News/Canada

About 200 Jesuits and their lay collaborators gathered at Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ont., from July 27 to 31 to “remember and renew without counting the cost.”

The congress for the Jesuits in English Canada celebrated the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Jesuits to Canada on May 22, 1611.

“We decided that we would use this celebration not only to remember this foundational event but also to gather all the Jesuits from English Canada plus those who work with us in significant roles in our ministries across the country,” said Fr. Erik Oland, a member of the organizing committee which began meeting about two years ago to plan the congress.

In addition, a substantial delegation of French Canadian Jesuits and one member of the Hungarian Jesuits in Canada were in attendance.

OTTAWA - Conservative MP Joy Smith plans to introduce five pieces of legislation to combat human trafficking, including a change in prostitution laws to punish men who buy sex, particularly from underage women.

“What I want to do is target the market,” she said.

Though the details of her legislation are embargoed, Smith said she likes the Nordic model that treats the women and children involved in prostitution as victims and criminalizes the men who buy sex or make money off exploiting prostitutes. Penalties could include fines and/or jail time.

The Nordic model was adopted after hard evidence showed the harms that developed in some countries that had tried legalizing prostitution, she said. Legalized prostitution leads to an increase in violence against women, increase in child rape and child pornography, and a rise in human trafficking, she said.

OTTAWA - At Bishop Raymond Lahey’s sentencing hearing here Aug. 4, his lawyers tried to show his child porn collection was smaller, less sophisticated and less hard-core than others examined by an Ottawa Police detective.

Detective Andrew Thompson, who found 588 child porn images, 60 videos and a file containing fictional stories on the bishop’s laptop and other devices, agreed Lahey’s collection was smaller than some he had investigated which had included hundreds of thousands of illegal images. And while Thompson agreed many of Lahey’s images were on the soft-core end of the spectrum, showing adolescent boys in nude poses, he stressed some were “quite graphic” and included “torture and stuff like that.”

The expert in child pornography investigations and computer forensics admitted he has seen worse child pornography than those in Lahey’s collection, but some of the bishop’s worst images “were right up there.” None of the material depicted infants, for example, but “the explicit images of torture are disturbing,” he said.

He told the court that the unusual combination of images, videos and stories showed that “Mr. Lahey has gone out and searched for stuff like that.”

Archbishop Francis John Spence, former archbishop of Kingston, died peacefully in his Kingston, Ont., home on the morning of July 27 at the age of 85.

Archbishop Spence, a former president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), served as a priest for 61 years and as a bishop for 44. In 2002, after two decades of leading the archdiocese of Kingston, he retired.

“As an archdiocese, we thank God for the gift of Archbishop emeritus Spence and his unfailing service and witness throughout the years of his priesthood and episcopacy,” read a statement from the archdiocese of Kingston.

Archbishop Spence was born in Perth, Ont., in 1926. After his ordination in 1950, he spent two years as an associate pastor at Kingston's St. Mary’s Cathedral, where he was the secretary to the archbishop of Kingston. In 1955, Archbishop Spence earned a doctorate in canon law from the Angelicum University in Rome after three years of study. After returning to Kingston, he fulfilled a variety of responsibilities and attended the Second Vatican Council, until his appointment as a bishop in 1967.

TORONTO - “No snail mail: Who cares?” read a newspaper headline on the morning of June 3, when Canada Post began its rotating postal strikes. It may have been a sentiment shared by many Canadians, but certainly not by registered charities.

For them, it was a “nightmare,” according to Jim Hughes, president of Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), a pro-life charity that simply wouldn’t be able to operate without mail donations.

“We rely upon donations of up to $5,000 a day in order to keep our doors open,” said Hughes, adding that, conservatively, CLC lost $75,000 worth of donations as a result of the strike.

Donations that weren’t sent in June were not made once postal workers were sent back to work on June 27, he said. Instead of having regular contributors “double up” their gifts, the donations were simply lost.

TORONTO - Bishop Paul Marchand, S.S.M., of the Diocese of Timmins, Ont. died of natural causes on July 23 while on summer vacation.

A “humble” priest with a collaborative pastoral approach, Bishop Marchand headed the Diocese of Timmins at a challenging time of declining numbers of parishioners and priests in the community.

“He was a very collaborative-oriented person. He really believed in the role and responsibility of the laity,” said Fr. Pat Lafleur, rector of Timmins' St. Anthony of Padua Cathedral.

“He was in a difficult position because we have a shortage of priests up here that is rather pronounced,” he added.

There are currently about 14 priests, at least half of whom are from outside the diocese, Lafleur said.

During his tenure, Marchand had to make difficult decisions such as closing five parishes because many residents were moving out of the community and there was a decline in church attendance and vocations to the priesthood.

OTTAWA - Novalis Publishing celebrated its 75th anniversary at Ottawa’s Saint Paul University July 7 at a reception to honour its authors, editors and past and present staff.

Novalis began in 1936 when Oblate Father André Guay, who founded the Catholic Centre at the University of Ottawa, began publishing pamphlets to help ordinary Catholics better understand their faith in a post-Depression era.

“No organization can achieve the kind of success Novalis has had in 75 years without truly caring and committed people,” said Novalis’ publishing director Joseph Sinasac. “From André Guay until now, Novalis benefited from a tremendous amount of wisdom, of passion, of talent, of devotion from its staff writers, editors and many, many friendly collaborators.”

Guay recognized the way ordinary Catholics lacked an understanding of their faith, said Celebrate Magazine editor Bernadette Gasslein.

McLENNAN, Alta. - The archdiocese of Grouard-McLennan plans to move its offices from the town of McLennan into Grande Prairie.

The move is motivated primarily by transportation and staffing needs, says Archbishop Gerard Pettipas.

“In spite of the cordial welcome and genuine support I have enjoyed in McLennan since becoming archbishop, I have become increasingly aware that this is not the most suitable location for me and the chancery offices at this point in our history,” the archbishop says in a recent letter to Catholics in the northwestern Alberta diocese.

“I have thus began to look seriously at a move to Grande Prairie, which provides the only air transportation by national carriers within the archdiocese, as well as a suitable large population base from which to hire office staff.”

McLennan is a small agricultural community of about 825 people.

Associate Editor Michael Swan of The Catholic Register was recently awarded one first-place and two second-place prizes for outstanding writing at the annual awards banquet of The Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada.

In total, The Register won five awards in the North American wide competition of Catholic newspapers. Those honours follow the 14 awards, including best religious newspaper in Canada, The Register won earlier this year at the Canadian Church Press awards ceremony.

Swan’s first-place prize was in the category of Best Personality Profile for a front-page feature titled “Deacon Judge Rules with Conviction.” [read article here]

It explored how Alf Stong, a deacon in the Church, relies on his Catholic values in adjudicating the law.

OTTAWA - Montreal auxiliary Bishop-elect Christian Lépine never envisioned becoming a bishop, or even a priest, though as a child he wondered about becoming a saint.

Growing up in 1950s Quebec, when the whole province was steeped in the Catholic faith, Lépine recalls kneeling at the age of five with his French-Canadian family every evening and reciting the rosary “like all of Quebec.” He recalls reading the lives of the saints when he was eight. “I was not thinking so much of being a priest, but I was thinking about being a saint,” he joked.

The oldest of four brothers and one sister, Lépine remained certain he would marry. It wasn’t until he was 25, sitting in his favorite rocking chair at Christmas, wondering what he was searching for, that he entertained the thought of becoming a priest. “What am I thinking about?” he wondered.

By then he had attended the Royal Military College in Saint-Jean, pursued an engineering degree at the École Polytechnique in Montreal and, after a year working at an engineering firm, returned to school to study economics and politics. He decided to wait for a couple of months to see if the desire for priesthood remained strong.