NEWS

TORONTO - The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has recently encouraged a more widespread effort to get apologetic material into the hands of Catholics, but Toronto’s St. Benedict’s parish is way ahead of the game.

Eliseo Zompanti started the St. Benedict’s Catholic Apologetics and Bible Study group a year-and-a-half ago at St. Benedict’s parish. He said apologetics — being able to explain and defend the faith — is like a 2,000-year-old armoury that the Church has amassed.

TORONTO - The man charged with bringing unity to the body of Christ by 350 churches world-wide is coming to Toronto to speak about “The unity we seek: Exploring the hopes and challenges of modern ecumenism.”

Rev. Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, will talk about the state of ecumenism at St. Andrew’s Church, next to Roy Thomson Hall in downtown Toronto, March 14 at 7 p.m.

TORONTO - A Toronto parishioner who wishes to remain anonymous has committed to matching up to $650,000 of donations collected during ShareLife’s 2012 campaign.

“We have a parishioner in the archdiocese  of Toronto who has come forward to offer to match all new and increased gifts to the ShareLife campaign this year,” said ShareLife’s executive director Arthur Peters. “This person’s only goal is to see the campaign succeed.”

After educating Catholic youth for 60 years in the Strathcona Park community in Kingston, Ont., the doors to St. Paul Catholic Elementary School, among others, may permanently close following the local school board’s accommodation review process.

But there is a voice to St. Paul which is not letting the school be put to rest quietly. Shortly after word filtered out in 2011 that St. Paul could be among the schools targetted for closure by the Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board, Sarah Mignault and several other concerned community members began the Save St. Paul Action Committee.

About 900 guests filled all four halls inside Hamilton’s Carmen’s Banquet Centre Feb. 25 to sip cocktails, enjoy a four-course meal and bust a move at the Bishop’s Charities Dinner Dance.

The annual event with Bishop Douglas Crosby helps raise money for a number of charities.

Organized by the Knights of Columbus’ Fred Miscio, with help from fellow members, this year marked the 27th anniversary of the annual event which Miscio coined successful as always.

WINDSOR, Ont. - The diocese of London has fired the company charged with raising funds for an extensive restoration and expansion of Windsor’s oldest and most historic church, Our Lady of Assumption.

In a statement posted on the diocese’s web site Feb. 22, the diocese and Assumption Church stated they were “not satisfied with the results achieved so far and have decided to end our relationship with” Philanthropic Management Consultants Inc. (PMC) to manage a $9.8-million campaign to pay for the restoration.

CHARDON, Ohio - The Catholic community "shares the grief of the families and friends of the five victims" of a school shooting Feb. 27 in Chardon, said Bishop Richard G. Lennon of Cleveland.

"We continue to struggle in disbelief with the horrifying nature of the incident and we look to God to bring us peace and comfort," he said in a statement.

VATICAN CITY - The government of Vietnam has agreed to allow the pope's special envoy to have greater freedom to visit Catholics in the communist country, the Vatican spokesman said.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the spokesman, said Vatican-Vietnamese relations continue to take "gradual steps forward," including an agreement reached in late February "to facilitate the work" of Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli, the pope's non-resident envoy to the Vietnam, by making it easier for him to visit Catholic leaders and communities.

ABUJA, Nigeria - Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja challenged Nigerians to do everything possible keep their nation united and to resist any attempts to divide it along narrow religious lines.

"We live in a nation where everyone is supposed to be free to profess whatever faith he or she decides to follow," Archbishop Onaiyekan said in his homily at the opening Mass of the Nigerian bishops' plenary Feb. 26.

VATICAN CITY - An almost exclusive reliance on technology and a focus on financial profit seem to dominate the field of medical responses to infertility, Pope Benedict XVI said.

However, what couples need and deserve, he said, is "a correct diagnostic evaluation and a therapy that corrects the causes of infertility."

Pope Benedict spoke Feb. 25 to members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, which had just held a daylong workshop at the Vatican on diagnosing and treating infertility.