NEWS

TORONTO - Barbara Kowalski usually walks through the streets of Toronto without showing outward signs of faith. But that changed on Palm Sunday.

Walking in a procession from St. Paul’s Basilica to St. Michael’s Cathedral as part of the Office of Catholic Youth’s World Youth Day Palm Sunday event on April 16, she helped to carry the World Youth Day commemorative cross down Queen Street.

“It was nice to show others that this is my religion,” said Kowalski, 23, a legal communications clerk at a law firm in Toronto.

Palm Sunday is recognized internationally as the World Day of Youth.

TORONTO - The life of slain Pakistan minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti is an inspiration to all Christians to live in the footsteps of Jesus, said Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins at an April 16 Memorial Mass at St. Andrew's Catholic Church.

"We look to the example of great heroes like Shahbaz Bhatti to show us the way, to share the light of Christ by what they say, how they live and their life of sacrifice," Collins told about 1,800 people, including some politicians and members of the Pakistani community from different faith groups, who packed the church.

The challenge is "not to be complacent but be inspired" by Bhatti's martyrdom, he said.

Bhatti was gunned down on March 2 by Taliban militants who claimed responsibility for the assassination because of Bhatti's vocal opposition to Pakistan's blasphemy laws. Bhatti spoke out against religious discrimination and openly supported the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy. He said the blasphemy laws are being used to prosecute innocent people from minority religious groups in the country.

VATICAN CITY - The slight differences between a beatification and a canonization are easy to miss, especially when one pope beatifies another pope.

Just three weeks before Pope Benedict XVI was to beatify Pope John Paul II, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments issued a decree designed, in part, to maintain the distinction. The decree dealt with one of the three main differences: the number and location of dioceses that can hold annual public liturgical celebrations in the holy person's honour.

The other two differences are less noticeable and they deal with who ceremonially requests the Pope to act and the level of papal authority involved in the proclamation.

During a beatification ceremony, the bishop of the diocese where the person dies asks that the candidate be declared blessed; at a canonization, the prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes speaks in the name of the whole Church and asks that the candidate be declared a saint.

If you strip life down to its essentials you don’t strip out beauty. You produce lives entirely devoted to beauty.

In This Side of Eden we’re invited into the lives of Benedictine monks at Westminster Abbey in Mission, B.C., during Holy Week. The simplicity of their daily round of work and prayer feeds into the most solemn and significant liturgies of the Christian calendar — Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil.

All this unfolds before the camera in one of the most extraordinary settings. Surrounded by mountains and nestled into the temperate rain forest of the B.C. coast, Westminister Abbey Church is a modern architectural gem constructed in the early 1980s with 7,000 square feet of stained glass. The church and abbey are filled with contemporary frescoes, paintings and sculpture — much of it by one of Mission’s monks, Fr. Dunstan Massey.

VATICAN CITY - A Vatican commission on China expressed deep concern over worsening relations with the Chinese government and appealed to authorities there to avoid steps that would aggravate Church-state problems.

Specifically, the commission urged Chinese authorities not to persist in imposing new government-backed bishops who do not have the approval of Pope Benedict XVI.

Titled a "Message to Chinese Catholics," the text was issued April 14 following a three-day annual meeting of the commission at the Vatican.

The commission expressed joy at the news that the diocese of Shanghai was launching the beatification cause of Paul Xu Guangqi, a Chinese scholar who worked closely with the famed Jesuit missionary, Fr. Matteo Ricci, in the 16th and 17th centuries.

NEW YORK - Addressing the continuing controversy over Pope Pius XII's actions during the Second World War, Archbishop Timothy Dolan expressed sympathy before a Jewish audience April 12 at researchers' "present frustration about the pace of opening the Vatican Archives" from that period.

"Whatever is needed to complete this project, even in phases rather than only as a whole, should be explored for its practicability," said the New York archbishop and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in an evening talk at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

"Whatever the archives hold, the Catholic Church does not fear the truth about the often heroic and sometimes disgraceful conduct of her leaders and members during the Second World War."

The archbishop, a trained historian who served as the bishops' liaison for Catholic-Jewish relations until November, said he sometimes hears questions about how the Church can consider both Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II as candidates for beatification. But, he said, "what constitutes holiness of life — that is to say, closeness to and friendship with God — is not measured in the same way as political, social or financial success.

VATICAN CITY - The rights of circus and carnival workers must be protected and circus animals must be properly cared for and treated ethically, said a top Vatican official.

Archbishop Antonio Veglio, president of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travellers, made the remarks in a message marking World Circus Day, celebrated April 16.

"The Church recognizes the social, cultural and educational value of circuses," which bring children and families together, spark people's imagination and foster creativity, he said in a message released April 15.

Carnivals and circuses offer special opportunities for people to break out of their shell, be awed by the beauty of the shows and the skills of the artists and acrobats, and be filled with "hope that brings inner peace even amid the suffering, worries and frustrations in life," he wrote.

MEXICO CITY - A Mexican bishop said at least one priest has abandoned his parish in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, where the bodies of at least 122 abducted and murdered bus passengers have been pulled from mass graves within the first half of April.

Matamoros Bishop Faustino Armendariz Jimenez told reporters April 13 that at least one priest from a municipality near where the mass graves were discovered had fled after being threatened and subjected to harassment by presumed members of organized crime. He added that other priests have encountered difficulties travelling in the state, which is plagued by highway checkpoints manned by organized criminal groups such as Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel.

"We've had (incidents) at the armed checkpoints," Armendariz said in comments published by the newspaper El Universal. "Thanks to God, we're still here. Fortunately, nothing has happened, but we travel with fear."

OTTAWA - Pro-family groups are delighted to see a focus on family issues in the election campaign platforms of all three national parties.

But some social conservative leaders have expressed disappointment that Stephen Harper refuses to reopen the debate on abortion or marriage even if the Conservatives win a majority.

Past elections have seen the “odd snippet” of platform policy directed at family issues so it’s encouraging to see the major parties addressing family matters in this campaign, said Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC) executive director Dave Quist.

“It’s good,” he said. “It’s time they looked at the foundation of our society and that is the family.

“We may disagree on the solutions, that is what democracy is all about, but it’s important that we be discussing these things.”

TORONTO - Ongoing controversy over abortion and the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace may be having a negative effect on overall fundraising for ShareLife.

Each time Development and Peace faces public allegations that some of its partners are linked with organizations advocating legal access to abortion, ShareLife is contacted by angry donors threatening not to give, said ShareLife spokesman Bill Steinburg.

“Whenever they call we always remind them that by doing so they’re having an impact on the huge family of more than 40 agencies that do a lot of work here on the ground, helping our own communities,” Steinburg said.

Early this month, speaking engagements by a Mexican priest to promote Development and Peace’s overseas work were cancelled in Ottawa and Cornwall following allegations that the Jesuit priest’s human rights centre is associated with an organization that supports decriminalization of abortion. In cancelling the Ottawa events, Archbishop Terrance Prendergast said that support by Fr. Luis Arriaga’s centre for groups sympathetic to abortion is “incompatible” with Church teaching.