NEWS

INUVIK, N.W.T - It was a day of tears in Inuvik as Inuit, Dene and Metis gathered to remember and count their losses from years spent in residential schools.

"For the life of me, I can't remember the years from five years old to ten years old," said John Banksland, a representative of the northern survivors committee.

The second major hearing in the Truth and Reconciliation process opened on June 21 with approximately 1,000 survivors of residential schools turning out to tell their stories or listen to others tell theirs.

The federally funded commission is crossing the country to document the abuse that was rampant in the Indian residential school system that ran in Canada for more than a century.

Banksland's hope for the four-day meeting of residential school survivors, church representatives and government officials was for a better future.

"We've had 130 years of this stuff," he said. "It's time to let it go."

OTTAWA — The union representing Development and Peace employees says tighter supervision by the Canadian bishops threatens the democratic nature of the lay-run organization and undermines the prophetic vision that motivates their work.

The union report, prepared for a recent meeting of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace’s (D&P) National Council in June, said the world “ is increasingly turning towards a conservative ideology.”

“There is clearly a turn to the right in several societies, as well as in the Universal Church,” it said.

The 7-page document, published June 25 on the blog Soutenons Developpement et paix (soutenondetp.wordpress.com), claims the shift “runs counter to the prophetic vision that gave rise” to D&P’s creation 45 years ago.

ALBANY, N.Y. - Following passage of legislation to allow same-sex marriage in the state, the Catholic bishops of New York expressed concern “that both marriage and family will be undermined by this tragic presumption of government.”

In a June 24 statement, the heads of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses said they were “deeply disappointed and troubled” at approval of a bill that will “alter radically and forever humanity’s historic understanding of marriage.”

The state Senate passed the measure 33-29 in an evening vote June 24, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed it into law later that night. Unless it is delayed by legal challenges, it will take effect in late July.

New York would then become the sixth state to permit same-sex marriage. It currently is allowed in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, in addition to the District of Columbia.

TORONTO - Christians should be lobbying their Members of Parliament to put pressure on countries that exercise torture, Jesuit Father Valerian Shirima told a small group gathered at a 12-hour prayer vigil held by the Toronto chapter of Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture (ACAT).

Commemorating the United Nations’ International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, about 15 people attended the vigil at the University of St. Michael’s College, which ran from 7 p.m. June 25 to 7 a.m. the following morning, for various lengths of time.

“We are collectively praying together, meditating and thinking of victims of torture,” Stephen Scharper, director of ACAT-Toronto, told The Catholic Register.

ACAT is an ecumenical organization that campaigns for the abolition of torture throughout the world and lends support to victims. First established in Paris in 1974, the organization is now active in 30 countries. The Toronto chapter was founded in October 2010 by Scharper with help from his PhD student, Simon Appolloni.

>VATICAN CITY - Raised Catholic by Jewish and Catholic parents, Msgr. Robert L. Stern loved his faith but never planned on becoming a priest.

The outgoing head of the international Vatican agency Catholic Near East Welfare Association said that when he was in college, the priesthood seemed like a "gloomy road" and he had his eyes instead on the brighter path of becoming a nuclear physicist.

"It was the 'in' thing at the time," he told Catholic News Service at CNEWA's central office at the Vatican.

But God had different plans for the native New Yorker, and the "temptation" to enter ordained life grew while he was an undergraduate student.

The tall, spritely 78-year-old clergyman said he only thought about the priesthood because he felt the Holy Spirit calling him strongly and "I wanted to do what God wanted."

Yet it was with "fear and trepidation" that he started exploring a priestly vocation in his junior year at college.

TORONTO - About 80 young Catholics attending this year’s Teopoli Summer Experience will be doing more than outdoor sports, making new friends and the usual summer camp fare.

They’ll also be introduced to Sr. Carmelina Tarantino of the Cross, the late Passionist Sister of St. Paul whose cause for sainthood is underway.

At the Teopoli camp in Gravenhurst, Ont., students will learn about Sr. Tarantino’s story “in a gentle way” and how she was able to endure her trials through her faith in God, says Luca Mirenzi, a Teopoli youth minister. Sr. Tarantino suffered unexplained illness but maintained a devout life of prayer through it all. For 24 years, she was bed-ridden at Toronto’s Riverdale Hospital (now known as Bridgepoint Health) and was visited by thousands of people seeking spiritual direction. She died in 1992 at the age of 55. The official inquiry into her cause for sainthood began two years ago.

Youth will also visit the memorial at the camp built in Sr. Tarantino’s honour, said Mirenzi.

OTTAWA - Bishop Raymond Lahey’s sentencing hearing for importing child porn has been postponed to Aug. 4 and 5.

The sentencing hearing had been scheduled for June 24, but the Crown had not received the report from forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Bradford, who assessed the former Antigonish bishop.

Lahey, 71, the former bishop of Antigonish, N.S., faces a minimum of one year in prison and could receive up to 10 years. In August, Bradford will be cross-examined concerning the bishop’s mental state and likelihood of reoffending.

Lahey pleaded guilty to importing child porn May 4, 18 months after a Canadian Border Services agent stopped the bishop at Ottawa airport and pulled him aside for a secondary search of his laptop. A more serious charge of possession for the purpose of distribution was dropped by the Crown. The bishop opted to go to jail immediately, pending his sentencing hearing.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI inaugurated the Vatican's online news portal with a click, and then announced the launch with the first-ever papal tweet.

"Dear Friends, I just launched News.va. Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI," the pope said in his message on the news site's Twitter account.

His tweet -- 117 characters -- went viral, and within 24 hours twitter.com/news_va_en had more than 35,000 followers.

The pope was flanked by Vatican communications officials June 28 as he tapped an iPad and officially launched www.news.va, which aggregates news content from the Vatican's newspaper, radio, television and online outlets.

The pontiff was then given a brief tour of the portal's features. The launch came on the eve of the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul and the 60th anniversary of Pope Benedict's ordination into the priesthood.

TORONTO - Alan Yoshioka chose God over his homosexual inclinations.

Before his conversion to the Catholic Church, Yoshioka says he lived an “out and proud gay lifestyle.” The 48-year-old Toronto-based freelance editor says after many years of rejecting the Church’s views on homosexuality, he experienced a spiritual conversion leading him to “interior freedom” when he embraced a life of chastity.

“(I am) so grateful for having discovered what it is like to live a life of chastity because there is an interior freedom that I never knew during all my years seeking liberation, seeking freedom in a worldly sense,” he told The Catholic Register.

His blog, “The Sheepcat,” is “a Catholic commentary by a former gay activist and his wife” where Yoshioka writes of his spiritual and personal conversion.

OTTAWA - Canada’s Catholic bishops have published an uncompromising pastoral letter on ministry to young people with same-sex attraction that upholds Church teaching on sexuality yet shows sensitivity to their challenges.

The eight-page booklet prepared by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (CCCB) doctrinal commission and released June 27 comes at a time when publicly funded Catholic schools in Ontario are under pressure from the provincial government’s equity policy. You can download the document by clicking on the image on the right.

Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J., a commission member, said he hopes the document will clarify for school boards, teachers, parents and students where the Church stands.

“If we are going to be Catholic school boards and we are going to try to have equality and equity in our outreach to young people then we need to be clear about what the Church’s teaching is,” he said.

The document frames the debate in Catholic terms and avoids reducing people to an identity based on sexual orientation. The Church does not use the terms “gay” or “lesbian” in its official teachings.