News/Toronto-GTA

WASHINGTON – Pope Francis has appointed Auxiliary Bishop Bawai Soro of the Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of St. Peter the Apostle in San Diego as bishop of the Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of Mar Addai of Toronto.

Bishop Soro, 63, has been an auxiliary bishop of the San Diego-based eparchy since the pope named him to the post in January 2014. He was ordained as a bishop in 1984, two years after his ordination to the priesthood.

The appointment was announced Oct. 31 in Washington by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

The bishop, a native of Iraq who came to the United States as a refugee in 1976, has spoken about the plight of displaced Iraqi Christians for years.

This past summer, at a news conference in Washington, he said the current situation for Christians in the Middle East remains fragile, as they suffer at the hands of radical Islamic groups.

"It is very unfortunate that Iraq as a country still lacks the certain constitutional amendments that guarantee liberty and equality to all Iraqis," he said. "It remains our dream that the Christians will not be second-class citizens in their own native homeland, Iraq. But instead, they will hopefully soon have equal social, economic, political, lives and statuses just as all Iraqis have."

In an interview with Catholic News Service in 1992, he lamented the plight of more than 50,00 Iraqi Christian refugees who fled their country along with hundreds of thousands of Kurds to escape the destruction unleashed by the Gulf War and Iraqi military operations against Kurdish rebels that followed.

"The future is unknown for these people," he said. "Mainly, they sit down and wait; they don't know what to do with their lives."

And in a 2004 interview, he told CNS that Christians and ethnic minorities have always played a "significant and civilized role" in the progress of Iraq, and sees the unification of Christians as even more crucial today. But he noted that the number of Christians in Iraq is dwindling.

Christians need to actively engage modern culture with "the profound wisdom of our faith tradition" to combat the emptiness and loneliness in our modern world, said Cardinal Thomas Collins.

Sr. Gwen Smith is singing about shoo-fly pie and apple pan dowdy.

Presentation Manor, a major new experiment in Catholic senior living, now has an executive director. Gord Perrault takes the reins of the 229-unit eldercare residence on Aug. 1.

Toronto Police have charged a St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church volunteer with sexual assaults on four people between the ages of 12 and 21.

It has been 27 years since the Sisters of St. Joseph relinquished control of Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, but the mission they began in 1892 hasn’t wavered.

Cardinal Thomas Collins believes the Archdiocese of Toronto’s founding bishop was a martyr and is a saint. On the occasion of the archdiocese’s 175th anniversary, Collins announced he plans to begin the process that could make it official.

TORONTO – If the news seems to be shouting at you and your Facebook feed is crowded with takedown artists, Fr. Frederico Lombardi has an alternative media diet you might want to consider.

After spending 40 years as an employee of Toronto’s Catholic school board, Angela Gauthier is retiring, but that doesn’t mean she won’t be heading to school when classes resume in September.