NEWS

Editor’s Note: As the Year for Priests comes to a close, Catholic Register reader Rappai J. Nedumpara, president of Family Prayer Mission (Ontario), shares the thoughts of a young priest whose petition from India has universal meaning.

The Catholic world is reeling under the huge storm of scandals and it pains me to see such things happening. One person went to the extent of saying that “I don’t feel like going to Church any more to hear the great and lofty ideals that these people preach.”

We have reached a stage where people are thinking of giving up on the Church, and priests in general are being blamed for it. Many of us Catholics are joining this outcry. Priests are being looked at with different eyes now — eyes of suspicion, and understandably so. This hurts and pains me as I am a priest.

Yes I am ashamed, I must admit, about what has happened. A priest is supposed to be one who is trusted, at times trusted even more than one’s own parents. A priest is meant to heal and to care and when a priest fails to do that it is saddening.

VATICAN CITY - Catholics expect a lot from their priests and Pope Benedict XVI is no exception.

Some people might have thought the Pope convoked the June 2009-2010 Year for Priests as a praise-fest for the Church’s collared class, but instead he highlighted the importance of priests in the life of the Church by exhorting them to live up to their calling.

In hundreds of speeches throughout the year and in a special three-part series during his weekly general audiences in April and May, Pope Benedict described the identity and mission of priests, asked Catholics to pray for their ministers and asked the men in black not just to be good priests, but to be holy.

The fact that the Church’s handling of cases of priestly sex abuse came to the fore in Ireland and other European countries and then was back in the news in North America made it impossible during the Year for Priests for the Pope or anyone else to ignore that a problem existed, even if it involved just a small portion of the world’s priests.

TORONTO - Forty communities of Catholic nuns were among 21 “Affordable Housing Champions” honoured by the City of Toronto June 3.

The sisters were singled out for their WRP Neighbourhood Housing project, which created 38 units of subsidized housing in southeast Scarborough.

The project began as a millennium jubilee project in 1999.

TORONTO - Living in the L’Arche community in France and meeting Jean Vanier led John Meehan to discover his call to become a priest.

“It changed the way I looked at community, the Church, my faith. I wouldn’t be a Jesuit now if it hadn’t been for L’Arche,” he told The Catholic Register.

Meehan, 42, was ordained June 5, along with Teo Ugaban, at Toronto’s Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, with Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J., presiding at the Ordination Mass.

Born in Halifax, Meehan started thinking about the priesthood in his teens. But it was his experience in France that led him to consider the Jesuits. The call came during a European backpacking adventure in 1989 when he decided to volunteer at L’Arche and work with individuals with severe disabilities. His eight months living in community and living “very simply” was what attracted him to the vocation.

TORONTO - The St. Patrick Centre in Northern Ireland aims to not only instill peace at home, but also change the perception of Irish culture abroad, which it will now do in Canada through partners based in Toronto.

“It’s important because there’s a large connection between Northern Ireland and Canada, especially in Ontario,” said Dr. Tim Campbell, the centre’s director in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland.

Campbell said there are too many pre-conceived notions abroad about Northern Ireland and hopes the centre can help people to understand that Irish culture and St. Patrick’s legacy aren’t about shamrocks and green beer.

Sharon DiCecco, the centre’s Toronto chapter director, discovered the centre online while researching St. Patrick for one of her “Community in Concert” programs on Toronto’s HMWN Radio Maria last year. She started a “Young Friends of St. Patrick” club at Our Lady of Peace parish where  she meets monthly with a group of children ages four-10, teaching them about the different saints and engaging them in charity projects. She also connected 26 children in her parish who were preparing for their First Communion with first communicants in Downpatrick, where she visited in May.

The faith leaders meeting to discuss the G8 and G20 agendas are absolutely not going to bomb any banks and have rejected violent protest, said the Canadian Council of Churches in a news release.

On May 18 activists bombed a Royal Bank of Canada branch in Ottawa causing $500,000 damage. A group calling itself FFFC-Ottawa claimed responsibility.

“In light of the recent acts of violence in Ottawa and Toronto by those protesting the upcoming visit of the G8/G20 to Canada, the Canadian Council of Churches, a member of the 2010 InterFaith Partnership, reiterates its belief in the importance of dialogue and conversation and rejects violence as a medium of protest,” said the release sign by CCC general secretary and 2010 InterFaith Partnership chair Rev. Dr. Karen Hamilton.

TORONTO - When Susan Lavallée found her children would be forced to take Quebec’s controversial ethics and religious culture course, the 45-year-old felt she had to stand up for her religious rights as a Catholic parent.

It’s a fight the Drummondville mother of six is willing to take all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

“We’re hoping that they will take the case because it’s a very serious case and it’s a case of national interest,” said Lavallée.

TORONTO - The same-sex marriage debate. A controversial sex-ed program aimed at elementary students. YouTube videos exposing the desecration of the Eucharist.

These are some of the issues the Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) has dealt with in its mission to combat Catholic defamation in the media and public square over the past 25 years.

The league celebrated its silver anniversary at a June 10 gala in Toronto.

Established in 1985, the league is a national lay Catholic organization that works with media to ensure a fair hearing for Catholic positions on issues, lobbies the government and intervenes in court challenges supporting laws and policies that reflect Catholic understanding of the common good and human nature

At a pair of recent galas to recognize excellence in religious media, staff of The Catholic Register took home an impressive 13 prizes, including five first-place awards, covering a wide array of writing and design categories.

Six of the awards came at a gala dinner of the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada (CPA) held in New Orleans on June 4. Those awards followed seven honours taken by The Register at the Canadian Church Press (CCP) awards dinner in Toronto on May 28.

A Canadian Jesuit gunned down in 2001 standing by his rectory door in Jamaica will have his name attached to an AIDS clinic in Burundi.

“The decision to name this clinic after Martin Royackers has been motivated by two things,” said SYM director Jesuit Father Desire Yamuremye in an e-mail to The Catholic Register. “The principal one is that the centre is at the service of the poor living with HIV and AIDS. I think Martin Royackers was murdered while he was at the service of poor people. The second reason is that part of the funds came from the Canadian Jesuit province.”