NEWS

VATICAN CITY - In the wake of the deaths of a U.S. ambassador and three staff members in Libya and the unrest triggered by a U.S.-made amateur film hostile to Islam, the Vatican decried disrespect toward all religions and deplored all violence as unacceptable.

"Profound respect for the beliefs, texts, outstanding figures and symbols of the various religions are an essential precondition for the peaceful co-existence of peoples," said Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.

"The serious consequences of unjustified offense and provocations against the sensibilities of Muslim believers are once again evident in these days, as we see the reactions they arouse, sometimes with tragic results, which in turn nourish tension and hatred, unleashing unacceptable violence," he said Sept. 12 in a written statement that was also translated into Arabic.

He told journalists that Pope Benedict XVI's Sept 14-16 trip to Lebanon would continue despite the fresh wave of unrest in the region because the Pope's journey is a testament of "peace, understanding and dialogue that's completely opposed to this kind of tension that has been and is being created," he told reporters.

"The message of dialogue and respect for all believers of different religions, which the Holy Father is preparing to carry with him on his forthcoming trip to Lebanon, indicates the path that everyone should follow in order to construct shared and peaceful co-existence of religions and peoples," the spokesman wrote.

The Vatican statement comes after the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and three staff members were killed during a mob attack against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi Sept. 11. The violence was triggered by angry reaction to the trailer of a film mocking the prophet Mohammed. Though the trailer was released online in July, it was recently dubbed into Arabic and grabbed Arab media attention.
Tensions spread the same day as thousands of unarmed demonstrators gathered outside the United States Embassy in Cairo and some later breached the compound's walls and destroyed a flag found inside.

Libya's interim president, Mohammed Magarief, offered his condolences and apologized for the attack, describing it as "cowardly," according to the Associated Press.

U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the killings and praised Stevens' selfless service to the United States and the Libyan people.

"While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants," Obama said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the Vatican's representative in Libya lamented the violence while pleading for greater respect for religious beliefs. Referring to the officials' deaths, Italian Bishop Giovanni Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli, told the Vatican's missionary news agency Fides, "What has happened is terrible, but we need to avoid offending the people's religious sensibility."

"One has to respect the sensitivity of the Muslim population. The Arab countries are already in the throes of momentous upheaval; pouring gasoline on religious outrage is really dangerous," he said in a Sept. 12 interview.

TORONTO - For the second time Tobias Enverga has made Canadian political history.

After being the first Filipino-Canadian to hold a publicly elected position in Toronto, the Catholic school trustee has been appointed to the Canadian Senate.

"I'm the first Filipino-Canadian (senator) and we have some unique values that the Senate doesn't have yet and I want to share that," said Enverga, who is now a former Toronto Catholic District School Board trustee after his appointment. "It's a big honour for me and a big honour for our community at the same time."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office announced Enverga's election to the Red Chamber on Sept. 7, which fills an Ontario seat vacancy. He, along with four other new senators announced the same day, will officially be sworn in on Sept. 25 in Ottawa.

The five new senators, who have an allegiance to the Conservatives, swells the majority government's chamber representation to 62 in the 105-seat Senate.

When Enverga received the phone call telling him he had been chosen as a senator, he was shocked. Not only did he not know he'd been nominated, Enverga, 56, didn't even really know what a senator did.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I think I was going to be in one of the highest positions in the land," said Enverga. "Like any other new position there will be new challenges. I'm not sure what the new challenges will be because this is the first time that I've heard about the position actually."

But treading unfamiliar waters is nothing new to Enverga, who arrived in Canada in 1981 seeking "adventure and a good job."

Employed by the Bank of Montreal since arriving here, most recently as a project manager, Enverga sought adventure again in 2010 when he ran for Catholic school trustee. 

As a senator Enverga had to give his two weeks notice to the bank and resign from his trustee position.

"According to the by-laws I cannot hold two jobs, especially as a senator and trustee," he said. 

Although Enverga said he feels bad about leaving the ratepayers who voted for him, this new position will allow him to help a broader range of people. And he believes his experience with the TCDSB can only help him in his new position.

"The good thing is that the Catholic school board has given me the experience to deal with issues and deal with people at the same time," said Enverga, adding that the economy will be a large area of focus while sitting in the Red Chamber. "It's a big challenge but God will not give me anything that I cannot do."

The TCDSB has not decided how it will fill Enverga's seat. It could call a by-election or appoint an interim trustee.

VATICAN CITY - In an effort to comply more fully with international standards against financial criminal activity, the Vatican has hired an outside expert in combating money laundering and financing terrorism.

Rene Brulhart, a 40-year-old Swiss international lawyer, started working as a consultant to the Vatican in September on “all matters related to anti-money laundering and financing of terrorism,” Vatican Radio reported Sept. 11. Brulhart’s “role is to assist the Holy See in strengthening its framework to fight financial crimes,” the broadcast reported.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a written statement that the hire is “a powerful sign of (the Vatican’s) commitment to work in this direction.”

A report by European finance experts released in July said the Vatican had passed its first major test in becoming more financially transparent and compliant with international norms.

But the report by Moneyval — the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism — said there were still critical loopholes that needed tightening and other “important issues” to be addressed. For example, the committee found the Vatican’s own financial oversight agency, the Financial Information Authority, lacked adequate legal powers and the independence necessary to monitor, inspect and sanction all Vatican agencies and foundations based in Vatican City State that have financial dealings or commercial transactions.

Finding a well-respected, experienced professional was critical because Moneyval’s recommendations “are highly technical elements that require someone with highly technical knowledge,” said a source familiar with the situation.

Lombardi characterized Brulhart’s appointment as part of the Vatican’s “renewed efforts to respond to the (Moneyval) report’s recommendations and ever more efficaciously pursue transparency and financial trustworthiness.”

Brulhart is vice-chair of the global Egmont Group network, which brings together national Financial Intelligence Units that collect and analyse information on suspicious or unusual financial activity, which may then be passed on to law enforcement officials.

He is also head of the Liechtenstein delegation to Moneyval and the coordinator of the Liechtenstein Task Force on Countering the Financing of Terrorism.

PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE, Manitoba - Catholic and Orthodox churches in Canada and the United States can be an example for their counterparts in Ukraine, Canada's top Ukrainian Orthodox leader told the Ukrainian Catholic Synod of Bishops.

Ukrainian Orthodox Metropolitan Yurij of Winnipeg, addressing the worldwide synod Sept. 10, told the bishops it was "evident that our God is blessing us and helping us develop this better relationship."

"We also pray that in Ukraine this same attitude will develop as well," he said at the first meeting of the synod. The synod is private, but part of its initial session was open to media.

Metropolitan Yurij told several dozen Ukrainian Catholic bishops that the North American Catholic and Orthodox bishops have worked through the "animosity" that once marked relations between their Churches, and they now collaborate.

"In Ukraine, they have to go through the same kind of process," he said, and the bishops outside Ukraine must be patient with their brothers.

While the majority of Ukrainians are Orthodox, they are divided into three Churches: one in communion with the Russian Orthodox Church, one with a patriarch in Kiev and the third known as the Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The forced unification of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church with the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1940s "is one of the principal problems," the metropolitan said.

The 2010 election of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a member of the Orthodox Church in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, appears to have fueled long-standing tensions between Orthodox loyal to Moscow and those who support an independent Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Yanukovych has worked to strengthen ties with Russia.

Metropolitan Yurij did not mention politicians. However, he did note that the Russian-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church is the only one canonically recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. So, for instance, when Patriarch Filaret of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kiev Patriarchate visited Canada in April, Metropolitan Yurij did not meet with him.

"I have directors also," he said, referring to the ecumenical patriarch, considered first among equals of Orthodox leaders. "I am part of the community of the Orthodox, and he (Patriarch Filaret) is not recognized as a patriarch, so I could not meet him."

Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kiev-Halych, Ukraine, the elected head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, told Metropolitan Yurij he often finds himself caught in the middle of the delicate situation in Ukraine.

Shevchuk deals with leaders of all three Ukrainian Orthodox churches. Yet every time he has contact with someone from one of the non-canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Churches, "right away a letter goes from Moscow to Rome" asking why the Ukrainian Catholic Church is collaborating with them.

"Directly or indirectly ... I end up being a kind of a go-between between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church," he said.
Shevchuk said he, like his predecessor, Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, believes that "we can and we must be ambassadors of the whole Kievan Church," a term used to refer to all Eastern churches based in Ukraine.

Metropolitan Yurij and Winnipeg Archbishop James Weisgerber thanked the synod members for inviting them to the opening session and to the previous day's Divine Liturgy.

Weisgerber, former president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, told them, "Sometimes we get the impression that — because the Roman Catholic Church is so large — that it has nothing to learn from anyone else.

"This is a great, great mistake. Often the smallest have the most important things to say," the archbishop said.

The synod was scheduled to meet behind closed doors in Portage la Prairie until Sept. 15 before a public closing celebration in Winnipeg Sept. 16.

BRAMPTON, ONT. - Flags flew at half-mast at Brampton's St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Secondary School Sept. 10 in memory of Gene Odulio, 17, who passed away the day before in hospital after he collapsed during a high school football game Sept. 7.

Odulio mysteriously collapsed during an exhibition football match against the visiting Brantford Collegiate Institute. After huddling with his team's defence squad, Odulio, a four-year veteran, fell limp onto the field with about nine minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. He was rushed to Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital in critical condition.

"It was a very sad environment at the school this morning ... liturgies were held throughout the morning to remember Gene," Bruce Campbell, spokesperson for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, said. "That's one of the things about a Catholic school, that we can rely on our faith to help us to grieve and better understand or at least better accept that we are all part of a greater plan."

Campbell said it was a head injury that felled the defensive back. Odulio had no history of head injuries, at least to the school's knowledge.

"There was no discernible hit or triggering playing in the game where you could identify that he might have been injured," said Campbell. "But clearly it was a head injury of some type, he did have swelling so it was a brain injury for sure."

Remembered as an outgoing and popular student, football stood out as Odulio's passion in life.

"He was very passionate about football and that seemed to be a major passion in his life," said Campbell.

The school is considering retiring Odulio's number, a bittersweet tribute to the Grade 12 student, said Campbell.

WINNIPEG - Ukrainian Catholic bishops from around the world gathered in Winnipeg to discuss how to make their parishes more vibrant — especially through the involvement of laypeople.How they do that requires solutions as varied as the parishes that represent more than four million Ukrainian Catholics on four continents.

"We have parishes that are growing" and need pastoral, financial and structural support, said Bishop Ken Nowakowski of New Westminster, B.C., who heads the Ukrainian Catholic Church's implementation team for its strategic plan, "Vision 2020."

Some urban parishes have an aging population and declining numbers, and synod members must decide how to support the parish priest who spends so much time visiting the sick and officiating at funerals, said Nowakowski. At the other end of the spectrum, the bishops must consider how to help keep priests in busy, large parishes from burning out.

The vibrant parish initiative was approved by the synod in 2011 when the bishops met in Brazil. Their first steps have included making sure that clergy understand the plan and representatives of each of the Ukrainian Catholic eparchies, or dioceses, designated a priest-representative to help introduce the plan within the diocese.

Nowakowski said that about 70 per cent of the world's 4,500 Ukrainian Catholic priests have given feedback and are involved with the plan. This year Church leaders hope to involve religious communities and monastics, he said. He told Catholic News Service he would present synod members with a report on what has been accomplished and would include feedback. Synod members will either ask the committee to continue with its current plan or make changes, he added.

The Synod of Bishops, the Ukrainian Catholic Church's governing body, normally meets in Ukraine, but it is meeting in Canada Sept. 9-16 in honour of the centenary of the arrival of Canada's first Ukrainian Catholic bishop, Blessed Nykyta Budka.

Winnipeg's Ukrainian Archbishop Lawrence Huculak said as bishops from other countries arrived for the synod, they were impressed with the involvement of Canada's laity. Even the synod's organizational committee has laypeople on it, he said.

"It's not just the bishops ... the people are taking part and helping to organize it," he said.

Ukrainian Catholics in Canada have women's, men's and youth groups. Lay groups have national conventions, elect leaders and participate in the life of the Church.

"Although we (Canadians) may take it for granted, our laity have not been able to organize themselves in the same way" in some other countries, he said.

Last December, the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kiev-Halych, Ukraine, outlined his vision in a pastoral letter to Ukrainian Catholics worldwide. In the letter, "The Vibrant Parish — A Place to Encounter the Living Christ," he spoke of the elements needed to "grow in holiness and unity in Christ Jesus."

Shevchuk said people of all ages must continue to learn about the faith — not only from the Bible, but also from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Priests must teach and laity have a responsibility to learn because "permanent and continuous formation for various age groups ... is an essential component of the vibrant parish."

Parishioners must participate regularly in the sacraments, and families must once again become "a school of prayer," he said.
"Our parishes can become places where care is given to the orphan, protection for the widow, help for the poor, and where the suffering of the sick is shared," he said.

Parishes must have active pastoral and parish councils as well as "well-formed and mature co-workers who assist the priest in leading catechetical schools, church brotherhoods, charitable works, youth organizations and prayer groups," he said. "One of the most important responsibilities of leadership in the parish community is discerning God's will and searching for the best ways of implementing it in the life of the parish."

Everyone in the parish must have a missionary spirit, he said.

As war bears down from all sides, Lebanese Christians are waiting for their own Arab Spring. For the Middle East’s most Christian country, spring arrives with Pope Benedict’s visit to Beirut Sept. 14-16.

“The Pope’s visit comes as an important message of peace, not only for the Christians but also for the Muslims of the region,” Issam Bishara, Catholic Near East Welfare Association regional director, told The Catholic Register in an e-mail from Beirut.

With much larger Syria fully engulfed in civil and sectarian war to the north, east and south, fighting has already slipped across the border into Lebanon.

“Lebanon cannot but be affected by what is going on in Syria,” Bishara said.

Despite the raging war in Syria, Lebanese and Vatican officials expect the papal visit to proceed on schedule.

“I know that the visit is very well prepared and the security is under the control of the presidential guard,” said Bishara.

In Beirut on Sept. 15, Pope Benedict XVI will deliver an exhortation based on the 2010 Synod on the Middle East in Rome. The synod gathered bishops and patriarchs of the region with selected bishops from around the world to discuss the future of Christianity in the land of its birth. With a diminishing Christian population, deep divisions along religious lines and the increasing dominance of politicized forms of Islam, the bishops called for an enlarged secularism with room for all religious voices and institutions to contribute to society. Such a transformation has to begin with ideals of citizenship which transcend local allegiances of tribe, clan and family, said the bishops.

Keeping Lebanon at peace is critical for the future of the whole region, said Fr. Youssef Chedid, associate pastor at Toronto’s Our Lady of Lebanon parish.

“Lebanon is a key country in the (Middle) East in which everything that happens in Lebanon will have implications for the whole area, and vice versa,” he said.

Chedid was an expert advisor at the 2010 Synod on the Middle East. He views the Pope’s Sept. 15 exhortation as an opportunity to re-orient the Arab Spring.

“It’s more an autumn than a spring (so far),” said Chedid. “It hasn’t brought good news. It hasn’t brought events of social progress. It didn’t get better after all these revolutions.”

Pope Benedict XVI’s exhortation is an opportunity to change the channel on entrenched regional conflicts, said Chedid.

“We would hope that this exhortation will bring to the whole Middle East a new hope,” he said.
A form of secularism that respects and values the contributions of all religions, where majorities and minorities can speak as equals, is the best hope for Middle Eastern Christians, said Chedid.
“We don’t want to be considered second rate. We don’t want to live in a totalitarian regime. We want democracy that will care for all the social groups,” he said.

Chedid grew up in Lebanon under the rule of the militias. He worries that importing a war from Syria repeats the same mistake of Lebanon in the 1980s.

“It’s the war of outside parties with everyone supporting outside parties,” he said. “They’re doing their fight on our land.”

Countering the tendency for regional wars to seep into Lebanon, the Pope has the opportunity to export a vision of peace from Lebanon to the region, according to Chedid.

“Our hope after the visit of the Pope to Lebanon is that through Lebanon he will speak to all the Arab countries and he will help us to understand each other — to help us to have a good dialogue, not between the strong party and the weak party but between all of us as believers. We will have a dialogue that will care about everything on the social level and also the political level.”

This message matters when gun battles break out between Sunni and Alawite militants across Syria Street in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city, said Bishara. The Alawites are loyal to the Assad family and its regime in Damascus. As in Syria, the Sunnis line up with rebel forces.

It isn’t just Lebanon’s Muslims who are picking sides in Syria’s war.

“Christians in Lebanon have already chosen sides. One group supports General (Michel) Aoun (founder of the Free Lebanon Party) whose allies are the Shiite Hezbollah and Speaker of the House Nabih Berri,” said Bishara. “Another Christian group is loyal to the chief of the Lebanese Forces Samir Geagea, supported by the Sunnite political leaders headed by the previous Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri.”
Aoun’s group is part of the March 8 Movement allied with Syria. Hariri is leader of the March 14 Alliance which opposes Syrian interference in Lebanon.

“The Church leadership in Lebanon, especially Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, has been trying to unify this schism for years — but with very little success,” said Bishara.

So far, all parties want to avoid the kind of militia-led politics that made Lebanon a failed state in the 1980s.

“Going back to the years of war when militias were in charge of Lebanon is very unlikely,” said Bishara. “The leadership of the different political groups have all experienced the devastation resulting from total loss of order by government and also know well that in the end they will all lose.”

Al-Rahi condemned the “so-called military councils of clans and sects” as fighting broke out in Tripoli. Al-Rahi is calling on Lebanon’s central government to exercise full control and maintain its independence.

TORONTO - Going into its 21st year as Canada’s right-leaning, conservative journal of ideas, Catholic Insight is writing a new chapter in its history. But the man writing that chapter promises it will be just like the first chapter.

Biologist, academic and pro-life crusader David Beresford has taken over from Fr. Alphonse de Valk as editor of the Toronto-based monthly magazine. The founding editor, de Valk, 80, retired last month.
On the job since Aug. 15, Beresford landed the position by promising to do the conservative thing and keep everything the same.

“I happen to be a big fan of Catholic Insight and said I didn’t think it needed to be changed,” Beresford told The Catholic Register.

Beresford will seek to modernize software and internal processes, but the final product will continue to look not much different from the first issue back in January of 1993. With a subscription base of just under 3,000, the big challenge at Catholic Insight will be to grow circulation.

Beresford’s experience in publishing includes a position as contributing editor to Gilbert Magazine, the publication of the American Chesterton Society. He also once published his own newsletter expounding distributism — a turn-of-the-20th-century Catholic response to Marxism that arose among English intellectuals.

He has published articles in The Interim, a pro-life newspaper in Toronto, the National Catholic Register, a U.S. newspaper of the Eternal Word Television Network, and the Journal of the Canadian Chapter Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

The 50-year-old father of seven lives with his family on a farm in Dummer Township, Ont. and teaches science at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy, a non-accredited Catholic liberal arts school in Barry’s Bay, Ont.

With a PhD in evolutionary biology, Beresford said his passion for Catholic ideas is rooted in his scientific training.

The mission of Catholic Insight is to encourage Catholics to engage with the world, Beresford said.
“Every generation of Catholics gets the opportunity to be apostolic,” he said. “The previous generation doesn’t hand us the job half-done or even finished. We get to start at ground zero again, to do it in the same way as the apostles.”

Where many Catholics seem to be overwhelmed by negatives in media, Catholic Insight is trying to point out the positives, he said.

“I want to encourage Catholics. The world is not as bad as the media portrays it. There’s a lot of really good, hardworking things happening in the Church,” Beresford said.

TORONTO - The Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition and the Intercultural Dialogue Institute of Toronto are pulling together Jews, Christians, Muslims and Buddhists to think and talk about social justice at a free dinner at the Church of the Holy Trinity.

The evening will be moderated by Salt + Light TV personality Deacon Pedro Guevara Mann, with opening remarks from Campaign 2000 national co-ordinator Laurel Rothman, and takes place Sept. 13 at 6:30 p.m. The Church of the Holy Trinity is tucked in next to the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto.
Campaign 2000 is the coalition of churches, unions and social work agencies that campaigns against child poverty in Canada.

Speaking on social justice from the point of view of major faith traditions are Sean Hillman, Buddhist PhD candidate in religion at the University of Toronto, KAIROS executive director Jennifer Henry, Muslim scholar Halil Simsek and Avrum Rosensweig, founding director and president of the Jewish volunteer agency Ve’ahavta.

To register for the evening go to www.interfaithdinner.com. Space is limited.

TORONTO - Tools, training and talent aside, the one thing you really need to make a piece of stained glass is time.

“A stained glass window, if it is truly a stained glass piece, you put in about five months,” said Joseph Aigner, owner of Artistic Glass since it opened in 1971. “That’s realistic. If it is just coloured glass and leading, that’s different.”

For a piece to be genuine stained glass one must paint it, heat it in a kiln to 677 degrees Celsius, and repeat as necessary. Each time this is done, four times on average to produce a detailed face, it takes about 16 hours because once the glass is heated it requires half a day to cool before a second coat of paint can be applied.

Not only is this the defining characteristic of stained glass, it is also a very time-consuming stage of the process — one which many people never associate with the semi-transparent art work.

“A lot of people have the imagination that this is what stained glass is,” said Aigner, pointing to large piece of coloured glass that had been tinted during the manufacturing of the solid glass sheet. “You have to then inform them that what they have is coloured glass leaded together.”

Aside from the paint and bake component, the process of making a piece of artistically leaded glass — be it clear, stained, coloured or more commonly a combination — is the same.

A design is composed and once it satisfies the collective vision of those involved, a full-scale version is drawn up. One of these drawings is then taken and, using wide-blade scissors to compensate for the necessary gaps for leading, cut into the individual sections. These patterns, labelled for further reference, are used to cut out each piece of glass by hand.

Leading is when the multiple sections of glass are bound together. To do this a full-scale pattern is laid out on a table which has one corner fitted with a molding boarder. The molding, which sits higher than the table’s surface, provides the artist with a ridged edge to pin the glass pieces against as stripes of lead are used to frame each.

Once the entire project is laid out and leaded, including the outer edge, all joints are soldered together and then sealed with a specially mixed glue.

How long this all takes varies as much as the number of combinations you can make.

“(It) depends on how many pieces are in it, how difficult it is,” said Aigner, who picked up the craft as a child while working at his family’s glass shop in Germany. “When we make a church project it can take sometimes up to two years to complete.”

There are two major reasons why stained glass windows for churches take so long, said Aigner. First, priests want real stained glass, although most accept a mixture of coloured and stained to keep costs down. The second reason, church projects are large, complex and often multi-window assignments intended to please hundreds of parishioners meaning the design phase is rarely a first-draft success.

“The most challenging thing is to get the design approved,” said Aigner, who is four months into an eight-window project, each representing one of the Beatitudes, for St. Augustine Catholic High School in Markham, Ont. “We had a little bit of a problem finding images for the Beatitudes. I had a little trouble getting a concept ... but now we have a beautiful design.”