There already were a few children in line making a bowl of cereal or waiting for the toaster to pop when Jazmin Torres burst through the basement doors at 7:42 a.m. St. Paul’s Basilica in the Corktown neighbourhood of East Toronto.

Stocks, bonds and mutual funds make great gifts — just ask the parishioners at St. Patrick’s in downtown Toronto.

An estate gift to your parish or favourite charity can be your way of expressing what was important in your life. What follows are some of the ways people choose to remember charities in their estate plan.

For many Toronto-area Catholics, the Family of Faith campaign may be a distant memory, or it may be a memory that comes back once a month as their pledge makes its regular visit to their bank account.

If you die without a Will, you are considered to have died “intestate.” While dying intestate does not mean your estate goes to the government, it does mean that you lose the ability to decide who will benefit from, and manage, your estate.

In this digital age, it is the rare person who does not have some form of digital footprint. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others are part of everyday life for most people.

You can tell a lot about a person by what’s in their Will.

Having an outdated Will can be as harmful as having no Will at all.

“Caring for those who always cared for us.”

Blessed Frédéric Ozanam Parish still has a long way to go but it is one step closer to moving out of a gym and having a church of its own, thanks to the generosity of a Markham parishioner.

Newman Centre chaplain Fr. Peter Turrone had no idea where the Toronto parish was going to get the money to fund a huge renovation project.

On July 18, 2017 the Department of Finance introduced proposed changes to the Income Tax Act that are very far reaching and affecting all Canadians who use private corporations, including many family businesses and incorporated professionals. The changes proposed were the most dramatic since the introduction of capital gains taxation in 1971.   

My dear friends,

It is never easy to discuss funeral and burial arrangements with loved ones. Yet as Catholics, it is important that we learn and appreciate how our legacy of faith can be embraced in every moment of our journey, even in death.  

You can’t be prepared for every hurdle in life. But for those things you can anticipate, why not have all your ducks in a row by planning ahead?

Things certainly could have turned out differently for Brendan Clarke had he not been raised in a family well-grounded in the Catholic faith.