NEWS

VATICAN CITY - Gunmen shooting at guards keeping watch over the archbishop's residence in Kirkuk in northern Iraq triggered a firefight, leaving two of the gunmen dead and five policemen wounded.

Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Louis Sako told Vatican Radio that he had just returned home from a parish visit before the drive-by attack Jan. 11.

WASHINGTON - A letter signed by more than three dozen U.S. religious leaders objects to the specter of religious groups being forced to treat same-sex unions "as if they were marriage."

"Altering the civil definition of 'marriage' does not change one law, but hundreds, even thousands, at once," said the letter, "Marriage and Religious Freedom: Fundamental Goods That Stand or Fall Together," released Jan. 12.

VATICAN CITY - The economic crisis should push people to look at the values reflected in their civic life and prompt an honest evaluation of whether citizens are working together to promote justice and solidarity, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Addressing the mayor of Rome and the presidents of the province of Rome and region of Lazio Jan. 12, the Pope said citizens need to "recover values that are at the basis of a true renewal of society and that not only favor economic recovery, but also aim at promoting the integral good of the human person."

JERUSALEM - Almost a year after the eruption of the Arab Spring uprisings, the Middle East is a place of hope and fear for Christians, said Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz.

Bishop Kicanas, chairman of the board of the U.S. bishops' Catholic Relief Services, was in Baghdad late last year and visited Egypt prior to his arrival in Jerusalem Jan. 8-12 for the annual Holy Land Coordination meeting with bishops from the United States, Canada and Europe.

"There is a fear among the Christians (in Egypt) whether they will be given human rights and whether they will be treated as equal citizens. There is a sense of wait and see," Bishop Kicanas told Catholic News Service Jan. 11.

EDMONTON - Catholics from Edmonton are elated to learn their former archbishop has been elevated to the College of Cardinals.

The announcement that Archbishop Thomas Collins, now archbishop of Toronto, will be a cardinal was made at the Vatican Jan. 6.

After serving as archbishop in St. Paul, Alta., Collins was the archbishop in Edmonton from June 1999 to January 2007.

OTTAWA - Though the Prime Minister has repeatedly said his government will not allow the abortion debate to reopen, an Ontario Conservative MP said he is not worried about the risk as he contemplates bringing forth a private members’ bill on the matter.

“I’m pretty comfortable as a Member of Parliament raising this issue, because it is an issue with such human rights implications,” said Stephen Woodworth of Kitchener, Ont. “It should be everyone’s priorities to ensure that any law that involves fundamental human rights is informed by modern, medically accurate evidence, not some 400-year-old arbitrary legal argument.”

KITCHENER, ONT. - The new year meant a new beginning for a group of Anglicans from Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.

On Jan. 1, 12 individuals from that area were received as a community into full communion in the Roman Catholic Church during an Anglican Use-rite Mass at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Hamilton. The liturgy was presided over by Bishop Douglas Crosby and celebrated by their former priest-mentor, now chaplain, Fr. William Foote. The group made a profession of faith and received the sacraments of Confirmation and the Eucharist.

Now known as the Sodality of St. Edmund, King and Martyr, under the oversight of the diocese of Hamilton initially, they become the second community of Canadian Anglicans to be so received, following St. John the Evangelist in Calgary, which entered the Church on Dec. 18.

SASKATOON - The new Cathedral of the Holy Family was officially declared the diocesan home for the Roman Catholic diocese of Saskatoon at a celebration on New Year’s Day.

Archbishop Albert LeGatt of St. Boniface was a special guest at the first diocesan celebration in the new building. During his time as bishop of Saskatoon, LeGatt initiated plans to construct the new cathedral and diocesan pastoral centre, in conjunction with a new church building for Holy Family parish in northeast Saskatoon.

Cardinal-designate Collins becomes the 16th cardinal in Canadian history. Here is the entire list.

TORONTO - Receiving the honour of a papal invitation to join the College of Cardinals means Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins will become an advisor to Pope Benedict XVI, likely be assigned a symbolic parish in Rome and acquire important commissions from the pontiff.

And as the highest-ranked Catholic prelate outside Quebec, he will also be delegated the responsibility of becoming the primary spokesman for the Church in English Canada. As an archbishop, he is familiar with the role. As a cardinal, it takes on greater weight.

That’s not to suggest the new cardinal will become wildly outspoken. That’s not his style, nor should it be. But Collins, who was designated on Jan. 6 by the Pope to become a cardinal, expects to be proactive to ensure that Church positions on important social justice and life issues are voiced in the public forum.