NEWS

DARBY, Pa. U.S. Cardinal John P. Foley, who spent more than two decades leading the Church's social communications council and later worked for the Church in the Middle East, died Dec. 11 after a battle with leukemia.

The cardinal, who had been residing at Villa St. Joseph, the home for retired Philadelphia archdiocesan priests, was 76. Cardinal Foley's media-friendly style and quick sense of humour shone in person and throughout the numerous speeches and homilies he delivered around the world. He often spoke of the joys of working for the Church, telling his audiences that while the pay often is not great "the benefits are out of this world."

HAVANA - The Cuban bishops announced that 2012 would be a Marian jubilee year and that Pope Benedict XVI would come to Cuba as a "pilgrim of La Caridad," the popular name for the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, the country's patroness.

In a Dec. 8 pastoral letter, they declared a jubilee year from Jan. 7, 2012, through Jan. 6, 2013, and said Cubans need the joy of faith, the strength of Christian love and the light of hope that can come from "a reunion with our Christian roots" and with the "enthusiastic reception of the teachings of Jesus Christ."

WASHINGTON - The U.S. bishops' pro-life spokeswoman said she was relieved that the Obama administration has decided not to allow the Plan B One-Step "morning-after pill" to be sold without a prescription to those under 17.

"Luckily, things did not go from bad to even worse," Deirdre McQuade, assistant director for policy and communications at the USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, told Catholic News Service Dec. 8. "We're pleased that they did not expand access to this very powerful drug."

McQuade said Plan B One-Step, known generically as levonorgestrel, "is 40 times more potent than comparable progestin-only birth control pills for which a prescription is required" even for adult women.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI tapped a tablet computer and successfully lit the world's largest electronic Christmas "tree" located in the Italian town of Gubbio.

Before turning on the tree with a tap on the Sony S Tablet, the pope addressed the citizens of Gubbio via a video link from his apartment in Vatican City Dec. 7, calling on Christians to serve as a light in the lives of others.

In his talk, the pope said that just as the tree design in Gubbio was made up of tiny individual lights, each person needs to bring light to the people and places in their lives, to their family, workplace, neighborhood, town or city.

MOOSE FACTORY, ONT. - Poverty. No clean water supply. No electricity. No heating. Lack of proper housing. Lack of education. Minimal health resources. Suffering. Hopelessness. Loud cries for help. And yet no one is listening. No one is paying attention. No one is showing care and compassion.

This may sound like a Third World, developing country, but, no, this is Canada. This is the Canada that so many people do not know exists and is ignored. Until recently, I was one of these people.

I am a registered nurse who has served in impoverished villages in Nigeria and the shantytowns surrounding the cities of Lima, Peru, and Guayaquil, Ecuador. I have experienced much poverty in my travels, but I have also experienced hope, courage and love. Although these people may seem to lack the basics, they have so much more. It is a poverty of material, not of spirit.

The Town of Midland's Planning and Development Committee won't be talking over plans for a metal and industrial waste recycling facility next to the Martyrs' Shrine at its Dec. 7 meeting.

The Recycling Specialties Inc. proposal for an open-air waste sorting facility on the doorstep of the shrine is off the agenda while the company continues to work on its plans.

Meanwhile, Midland Mayor Gord McKay tells The Catholic Register relocating the Recycling Specialties yard away from the Wye Marsh, Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons and the Martyrs' Shrine is a distinct possibility.

It’s a good thing the federal government wants to know where millions of dollars given to the Attawapiskat community has gone, Fr. Rodrigue Vézina told The Catholic Register on the phone from the Northern Ontario reserve. Since 2007, the government has given more than $90 million to the struggling community.

“All of us want to check where all of our tax money is going,” said Vézina, an Oblate missionary and pastor of St. Francis Xavier parish in Attawapiskat, supported by Catholic Missions In Canada.

The small isolated town near the western shore of James Bay received international attention when Chief Theresa Spence declared a state of emergency in October as temperatures began to drop. For at least the past two years, many residents have lived in makeshift tents and shacks without heat, electricity or indoor plumbing.

DURBAN, South Africa - Excessive focus on money is destroying the environment and dehumanizing people, said Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, president of Caritas Internationalis.

Religious communities have a duty to call attention to the importance of the human person, who is “at the centre of creation,” he said while international leaders were debating the extension of legal limits on the production of greenhouse gas emissions.

Officials from nearly 200 countries were in Durban Nov. 28-Dec. 9 for United Nations-sponsored climate change talks.

TORONTO - After years of free service, churches, shelters, charities and non-profit organizations could be on the hook as the City of Toronto plans to start charging a fee for trash pickup.

The city has said there will be no increase for homeowners in terms of their garbage pickup, but parishioners may be asked to give a little bit to help offset the new fees for churches, said Neil MacCarthy, director of communications for the archdiocese of Toronto.

“So really, you’re just going back to the same people to ask for more to support this change,” he said.

The proposal is one of the items on the table as the city works on its 2012 budget. A long list of cuts and increased service fees are on tap as the city struggles to find ways to balance its budget.

MacCarthy said while he understands the city is looking for ways to realize some cost efficiencies, the new proposal is going to have significant implications on the roughly 125 parishes within city limits in the archdiocese of Toronto.

“It really depends on the frequency of pickup at a church for garbage and… the number of bins they might have at a church,” he said. “So if it’s weekly with a bin, they’re talking about $800 a year.”

But it’s difficult to say how many parishes would be affected by this as some use city services while others use private garbage collection, said MacCarthy.

The city wants to start charging a fee for this service “in order to make the system fair overall and to prompt those new to the fee system to improve their waste diversion efforts,” according to a document sent to non-residential customers.

For a curbside bin emptied bi-weekly, the cost is $403, weekly is $806 and twice weekly is $1,612.

The changes would be phased in, with a yearly 25-per-cent increase effective July 1, 2012 and full trash pickup fees effective Jan. 1, 2015.

St. Francis Table, a ministry that provides meals for the less fortunate in Parkdale, would be one of the agenices affected by the trash pickup fee. Br. John Frampton, who runs St. Francis Table, said it’s a crime that charities and church groups are being singled out to pick up the city’s costs.

“We try to keep it to a minimum,” he said. “We compost, we take care of the paper and plastics. We comply with garbage bag content and I just think it’s another money grab to pay for services that are costing too much.”

The poor are getting poorer, he said.

“We are feeding the hungry here six days a week,” said Frampton. “And other groups are doing justice amidst injustice that’s being done by the government that should be responsible to these people.

“St. Francis Table is responsible for feeding the hungry of Toronto and this is the appreciation we get.”

The proposal also includes charging transfer station tipping fees of $100 per tonne of waste to previously exempt non-profits, including the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

“With the collection, we get a lot of really generous donors that are really careful about what they donate, but we also get a lot of stuff that’s just not usable at all and it has to go to the dump,” said Louise Coutu, executive director of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Toronto.

“For years, the Society has had an arrangement with the city where we don’t pay tipping fees because it’s realized that this stuff is our responsibility, but if it weren’t going to us to be sorted, there would probably be more going directly to the dump,” she said.

Coutu estimates this will cost an additional $20,000 on its annual budget.

“It’s not just the tipping fee we’re paying, it’s our truck out there, our guys,” she said. “So it is expensive for us. We’ve seen it as part of our service. You can’t look in everyone’s bag when they’re donating to you.”

TORONTO - Our Lady of Mercy is back in Toronto, gleaming and armed with the latest technology while making room for families, children and newborn babies.

St. Joseph's Health Centre blessed its new, four-story patient care wing Dec. 5. The new wing carries on the name of the old Our Lady of Mercy Hospital. The original Our Lady of Mercy merged with St. Joseph's in 1980 and finally closed in 1998.

The new $73-million, 130,000-square-foot wing adds a neonatal intensive care unit, a family birthing centre, a pediatric unit with six surgical day care beds and six medical day care beds, 92 more adult inpatient beds and a child and adolescent mental health unit which includes a full-time classroom.