NEWS

OTTAWA - A bill that could reshape society’s understanding of human sexuality by granting protected status to transgendered and transsexual people passed a final vote in the House of Commons and has gone to the Senate.

NDP MP Bill Siksay’s private members’ Bill C-389, which would add gender identity and gender expression to the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act, passed 143-135.

Most Conservatives voted against the bill Feb. 9, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, while the leaders of the Opposition parties all supported it.

TORONTO - As the world's attention is focused on the unrest in Egypt, Canadians must not forget the political prisoners in Iran, say the supporters of two Toronto residents facing execution.

Saeed Malekpour and Hamid Ghassemi-Shall were convicted without a fair trial and deny the charges against them, according to their Canadian supporters. Malekpour faces execution at any moment, while Ghassemi-Shall's death sentence was commuted to a life sentence last year but is pending confirmation by Iran's Supreme Court.

Some 50 people braved a chilly winter evening for a candlelight vigil outside the University of Toronto's Massey College Feb. 9 to raise awareness of the men's plight. 

ROME - The diocese of Rome launched a new web site dedicated to the beatification and canonization of Pope John Paul II.

Published in seven languages, the site www.karol-wojtyla.org offers news updates and background information on the late pope and his sainthood cause, as well as a live webcam of his tomb in the grotto of St. Peter's Basilica.

The web site also announced that the beatification ceremony in St. Peter's Square May 1, Divine Mercy Sunday, will be open to the public and no tickets will be required to attend. The evening before the ceremony, April 30, there will be a prayer vigil at Rome's ancient Circus Maximus racetrack, it said.

TORONTO - If Scripture is a guide, the measure of Canada as a Christian country may be the nation’s immigration and refugee policies, the Very Rev. Lois Wilson told a couple dozen people gathered at the University of Toronto’s Newman Centre chapel Feb. 1.

Wilson was lecturing as part of the Jesuit-sponsored Naming the Holy series at the Newman Centre. Under the title “Who is my neighbour? Immigration, citizenship and refugees,” Wilson pointed out how “the alien, the orphan and the widow” are “just all over the Scriptures.”

Old Testament law regarding treatment of aliens, orphans and widows establishes the importance of the individual in Western culture and law, said Wilson. In the New Testament Jesus Himself is an outsider who scandalously communicates with other outsiders — Samaritans, women, lepers, etc.

TORONTO - As the Muslim Brotherhood spoke directly with Egypt’s government and as Christian leaders and Muslim scholars paraded together through Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Toronto’s tiny Coptic Catholic community prayed for peace and wisdom in Egypt, and for the safety of their relatives back home.

“This is our part, to collect our voice and go to God,” said Magda Megalli after Mass Feb. 6 at Holy Family Coptic Catholic Church in Toronto’s west end.

Most Holy Family parishioners send money monthly back to their families, said parish priest Fr. Bishoi Anis. The protests and street fighting that began in Cairo on Jan. 24 and the apparent end to Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule have left Toronto Copts feeling stunned and helpless, he said.

“What can you do here, here in Canada?” Anis asked.

TORONTO - The camera zooms in on new mom Lisa Canning who beams with enthusiasm as she talks about energy-efficient decor with Toronto TV host Marilyn Denis.

The 26-year-old interior decorator was one of the experts on CTV’s inaugural The Marilyn Denis Show last month.

Aside from running her own interior design business, she talks enthusiastically about how motherhood has helped her mature in her Catholic faith as she and her husband, Josh, raise their two children.

“When I became a mom for the first time, something shifted quick in me that I am completely responsible for the soul of this person. When I saw (my son) in my arms, I realized I have a huge responsibility,” she said.

Faith has been central in the Cannings’ marriage and parenthood. The Cannings are former student campus ministers at the Newman Centre at the University of Toronto. (Josh is now Newman’s chaplaincy co-ordinator.)

TORONTO - You don’t often get to see a Wicked Bible. There aren’t many of them left. That’s because King Charles I ordered them all burned.

The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library of the University of Toronto has a Wicked Bible on display until June 3, along with dozens of other rare and fascinating Bibles.

The 1631 Wicked Bible contained perhaps the most famous typo in the history of the English language. In Exodus 22:14 a compositor left out the word “not,” leaving the commandment to read, “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

But there’s much more than giggles to the exhibition “Great and Manifold: A Celebration of the Bible in English.” The Bibles on display span just over a millennium, ranging from an 11th century Greek New Testament from Constantinople bearing the name “Torontoensis” to an illuminated Book of Psalms in English produced over the last decade by calligraphers and artists under the direction of Benedictine monks in Collegeville, Minnesota.

Pinned to the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, “Great and Manifold” is a compact epic journey through the history of English language, politics, spirituality and culture as it relates to this one book.

TORONTO - A private Toronto art gallery has received thousands of e-mails protesting its controversial exhibit featuring a “bullet-ridden” Pope Benedict XVI.

Bezpala Brown Gallery president Darrell Brown said the gallery received about 8,000 e-mails in one hour from the American Catholic group America Needs Fatima which launched a web campaign against Peter Alexander Por’s exhibit “Persona Non Grata: The Veil of History,” running at the gallery Feb. 5-25.

Brown first promoted the exhibit with a provocative press release called “Pope shot, Obama crucified at the Bezpala Brown Gallery.”

“Pope Benedict XVI’s portrait is riddled with bullet holes, a less than subtle expression of the hurt and anger directed at a pontiff and an institution that has abandoned its flock, choosing to focus on dogma while its subjects suffer and, in many instances, die from its archaic policies,” the release read, referring to the clergy abuse scandal that has rocked the Church.

As Catholics and Anglicans sit down again for official theological dialogue this spring, they face the challenge of adding to some of the most substantial and carefully reasoned theological documents written in the last 35 years.

“It’s been some of the best theology of the 20th century, and we’re into the 21st century now. It’s excellent theology,” said Margaret O’Gara, a former Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) member and professor at Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College.

A new stage of ARCIC discussions opens May 17 to 27 at the Monastery of Bose in northern Italy. The international dialogue group has been asked by the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams and Pope Benedict XVI to examine “the Church as communion — local and universal” and “how in  communion the local and universal Church comes to discern right ethical teaching.”

GATINEAU, Que. - As Quebec marked Suicide Prevention Week Jan. 30-Feb. 5, the province’s Select Committee on Dying with Dignity held hearings here testing support for legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The irony did not escape Linda Couture, who directs Living With Dignity, a grassroots, non-religious organization that has been monitoring the hearings as the committee travels across Quebec.

The committee made up of members of Quebec’s National Assembly (MNAs) has been holding public hearings in cities across Quebec since September. Couture has attended most of them. The committee wraps up its hearings at the end of February and will then work on a written report.