NEWS

{mosimage}A private members’ bill to establish a Canadian Department of Peace will soon be before Parliament, perhaps as early as the fall.

British Columbia MP Bill Siksay jumped on board the six-year-old campaign advocating for a Department of Peace just a few years ago, and recently volunteered to write the legislation for the private members’ bill he hopes to table in September.

{mosimage}TORONTO - It was just after Sunday Mass when missionaries-in-training Maggie and Mark Banga learned about the military coup in Honduras.

Although it was an abrupt ending to their mission work, the Bangas say this experience has taught them invaluable lessons about missionary life.

The 30-year-old couple, parishioners at Toronto’s Newman Centre, had been volunteering with Mission Honduras International, a U.S.-based Catholic Franciscan charity in Comayagua, northwest of Honduras’ capital Tegucigalpa since April. The Bangas were teaching kids English and about computers at a local school. Maggie was also working with single mothers who were learning how to make and sell rosary bracelets The couple was scheduled to finish the placement in mid-July when the coup happened.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Corazon “Cory” Aquino’s courage in standing up to a feared dictator, says Toronto-based journalist Hermie Garcia, is what many Filipino Canadians admired about the late Philippines president. Mrs. Aquino, 76, died Aug. 1 after a year-long battle with colon cancer.

Garcia, the founding editor of Toronto’s The Philippine Reporter , said Mrs. Aquino’s death saddens many Filipinos in Toronto.

{mosimage}VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI deplored the killing of eight Christians in Pakistan by a Muslim mob and urged the minority Christian community not to be deterred by the attack.

The Christians, including four women and a child, were either shot or burned alive Aug. 1 when a crowd attacked the eastern Pakistani town of Gojra, setting fire to dozens of Christian homes. Authorities said tensions were running high in the area, fueled by a false rumour that a Quran, the sacred book of Islam, had been desecrated.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Getting individual bishops or bishops' conferences to sign off on more than $16 million worth of projects is complicated, but Canada's Catholic development agency is willing to get those signatures and reassure the bishops it's working with the church when it chooses partners.

"The good news is that we're dialoguing on this," said Michael Casey, executive director of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace. "They've expressed their support for Development and Peace."

{mosimage}ROME - Closing the year of St. Paul, Pope Benedict XVI announced that tests done on the presumed tomb of the Apostle revealed the presence of bone fragments from a human who lived between the first and second century.

"This seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that they are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul," the Pope said during an evening prayer service June 28 at Rome's Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.

{mosimage}KABUL, Afghanistan - In the midst of the escalating war in Afghanistan, there is a place of peace for Kabul's tiny Catholic population.

Inside the Italian Embassy compound visitors will find a small white building marked simply with a cross. Its guardian is the shepherd of Kabul, Barnabite Father Giuseppe Moretti.

A warm 70-year-old Italian with graying hair and a sharp sense of humour, Moretti is the only full-time priest in Afghanistan.

{mosimage}OTTAWA  - A New Brunswick newspaper has apologized for a July 8 story that wrongly accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of pocketing Communion at a Catholic funeral.

The story also said a senior Roman Catholic priest had demanded the prime minister explain what happened to the Host.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Qiuhua Chen had never seen a homelessness memorial before.

The 27-year-old came to Canada last October, having converted to Catholicism more than a year ago. She said there aren’t similar memorials in her hometown of Fujin City, northeast of Beijing, China.

{mosimage}TORONTO - At 82, Bernard Scanlan has a new job. Known as “roving editor” of Around the Houses, the Providence Healthcare resident newsletter, Scanlan can be seen roaming the hallways of the Cardinal Ambrozic Houses of Providence, on the lookout for a good story.

On this day Scanlan is all smiles, with black notebook and gold pen in hand, looking eager to get started on the next article.

“I love doing it,” said Scanlan. “I never turn down a good story.”