NEWS

Three hundred Catholic women from across Ontario met from July 10-13 in Hamilton for the 64th annual Ontario Catholic Women’s League Provincial Convention, where Marlene Pavletic of Thunder Bay was chosen as the new provincial president.

This year’s four-day conference, which concluded with the election of a new provincial executive including Pavletic, was themed “Centred on Faith & Justice — Led By The Spirit." Held at the Sheraton Hotel in Hamilton, the convention offered representatives of the CWL, which has 54,000 members in 13 dioceses across Ontario, a chance to reflect on the past year, deepen and celebrate their faith and set their goals for the future.

Those goals consisted mainly of this year’s three resolutions, each focused on health. The resolutions, submitted by Ontarian dioceses, aim to provide clean water for First Nations communities, limit sodium use in food and raise awareness of colorectal cancer. These resolutions, which were passed at the provincial level, will be submitted to the national CWL, which will gather Aug. 14-17. A final set of resolutions will be chosen at the national convention and set as initiatives for the CWL over the next year.

VATICAN CITY - The ordinations of 20 new priests for the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X are "illegitimate, period," said the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi.

WASHINGTON - Fr. John A. Corapi, a highly visible speaker and preacher who had his own television show, was involved in "years of co-habitation" with a former prostitute, repeated abuse of alcohol and drugs and "serious violation" of his promise of poverty, according to a fact-finding team appointed by his religious order.

Corapi, who recently announced he would leave the priesthood because he could not get a "fair hearing" on misconduct allegations against him, has been ordered by the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity to return to live at the order's regional headquarters in Robstown, Texas, and to dismiss a lawsuit against the woman whose accusations prompted the investigation.

"Catholics should understand that (the order) does not consider Fr. John Corapi as fit for ministry," said a July 5 news release from Fr. Gerard Sheehan, regional priest servant for the order, commonly known as SOLT.

INUVIK, N.W.T. - The Church in the north can help native people recover their languages and cultural identity, but it won't be easy, said Oblate Archbishop Sylvain Lavoie at the conclusion of four days of testimony about the damage residential schools did to native families, communities and culture.

Justice Murray Sinclair, chief commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada with a five-year mandate to investigate the history of the schools, wrapped up the TRC's Northern National Event in Inuvik July 1 with a warning to aboriginal participants in the Commission's hearings that they will have to take responsibility for the future of native culture.

"The Church can't give you back your language. The Church can't give you back your culture," Sinclair told about 400 people who attended the closing ceremonies for the event.

Sinclair told churches they would have to tell people they don't have to be Christian if they really want reconciliation.

TORONTO - An Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that makes it harder for doctors to withdraw life support when such a decision goes against a patient's family's wishes is "fabulous" news to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the coalition, said the June 29 ruling in the case of Hassan Rasouli was exactly what the coalition was hoping for.

"Doctors were interpreting their power as being that they could withdraw treatment without consent and that they only required consent to treat," said Schadenberg.

The withdrawal of life support now requires the consent of a substitute decision maker — and if that's not satisfactory to the doctor, he or she must go to the provincial Consent and Capacity Board to try to have the decision overturned, said Toronto lawyer Gardner Hodder, who represented the Rasouli family.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican reported a budget surplus for the first time in four years in 2010, but said contributions from Catholics and dioceses around the world had gone down.

The budget of the Holy See, which includes offices of the Roman Curia and related agencies, ended 2010 with a surplus of about $13.1 million.

The separate budget of Vatican City State, which includes the Vatican Museums, ended 2010 with a surplus of about $28 million, according to a Vatican statement July 2.

The figures were released following a three-day meeting of a council of cardinals charged with reviewing Vatican finances. The statement said the Vatican's financial picture continued to improve, but it cautioned that the global financial picture still presented "elements of uncertainty and instability."

VATICAN CITY - Documents from the still-sealed Second World War section of the Vatican Secret Archives will be part of a major exhibition of Vatican papers hosted by the city of Rome.

The exhibit marking the 400th anniversary of the Vatican archives will be open February-September 2012 at Rome's Capitoline Museums.

Bishop Sergio Pagano, prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives, said that with special permission from the Vatican Secretariat of State "a very limited number" of documents related to the Second World War would be among the 100 documents and objects from the eighth to the 20th century placed on public display.

"The exhibit certainly will not be able to shed new light on Pius XII because (the archival papers from) this pontificate are still closed," the bishop said July 5 at a news conference announcing the exhibit.

TORONTO - Toronto Catholic parishioners will be getting a sneak peek at the new Roman Missal in their parishes as early as this summer.

A number of parishes will be preparing their flocks for the third edition of the Roman Missal which is set to launch in Canada on Nov. 27, the first Sunday of Advent.  

Msgr. Brad Massman, pastor of St. Paul’s Basilica, said the parish’s musicians are already taking courses in preparation for the new Missal. And parishioners will receive more information this summer through parish announcements.

“We’re going to talk to people about the new Missal. It’s a good time to refresh all of us as far as the Mass is concerned,” said Massman.

According to the new Missal, the structure and order of the Mass will not change, but there will be new texts for prayers and new observances for saints in the Church calendar. Other additions include a Mass in thanksgiving for the gift of human life and an extended vigil for Pentecost.

TORONTO - Dating is the farthest thing from nine-year-old Aramayah Ocol’s mind. She prefers walking to the ice cream store with her dad. No one matches up to “Daddy.”

That’s just how Noel Ocol hopes it will be, that is until Aramayah is old enough to be courted by potential suitors.

Ocol, a 39-year-old parishioner at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in downtown Toronto, started a blog “Like Father, Like Daughters” for Our Kids Media, an online magazine for private schools.

“So how can I as a dad be proactive against a world where modern pop-culture causes girls to see themselves as a sexual objects and packages love as something from a vending machine where you put your money in, get what you want and throw the rest out?” he asks in his blog.

INUVIK, N.W.T. - In the midst of a gathering which seeks reconciliation and healing from the 130-year history of residential schools in Canada, Catholic and Anglican bishops from the north took responsibility for the 400-year-old division between the churches and pledged continued dialogue, co-operation and reconciliation.

"This is a road we're on and there are no exits," said Bishop Gary Gordon of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.

The gesture of reconciliation and healing came on June 29, day two of the five-day Northern National Event of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in Inuvik. About 1,000 native people from all over the far north have gathered with Church and government officials to review the history of the residential schools, hear the stories of school survivors and imagine a new future for native Canadians.

Anglican and Catholic missionaries brought their rivalry with them to northern communities, often dividing communities and families along denominational lines. Catholics couldn't attend the funerals of their Anglican family members. Anglican and Catholic residential school students fought each other on the basis of religious labels.

"These are things we offer regret for, and we want to put them in our past," said Bishop Murray Chatlain of Mackenzie-Fort Smith, N.W.T.