News/Canada

There was one happy Jesuit in the background of a lot of your favourite movies, TV shows and broadcast journalism through the last 40 years. Smiling Fr. Jack O’Brien didn’t produce The Fifth Estate, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Bon Cop Bad Cop or Law and Order. He did, however, produce the minds that made those shows great.

TORONTO - Fr. Hector Vila, rector of Toronto’s Redemptoris Mater Missionary Seminary, has been appointed the new bishop of Whitehorse.
Pope Francis announced the appointment on Nov. 27.

TORONTO - In 2010, Morgan Wienberg’s future was set: she was headed to McGill University to study nursing to specialize in pediatric surgery because she knew she wanted to work with children. But her plans were derailed when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti.

THORNHILL, ONT. - Every day Rami Kaai receives at least 50 phone calls from Christian refugees in the Middle East who plead for his help in coming to Canada.

The Knights of Columbus Sydney Council 1060 has brought the order’s prestigious Star Council Award to the shores of Nova Scotia.

OTTAWA - The fate of Andrew Bennett and the Office of Religious Freedom is up in the air as the office was not included in the Prime Minister’s mandate letter to the Foreign Affairs Minister. Government silence has advocates for religious freedom worried about where religious freedom stands with the new Prime Minister.

OTTAWA - Euthanasia opponents fear that the new Liberal government is “kowtowing” to the euthanasia lobby following new directions given to a federal panel that has been consulting Canadians on assisted suicide.

OTTAWA - Former Anglicans in the Ordinariates will celebrate according to their new missal, Divine Worship: The Missal, beginning the First Sunday of Advent.

MONTREAL - Quebec's new end-of-life care law will go into effect Dec. 10, and at least one of its 31 palliative care facilities announced that it will be offering medically induced death, or assisted suicide.

TORONTO - Toronto area Catholics are getting new destinations of pilgrimage with the designation of seven Holy Doors in parishes across the archdiocese for the upcoming Year of Mercy.