NEWS

TORONTO - Ever since installing its Homeless Jesus sculpture outside its front door, Regis College has been getting second looks.

TORONTO - For 25 years the Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition has gathered religious leaders at Queen’s Park to discuss the poor in Ontario. In their 26th year, ISARC dedicated its spring meeting to the middle class.

TORONTO - As Pax Christi members around the globe celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pope John XXIII’s epochal encyclical Pacem in Terris, the seven-year-old Pax Christi Toronto still has only a dozen regular members, has made no progress toward becoming a national Catholic peace movement and can’t name its international or national priorities.

TORONTO - Come August one of Toronto’s oldest parishes will enter its centenary year and its parishioners are doing what they can to ensure its future for another 100 years.

A high percentage of the 100,000- plus visitors who walked the grounds of Midland, Ont.’s Martyrs’ Shrine last year will begin pouring through the gates again when the shrine reopens on May 4.

A Marian order priest on the cusp of returning to Canada within a week was shot and killed in Haiti's capital April 25.

BRUSSELS  - The Belgian bishops' conference criticized an attack on its president, Archbishop Andre Leonard of Mechelen-Brussels, during which he was soaked with water by half-naked women.

BOSTON - I was in the foyer of the House of Commons when I learned of the Boston Marathon bombings. Knowing my brother Mike and his wife Sally had friends running, I immediately called his home. Sally said Mike had been shooting video of runners raising money for charity and had called her from near the finish line. “His voice was high. He said: ‘There’s been an explosion. I’m okay. I gotta go.’ ”

DUBLIN - The head of the Irish Catholic Church's child safeguarding watchdog said he is encouraged by the latest audits of the handling of abuse allegations by dioceses and a religious congregation.

PHILADELPHIA - A Philadelphia judge dismissed three of eight murder charges April 23 in the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist accused of killing babies said to be born alive at his clinic.