NEWS

{mosimage}TORONTO - There’s a mental health emergency in Toronto’s huge Tamil community.

Addictions and alcoholism, depression, family violence, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicides haunt the community as people struggle to cope with death and disappearance of their families back home in Sri Lanka.

The extraordinary stress on Toronto’s 150,000 Sri Lankan Tamils dates back to the Christmas 2004 tsunami that wiped out whole villages in the largely Catholic coastal areas. But just as Toronto’s Tamils began to recover from the grief of burying family and friends and seeing the places they grew up obliterated by the sea, the war then intensified along the same coastal strip.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Praying for the homeless on Thanksgiving Monday morning at Toronto’s Peace Garden, Ambrose declared himself God’s comedian.

The grey, five-degree morning was already cold enough to make a soul wince for those who slept outside the night before. Prayers were offered for Toronto’s street population and the homeless throughout the world. Ambrose joined the circle after having spent the previous night in front of the Thomson Building on Queen Street West, across the street from City Hall.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Economic experts may say the recession is over, but unemployed workers are still bearing the brunt of the economic crisis, say directors of Catholic-run agencies.

Good Shepherd Centre executive director Br. David Lynch said the centre has been “seeing more and more people than we’ve ever seen before.” He says there has been a 46-per-cent increase in demand for meals this year at his downtown shelter. The centre is serving an average of 1,100 daily meals and snacks, compared to 800 last year.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - U.S. President Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was met with high hopes from the Vatican spokesman.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi told journalists Oct. 9 that the news "was greeted with appreciation at the Vatican in light of the president's demonstrated commitment to promoting peace on an international level and, in particular, in recently promoting nuclear disarmament."

{mosimage}Bishop Raymond Lahey’s evasive behaviour coupled with a passport stamped with exotic locations known for child pornography prompted a Canadian Border Services agent to examine the contents of his laptop.

Lahey, 69, faces charges of possession and importation of child pornography in the form of “graphic computer images.”

{mosimage}OTTAWA - A sea of empty chairs on the floor and a virtually empty gallery greeted Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde’s opening speech on the first hour of debate on her bill to legalize assisted suicide Oct. 2. 

Only about 20 MPs were present, scattered along the margins.

“My conviction has grown stronger, and that is why I am introducing an amended bill on the right to die with dignity, Bill C-384,” said Lalonde. 

{mosimage}Internet-based allegations that the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace financed partners who have lobbied in favour of legalized abortion are a non-issue, the general secretary of the world-wide alliance of Catholic development agencies told The Catholic Register.

None of the Catholic development agencies in Europe — many of whom work with some of the same partner organizations in Latin America, Africa and Asia as Development and Peace — has been accused of collaborating with organizations that support legalized abortion, said CIDSE general secretary Bernd Nilles in a phone interview from Montreal.

{mosimage}TORONTO - If Christians and Muslims are going to talk, Christians are going to have to unlearn what they think they know about Muslims, particularly Muslim women, according to a Wilfred Laurier University professor of religion and culture.

From the images of protesting women in burkas to the idea Western armies can liberate women in Afghanistan, cliches and gross simplifications are overwhelming conversation, Meena Sharify-Funk told about three dozen students along with church and mosque representatives at the annual dinner of the National Muslim Christian Liason Committee held in the University of Toronto’s Multifaith Centre Oct. 1.

{mosimage}TORONTO - American Catholics who care about abortion and end-of-life issues are being cynically used in the bitter health care debate in the United States, one of the U.S.’s leading experts on Catholic health care has told The Catholic Register.

“It has partly to do with just political polarization between Democrats and Republicans in this country in the wake of the election of President (Barack) Obama,” said Dominican Father Charles Bouchard, vice president of theological education at Ascension Health in St. Louis.

{mosimage}TORONTO - It’s been a harrowing week for Faye Arellano as she worried about relatives in the Philippines hit by Typhoon Ketsana, the “Katrina of the Philippines.”

Close to 300 people died in and around Manila from the typhoon which struck on Sept. 26.

It dumped an average month’s worth of rain in one day in Greater Manila and displaced about half a million people. A week later, at least 22 people were killed by tropical storm Parma.