News/Canada

AMMAN, JORDAN - Wafi Youssif asked his daughter Raghda not to go to church because churches had been bombed for years. She told her dad: “If I have to die, I don’t mind dying in church.”

Raghda did. She bled to death in Baghdad’s Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic Church, Oct. 31 last year, only 40 days after her wedding day. Terrorists stormed the church during Mass, locked the doors, cut the electricity and began their killing spree.

Wafi and Jinan Youssif told me the story of their 22-year-old daughter in their Amman apartment where they lived since fleeing Baghdad. They showed me the near-perfect grades she earned studying for her PhD in chemical engineering, the plaque she was given for representing the Syriac Catholic youth community at a National Eucharistic Congress in Amman and the photos of her crowning the statue of Mary in May at their church in 2008.

TORONTO - Ontario’s first Italian Heritage Month kicks off on June 2 and will pay homage to the Italian Canadian community’s cultural and religious heritage.

Michael Tibollo, president of the National Congress of Italian Canadians, formally introduced the line-up of Italian Heritage Month featuring exhibits, lectures, concerts and other festivities throughout the GTA at a May 11 press conference at Queen’s Park.

“One of the pillars of the Italian culture has always been the religious aspect of it,” Tibollo told The Register after the announcement.

Coming on the heels of Mother’s Day, Deborah Morlani believes the timing couldn’t be more right for the National March for Life.

"It’s perfect timing for women to be showing that they’re proud to be mothers and that motherhood is a blessing," Morlani, a pro-life speaker and Catholic writer, told The Catholic Register.

The annual National March for Life takes place in Ottawa May 11 through 13, mere days after Mother’s Day. This year’s theme is "Abortion kills a human being." The aim of the march is to promote respect for life at all stages, from conception to natural death.

Morlani, along with taking part in the march, will be among the guest speakers at the march’s youth conference on May 13.

"I was conceived in rape when my mother was raped when she was 16, so I’ll be sharing my testimonial with youth," she said. The title of her talk is "Every human being deserves a chance at life: no exceptions."

ANTIGONISH, N.S. - Antigonish Bishop Brian Dunn called it a sad day for his Nova Scotia diocese as he spoke to media a day after former Bishop Raymond Lahey plead guilty to possession of child pornography charges.

It was the first time that Dunn, or the diocese, had commented on Lahey’s legal situation since charges of possession and importation of child pornography were laid in September 2009.

"This is indeed a very sad day as we witness one of our Church leaders convicted of these very serious charges connected with child pornography," Dunn said in his opening statement.

"As a Church, we condemn pornography in all its forms since it seriously degrades humanity. We especially find repugnant any forms of child sexual exploitation because of the lasting consequences that these have on the gift of childhood."

OTTAWA — Bishop Raymond Lahey pleaded guilty to the importation of child pornography May 4 and went directly to jail after he asked the judge to be incarcerated while awaiting his sentence hearing.

The former Bishop of Antigonish, N.S., faced two child porn charges, but the Crown and defence counsel agreed to drop the more serious charge of possession of child pornography for the purpose of transmission. Lahey's lawyer told the court there was no distribution involved.

Lahey faces a minimum mandatory sentence of one year in jail and possibly up to 10 years.

He also faces dismissal from the clerical state, or defrocking as it was once known, from the Vatican. In a statement yesterday, the Vatican restated its condemnation of sexual exploitation in all its forms, particularly crimes against minors.

"Although the civil process has run its course, the Holy See will continue to follow the canonical procedures in effect for such cases, which will result in the imposition of the appropriate disciplinary or penal measures," said the statement.

He's still a bishop and the proper title is still "The Most Reverend" Raymond Lahey, but the former bishop of Antigonish, a confessed hoarder of child porn, is very likely to set canon law history by being dismissed from the clerical state.

New norms to deal with priests who use child pornography became Church law just a year ago. In May 2010 a new list of grave acts to be judged by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) included the possession, acquisition or distribution of pornographic images of a minor under 14 years old for the purposes of sexual gratification by whatever means and using whatever technology.

Lahey is likely be the first bishop transferred to the lay state (defrocked) as a punishment for possessing child porn after he pled guilty to charges in an Ottawa courtroom May 4.

It's hard to say how long it will take, but the congregation has a clear mandate from Pope Benedict XVI to prosecute such cases, said Chad Glendinning, a canon law professor at Ottawa's Saint Paul University.

OTTAWA - When the producer of the pro-life movie Bella saw a video of police handcuffing Ruth Lobo and four other students and pushing them into a police wagon, he wept.

Lobo, who heads up Carleton Lifeline, the university’s pro-life club, her fiancé James Shaw and three others were arrested for trespassing last fall on Ottawa’s Carleton University campus after trying to mount a Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) display of photographs comparing abortion to genocide.

“When I saw that officer just ignore the rule of law, I began to cry,” said Jason Jones, who spoke April 30 at a fundraiser for Lobo, Shaw and the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform at Notre Dame Cathedral. The Calgary-based pro-life organization created the GAP project

Jones produced the acclaimed film Bella, a small budget film that drew rave reviews when it was released in 2008. It also took the People’s Choice Award at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. The film tells the story of a young unmarried waitress fired from her job after she becomes pregnant and the cook who commits to helping her and ultimately convinces her to have the baby.

At Our Lady of the Rosary Shrine in Merlin, Ont., you’ll find trails dedicated to the rosary, saints, approved apparitions and the Stations of the Cross. And helping you through these trails, you’ll also find three monks from Sri Lanka — the very first of their order to come to Canada.

Since last July, Fr. Francis Jeyaseelan, Shrine director, and two other monks from Sri Lanka, Frs. Arulthas Mariyanayagam and Anthony Kamalathasan, have been living in a monastery on the grounds of Our Lady of the Rosary Shrine. Members of the Rosarian Order, a contemplative order, this is their first foundation outside of India and Sri Lanka. The order was founded by Fr. Bastiampillai Anthony Thomas in 1928 in Sri Lanka.

“The Congregation of the Rosarians in their General Chapter in 2006 decided to extend their monastic and prayer apostolate to other parts of the world in order to give a witnessing life of prayer and penance,” Jeyaseelan told The Catholic Register.

The Rosarians also strive to do reparation for the sins of the world by praying before the exposed Blessed Sacrament, he said.

Bishop Richard Grecco and the diocese of Charlottetown no longer own all the Catholic parishes in Prince Edward Island.

The diocese of Charlottetown, which covers all 49 parishes on Prince Edward Island, has reorganized itself so each parish is now separately incorporated as a non-profit, charitable corporation. In the old “corporation sole” arrangement, the parishes were, legally speaking, the property of the diocese, and thus of the bishop.

This kind of corporate reorganization has been gradually taking place across Canada since a Dec. 14, 2005 letter from then-apostolic nuncio Archbishop Luigi Ventura to Canada’s bishops asking them to abandon the corporation sole and bring their corporate structures into line with the Church’s 1983 Code of Canon Law.

The big motivator for the change has been the recent history of lawsuits and bankruptcies over sexual abuse cases.

“If there is a court case and the court demands a huge sum, they demand that the diocese use all its assets to pay it,” explained Grecco. “Well, the parishes belong to the diocese’s assets.”

The Canadian Catholic Campus Ministry (CCCM) has been recognized as a national private association of the faithful according to the Code of Canon Law by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

CCCM is now one of only two national associations to be recognized as a private lay association of the faithful by the Canadian bishops. The Catholic Women’s League was recognized in 2005.

“We are honoured to have been recognized in this way by the bishops,” said Fr. Daniel Renaud, CCCM board chair.