NEWS

{mosimage}With Montreal being home to the largest population of Haitians in Canada, the archdiocese of Montreal’s response to the Haiti earthquake has been four-fold.

First was Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte’s immediate call to prayer and action on the very day of the Jan. 12 humanitarian catastrophe. Next was the support and active promotion of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace’s fundraising campaign, which in two weeks had raised almost $2 million.

{mosimage}TORONTO - When Grade 9 student Jeremy Addoty spoke at a service in front of students and teachers at Brampton’s Cardinal Ambrozic High School, he appealed for prayers for missing relatives and those who survived the devastating Haitian earthquake.

Haitian-born St. Ignatius of Loyola High School teacher Pierre-Michel Laveau is also doing what he can to help friends and family cope after the disaster by sending money to those in need.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Close to 70 girls at a Catholic-run orphanage who survived Haiti’s devastating earthquake are sleeping on the streets of Port-au-Prince with little food and water and are still awaiting outside help since the disaster struck Jan. 12, says Frank Chauvin.

Chauvin, a retired police detective in Windsor, Ont., told The Catholic Register that three 18-year-old girls and one worker from his orphanage run by the non-profit organization Le Foyer des Filles de Dieu died after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti. But 67 girls at the orphanage and its director survived. At least 30 other children have joined them on the streets and are sharing their food and water.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II always took penitence seriously, spending entire nights lying with his arms outstretched on the bare floor, fasting before ordaining priests or bishops and flagellating himself, said the promoter of his sainthood cause.

Msgr. Slawomir Oder, postulator of the late pope’s cause, said Pope John Paul used self-mortification “both to affirm the primacy of God and as an instrument for perfecting himself.”

{mosimage}TORONTO - An internal LCBO review of how Mass wine gets from California to your parish’s altar has church suppliers a wee bit nervous, but the provincial wine merchant and regulator is trying to reassure everyone it is not going to reroute the grape vine.

A January freedom of information request by The Canadian Press uncovered internal Liquor Control Board of Ontario memos which decried “general non-compliance with rules and regulations” in the sacramental wine business.

{mosimage}TORONTO - With an assist from the United Nations, the Archdiocese of Toronto has sprung a 14-year-old refugee from a three-year bureaucratic purgatory of waiting for the government of Canada to act.

Within days of receiving a letter from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Canadian visa post in Accra, Ghana recognized Piratheeprajh SriVijayarajarajan, who had fled the civil war in Sri Lanka, as an urgent case and a week later had him on a plane to join family in Toronto. For four months Citizenship and Immigration officials at the Canadian embassy in Accra had insisted the boy refugee living alone in the West African city did not qualify for special treatment.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, archbishop of Toronto from 1990 to 2007, turns 80 Jan. 27.

Ambrozic, a resident at Providence Healthcare in Scarborough, has always valued his privacy and no public celebrations are planned for his birthday. The 5:30 p.m. Mass at St. Michael’s Cathedral on Jan. 27 will be offered for the intentions of the Cardinal.

TORONTO - With Haiti yet to emerge from the rubble, Christians didn't have to think hard to come up with a reason to pray hard and pray together at the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity ecumenical prayer service Jan. 24.

"We're called to reach out to assist those who suffer and to pray together (for the people of Haiti)," declared Archbishop Thomas Collins in his sermon at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, part of the ecumenical grouping of mid-town Toronto churches called the "Churches on the Hill." Along with two Anglican and five Protestant churches, the Yonge and St. Clair neighbourhood churches include Holy Rosary and Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Churches.

 

The arrest last fall of Bishop Raymond Lahey has refocused attention on sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. The Catholic Register examines the issue in this special report.

OTTAWA (CCN) — Investigative journalist Michael Harris has seen a “tremendous policy change” in the Catholic Church since he broke the story of sexual and physical abuse at the Mount Cashel orphanage in the late 1980s.
 
“There has been a true response to the real problem instead of musical parishes, private deals and checkbook dispensations,” said the author of Unholy Orders: Tragedy at Mount Cashel. “I have a good feeling that the next generation of Catholic priests will not be in this position.”

{mosimage}Jesuit novices Edmund Lo and Artur Suski of Toronto arrived in Haiti early in the new year to further their formation with a five-month teaching assignment. But after narrowly escaping injury in the Jan. 12 Haiti earthquake they have instead found themselves in the midst of a huge humanitarian relief operation.

“The Jesuits here, in collaboration with the Jesuits from the Dominican Republic, had been spearheading a relief effort, and this is what Artur and I will be doing for the near future,” Lo said through e-mail.