NEWS

TORONTO - Normally, Lillian Gomez of Toronto would not attend Mass on a Thursday but she did on Dec. 28. What compelled her to attend Mass that cold Thursday was the theme of the service.

TORONTO - Canadians are the third most generous people in the industrialized world, but only half as generous as Americans.

A spate of recent statistical reports on Canadian philanthropy draws a picture of a nation that opens its wallet, but not too wide.

TORONTO - There's no new money but there is a new name for the federal government's program to house the homeless across Canada.

OTTAWA - The Ontario Court of Appeal has recognized three parents in the case of a child being raised by a lesbian couple and has accorded equal rights and obligations to the lesbian partner in addition to the child's biological mother and father.

VATICAN CITY - Executing someone guilty of a crime "is not the way to restore justice and reconcile society," the Vatican spokesman said after Saddam Hussein was hanged Dec. 30.

OTTAWA - The president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has written Prime Minister Stephen Harper, raising a number of concerns in the wake of a failed motion to restore the traditional definition of marriage.

ROME - Unless the Catholic Church can show the world concrete models of male-female co-operation in positions of responsibility and decision-making, the church will continue to struggle against charges that it is chauvinistic, said Mary Ann Glendon.

TORONTO - Muslim cleric and scholar Shabir Ally's message to high school students with questions about terrorism is that theology matters.

Ally took about 200 high school students from across the Greater Toronto Area through a quick tour of the history of Muslim thought about war and peace. The students were at the University of St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, for the annual Brebeuf Social Justice Symposium on Dec. 15. Students from half a dozen Catholic schools converged downtown to question a variety of speakers gathered to address the topic  "When faith meets terror."

TORONTO - Instead of reflecting on the tradition of a Hindu marriage ceremony, Grade 11 World Religion students at Bishop Allen Academy in Toronto reflect on the question: "Why do I have to take this course?"

TORONTO - The man who is about to become one of the most powerful churchmen in Canada has no interest in the trappings of power.

Archbishop Thomas Collins has been a success as a seminary professor and rector, as a bishop in northern Alberta and as a metropolitan archbishop in Edmonton. Church insiders are not surprised Collins was appointed to lead Toronto, Canada's largest and richest Catholic diocese by Pope Benedict XVI on Dec. 16.