The Catholic mayor of Saguenay, Que., is appealing for donations to help him fight a Quebec Human Rights Tribunal ruling that ordered him to stop opening council meetings with a prayer.

Mayor Jean Tremblay said he will appeal the decision all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

“We make a prayer, all the council, since the beginning of the city 150 years ago,” said Tremblay in an interview from Saguenay of the 20-second prayer said before the opening of council meetings.

Tremblay has also refused to heed an order to remove a crucifix and a small statue of the Sacred Heart from council chambers.

“We don’t agree with that because those objects for some people that means our faith, for some others our culture, for some other our tradition,” he said.

TORONTO - A new private Catholic high school that wants to open its doors to youth from low-income families in Toronto is taking flack from critics who argue the plan would “economically segregate” students.    

David Livingstone, director of the University of Toronto OISE Centre for the Study of Education and Work, has concerns about the proposed model for the 500-student Toronto Cristo Rey School, which will be run by the Basilian order. The project is “well-intentioned but ill-informed,” said Livingstone, author of How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. He said research since the 1960s has found that mixing low-income and high-income students together suggests “low-income students are going to gain and high-income students are not going to lose.”

TORONTO - John M. Cassaday, president and chief executive officer of Corus Entertainment Inc., has been named as chair of the 32nd annual Cardinal’s Dinner.

The dinner, founded by the late Cardinal Gerald Emmett Carter and continued to this day by Archbishop Thomas Collins, has raised more than $5 million since its inception, with many business and political leaders attending each year. It will be held Oct. 27 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

With only a few, small projects in the Middle East, the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace is carefully watching the changing political landscape before it makes any changes to its programming in the region.

“Our current program, which is mainly focused on peacebuilding, is quite small and we are not present in any of the countries experiencing protests,” Development and Peace spokeswoman Kelly Di Domenico told The Catholic Register.

Most of the $935,000 a year Development and Peace designates for the Middle East is in fact spent in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where partner agencies receive $385,000 and $120,000 to run programs that help women earn money.

QUEBEC CITY - The search for Cardinal Marc Ouellet’s replacement came to an end on Feb. 22 when the Vatican announced that Bishop Gerald Lacroix will become the new archbishop of Quebec.

Lacroix, 53, had been acting as diocesan administrator to the archdiocese since Pope Benedict XVI named Ouellet the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and transferred the cardinal in August to Rome. Among Ouellet’s duties is to advise the Pope on the appointment of bishops.

TORONTO - Aaron Lewis loves to see the smile on the faces of people when he’s done steaming and vacuuming their apartments. He knows that what he does helps people sleep a little easier.

“We make their life a bit more joyful,” he said.

Lewis forms part of a Good Shepherd CARES crew that prepares apartments for pesticide treatments that eliminate bed bugs and cockroaches. Without the intense and detailed cleaning they provide — steaming, vacuuming, overturning tables, chairs and beds and sealing up openings around phone jacks, cable and electrical outlets, laundering all the clothes and sheets, etc. — the mere application of chemicals won’t eliminate the pests.

Getting all that cleaning done for somebody who can’t do it by themselves makes Lewis feel proud and satisfied with a job well done.

BRAMPTON, Ont. - Eight-year-old Ofure Akhigbe stands alongside 18 of her classmates as “Oh Canada” plays over the loudspeaker to calypso-style beats at St. Josephine Bakhita Elementary School.

As the school celebrates Black History Month in February, it also commemorated St. Josephine Bakhita’s feast day on Feb. 8. The school is the first in North America to be named after the first Sudanese saint.

Bahkita was a former slave from Darfur who became a Canossian nun in Italy and lived there for 45 years. She was canonized in 2000.

On St. Josephine Bakhita’s feast day, the school celebrated with a liturgy and the nearby St. Josephine Bahkita parish loaned the saint’s relics to the school. Canossian sisters from the parish also visited the school and shared St. Josephine’s story to the students.

TORONTO - There is no cause for sainthood for Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The painter who gave birth to baroque art was a scoundrel.  

A brilliant virtuoso with a paintbrush, Caravaggio was dangerous with a sword. He paraded about Rome with his weapon at his side and brawled frequently. In 1606 he killed a man. He was himself dead in 1610 at the age of 38.

But no one can claim to understand Caravaggio without understanding his religious world, the spirituality of his times and theological currents coursing through the Church during the Counter Reformation.

More saintly men have painted much less compelling theology than Caravaggio.

OTTAWA - The interfaith group KAIROS was denied $7 million in funding after an approval document signed by senior civil servants was doctored by International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda, the minister has admitted.

The Conservative Minister now stands accused of lying to a committee of MPs when she testified on Dec. 9 that she did not know who altered the memo that was drafted by executives at the Canadian International Development Agency.

The original CIDA memo indicated that its president and a vice-president approved a KAIROS request for a four-year funding grant. But after the memo had been signed by CIDA executives the word “not” was inserted by hand to change a key sentence to read “not approve,” creating the impression that CIDA had rejected the request.

On Feb. 14 Oda admitted in the House of Commons that she ordered that the “not” be inserted, contradicting statements she had made two months earlier.

OTTAWA - Quebec’s Catholic bishops have asked the province to consider better ways to help maintain the churches and religious buildings associated with the provinces’ cultural heritage.

The request by the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Quebec’s religious patrimony committee was made in a Nov. 11 submission to the province’s Parliamentary commission of culture and education, but not made public until early February.

In it, the bishops suggested revisions to Quebec’s Cultural Property Act.

The bishops pointed out large sums of money are needed to maintain and restore churches and historic buildings belonging to religious communities. Otherwise, church properties will continue to be sold to developers who may turn them into condominiums or concert halls, they said.