Features/Features

WATERLOO, Ont. - An educational program at St. Jerome’s University transports students beyond educational, personal and emotional borders, combining the classroom with service to others.

Beyond Borders began during the 2005/06 school year as a way of helping students put their education into practice by travelling to and working abroad. The program, which runs for three terms, comprises three academic courses, fund-raising and a home stay and work placement co-ordinated through one of Beyond Borders’ international network of partners.

TROMSO, Norway - Norway’s Catholic parish of Var Frue Kirke (The Church of Our Lady) in Tromso may well be the most northerly Catholic church and most northerly Catholic cathedral in the world. It’s located 400 kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, at a latitude of almost 70 degrees, similar to Siberia. (There’s a Catholic mission house in the Canadian hamlet of Arctic Bay, Nunavut, at a latitude of over 73 degrees, but technically it’s not a church).

{mosimage}TORONTO - Among the 33 principals chosen for this year’s Canada’s Outstanding Principals Award were four Catholics from across Ontario.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The Catholic Church’s historic mission to the native people of Canada is a big issue, and getting bigger. For the first time Statistics Canada reports there are more than one million Canadians who claim native ancestry. The aboriginal population grew 45 per cent between 1996 and 2006 — six times the growth in the Canadian population as a whole.

{mosimage}TORONTO - There’s more to the modern practice of capitalism than squeezing costs to watch the bottom line grow, according to the company that sells some of the most expensive electricity in Canada.

Toronto-based Bullfrog Power has hundreds of business customers in Ontario and Alberta willing to spend three cents per kilowatt hour more for electricity than average rates. That’s a 25- to 30-per-cent increase in their electricity bill.

{mosimage}THUNDER BAY, Ont. - Lakehead University Life Support was officially denied club status on campus on Jan. 10.

That decision, made by the university’s student union, was based on a poster campaign which some students found offensive.

{mosimage}If you pray for something for 100 years you might find the prayer refines itself in the light of new realities, and then perhaps the prayer itself deepens your understanding and broadens your horizon.

{mosimage}MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - There will be no more sweating it old school in Catholic schools west of Toronto. The Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board has passed a no-sweat policy for school uniforms, team jerseys and employee clothing.

{mosimage}Editor’s note: To mark the 150th anniversary of Mary’s appearance to St. Bernadette Soubirous near Lourdes, France, Pope Benedict XVI has authorized a special indulgence to encourage renewed holiness. Pilgrims visiting the Massabielle grotto, where Mary appeared to St. Bernadette, can receive the indulgence during the Lourdes jubilee year, which runs from Dec. 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, until Dec. 8, 2008. Pilgrims who visit any public sanctuary, shrine or other worthy place dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes may receive the indulgence Feb. 2-11. Feb. 11 is the day the first of 18 apparitions occurred and is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Feb. 2 is the feast of the Presentation of the Lord. The following is a reflection on the deeper meaning of the great shrine at Lourdes.

There are few pilgrimage places on Earth where one can experience the mystery of the cross and the meaning of redemptive suffering at the heart of the Christian life. Lourdes is one of those places.

{mosimage}Despite a recommendation from its own review committee that The Golden Compass continue to be available to students in Grade 7 and above, the Halton Catholic District School Board has banned the book from all its libraries.