NEWS

OTTAWA - Due to recent episcopal nominations as well as the death of Timmins Bishop Paul Marchand, a number of dioceses will see some changes in the near future.

Fr. Patrick Lafleur has been elected administrator of the diocese of Timmins after the death of Marchand, S.S.M., On July 24.

There was never a time Dr. David McCann didn’t believe and never a time he didn’t know what he believed. Until he died Aug. 8 after a short battle with pancreatic cancer, the McMaster University associate professor of family medicine and expert in disaster relief operations only believed more and more — in God, his Church, his family and the inviolable sacredness of life.

The 50-year-old doctor leaves his wife Donna and five children.

He also leaves a sort of second family in the Florida One Disaster Medical Assistance Team. McCann was its chief medical officer despite having moved away from Georgia to Hamilton, Ont., in 2007.

A dual citizen, Dr. McCann had joined the emergency response team not long after working with survivors of the 9/11 terror attacks. He responded annually to hurricanes in the United States and to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

TORONTO - For six years, the Toronto Commandery Foundation has been trying to find a site for a hospice that will allow terminally ill people to die with dignity.

But as the foundation has discovered, though everyone seems to agree on the need, no one wants to address it.

The foundation, a charity established with the co-operation of the Order of St. Lazarus, has spent its entire existence searching and negotiating for a site in North York to host a 10-bed end-of-life care facility. Though unsuccessful so far, there are no plans to stop looking any time soon.

“We’ve got all these oncologists saying we need a hospice, but there’s just nowhere for them to go,” said Jacqueline Wood, director of the foundation.

The Toronto Commandery Foundation was created out of this need, shared by a vast majority of Canadians. According to the Canadian Palliative Care Association, three-quarters of the 220,000 Canadians who die every year are in hospital or long-term care, while only 15 per cent have access to palliative or hospice care. On average, the cost of a bed in a hospice per day is $439, while a bed in a hospital or long-term care is nearly double.

TRIPOLI, Libya - The head of Libya’s rebel forces, on the verge of taking the capital city of Tripoli, said dictator Moammar Gadhafi had tried to scare people by saying that Islamic extremists were part of the rebel movement.

Mustafa Abdel-Jalil called on all Libyans to respect the lives of others and urged the rebels to show the world that Libya is a country of “religiously moderate” people.

“Moammar Gadhafi will be remembered and his period of rule through the acts that he committed against the rebels and the world,” he said Aug. 22.

“But God has chosen that Gadhafi’s end should be at the hands of these youths, so that they can join the Arab Spring that is going around the Arab nations. And now I say with all transparency that the era of Gadhafi is over,” he said.

OTTAWA - Jack Layton was not religious but the former NDP leader is being remembered as a deeply spiritual man whose commitment to a caring society had a Christian foundation.

MADRID, SPAIN - Pope Benedict XVI saw that 1.5 million young people could be buffeted by gusty winds and drenched by a driving rain and still fall silently to their knees to adore the Eucharist.

MADRID - Hours after firefighters doused overheated pilgrims with much-needed jets of water, the heavens added to their efforts by driving rain and wind onto the more than 1 million young Catholics camping at Cuatro Vientos airbase Saturday night for the World Youth Day vigil.

But the rain didn’t dampen the spirits of the pilgrims, who sang and chanted all the louder for Pope Benedict XVI, who entered the airbase to cheers and applause. The pope, however, skipped the longer speech he had prepared in favor of short addresses to pilgrims in Spanish, French, English, German, Italian, Portuguese and Polish.

In the different languages, he told the young people to be proud of the gift of their faith they should “gather with others to deepen it, be faithful to the celebration of the Eucharist, the mystery of faith par excellence.”

Pope Benedict asked that the youths, during the eucharistic adoration that followed, to “raise our minds and hearts to Jesus Christ” so he “may he pour out his Spirit upon us and upon the whole church, that we may be a beacon of freedom, reconciliation and peace for the whole world.”

He encouraged them to seek out their life’s vocation and to “persevere in it with joy and fidelity, knowing that he never abandons you or betrays you.”

MADRID — Pope Benedict XVI began his third day in Madrid by hearing confessions in one of 200 portable confessionals set up in a park for World Youth Day pilgrims.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said the pope offered the sacrament of reconciliation to four World Youth Day volunteers: two young men and two young women. The pope heard the confessions of two in French, one in German and the confession of a Spaniard in Italian.

While the pope used one of the same portable white confessionals that all penitents and priests in the park used, a white screen was placed around his to increase privacy.

Organizers originally had said the pope would offer the sacrament to three young people.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican published online more than 70 pages of documents which, it said, prove the Vatican had no knowledge of a priest's sexual misconduct until he and his religious order petitioned for his laicization.

The case involves the late Andrew Ronan, a former Servite priest who was laicized in 1966; a man who says he was abused by Ronan in Oregon in 1965 has taken the Vatican to court, claiming Ronan was a Vatican employee.

In a statement Aug. 17, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said, "While most of the case has been dismissed, two accusations made by (the) plaintiff's attorneys have persisted and have been repeatedly reported in the press: that the Holy See knew that Ronan was an abuser, and that the Holy See transferred Ronan from one place to another with that knowledge.

"Those would, of course, be very serious accusations -- if true," Father Lombardi said. "But, as we are learning with the development of the case, the accusations are decidedly not true."

SAN LORENZO DE EL ESCORIAL, Spain (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI's meetings with young religious women and young university professors, held in the same complex, had very different tones.

The sisters and nuns -- all under 35 -- gathered in the sunny courtyard of the Basilica of St. Lawrence, while the professors -- most under 40 -- gathered inside the imposing stone basilica.

The young consecrated women were exuberant: singing, chanting and doing the wave. Most of them stood on their plastic chairs when the pope entered. The young professors visited one another rather quietly before the pope arrived and remained standing on the floor when the pope entered; they were in a church, after all.

In speeches to both groups, the pope expressed gratitude and offered encouragement, but he once was a young professor himself, and much of his advice to the scholars was based on personal experience and a continuing keen observation of what is happening in universities around the world.