NEWS

ASSISI, Italy - Taking 300 religious leaders with him on pilgrimage to Assisi, Pope Benedict XVI said people who are suspicious of religion cannot be blamed for questioning God's existence when they see believers use religion to justify violence.

"All their struggling and questioning is, in part, an appeal to believers to purify their faith so that God, the true God, becomes accessible," the Pope said Oct. 27 during an interfaith gathering in the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels.

Marking the 25th anniversary of the first Assisi interfaith gathering for peace, hosted by Blessed John Paul II in 1986, Pope Benedict brought together the religious leaders and -- for the first time -- four philosophers who describe themselves as humanists or seekers who do not identify with any single religion.

SAN FRANCISCO - The historic bell stolen Oct. 23 from the grounds of St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco was recovered Oct. 26 in West Oakland across the street from a scrap metal yard near the Port of Oakland docks, San Francisco police said.

The theft of the bell received widespread news coverage. Given to the church in 1889, the bell was in service at the former St. Mary's Cathedral until it burned to the ground in 1962, when it was moved to the current cathedral site.

An informant notified San Francisco Police inspectors Oct. 26 at 2 p.m. that the 5,330-pound bell was resting on beams in a field in West Oakland, said Officer Albie Esparza.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI offered prayers for the victims of Turkey's magnitude 7.2 earthquake as Catholic aid agencies worked to support the tens of thousands of victims left homeless in temperatures that approached freezing each night.

At the Vatican Oct. 26, at the end of a prayer service for peace, Pope Benedict said his thoughts were with the victims of the earthquake that "caused a serious loss of human lives, numerous missing and extensive damage. I ask you to join me in prayer for those who lost their lives and to be spiritually close to the many people who are struggling. May the Almighty give support to those who are involved in the rescue work."

TORONTO - There are 29,000 Catholics held captive behind a rusty, two-metre high, chain-link fence in the middle of downtown Toronto. Mind you, they’re not clamouring to get out. They’re dead and buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery, a little south of St. Clair Avenue and hidden behind the stores on the west side of Yonge Street.

Martha Crean and Mary Egan want to get in. Each of them is related to early sextons (maintenance men) of the 156-year-old cemetery. They have relatives buried there and they would like to see the historic gem opened and advertised to Torontonians.

Vandalism, dog-walking, skiing, neighbourhood fireworks displays, baseball games and litter on the cemetery grounds forced Catholic Cemeteries, Archdiocese of Toronto to lock the gates in 2005, said executive director Richard Hayes in an e-mail to Crean and Egan.

CORNWALL, ONT. - Edmonton Archbishop Richard Smith is looking forward to serving “my brother bishops” in his new role as president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"It’s not something I was looking for, by any stretch of the imagination,” Smith said in a telephone interview Oct. 20, the day after he was elected CCCB president. “But it’s a unique privilege.”

The choice of Smith, 52, came as no surprise. He has been the conference’s vice-president the last two years and was unopposed in the election.

TORONTO - Hundreds of people gathered at Queen’s Park Oct. 22 to send a message to the newly elected provincial government: stop using taxpayers’ dollars to fund abortions.

“This is outrageous that we are forced to fund an elective, medically unnecessary procedure,” said Alissa Golob, the youth co-ordinator for Campaign Life Coalition and organizer of the Defund Abortion Rally.

In Ontario, abortions are funded by taxpayer dollars. That’s about $30 million for at least 30,000 abortions a year, at a cost of $1,000 each, Golob said.

Instead of asking for candy on Halloween night, students at St. Thomas More Catholic Secondary School in Hamilton will be trick-or-treating for non-perishable food items.

The school will be holding its 12th annual Halloween for Hunger campaign to raise money for the Neighbour to Neighbour Centre with a goal of collecting a record-breaking 70,000 pounds of food.

Hamilton’s Good Shepherd Refuge has passed the halfway mark of its $10-million fundraising goal to complete Good Shepherd Square, the city’s first complex of buildings that will house social services to combat poverty.

Alan Whittle, Good Shepherd’s director of community relations and planning, says it’s an innovative approach in tackling poverty that includes access to affordable housing and social services within the same vicinity.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI prayed that his interreligious pilgrimage to Assisi would promote dialogue among believers of different faiths and help the world move toward peace and reconciliation.

"In a world still torn by hatred, divisions, selfishness and wars, we want to pray that tomorrow's meeting in Assisi would promote dialogue among people of different religions," the Pope said Oct. 26 during a prayer service at the Vatican.

Pope Benedict prayed that the Assisi meeting would help "enlighten the minds and hearts of all men and women so that anger would give way to pardon, division to reconciliation, hatred to love, violence to meekness, so that peace would reign in the world."

The Jesuit priest who helped bring us Law & Order — the TV show as opposed to the socio-political ideal — received a medal for his efforts.

On Oct. 18, Fr. Jack O’Brien was awarded the Loyola Medal at Concordia University in Montreal.