Faith, finance and the bottom line
Canadian Catholic journalist Laura Ieraci is a bit of a “Jill of all trades” and when she is not editing, writing or shooting a film, she is coaching people to bring their faith and their finances into alignment.
London diocese pledges $1 million to save church
WINDSOR, ONT. – The Diocese of London has pledged $1 million towards the restoration of Ontario’s most historic Roman Catholic Church, mothballed due to safety concerns over the past four years and not in active use since 2004.
The many ways of giving
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.
A wall of secrecy doomed two successive fundraising campaigns to restore one of Canada’s most significant historical churches in Windsor, Ont., an independent inquiry has found.
Ontario cities target payday loan shops
The sin of usury has come to the attention of city planning committees across Ontario as they begin to craft zoning laws to control the spread of payday loan stores.
Bishop to South Sudan: Declare bankruptcy
JUBA, South – The head of the Sudan Catholic Bishops' Conference challenged South Sudan to admit it is bankrupt after it failed to raise the funds to host Independence Day celebrations for a third year running.
How to manage your student debt with a Catholic virtue
VATICAN CITY – After suspending an external audit led by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Vatican has signed a new contract with the auditing firm asking only that it provide assistance and consulting services.
Managing finances like a saint
TORONTO – Living in a materialistic world of impulse buying and celebrity culture, Quentin Schesnuik acknowledges how easily we are moved away from God. But by integrating faith with finances, we have the choice to treat our material possessions how God intends us to and to treat it in a healthier way.
VATICAN CITY – The Vatican's financial watchdog agency reported a huge jump in the number of financial transactions flagged as "suspicious" and in the value of assets it has blocked or frozen.
During 2015, the Financial Intelligence Authority "received 544 reports of suspicious activities — almost three times as many as 2014," it said in its annual report, released April 28.
Vatican suspends outside audit while reviewing contract
VATICAN CITY – Four months after announcing it had hired the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct an external audit of its finances, the Vatican has suspended the work underway.
An Italian journalist said he was given private documents by a Vatican official detailing problems with financial reforms and that he had a duty to publish them.
VATICAN CITY – The man who served as executive secretary of a commission Pope Francis established to study Vatican finances said he never gave documents of any kind to Italian journalists and, in fact, met the two reporters only when he and they entered a Vatican courtroom to face charges connected to the leaking of the documents.
VATICAN CITY – A former consultant to a pontifical commission vehemently denied giving private documents regarding the Vatican's financial reform to two journalists.
Does money lead to happiness?
TORONTO - Most Canadians are richer than their parents, far richer than their grandparents, infinitely richer than their great-grandparents. But are we happier for this?
For plenty of indebted, stressed and uncertain Canadians, their country’s rising Gross Domestic Product has not translated into a more meaningful, more satisfying life, either individually or on the level of community. How many can claim to live in a more harmonious, more confident community than the generation that endured the Great Depression and two World Wars?
What we measure matters. If our politics and our headlines are driven by the weekly, monthly and annual pulse of the GDP we end up living narrow, nervous lives on a shrinking and poisoned planet, according to Dennis Patrick O’Hara, a University of St. Michael’s College theology professor.