NEWS

TORONTO - At 14 Neola Husbands decided she couldn’t continue living at home with her father and his new wife. At 18 she’s starting her second year at McGill University in Montreal, her first year in the bachelor of commerce program, while she shores up a business plan that she hopes will launch a career in fashion.

The bridge between a violent home and a bright future for Husbands has been group homes run by the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto.

On Aug. 22 Husbands was one of 100 former CCAS youth in care to receive a scholarship from the Hope for Children foundation. She planned to use the $2,000 she received for tuition — absorbing a small part of the burden of debt she would otherwise face as a university student with no parental support.

Foster kids graduate out of the children’s aid system at 18. At the age when most high school graduates are getting some help from their parents in realizing their post-secondary dreams, kids like Husbands have to make it on their own.

RYE, N.Y. - As Chief Joseph Pfeifer of the New York City Fire Department sees it, the 9/11 terrorist attacks were a global trauma and the 10th anniversary of the attacks provides a transformative opportunity for the world community to pause and think about the tragedy’s spiritual dimension and its aftermath.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Pfeifer was chief of the 1st Battalion, one of the first on the scene and in charge of directing firefighter response in the north tower of the World Trade Centre. He met his firefighter brother in the lobby of the building as Lt. Kevin Pfeifer responded to the second alarm. They exchanged a few words, and Kevin headed up the stairs. He helped evacuate workers and directed other firefighters to safety, but he was killed in the collapse of the building.

“People were angry at God and they had every right to be, but that was not my experience,” Pfeifer said in an interview with Catholic News Service. “I was walking back to the firehouse from the site on the second day, when we knew there would be no more survivors. It was completely dark except for the lights we had brought in. There was no power and there was smoke everywhere.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican forcefully denied it undermined the Irish bishops’ efforts to protect children from sexual abuse and characterized as “unfounded” claims the Vatican tried to interfere in government investigations regarding Church handling of sex abuse cases.

The Vatican recognizes “the seriousness of the crimes” detailed in a government report about cases in the diocese of Cloyne, Ireland, and “has sought to respond comprehensively,” said a communique released by the Vatican Sept. 3.

The communique accompanied a 19-page formal response to the Irish government’s Cloyne Report on the diocese and to statements made by the Irish prime minister and motions passed by both houses of the Irish Parliament concerning the report and the Vatican’s involvement in how cases were handled. The Vatican said the report “brought to light very serious and disturbing failings in the handling of accusations of sexual abuse by children and young people by clerics in the diocese of Cloyne,” but it said the local bishop and his vicar general were to blame.

The formal “Response of the Holy See” was hand-delivered Sept. 3 by Msgr. Ettore Balestrero, undersecretary for relations with states, to Helena Keleher, charge d’affaires at the Irish Embassy to the Holy See in Rome, the Vatican said.

WASHINGTON - Maryknoll Father Jim Noonan hopes the five or so hours he spent in jail recently will be noticed by U.S. President Barack Obama.

A staff associate in the Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns, Noonan, 77, was among 65 people arrested Aug. 20 during the first day of a planned two-week protest to call attention to the environmental dangers he believes are posed by a proposed-mile pipeline to carry Canadian crude oil to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas. Through Aug. 30, nearly 600 people had been arrested.

"I wanted to do anything I possibly could to be a voice," Noonan told Catholic News Service after his arrest for participating in the first sit-in. "I wanted to ask the president please do not authorize this pipeline because your children and your grandchildren will rue the day that this was authorized."

Noonan's angst is aimed at preventing Obama from signing a permit allowing construction of the Keystone XL Project by TransCanada Corp., from Montana to Texas. The pipeline expansion, opponents believe, would open the door to a rapid increase in oil mining in northern Alberta, endangering a fragile ecosystem and escalating the release of greenhouse gases.

We've sifted through The Catholic Register photo archives to recount the extraordinary life of a man who, as archbishop of Toronto for 16 years, oversaw the transformation of Canada's largest diocese into a multicultural, multi-racial home to today's 1.8 million Catholics.

Cardinal Aloyisus Ambrozic, 81, died Aug. 26 at Providence Healthcare following a lengthy battle with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.

His funeral Mass on August 31 saw an overflow crowd of bishops, priests, family, dignitaries and friends fill St. Michael’s Cathedral. Hundreds more, unable to get into the cathedral, stood outside and followed the Mass on loudspeakers.

The photo gallery will play at a slow pace automatically. You can pause the slideshow at any time. To scroll more quickly through the images, brush your cursor on the thumbnail images at the bottom of the page.

VATICAN CITY - When it comes to sex education programs, the Catholic Church is painted as old-fashioned and callous about teen pregnancy and disease. But governments that mandate sex education in the schools are fooling themselves about its effectiveness, the Vatican newspaper said.

Writing on the front page of L'Osservatore Romano Aug. 30, Lucetta Scaraffia looked specifically at New York City, where students in middle school and high school will be required to attend a semester-long course in sex education. She said that "to avoid religious controversy, chastity will be cited among birth control methods and teachers will have to speak about sex with some caution" in the New York courses.

Still, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York criticized the mandatory program as usurping the rights of parents to educate their children in line with their beliefs and values, she said.

The last time Bishop John Sherlock saw his old friend Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic there were tears in Sherlock’s eyes.

“The devastation of that Parkinson’s (like disease) had set in,” recalled London’s bishop emeritus. “I remember being overwhelmed with sadness. I remember I came out of his room and I broke into tears.”

Cardinal Ambrozic was a scholar who spoke English, French, Italian and German, read Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, all in addition to his native Slovenian. It was painful for Sherlock to think of the cardinal imprisoned by a disease, unable to communicate.

“His life must have been pretty miserable. He was a voracious reader and I presume even that was stripped away. He was a great communicator and that was taken away,” said Sherlock.

Sherlock prayed for Cardinal Ambrozic by name every day over the last two years. He directed his prayers to Blessed John Paul II, who had also suffered through Parkinson’s.

MISSISSAUGA, ONT. - International Christian Voice is hosting a dinner Sept. 9 in Mississauga to thank Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government for their work in promoting religious freedom internationally.

The Toronto-based human rights organization is run by Peter Bhatti, the brother of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Pakistani minorities minister and Christian who was assassinated last March after speaking out against the country’s blasphemy laws.

“The Conservative government has made an announcement of an international religious freedom office (the Office of Religious Freedom) and they’re trying to promote religion internationally, so we want to thank them,” said Bhatti.

“When my brother was murdered, (Immigration Minister) Jason Kenney attended his funeral… and gave him tribute. And before, nobody was even talking about religious freedom. But now, Stephen Harper has made an announcement that they would open a new office with the focus internationally on religious freedom and that makes us very hopeful.”

EDMONTON - As the famine in the Horn of Africa deepens, an Edmonton parish has been challenging Catholics nationwide to raise $10 million for famine relief.

St. Michael-Resurrection itself has raised $23,428, enough to buy almost 47 tonnes of rice to feed nearly 84,600 people for one day.

“It seems like such a little drop in the bucket, but we figure if every person can do a little bit, we can make a big difference,” said spokesperson Bernadette Gasslein.

So far, three other parishes from across Canada have responded, two in Ontario and one in Saint John, N.B.

Relief for the people of Somalia has been slow, and makeshift refugee camps are still overflowing. Some estimates suggest about 12.4 million people are affected by the food crisis. It’s the biggest food crisis in a generation, according to the United Nations.

BOSTON - Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston has released the names of 159 of the 250 Boston archdiocesan priests or deacons accused of sexually abusing a minor, including 22 whose cases have not been resolved canonically.

In a six-page letter to the people of his archdiocese Aug. 25, the cardinal said the decision represented “one more step forward in our efforts to assume responsibility for our past failures and reaffirm our commitment to assure that our present-day standards protect the children of our community.”

The list of names is published at www.bostoncatholic.org.

Cardinal O'Malley also released a separate list of Boston archdiocesan priests who had been publicly accused of sexual abuse where the allegations have been found unsubstantiated by the archdiocesan Review Board or who were acquitted of charges in a canonical process.