups intervened previously when the Terri Jean Bedford et al. vs. the Attorney General of Canada case went before the Ontario Superior Court last September.

In that ruling, Justice Susan Himel struck down sections of the Criminal Code that prohibited soliciting for the sake of prostitution, running a brothel or pimping.

OTTAWA - Supporters of the “Medicine for All” Bill C-393 hope the bill can pass the Senate before a possible spring election call that would see the bill die.

“This is one of those rare moments of life, where you have a precious window of opportunity, you either open it or you don’t,” said Dr. James Orbinski, Dignitas International founder and a University of Toronto public health professor. “Let’s make it happen.”

The bill, which passed the House of Commons March 9, would amend the Access to Medicine Regime and make cheaper generic drugs available to the world’s poor. Opponents are against this as it would infringe upon trademark and other rights held by big pharmaceutical companies.