BANGALORE, India - Catholic bishops in India made some self-critical observations and also discussed moral decline and growing religious fundamentalism during their biennial assembly.

TORONTO - Toronto’s downtown Catholic campus chaplaincies came together to be visible witnesses of their faith on the streets.

It was a sight of beauty. Perhaps as beautiful a thing as I have ever seen. I saw it during morning rush hour on a freezing cold day in front of a busy Toronto bus stop. I was driving and fortunately the light turned red, allowing me to look more closely at what was taking place.

VATICAN CITY - Christmas is a reminder that through the birth of Christ, hope and peace are possible and that only through his grace can humanity find peaceful solutions to the world's most difficult problems, Pope Francis said.

TORONTO - After watching friends and families with children come together to create a Christmas tradition making decorative wreathes, Sarah Fairley finally decided to give it a go herself.

“What are you doing in this bad part of the city?”

I looked around and saw a young man bent over and out of breath, his rollerblade wheels still spinning in the dark of the evening.

He had seen my clerical collar.  The “bad part of the city” he referred to is a Toronto neighbourhood known as “the track,” where prostitution is open and drugs are barely concealed.

VATICAN CITY - The mission-oriented agencies of the Church must guard against operating like nongovernmental organizations, empty of Christ's presence, Pope Francis said.

Vowed life is a mystery, but only in the Catholic sense. There’s no mystery in the vows themselves. Poverty, chastity and obedience are pretty straightforward — no money, no sex, no turning your back on the demands of the community.

Jed Malitz appends V2 to the name of his art gallery in New Orleans’ Warehouse District. The V2 stands for “Version 2” — both in art and in life.

VATICAN CITY - In a moving ceremony that recalled how Jesus loved the world so deeply that He lowered Himself to serve and died for everyone's sins, Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 prison inmates, plus a small toddler who lives with his incarcerated mother.

Several years ago, Mel Gibson produced and directed a movie which enjoyed a spectacular popularity. Entitled The Passion of the Christ, the movie depicts Jesus’ paschal journey from the Garden of Gethsemane to His death on Golgotha, but with a very heavy emphasis on his physical suffering. The movie shows in graphic detail what someone who was being crucified might have had to endure in terms of being physically beaten, tortured and humiliated.

FRANKLIN, Tenn. - The Catholic Church needs men to fully commit to their faith, and men have all they need from God "to be a force" for the church, a former major league baseball player told a men's conference in Franklin.

Some are searching, some have found and some are sharing God’s love in a story that follows the apparently separate lives of a dozen people until they collide — literally — and their eyes are opened to the power of Christ’s cross.

PICKERING, ONT. - The youth of Holy Redeemer parish believe Christ is what Christmas is about, and it showed at Pickering’s Santa Claus Parade on Nov. 10.

The parish’s youth group entered its Keeping Christ in Christmas float in the annual parade this year.

The 23-metre-long float carried about 50 volunteers and included three key scenes. The choir of volunteers and the CFC-Youth For Family and Life GTA Music Ministry band were the angels of heaven, singing praise through traditional Christmas songs and upbeat Christian music. A traditional creche with the baby Jesus made up the second scene. And the third, a fireside family scene — Christmas tree included — had a mother and father telling the true story of Christmas to their kids.

The float, which was created as a witness to the Year of Faith, was the idea of Caroline Dupuis, who pitched it to her 16-year-old daughter Emma, Emma’s friends and parishioners.

Emma helped her mother oversee the entire project.

“I think especially in our society, Christmas has lost its true meaning,” Emma said,adding Christ has been lost in the secularization of the season.

“Without Jesus, nothing else really matters,” said Emma. “He came and it’s time to celebrate Him.”

Spreading the Catholic faith, encouraging community involvement and being a witness to others were some of the reasons for creating the float.

When she suggested the float’s theme, “Some people thought, ‘Oh my goodness, you’re crazy,’ ” said Emma.

Holy Redeemer pastor Fr. Morosco Lett and others in the parish community weren’t among those, and were very supportive of the youth group’s effort. The parish donated about $750 while the trailer was donated by a parishioner.

“A lot of the big things are being donated to us by generous people. So that’s helped immensely or we wouldn’t have funds to put something like this together,” she said.

Another parishioner built baby Jesus’ stable free of charge, and a construction team of volunteers put the rest of the float together.

“They’re all big strong men who are getting up at 6:30 in the morning on Saturday to help put all of the pieces together and to nail down the stable and everything,” said Emma.

With volunteers of varying age, the youngest being age five, Emma hoped kids watching the parade would see the float and think that “kids like me and kids my age or even older get excited about this kind of stuff.”

In turn, Emma would like this to inspire more youth to be involved and to know that “It’s not about Santa Claus and the presents,” but about Jesus too.

TORONTO - Bright lights, booming music and large crowds — there is no party quite like Nuit Blanche. For one night each year, the streets of downtown Toronto erupt in celebration of the city’s rich arts culture. This year the city’s Catholic community joined the party.

The Newman Catholic Students Club (NCSC) from the University of Toronto facilitated an all-night adoration at St. Thomas Aquinas Church Sept 29. They called the event Nuit Benoit, which translates to “Blessed Night.”

“Something on your heart? Spend some time with Christ,” read a small whiteboard easel on a quiet corner at St. George Street and Hoskin Avenue, inviting passersby to enter the church from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.

“This is the Year of Faith, the year of evangelization,” said Christina Alaimo, NCSC president. “We want something that can draw people’s attention. We want them to be seduced by Christ.”

Nuit Benoit is NCSC vice president Natasha Milavec’s brain 

child to counter the events of Nuit Blanche as part of the group’s new initiative.

Milavec recalls hearing the creak of the church’s large wooden doors and watching an adorer step out.

“He looked like he was just filled with the Spirit,” said Milavec. “He said that if he had known that this was here, he would’ve come sooner. I think that is what is most satisfying about this event. People’s faces just looked other worldly when they came out.”

More than 100 people attended the event and adored the Blessed Sacrament throughout the night. Many also participated in praise and worship and received the sacrament of Reconciliation.

As Nuit Benoit worked to act as a retreat from the city, the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) saw the evening as a platform to display its message to the community. Four exhibits were featured over the night.

John Notten, a teacher at Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School, presented an art piece for the third year in a row. This year’s piece, The NeXt Desk, was displayed at the Distillery District as part of Thom Sokolsky’s project, Dada Reboot. It is a 13-foot wheel of 20 classroom desks. “It’s mobile, interactive and interconnected,” said Notten.

The NeXt Desk is a symbol representing a new vision to integrate 21st-century technology more seamlessly into the school system.

“The notion of traditional education has been unchanged since the Industrial Revolution,” said Notten. “But in the 21st century, technology is forcing us to re-examine how we educate our kids today.”

Notten’s students understood the state of change in their own way. They called it “the state of flux.” Each student took a piece of a car and transformed it into something that represented their experiences. These individual pieces were then reformed on Yonge and Gould Street as the Fluxmobile.

“It’s a huge honour for the students. I’m so proud of them,” said Notten. “It took my whole life to get my art featured at Nuit Blanche and these 16- and 17- year-olds already have one.”

A second installation from Mary Ward, supervised by Marissa Largo, was located at Wychwood Theatre. Paralandscape is an art piece where people were instructed to take hold of a white parachute as images from Google Earth are projected onto the cloth. As the images shift, they shook the cloth to skew the landscape for “an interactive globetrotting adventure.”

St. Joseph’s College also had its own art piece called the Magic Window. Students collected 35mm unused slides from across the school board and projected them through the windows of their school. This “stained-glass quilt” displayed 50 years worth of traditional curriculum against the modern frame of the building.

(Din, 21, is a third-year journalism student at Ryerson University in Toronto.)