NEWS

Elders and survivors took centre stage at Toronto's Hiroshima Day at the Peace Garden in Nathan Phillips Square.

They're asking world leaders to achieve nuclear disarmament before the generation that saw the first atomic weapon is gone.

Photos and commentary by Michael Swan

 

OTTAWA - Canada’s Catholic bishops have joined the chorus urging the federal government to reconsider its plan to abolish the mandatory long-form census.

“A great deal of this information, based on data gathered by Statistics Canada, is most helpful to all faith groups,” said Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) president Bishop Pierre Morissette in a letter to Industry Minister Tony Clement.

MISSISSAUGA, ONT. - Hubert Krampert's 40-year run in bringing The Catholic Register to the residents of Mississauga Lifecare Centre has come to an end.

MONTREAL - Thousands of agricultural workers from abroad have come and gone with the growing seasons since the 1970s, unnoticed by most Canadians. But a Spanish Mass that drew nearly 2,000 people to St. Joseph’s Oratory Basilica July 18 was evidence that, for a few faith-filled Quebecers, seasonal workers are as important to the community as their neighbours.

“It’s easy to develop a friendship with them. They’re just so respectful,” Louise Guinois said. Guinois is a former farm owner from St. Remi, Que., and organizer of the annual pilgrimage to the Oratory.

SURREY, B.C. - At the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada’s triennial synod July 12-16, bishops, clergy and lay delegates from across Canada passed a resolution to endorse the March 12 letter its bishops sent to the Holy See seeking an Anglican ordinariate in Canada.

The synod also passed a resolution enabling the bishop and the provincial council to make all adjustments to the diocese’s canonical legislation for the formation of the ordinariate.

The ordinariates will allow Anglicans who accept the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Petrine Ministry to become Catholics while retaining their Anglican liturgy and other aspects of their patrimony.

Six months after the earthquake, nobody wants to rebuild Haiti — at least not the Haiti from before the earthquake.

That Haiti was a country in which 30 per cent of its 9.2-million people suffered malnutrition, barely half the population over 15 could read and write, 80 per cent lived below the poverty line and 54 per cent lived in abject poverty. Infant mortality ran at 58.07 per 1,000 live births, about 12 times the rate in Canada.

There is no difference between praying for peace in Jerusalem and praying for Christian unity, according to the authors of prayers for next January’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

The 102nd Week of Prayer for Christian Unity will be celebrated Jan. 16 to 22 in Canada.

For the first time the ecumenical team that chose the theme and accompanying prayers for the week-long event is drawn from the churches of Jerusalem — the mother church for all Christians and the city that first witnessed the Resurrection.

TORONTO - The very last day in the life of the old Nathan Phillips Square Peace Garden will commemorate the 65th anniversary of the first use of an atomic weapon on a civilian population.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae, Hiroshima atom bomb survivors Setsuko Thurlow and Joe Ohori, Juno Award nominee Tom Barlow, the Yakudo Drummers and other community groups will be featured Aug. 6 at the 65th anniversary of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki. Aug. 7 the city will begin decommissioning the old Peace Garden.

ROME - Pope Benedict XVI has given his new papal delegate broad powers of authority over the Legionaries of Christ as part of a major Vatican-led reform of the order.

Italian Archbishop Velasio De Paolis has authority over the order's current superiors and can even override the order's constitutions. He will have a say in all areas of the order including its governance, decisions involving personnel, education and ordination, as well as how assets are spent.

TORONTO - Canada's universal health care system is pretty universal — except if you're homeless, according to a St. Michael's Hospital study.

One in six homeless people in Toronto, 17 per cent, say they need care for a medical condition and haven't been able to get it. Homeless women with dependent children have almost twice as much trouble getting to see a doctor as mothers generally do in Toronto, said the study by Dr. Stephen Hwang of the Centre for Research on Inner City Health at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital. The study will be published in the August edition of the American Journal of Public Health.