NEWS

WASHINGTON - As victims continue to recover from Hurricane Sandy, several dioceses and Catholic charities are still asking for support for the affected areas.

JERUSALEM - The late archbishop of Florence, Italian Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa, has been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem for the role he played in a widespread network set up to rescue Jews following the Nazi occupation of Italy.

DUBLIN - The newly appointed bishop of Cloyne vowed he would make healing the lives of victims of abuse in the diocese a priority.

VATICAN CITY - Greeting hundreds of Christians from Lebanon, Pope Benedict XVI encouraged their presence in the Middle East and launched a fresh appeal for peace in the region.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Recalling that Christ's mission transcends "all ethnic, national and religious particularities," Pope Benedict XVI created six new cardinals from four different continents, representing the Latin rite of the Catholic Church as well as two Eastern Catholic Churches.

From forests of walnut, oak and pine on their land near Dubuque, Iowa, often comes the wood that Trappist monks at the New Melleray Abbey hand carve into funeral caskets.

An innovative new program being launched in Ontario schools to discuss vocations is founded on a basic premise.

BRAMPTON, ONT. - Nine high school students in Brampton learned this week that while talk may be cheap, tweeting isn't.

"Over the weekend it came to the attention of the administration at the school that some disparaging, offensive and totally inappropriate comments were directed at specific teachers at St. Marguerite d'Youville School," said Bruce Campbell, director of communication for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board. "The school investigated and found nine students involved in a Twitter discussion."

While Campbell wasn't able to say exactly how the school became aware of the comments, he did say in the past students, parents and staff members have brought similar comments to the attention of school administration.

In this case the remarks made ranged from sexually explicit comments to messages of violent aggression directed specifically at three of the school's teachers — two female and one male.

Punishments varied in severity based on the degree in which each student participated in the "extremely derogatory" conversation. The nine were sent home Nov. 21, with five students receiving suspensions — two students hit with seven-day suspensions, the others with two-day suspensions.  

"The remaining two students, who's remarks were the most outrageous, received seven-day suspensions, they have to write letters of apology and they have been removed from the classrooms of those teachers whom these disparaging remarks were directed," said Campbell. "Peel police were actually called in to speak with a couple of them regarding the tone of the remarks. No charges were laid but two students were given a warning."

Campbell said none of the students were known for causing trouble in the past.

"These were good kids who made a bad decision."

Although the board is still developing a policy specifically regarding social media, these comments fall under the Catholic Code of Conduct's section on conduct injurious to the moral tone of the school.

Campbell said there is a good lesson to be learned out of all of this, which the school's principal has been echoing in the morning announcements during Bullying Prevention and Awareness Week in Ontario.

"Bullying, cyber-bullying or any kind of bullying is wrong," said Campbell. "Once you use social media it's not a conversation directly between you and two or three or four friends; it's out there.

"Regardless of whether it's during the day, off time, the weekend or in the summer, if somebody makes remarks directly related to somebody at the school — whether it be faculty, staff, admin or student — they should be aware that that has impact on the moral tone of the school and if we find out about it we're going to act on it."

TORONTO - Canada’s Syro-Malankara Catholic community may be modest in size but its members are reacting with immense pride to the elevation of its first cardinal.

Major Archbishop Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal, the head of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, was to be among eight prelates elevated to cardinal by Pope Benedict on Nov. 24. He is the first cardinal ever selected from the India-based Syro-Malankara Church.

For the 250-member Syro- Malankara congregation of Toronto, the unexpected honour is cause for celebration.

“I’m really, really thrilled for this recognition because the universal Church is recognizing our Church as a deeper part of communion,” said Sebin Alexander, 24, a parishioner at St. Mary’s Malankara Catholic Mission in Toronto.

The elevation of the head of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church puts the entire world congregation of approximately 500,000 members into the limelight, said Fr. John Kuriakose, pastor at St. Mary’s.

“Hopefully, since he received this elevation, it will put (the new cardinal) in a better position to work towards the unification of the Church,” Kuriakose said.

A handful of parishioners from St. Mary’s went to Rome for the elevation ceremony, where they expected to meet up with about 80 members of the faith from across North America. There is a second Canadian mission in Edmonton and approximately 10 congregations scattered across the United States, Kuriakose said.

The Syro-Malankara Church was founded in India by St. Thomas the Apostle in AD 52. In its long history it has experienced schisms and a break with Rome. Full communion for the Syro- Malankara Church with Rome was re-established in 1930.

Church members are hopeful that Thottunkal’s elevation to cardinal will help bring unification to the many branches of India’s Christian churches.

“Since this happened, it is with great hope we can extend our hands to our brothers in the Orthodox community, in the Jacobite community,” Alexander said, referring to the many splits in the Indian Church. “We can have more of an ecumenical movement to bring them back to the Church.

“It’s also a reminder of my responsibility as a youth to really understand the call of the evangelization in this culture and to have a greater dedication to the Church.”

Francis Thazhamon was to join the pilgrims in Rome.

“This is something he (Thottunkal) deserves and the universal Church is moving in the right direction realizing the need of the Church at this time,” said Thazhamon.

Thottunkal, 53, is one of six new cardinals being created by the Pope. They hail from six different countries and, in a rare twist, none are European. They are U.S. Archbishop James M. Harvey, 63, Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai, 72, Nigerian Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja, 68, Colombian

Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez of Bogota, 70, and Philippine Archbishop Luis Tagle of Manila, 55.

School is in for winter at St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto.

The college's 38 sessional lecturers, teaching assistants and continuing education instructors, who have been on strike the last week, reached a tentative agreement with university administrators at 2:00 a.m. Thursday morning, Nov. 22.

On the CUPE Local 3902 web site the union's bargaining team requested that the St. Michael's staff go back to work immediately.  

A ratification vote will be held by write-in ballot until the end of the day Friday.

Under the tentative agreement union members with a certain amount of experience will receive preference in awarding new teaching contracts, the union bargaining chief told The Catholic Register. Job security for contract employees was the major issue that sent the union out to the picket lines Nov. 15.

A day earlier, Celtic Mythology lecturer Daniel Brielmaier, speaking for CUPE Local 3902 Unit 4, said student papers weren't getting marked and some classes had been cancelled.

"Students are feeling an impact,"he said. "We don't like that they're feeling it."

St. Mike's administration claimed the strike hadn't been felt by very many students.

"The effect is relatively small at this point," said Robert Edgett, the executive director of alumni affairs and development who is acting as media liaison for the Catholic college at the University of Toronto. "But our concern continues to be for students. We want to be sure that their term and exams are held. That's why we're working so hard to come to some resolution."

Talks had been delayed a day while the administration worked out a new offer.

The union, which represents academic staff on contracts of less than 12 months, was pushing for a greater degree of job security. The mostly younger academics wanted a right of first refusal if their course is being offered again.

The system of repeat short-term contracts with no assurance of future work has been hardest on theology lecturers, many of whom have been teaching the same course for years but never know whether they will work again next year, said Brielmaier.

"We just want to get a contract and go back to teaching," said Local 3902 chair Abe Nasirzadeh.