NEWS

TORONTO - An overwhelming majority of Canadians prefer more palliative care to legalizing euthanasia, according to a new Environics poll.                                                                     

When presented with a choice of palliative care or legalized euthanasia, 71 per cent of respondents nationwide said they preferred investing in “more and better palliative and hospice care” over legalizing euthanasia (19 per cent), according to the poll commissioned by Life Canada. The other 10 per cent had no opinion or supported neither.

The study says that a majority of Canadians “want to kill the pain, not the patient,” said Monica Roddis, president of Life Canada.

BALTIMORE - At the start of their annual three-day fall assembly in Baltimore, the U.S. bishops were urged to restore the luster, credibility and beauty of the Catholic Church in the hearts of its members.

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York called on his fellow bishops Nov. 14 to communicate to the world that the sinfulness of the church's members is not "a reason to dismiss the church or her eternal truths, but to embrace her all the more."

In his first presidential address since election as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops last November, he opened and closed with the words: "Love for Jesus and his church must be the passion of our lives."

VATICAN CITY - To protect innocent civilians from the harmful effects of weapons of war, "international humanitarian law remains an essential safety measure not to be weakened," a Vatican official said.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's representative to U.N. agencies in Geneva, focused on the responsibility to protect civilian populations from harmful weapons in an address Nov. 14 to a conference reviewing the international Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

"The responsibility of the CCW to protect civilian populations rests on its ability to comply with the provisions of international humanitarian law and even in strengthening them," he said.

VATICAN CITY - In rejecting research using embryonic stem cells, the Catholic Church is not trying to impede science or delay treatment that can save lives, Pope Benedict XVI said.

The church's opposition to the use and destruction of embryos flows from the conviction that all human life is sacred and that destroying the most defenseless will never lead to a true benefit for humanity, the Pope said Nov. 12 to participants in a Vatican-sponsored conference on research using adult stem cells.

"When the end in view is so eminently desirable as the discovery of a cure for degenerative illnesses, it is tempting for scientists and policy-makers to brush aside ethical objections and to press ahead with whatever research seems to offer the prospect of a breakthrough," the Pope said.

VATICAN CITY - With a tap on an iPad, Pope Benedict XVI will light the world's largest electronic Christmas tree in the Italian town of Gubbio without having to leave his home in Vatican City.

The City of Gubbio and the Diocese of Gubbio announced at a news conference Nov. 12 that the Pope would light the tree via a video link set up by the Vatican Television Center. The tree-lighting ceremony takes place on the evening of Dec. 7, the eve of the Immaculate Conception.

Toronto's St. Michael’s College School remembered the soldiers who died protecting Canada with a ceremony, Nov 11.

After a procession in which the Canadian flag, a book of remembrance, and wreaths were carried to the front of the gymnasium, students watched video clips of veterans as they reflected on their experiences and observed a moment of silence. Captain Frank Lamie ’98 of the 48th Highlanders of Canada addressed the students at 11:00 a.m., discussing his experiences in Afghanistan, and the importance of gratitude for Canada’s men and women in uniform.

Following the ceremony, students carried the images of the 158 soldiers who died in the Afghanistan war to the school’s front lawn.

You can view pictures from the morning's events in the slideshow below.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Belmont Abbey College is suing the federal government over a new regulation that requires employer health insurance plans to provide free coverage of contraceptives and sterilization, even if it may be contrary to their religious beliefs.

The civil lawsuit was filed Nov. 10 in U.S. District Court in Washington by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a Washington-based nonprofit, public-interest law firm that is representing the Catholic liberal arts college in Belmont.

WASHINGTON - The Catholic parish and the Catholic radio station in Nome, Alaska -- with a population of 3,600, one of the largest outposts on the western Alaska coast -- escaped the worst of the damage wrought by a severe storm that slammed into the state from the Bering Sea.

St. Joseph Parish and KNOM, a radio ministry of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Alaska, were largely spared because they were three blocks inland from the shore. Homes and businesses within two blocks of the shore were strongly advised to evacuate because of the storm, which lasted two days.

Nome recorded wind gusts as high at 61 mph. Ric Schmidt, KNOM's general manager, said the intensity of the storm was equivalent to a Category 3 hurricane.

MANCHESTER, England - A British court has ruled that the Catholic Church can be held legally liable for the crimes of abusive clergy.

The Nov. 8 ruling by the High Court in London for the first time defined in British law the relationship of a priest to his bishop as that of an employee to an employer, instead of seeing the priest as effectively self-employed. This means that a bishop and a diocese can be punished for the crimes of a priest. Survivors' groups hope that it will also mean that many people who claim to have been abused by clergy will be able to claim compensation more easily.

VATICAN CITY - Vatican officials are at an advanced stage in studying the possibility of a papal trip to Mexico and Cuba in the spring of 2012, the Vatican spokesman said.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the spokesman, told reporters Nov. 10 that the nuncios to Mexico and Cuba have been told to inform those governments that "the pope is studying a concrete plan to visit the two countries, responding to the invitations received" from them.