NEWS

TORONTO - Proposed changes to Ontario’s adoption laws will make more children in care eligible for adoption, said Dina MacPhail of the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto (CCAS).

“I think it can only benefit the children who are crown wards and in our care,” said MacPhail, speaking of the Building Families and Supporting Youth to be Successful Act 2011.

The changes to the Child and Family Services Act, brought forth in mid-April by Children and Youth Services Minister Laurel Broten and still to be voted upon, include removing access orders that prevent 75 per cent of children and youth in children’s aid care from being eligible for adoption.

“You might have a child who is in a group home or a foster home and his adoption is blocked because he sees his birth parents once every year,” said MacPhail, a child protection worker in the adoption department at CCAS. “We cannot do an adoption for a child that has an access order.”

Church leaders from Canada, Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America will gather in Toronto for an ecumenical conference on mining from May 1-3.

Hosted by KAIROS and several of its member institutions in partnership with Norwegian Church Aid, they will be joined by indigenous partners, social partners from the Global South, Church members and agency staff.

The gathering is meant to develop alliances between leaders from the North and South in an effort to achieve mining justice around the world.

VATICAN CITY - In an Easter blessing to the world, Pope Benedict XVI prayed that Christ’s resurrection may open paths of “freedom, justice and peace” for troubled populations of the Middle East and Africa.

The Pope urged an end to violence in Libya and Ivory Coast, assistance to refugees flooding out of North Africa and consolation for the victims of the Japanese earthquake. He prayed for those persecuted for their Christian faith, and praised their courage.

He spoke from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica April 24 in his blessing “urbi et orbi” (to the city of Rome and to the world), after celebrating Mass for nearly 100,000 people in St. Peter’s Square. Broadcast to many countries and live-streamed on the Internet, it was the last major event on the 84-year-old pontiff’s heavy Holy Week schedule.

Pope Benedict said the resurrection of Christ must not be viewed as “the fruit of speculation or mystical experience.” It happened in a precise moment and marked history forever, giving human events new strength, new hope and new meaning.

VATICAN CITY — In his Easter “urbi et orbi” blessing to the city of Rome and to the world, Pope Benedict today contrasted the joy and hope brought by Christ’s resurrection with persistent conflicts and other forms of suffering in the world.

In one section of his blessing, he spoke about the need for reconciliation in parts of the Middle East and Africa:

So my message today is intended for everyone, and, as a prophetic proclamation, it is intended especially for peoples and communities who are undergoing a time of suffering, that the Risen Christ may open up for them the path of freedom, justice and peace.

May the Land which was the first to be flooded by the light of the Risen One rejoice. May the splendor of Christ reach the peoples of the Middle East, so that the light of peace and of human dignity may overcome the darkness of division, hate and violence. In the current conflict in Libya, may diplomacy and dialogue take the place of arms and may those who suffer as a result of the conflict be given access to humanitarian aid. In the countries of northern Africa and the Middle East, may all citizens, especially young people, work to promote the common good and to build a society where poverty is defeated and every political choice is inspired by respect for the human person. May help come from all sides to those fleeing conflict and to refugees from various African countries who have been obliged to leave all that is dear to them; may people of good will open their hearts to welcome them, so that the pressing needs of so many brothers and sisters will be met with a concerted response in a spirit of solidarity; and may our words of comfort and appreciation reach all those who make such generous efforts and offer an exemplary witness in this regard.

May peaceful coexistence be restored among the peoples of Ivory Coast, where there is an urgent need to tread the path of reconciliation and pardon, in order to heal the deep wounds caused by the recent violence. May Japan find consolation and hope as it faces the dramatic consequences of the recent earthquake, along with other countries that in recent months have been tested by natural disasters which have sown pain and anguish.

Last night, during a three-hour-long Easter vigil liturgy, the pope baptized six adults from Albania, China, Peru, Russia, Singapore and Switzerland. In a homily, he analyzed why the trajectory of salvation history reaches all the way back to creation — and why environmental responsibility is a Christian duty.

Our profession of faith begins with the words: “We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth”. If we omit the beginning of the Credo, the whole history of salvation becomes too limited and too small. The Church is not some kind of association that concerns itself with man’s religious needs but is limited to that objective. No, she brings man into contact with God and thus with the source of all things. Therefore we relate to God as Creator, and so we have a responsibility for creation. Our responsibility extends as far as creation because it comes from the Creator. Only because God created everything can he give us life and direct our lives. Life in the Church’s faith involves more than a set of feelings and sentiments and perhaps moral obligations. It embraces man in his entirety, from his origins to his eternal destiny. Only because creation belongs to God can we place ourselves completely in his hands. And only because he is the Creator can he give us life forever. Joy over creation, thanksgiving for creation and responsibility for it all belong together.

The creation account tells us, then, that the world is a product of creative Reason. Hence it tells us that, far from there being an absence of reason and freedom at the origin of all things, the source of everything is creative Reason, love, and freedom. Here we are faced with the ultimate alternative that is at stake in the dispute between faith and unbelief: are irrationality, lack of freedom and pure chance the origin of everything, or are reason, freedom and love at the origin of being? Does the primacy belong to unreason or to reason? This is what everything hinges upon in the final analysis. As believers we answer, with the creation account and with John, that in the beginning is reason. In the beginning is freedom. Hence it is good to be a human person. It is not the case that in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos, there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it. If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature. But no, Reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine Reason.

On Good Friday, at the close of the Way of the Cross at Rome’s Colosseum, the pope spoke about the cross as a symbol of love, not of triumph.

This evening, in faith, we have accompanied Jesus as he takes the final steps of his earthly journey, the most painful steps, the steps that lead to Calvary. We have heard the cries of the crowd, the words of condemnation, the insults of the soldiers, the lamentation of the Virgin Mary and of the women. Now we are immersed in the silence of this night, in the silence of the cross, the silence of death. It is a silence pregnant with the burden of pain borne by a man rejected, oppressed, downtrodden, the burden of sin which mars his face, the burden of evil. Tonight we have re-lived, deep within our hearts, the drama of Jesus, weighed down by pain, by evil, by human sin.

What remains now before our eyes? It is a crucified man, a cross raised on Golgotha, a cross which seems a sign of the final defeat of the One who brought light to those immersed in darkness, the One who spoke of the power of forgiveness and of mercy, the One who asked us to believe in God’s infinite love for each human person. Despised and rejected by men, there stands before us “a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, one from whom others hide their faces” (Is 53:3).

But let us look more closely at that man crucified between earth and heaven. Let us contemplate him more intently, and we will realize that the cross is not the banner of the victory of death, sin and evil, but rather the luminous sign of love, of God’s immense love, of something that we could never have asked, imagined or expected: God bent down over us, he lowered himself, even to the darkest corner of our lives, in order to stretch out his hand and draw us to himself, to bring us all the way to himself. The cross speaks to us of the supreme love of God and invites, today, to renew our faith in the power of that love, and to believe that in every situation of our lives, our history and our world, God is able to vanquish death, sin and evil, and to give us new, risen life. In the Son of God’s death on the cross, we find the seed of new hope for life, like the seed which dies within the earth.

For many of us, our yearly Lenten journey has been shaped by its beginning and end. We started with the temptations of Jesus and then the vision of his transfiguration. We end by entering with him into Jerusalem, where we share with him in his suffering, death and resurrection. But what has this really meant for us, and what happened to us on the way?

Sometimes we forget what the journey is really about, and fail to see what should be noticed along the route. In case you may have missed it, the three intervening Sundays of Lent told us a great deal about the Lenten journey and our entry into the Easter celebration. The readings of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Sundays of Lent invited the catechumens, as candidates for Baptism, to think over and even “test” their motives about why they want to be initiated into the community of faith. The same readings also invited the rest of the Christian community to examine its own faith journey. Three major points came forward in this year’s readings: What do we most yearn and thirst for in life (the Gospel reading of the woman at the well)?  How can we see what life is really about – not only to have sight, but insight and vision (the healing of the blind man at the pool of Siloe)? How can we embrace life and stand with courage, strength and inspiration among those truly alive (the Gospel reading of the resurrection of Lazarus)?

Often we simply plod along the road of faith – moving as if in some shadowy, superficial existence, not really aware. We frequently stumble on, half-hearted, hazy eyed, hesitatingly. Not fully alive, and not even aware of the deepest yearnings in our hearts, or in the hearts of our brothers and sisters.

Perhaps this is why we are easily distracted along the way. There is so much talk and chatter in contemporary life. Our daily lives are filled up with the glaring sounds of radio and television, the fleeting words of text messages and websites, and the frequently disturbing and cruel remarks from blogs and social media.
The Paschal Mystery is the road on which we are called to discover our deepest yearnings and most authentic needs. It gives us the light that enables us to see Light. It opens the way to life and to the truth about life. It is Life itself.

The 50 days of Easter are an invitation for us to rediscover the depths of our own lives. Through the Resurrection of Christ, we see the creative and transforming strength of God’s love for us and our world. This journey in faith is the journey to eternal life. To borrow from the words of Saint Paul, God our Father who raised Christ from the dead will give life to our mortal bodies also through his Spirit that is dwelling in us (Romans, 8.11).

Christ is risen! Yes, Christ is risen indeed!



+ Pierre Morissette
Bishop of Saint-Jérôme
President of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops

TORONTO - From prayer vigils and film viewings to special devotions and Mass, communities — Polish and others — across the Greater Toronto Area are joining the celebration of Pope John Paul II’s May 1 beatification.

St. Maximilian Kolbe parish in Mississauga, Ont., will be holding a prayer vigil for Pope John Paul II from 8 p.m. to midnight on April 30, said Fr. Pawel Nyrek.

“We’ll finish it with Holy Mass at midnight in thanksgiving for the beatification of Pope John Paul II,” said Nyrek.

Then, on May 2, the parish will be holding another thanksgiving Mass at 6 p.m. The Polish ambassador to Canada, the consul general of Toronto and representatives of the Canadian Polish Congress will be among those in attendance. Even Stephen Harper was expected to attend, before it conflicted with election day, Nyrek said.

A pro-life message on church property can’t be construed as a violation of Ontario’s Human Rights Code, a human rights’ tribunal has ruled.

“Freedom of religion must not be interpreted in a way that voids the positive dimension of the freedom (the right to hold beliefs, practice and disseminate them) of any meaning,” wrote Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario adjudicator Michelle Flaherty in an April 5 decision in favour of a Knights of Columbus council in l’Original, Ont.

The francophone Chevaliers de Colomb attached to the parish of Saint-Jean Baptise, an hour-and-a-half southeast of Ottawa, found itself on the defensive over a monument erected on the church’s front lawn. An inscription on the monument read (in French), “Let us pray that all life rests in the hands of God from conception until death.”

OTTAWA - When Bishop Raymond Lahey goes to trial on child pornography charges May 4, the anticipated news coverage will reopen wounds caused by the worldwide clerical sexual abuse, regardless of the trial’s outcome.

But observers say the pain provides an opportunity for needed renewal.

The former bishop of Antigonish was charged with possession and distribution of child pornography in October 2009. Lahey’s arrest followed the seizure of his laptop and other electronic equipment at Ottawa’s airport by a Canadian Border Service agent.

“The first thing is that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty and we should not jump to conclusions,” said Fr. Frank Morrisey, a canon lawyer who has advised the Canadian Church on the clerical abuse crisis.

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine President Benigno Aquino said he is willing to risk excommunication from the Catholic Church rather than scrap the so-called Responsible Parenthood Bill, reported UCA News.

“I remain committed to pushing for the introduction of a law for responsible parenthood ... at risk of excommunication, it is my obligation as a leader,” Aquino told graduates from the University of the Philippines. “In the end I must listen to my conscience and do what is right.”

He said he cannot stand by and watch the cycle of poverty continue as unplanned births spiral.

CONCORD, ONT. - Jesuit Father Bill Addley took one for the Our Lady of Lourdes team at the fifth annual Provincial’s Dinner April 13. In its 125th year in downtown Toronto, the Jesuits awarded their parish with the Magis Award and pastor Addley was there to accept the plaque.

“We gratefully and humbly accept it,” said Addley.

The award is bestowed annually by Canada’s English-speaking Jesuits on someone or some community that lives out the ideal of the magis. Magis is Latin for more. St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, urged his followers to constantly ask what more they could do for Christ. Jesuits ever since have called this constant search for more the magis.