OTTAWA - An Ontario court decision striking down three key prostitution laws shows the need for a national debate on the issue that includes looking at laws to prosecute johns, says Conservative MP Joy Smith, an expert on human trafficking.Smith has urged her government to study Swedish laws which have tackled the problem by prosecuting the clients of prostitutes, the johns. Sweden reduced prostitution by 30-50 per cent from 1999-2004 and substantially cut the number of women trafficked into the country, she said.
Interim tag removed from Durham CFS director
By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register
Catholic Family Services of Durham found what it was looking for was already there. The family counselling agency dropped the word “acting” from Elizabeth Pierce’s title, making her the new executive director.Pierce takes over an agency with a $1.3-million annual budget, 19 regular employees and three contract counsellors. Catholic Family Services of Durham deals with families from the eastern edge of Toronto to the Bowmanville area, and as far north as Port Perry. She has been with the agency for more than 14 years, mostly working as senior counselling program manager.
Padre Pio relics entrusted to church named in saint’s honour
By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register
WOODBRIDGE, Ont. - A humble Franciscan from a little town in southern Italy had them singing and dancing in the aisles in Woodbridge Sept. 23. The overcapacity crowd that came out to greet three relics of St. Padre Pio and inaugurate a new church named after the 20th-century Italian saint broke out in frequent applause as Archbishop Thomas Collins baptized their new church.
Euthanasia forces target Quebec
By Deborah Gyapong, Canadian Catholic News
OTTAWA - International pro-euthanasia forces see Quebec as a vulnerable beachhead for legalizing euthanasia in Canada and then spreading across North America, warns Margaret Somerville.Somerville, founding director of McGill’s Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, and others are keeping an eye on Quebec, where a legislative committee is holding public hearings on euthanasia.
Court quashes access to information on D&P
By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register
TORONTO - The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace obtained a Federal Court injunction Sept. 12 to block an access to information request for the names and funding levels regarding its nearly 200 partner organizations in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. The request was made to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) by LifeSiteNews, an online news organization that has published a series of articles over the past 18 months alleging links between Development and Peace-funded partners and pro-abortion lobbying in Mexico, Bolivia, South Africa and Nigeria. Development and Peace has denied those allegations and an investigation into five of its Mexican partners by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops cleared the Catholic aid agency of wrongdoing while also warning it to be more prudent in selecting its partners. LifeSite called that investigation “deeply flawed.”
Campaign launched to raise awareness of TCDSB elections
By Sheila Dabu Nonato, The Catholic Register
In the lead-up to Catholic school trustee elections, a group of former trustees, teachers and parents is leading a campaign to raise awareness and encourage Catholic supporters to vote on Oct. 25.“Lately, the reputation of our board has been badly tarnished in the public eye, and the Minister of Education found it necessary to place the Toronto Catholic District School Board under supervision. It is a time for healing. It is a time for change,” said former principal Mary Ellen Lawless at a Sept. 26 press conference outside St. Paul's Basilica. Lawless is a member of the new group C.U.R.B., Catholics United for a Responsible Ballot.
“It is imperative that we reunite the parent, teacher, principal, priest, trustee and the total Catholic community in carrying out the aims of Catholic education and the mission of the Catholic school,” Lawless said in a statement. The group urged Toronto's Catholic voters to get to know the issues and their trustee candidates as their “right and privilege to do so.”
Bishop Crosby to leave the Rock for Hamilton
By Vanessa Santilli-Raimondo, The Catholic Register
Pope Benedict XVI named Bishop Douglas Crosby as the new bishop of the diocese of Hamilton Sept. 24. Crosby will replace the retiring Bishop Anthony Tonnos who has led the diocese since 1984.“I’m very pleased and honoured by the appointment,” said Crosby, who remains administrator of the diocese of Corner Brook and Labrador until he is installed as bishop of Hamilton at the Cathedral of Christ the King on Nov. 8.
Born in Marathon, Ont., in the diocese of Thunder Bay, all of Crosby's ministry as a bishop has been done in Newfoundland and Labrador. Installed as bishop of Labrador City-Schefferville in 1998, he was also installed as bishop of St George’s, Nfld., in 2003 and retained responsibility for the former diocese. Then, following a realignment of the boundaries of the two dioceses, he became bishop of the diocese of Corner Brook and Labrador in 2007.
A new home for Padre Pio
By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register
The mostly Italian parish of Padre Pio in Woodbridge welcomed relics of St. Padre Pio as they inaugurated their new church Sept. 23. It was no small affair, with an overflow crowd peering in the windows from the parking lot to see Archbishop Thomas Collins baptize and anoint the new church.
Photos and commentary by Michael Swan
ShareLife bounces back to have a record year
By Vanessa Santilli-Raimondo, The Catholic Register
TORONTO - It was a record year for ShareLife as total donations to the annual campaign came it at an all-time high — $14.33 million. And it was all inspired by an anonymous donor.
“A generous parishioner in the archdiocese of Toronto came forward last year and offered to match all new or increased donations up to $500,000 to ShareLife during the 2010 campaign,” said Arthur Peters, executive director of ShareLife, the charitable fundraising arm of the archdiocese of Toronto.
A little piece of Don Bosco making its way to Toronto
By Vanessa Santilli-Raimondo, The Catholic Register
TORONTO - On Oct. 5, St. John Bosco will be closer to Canadians than ever before — his relics will be on display at St. Benedict parish in Toronto.It’s the first stop in Canada for the Don Bosco Among Us Relic Tour through 130 countries that kicked off on Jan. 31, 2009, the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Salesians of Don Bosco. The tour will make its way on to Montreal Oct. 6-8 and then to Surrey, B.C., Oct. 8-10, before continuing elsewhere until 2015, the 200th anniversary of his birth in Turin, Italy.
U.S. women religious feel they are under unfair scrutiny
By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register
TORONTO - For many religious women in the United States the Vatican-appointed apostolic visitation on American sisters is an open wound, a sore point and something they would rather not talk about.Sr. Donna Markham is coming to Toronto to talk about it. The Dominican Sister will deliver the annual Dominican Family of Toronto lecture at the University of St. Michael’s College Oct. 15. Markham has titled her talk “Mission, Membership and the Apostolic Visitation” and organizers are promoting it under the banner “Women Religious Under Scrutiny.”