TORONTO - St. Brigid’s parish just north of Danforth Avenue in Toronto’s east end doesn’t just believe in miracles. They are witnessed there weekly.

On Monday nights through the school year, St. Brigid’s invites the Special Olympics into the school gym, right next door to the church. Accompanied by Grade 8 student volunteers from St. Brigid’s Catholic School, an average of about a dozen Special Olympians and their parents play basketball, variations on tag and duck-duck-goose.

It’s an hour-and-a-half of fun, but it’s serious fun.

Intellectually disabled athletes as old as 12 and 13 have spoken their first words at Special Olympics, said coach and organizer Linda Ward.

“It’s like something unlocked,” she said.

“It’s very important for kids,” said Ariel Samuel-Charles’ mother Marina. “Ariel has Down’s Syndrome and it’s very important to keep her active.” The free program that allows 13-year-old Ariel to play and socialize comes as a welcome relief for Marina.

“Most programs are very expensive,” she said. Horseback riding, basketball and weekly swimming lessons for Ariel eat up a big chunk of the family budget, but they’re still not enough, said Marina.

Often the people who appreciate the miracles on the gym floor most are parents. “To see their kids laugh and having fun like everybody else, it’s like a vacation,” said Ward. “It’s all they want for their kids.”

Lina Cornacchi has seen her son Luigi learn new words at the age of 41. The program improves his balance, his co-ordination and his mood.

When asked why the parish should be involved in Special Olympics, Fr. Carlos Augustos Sierra Tobon just points to Luigi. On Sunday mornings after Mass, Luigi’s first question to Tobon is about Special Olympics. Every week he wants to be sure the program is on.

“Luigi has learned new words and new games,” said Lina. “When he knows all the new people, he’s very happy.”

The experience isn’t just new and exciting for the Special Olympians. Student volunteer Jack Kelly found the experience eye-opening.

“I didn’t know what to expect. You learn patience, definitely,” said Kelly. “It’s a different experience. I’ve never been around kids like this before.”

Without Special Olympics Geoffrey Fantaske’s life has a tendency to become much more narrow.

“He’s all too happy to get on his little iPad 15 hours a day,” said Ward.

Ward is really looking forward to this fall, when the St. Brigid’s Special Olympics program will go into its second year. Now she has a core of Special Olympians who have experienced the basics and may be ready to move on to more complex and competitive activities.

“It will be immediate, that trust factor,” she said.

Eventually the St. Brigid’s Special Olympians will have the opportunity to compete at regional, national and international Special Olympics.

TORONTO - Christian artists over the past couple of millennia have understood you can paint a picture about God but you can’t paint God. In Florence in the first half of the 14th century artists discovered a whole new way of talking about God — new techniques, new subject matter, new insights which taken together became the Italian Renaissance.

This spring the Art Gallery of Ontario invites us into Florence in the decades before 1348 — the year the black plague wiped out 60 per cent of the population. “Revealing the Renaissance: Art in Early Florence” will bring together altar pieces and manuscripts directly from Florentine churches, the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the AGO. Co-produced by the AGO and the Getty, this major new exhibition runs March 16 to June 16, 2013.

“The show is irreducibly about faith,” said AGO curator Sasha Suda. “The stories of the Christian faith are certainly being told in the works of art and that’s certainly important to many people. That will speak to them. That will be crucial to them in the experience of the show.”

The Italian Renaissance, more than any other art movement, stocked the shelves of Christian imagination in the West with images of what angels, the Blessed Virgin, Jesus and the saints are supposed to look like. Our mental pictures of heaven, hell and purgatory were first painted in Florence. This art was a clear break from the static, two-dimensional, flat images of previous centuries.

From the late 1200s to the mid-13th century there was a revolution taking place in Florentine workshops fueled by new money, culture wars, globalizing trade and easy credit. It was, said Suda, an age of anxiety and an age of possibility.

“It’s a show about faith in art to communicate anxieties, fears, hopes and most of all desire,” she said.

The mendicant orders, first Dominicans and then Franciscans, had been established more than a century earlier. By the beginning of the 14th century the orders were a force throughout Europe. In Florence they were each building a major basilica. The Dominicans were erecting Santa Maria Novella at one end of the city and the Franciscans had Santa Croce at the other.

“They are kind of in this competition with each other, with each putting their particular mendicant ways of life forward,” said Getty Museum curator Christine Sciacca.

The friars had something to say about the ultimate purposes of wealth and power which stood in opposition to the corrupt, self-aggrandizing wealthy families of the city — the families that Dante Alighieri was skewering in the Divine Comedy, written in Florence in the years leading to Dante’s death in 1321.

The mendicants were employing every artist they could find to carry their message. Giotto di Bondone, Bernardo Daddi, Pacino di Bonaguida and an army of others produced manuscripts, panel paintings, architectural designs and more for the new churches and for confraternities of lay people who attached themselves to the orders. The new art expressed the civic pride of Florentines who, thanks to trade across the Mediterranean with the emerging Ottoman Empire, were enjoying new wealth from expanding banking and textile industries.

While the Florentines were certainly proud of their city and not averse to flaunting their wealth, they had doubts. What was all this money doing to their souls? How was this new wealth leading them toward or away from ultimate salvation?

“With the mendicant orders, a really rich spiritual culture lives alongside and thrives alongside this more secularized practice and usage of religious art,” said Suda.

The Franciscans and Dominicans became closely associated with humanism, the literary and philosophical movement at the base of the Renaissance.

“(Humanism) is reflected in the art of the time, where instead of the gothic cathedrals where man was lost in the infinity of God we have an architecture based on human proportions,” said Dominican art historian Fr. Marius Zerafa in an e-mail to The Catholic Register. “Instead of the symbolism of Byzantine art we have the representation of biblical events, lives of the saints and eventually portraits of men and women.”

Franciscan and Dominican preachers urged people to enter the life of Christ by every means possible — from creche scenes assembled on hillsides to evocative preaching. They commissioned art with the same purpose.

“You have people like Giotto... making the scenes much more believable, using three dimensions so you get sort of sucked into that scene, so you can imagine all the details happening right in that one scene,” said Sciacca. “It was a very visceral thing.”

The literary precursor of Giotto’s paintings was the Meditationes de Vita Christi by Pseudo-Bonaventura, an anonymous Franciscan.

“In the early 14th century people are way more interested in this idea that there could be a correlation between their own lives and Scripture,” said Suda.

“That’s why you get the narrative painting taking off as well, because you could stand in front of these paintings and it becomes an experience of what was happening,” said Sciacca.

Sciacca and Suda’s study of 14th-century Florence has mapped out a crucial link between manuscript illumination and larger panels painted for display in churches. Pacino di Bonaguida pioneered new techniques and materials that made their way into both miniature book illustrations and large paintings.

From one age of anxiety to another, these 700-year-old works have power over 21st-century viewers, said Sciacca.

“They’re just going to react to beauty, first of all,” she said. “But on top of that they’re going to know these stories by looking at these different scenes — just by looking.”

These aren’t pictures just to be analysed by esthetic purists. They are part of the spiritual life of the Church.

“A lot of these things are coming from churches where they still are in use. That’s going to be really interesting. They still live and breathe as religious objects.”

Half-a-million people stuck in evacuation centres while their Manila-area homes are underwater are getting a helping hand from Development and Peace.

The development arm of Canadian Catholics is sending $100,000 to help its Filipino partners – Caritas Philippines, Urban Poor Associates and the Centre for Environmental Concern – deal with Manila-area flooding. A month of unrelenting rain has displaced close to three million Filipinos. Caritas estimates 1.1 million flood refugees are staying with family or friends, but another 500,000 are in schools, government buildings and community centres.

Typhoon Saola began dumping heavy rain in the Philippines July 28. The typhoon was followed by seasonal monsoon rains. The government claims illegal settlements along creek beds have made the situation worse.

The flood crisis has sparked another round of debate about relocating slum dwellers in Manila. But for Caritas-Philippines and its National Secretariat for Social Action, the question is what to do right now.

As of Aug. 10 the Caritas emergency fund known as Alay Kapwa Fund stood at just 2.4 million pesos, or $56,000.

"Aside from launching local appeal to the dioceses, NASSA Caritas-Philippines is also tapping international partners to join us in conducting the emergency response," said a NASSA Caritas-Philippines report.

Toronto's sizable Filipino community is also coming together to help with a fundraiser Saturday, Aug. 17 at Our Lady of the Assumption, 2565 Bathurst St. 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The parish is using its patronal feast to collect non-perishable food, over-the-counter medicine and money. Contributions will go directly to Caritas Philippines.

Aid is getting to displaced Christians fleeing the fighting in Syria, but there's no telling how Syria's Christian minority will cope as fighting shifts and the country's new reality takes shape.

"Based on our frequent contacts with our partners in Syria, I can say that they are still able to meet the demand (for emergency shelter, food, medicine and clothing). However, the question is for how long?" Issam Bishara, Catholic Near East Welfare Association regional director, told The Catholic Register in an e-mail from Beirut.

Numbers of internal refugees are on the rise as fighting spreads throughout Syria, Bishara said.

CNEWA is delivering aid to Christians and Muslims through the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Damascus and in Akrama-Homs, the Greek Melkite Patriarchate of Antioch in Damascus, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch working with families displaced from Homs and Wadi al Nasarah (Valley of the Christians) and the Melkite Greek Catholic parish in Al Qaa, a Lebanese village on the border with Syria.

Christians haven't been targeted in the fighting so far, said Samer Laham, the Greek Orthodox director of ecumenical relations and development.

"Christians are affected as well as Muslims in the country," said Laham in an e-mail from Damascus. "In some places they are targeted because they live in one area and that area has been invaded by rebels and is being shelled by government security forces. Rebels in many places tend to go to the Christian areas to find refuge and protection, which is the reason they put the Christian populations at risk."

Syrians have seen what happens when a Baathist government falls. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government in 2003 by American-led forces triggered an exodus of close to two million refugees who crossed the Iraq-Syria border.

While Middle-Eastern Christians may not have loved the old dictatorships of Iraq, Syria and Egypt, they're fearful of the alternatives on offer.

"They are seeing what is happening in other places and have found no success stories of democracy in the Arab world are taking place," said Laham. "Christians are afraid of the new, coming system that is not clear at all."

Fundamentalist politics based on an appeal to religion as a bulwark against a corrupt, foreign culture isn't the only problem Christians face in the Middle East.

"Christians are always the weaker body and pay the price of other conflicting groups," said Laham. "This is why they might be an easy target for revenge from all other parties."

Laham rejects the idea that Syria is engulfed in civil war.

"We are not witnessing a civil war yet and hope not to witness that at all," he said.

He blames outside forces for an escalation in violence.

"The war can stop if the external powers stop arming the so-called Free Army and stop sending terrorists for jihad in Syria," he said.

CNEWA Canada has launched an emergency appeal to support Syrian Christians as they deal with fallout from the fighting.

"if we could reach $100,000 by Christmas that would be good. If we could get more that would be better," said Carl Hetu, CNEWA Canada's executive director. "The needs are changing and increasing every day as the war intensifies."

Syrian Christians have become advocates for peace and dialogue as the conflict rages, said Hetu.

"A lot of the good stories are about Christians welcoming the Muslims, sharing their food, praying together," said Hetu. "And Shiites and Sunnis welcoming Christians into their homes. Those are the stories not told, but are happening."

The crisis has spurred Syrian churches to work ecumenically for less violent solutions to the political impasse.

"They found a new vocation — a vocation of dialogue and peace," Hetu said. "This is the vocation of the Christian in the Middle East, not only in Syria. If there's a lesson learned in Iraq it's that the churches can play a uniting role if they are united and they show that among themselves they can be. The Church, if it continues to play this role when the fighting is over, it can help the healing."

But that doesn't mean Christian communities in Syria are secure.

"The problem is being a minority and being in villages. When they leave, what will happen to their property? What will happen to them? Are they going to come back?" Hetu asks. "Any kind of disturbance in the daily life of Christian villages or communities, nobody is sure it will be the same once the war is finished. Will they go back to their villages? Will the balance of power be the same?"

Toronto Christians unite in prayer for Syria

Prayers for peace in Syria have united a large swath of Christians in Toronto. A dozen churches, Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic, came together at St. Mary Armenian Apostolic Church Aug. 9 for a three-hour weeknight ecumenical prayer service.

St. Mary's in the northeast corner of the city was full to overflowing with Christians who have relatives and friends in Syria and many who immigrated from Syria.

Franciscan Friar of the Atonement Father Damian MacPherson represented Cardinal Thomas Collins, who was traveling at the time, at the service. MacPherson contributed the Peace Prayer of St. Francis. Protopresbyter Stavophor Vasilije Tomic of St. Archangel Gabriel Serbian Orthodox Church led about 400 faithful in praying the words of Blessed Pope John Paul II from his May 7, 2001 visit to the Golan Heights in Syria.

"May they be inspired to oneness of heart and mind in working for a world that will be a true home for all its peoples. Salam! Salam! Salam!" is the conclusion to the papal prayer.

Clergy present at the prayer service represented the Armenian Apostolic Church, Coptic Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Ethiopian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Presbyterian, Iranian Christian, Maronite Catholic, Armenian Evangelical, Anglican and Syriac Orthodox.

Eighteen-million Africans of the Sahel region who face drought-induced starvation now qualifiy for matching funds from the Government of Canada.

Donations to qualified aid agencies received between Aug. 7 and Sept. 30 will be doubled with contributions from the Canadian International Development Agency. CIDA gets the ball rolling with a $10 million contribution to the Sahel drought matching fund.

"It acts as a stimulus," said Michael Casey, executive director of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace. "Of course it's a good thing."

Development and Peace has been trying to stir up interest in the eight-country drought for months. It enlisted the help of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in late May. That appeal has pulled in $340,000 so far to help fund a $5-million feeding and agricultural rehabilitation program jointly conceived by Development and Peace and Canadian Foodgrains Bank. In addition, Development and Peace is working with Caritas Internationalis on longer term projects in the region.

But the disaster stretching between Senegal in the west and Chad in the east hasn't taken newscasts and front pages by storm.

"There's going to be more media now," said Casey. "It's been a slow onset and now we're coming to the starting line."

The matching fund may reward tardy parishes that have not yet forwarded money collected so far to Development and Peace. CIDA officials say it doesn't matter when the funds were actually collected. They will be matched if Development and Peace receives them between Aug. 7 and Sept. 30.

Matching funds are "an exceptional measure in response to catastrophic disasters striking developing countries," said an e-mail from CIDA's communications department to The Catholic Register.

There have been seven matching fund appeals launched since Ottawa pioneered the approach in response to the massive Boxing Day 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

"It sends a signal to Canadians that the government is worried about the situation — that it's serious and they want Canadians to respond," said Canadian Foodgrains Bank spokeswoman Emily Cain. "It leverages people's money. It makes any donation go twice as far."

A quiet media response to the crisis has translated into a lukewarm donor uptake so far, said Cain. Over the summer Canadian Foodgrains Bank has collected $25,000 for the Sahel.

The partnership between Canadian Foodgrains Bank and Development and Peace has made the most of partnerships both agencies have with local actors in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, said Cain.

"The Sahel can be a difficult place to work, but Foodgrains works through local partners. That means these are people who already know the systems, how things work in the country, and already have longer term relationships with communities," she said.

Adding Caritas to the mix ensures there also are programs to respond to the drought in other countries, and to respond with programs that last longer than feeding stations and seed distribution.

"That's been a really great partnership," said Cain.

Because of the early warnings from Caritas, Development and Peace has been planning and working on its Sahel response since Christmas, said Casey.

CIDA has so far spent $47.5 million on humanitarian assistance in the Sahel. Development and Peace hasn't had any of that money — which goes largely to direct, country-to-country aid or United Nations agencies. But Development and Peace does plan to apply for future funding CIDA makes available to its proven partners, said Casey.

"We would certainly look at collaborating with others because that's all part of the leverage aspect. If we work together on these things with other agencies we can have greater impact," he said. "Our program has been very effective so far."

Every Jesuit chooses poverty. They all vow to live their lives poor, chaste and obedient. But Fr. Jim Webb kept choosing poverty – over and over.

The former provincial superior of the Jesuits in English-speaking Canada died 6:30 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 9 surrounded by his Jesuit brothers in Rene Goupil House, the Jesuit infirmary in Pickering, Ont. A long dormant cancer came back and metastasized, forcing him to resign as provincial superior and enter palliative care in May, 2012.

"One of the things that was most amazing about watching him the past few months was that, regardless of what was going on with his body, there was a radiance in his face. He was very much at peace," said Jesuit Fr. Philip Shano, the director of Rene Goupil House.

As provincial superior Webb moved out of the six-bedroom home in a leafy west-end Toronto neighbourhood which had once served as home base for the Jesuit leadership team. He and his socius moved into a small apartment in St. James Town – Canada's most densely populated neighbourhood and one of the poorest parts of Toronto.

Living his vow of poverty among poor people was important to Webb.

"If you say that material things are not important but then there's no sign of it, it lacks credibility," Webb told The Catholic Register in 2009. "Our commitment to social justice and solidarity with the poor is very strong. In terms of vocations, I think that is one of the things that is attracting younger people to the Jesuits."

But moving into St. James Town wasn't the first time Webb chose a more unambiguous sort of poverty. In over twenty years of service in Jamaica, the elegantly educated Canadian chose to spend every minute he could with the poor. Between 1986 and 2008 he was pastor of St. Peter Claver Church in Kingston, chair of the St. Mary's Rural Development Project, founding director of Citizens Action for Free and Fair Elections and regional superior of the Jesuits in Jamaica. In 2009 he received the National Union of Co-operative Society Award for helping to found the St. Peter Claver Women's Housing Co-operative.

He always believed there was more that could be done, however difficult it might seem, said Shano.

"Where others saw missions impossible, Jim was eternally optimistic about how things could work out," he said.

As superior in English Canada, Webb responded generously to the request for a greater Jesuit presence in Vancouver. It was a decision that may yet stretch Jesuit resources thin elsewhere, but thin resources and trusting in God make up a good portion of what it means to be poor.

Webb chose to live among the poor and work for the poor as soon as he was ordained in 1973. He and Jesuit Fr. Michael Czerny moved into South Riverdale just east of the Don River, long before gentrifiers began installing wine cellars and stone countertops in what had once been crowded boarding houses. There he helped found the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice, became a founding director of the Taskforce on Churches and Corporate Responsibility, helped get The Catholic New Times newspaper up and running, worked to bring the South Riverdale Community Health Centre into existence and founded the Canadian Alternative Investment Co-operative.

Of his 68 years, Webb spent 48 living the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. He was born in Halifax to J. Hilus Webb and Mary Somers July 29, 1944. He earned a B.Sc. from St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S. before entering the Guelph, Ont. novitiate in 1964. He made final vows in 1979 and along the way studied philosophy at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., taught high school at Brebeuf College in Toronto and studied theology at Regis College in Toronto.

In January of this year, as his own cancer spread, Webb was at Fr. Bill Addley's side when Addley died.

"He said that in those few minutes in the hospital as Bill died he realized that Bill was teaching him how to die," said Shano. "I noticed this Sunday, the (Feast of the) Transfiguration, you could look at Jim and see him being so, almost literally and physically, transparent because he was so thin. But his face still shining."

Webb was consistent his whole life long, said Fr. Michael Czerny – one of Webb's closest friends for 50 years.

"Jim understood that the Gospel drove us out into those worlds where, by being honest and helpful, we could encourage others to know God's love in their lives. This he did, his life long, and this he inspired many young Jesuits to do, too," said Czerney in an email to The Catholic Register

TORONTO - If people mistake the new larger-than-life crucifix at Edmonton’s St. Joseph College for something old it won’t bother Toronto artist Gregory Furmanczyk.

Furmanczyk is getting ready to ship his new sculpture to Edmonton for an official unveiling some time this fall. The crucifix, with a corpus of hardened plaster made to look like marble hanging on a wooden cross, was commissioned by Edmonton Archbishop Richard Smith for the new chapel at St. Joseph’s Seminary.

“It’s the age-old image of the story of redemption,” is how Furmanczyk describes his new work.

Smith and the seminary gave Furmanczyk leeway to produce a piece of liturgical art that would be unique.

“Firstly, I did it as my own expression,” he said. “You create something you want to create.”

While the artist makes no bones about paying homage to Michelangelo and 17th-century masters, he chose to emphasize the redemptive peace of Christ rather than suffering on the cross.

“I wanted to project a feeling of peacefulness and mysticism,” he said.

He likens his crucifix to Michelangelo’s famous Pieta.

Furmanczyk is best known as a portrait painter of official, public figures — from Heather Smith, the first female Supreme Court of Ontario Chief Justice, to Alvin Curling, the first black Speaker of the Ontario Legislature. But he has also built a career as a sculptor and painter of religious works. His Jubilee Cross was the centrepiece of Jubilee 2000 celebrations in the archdiocese of Toronto. He has painted a traditional icon of Christ the Pantocrator for Toronto’s Our Lady of Sorrows parish and has provided stations of the cross to St. Marguerite D’Youville in Brampton, Ont.

Canadians and Britons are more open to physician-assisted suicide than Americans, a recent poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion has found.

Eighty per cent of Canadians and 77 per cent of the English said that doctors should be allowed to assist terminally ill, fully informed and competent patients to kill themselves. But only 56 per cent of Americans agreed.

The poll found 10 per cent of Canadians and nine per cent of Britons firmly opposed to physician-assisted suicide no matter who asks for it. Nearly one third — 29 per cent — of Americans said it should never be allowed. On the flip side, three-quarters of Canadians and Britons said physician-assisted suicide should always be allowed under specific circumstances, whereas only half of Americans thought so.

The problem with polls is that few respondents understand what’s meant by physician-assisted suicide, said Rita Marker, Patient Rights Council executive director.

“Those who are answering this poll could be viewing it as removing life support,” she said in an interview from Steubenville, Ohio. The Patient Rights Council is independent, but closely aligned with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Murky notions of palliative care and its availability fuel a fear-based response to polls on physician-assisted suicide in Canada, said Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

“Most Canadians support euthanasia or assisted suicide because they fear dying in pain or experiencing uncontrolled symptoms,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Catholic Register. “Fear is a normal human response and it should be respected.”

The poll reveals nothing new about British attitudes to physician-assisted suicide, said Charles Wookey, assistant general secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.

“So far as the UK is concerned, in terms of opinion surveys this doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “What we’re seeing here to a degree is an instinctive, compassionate response from a society that prizes individual autonomy very highly.”

The Angus-Reid survey found 86 per cent of Canadians, 84 per cent of Britons and 69 per cent of Americans agree with the statement that “Legalizing doctor-assisted suicide would give people who are suffering an opportunity to ease their pain.”

People who believe laws against assisted suicide protect the vulnerable from social, economic and medical pressure to commit suicide face a major education challenge, said Wookey.

“It means there’s a very, very clear job for the Church to do, particularly in secular society,” he said.

But the Church can’t do it without allies, according to Wookey.

“What’s essential in this debate in this country is for it to be conducted in secular terms,” he said. “It’s an unfortunate fact that the religious argument or arguments based on the appeal to faith tend clearly not to persuade people who do not share the faith. They invite the response, ‘Don’t impose your faith-based views on the rest of us.’ ”

British bishops have teamed up with disability rights organizations and palliative care professionals to form an alliance called Care Not Killing — a purely secular platform to engage the public policy debate.

“When people are taken through the arguments and begin to understand first of all the quality of palliative care and what palliative care can provide, and secondly what the public policy consequences are for the most vulnerable members of society of a change in the law — what it might actually lead to — then very many people do actually change their minds,” said Wookey.

Getting people educated about the issue is essential because without a full debate economic issues will enter the equation, said Marker.

“We have to recognize the fact that all health programs are trying to save money,” she said. “By trying to save money the question is, will those health programs — if you say assisted suicide is a medical treatment — will they then do the right thing or the cheap thing?”

In Canada, availability and understanding of palliative care is key, said Schadenberg. He points to a 2010 Environics poll  that found 71 per cent of Canadians want governments to prioritize palliative care over euthanasia and assisted suicide. The 2011 Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care report Not To Be Forgotten is a start, he said.

“The real answer is to care for the needs of Canadians who are living with terminal conditions, chronic pain or disabilities,” said Schadenberg.

Angus-Reid’s online survey polled 1,003 Americans, 2,019 Britons and 1,003 Canadians between July 4 and 5. The margin of statistical error is plus or minus 2.2 per cent for Great Britain and plus or minus 3.1 per cent for Canada and the United States.

Atheists are taking Ontario's Grey County to court to force county council to stop praying the Our Father at the start of meetings.

Peter Ferguson of Kimberly, Ont. — one of nine municipalities in the county on the shores of Georgian Bay — served legal papers on the county July 30 alleging the practice of reciting a Christian prayer at the beginning of a government meeting is illegal. In 1999 the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that Penetanguishine, Ont., was violating constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by starting council meetings with The Lord's Prayer.

Ferguson is seeking an end to the practice along with $5,000 in damages.

As far as Catholic Civil Rights League executive director Joanne McGarry is concerned, going to court over prayer is just sad.

"I always find it very distasteful or off-putting when prayer turns into something people are just battling about," she said.

Ferguson's court case is backed by Secular Ontario, an offshoot of the Humanist Association founded in 2005 with about 20 members.

Secular Ontario president Sheila Ayala told The Catholic Register an important principle is at stake in the case.

"Council meetings are open to the public. It's important that everybody is included," she said. "The principle is that we all pay taxes to where we live. We ought to be included but we're being excluded."

No disrespect is being aimed at the traditions of Ontario or religious conviction of three-quarters of Ontarians who align themselves with Christian faith, said Ayala.

"We're not stopping anybody from going to their synagogue or their mosque or whatever. We're not saying you can't practise whatever religion you want."

But Ayala does believe expressions of religious faith have no place in the public sphere.

Secular Ontario has sent letters to about 28 municipalities where reciting the Our Father at council meetings persists, said Ayala.

"We're having to take them to court again. They're not complying with what in fact is the law. They are breaking the law," she said.

"Court challenges of this kind are unfortunate. It just causes a lot of grief to people that we don't really need to have," said McGarry.

McGarry supports councils that wish to pray at the start of their meetings.

"It's like grace before meals," she said. If there's a need to be more inclusive, then rotate the prayers among the faith traditions of the community, she said.

"One week it might be Christian and the next week Muslim and the following week it could be more secular, a moment of reflection," McGarry said.

When the issue came up at the Ontario Legislature in 2008, Toronto's Cardinal (then Archbishop) Thomas Collins argued against a simplistic, ahistorical interpretation of the word secular.

"It is important not to be befuddled by a distorted view of the secular, one which holds that all life in the public realm must be meticulously sterilized lest a hint of faith intrude," he told legislators.

Collins was not against non-Christian prayers being used to open public debates, but argued tradition and the large Christian majority ought to assure the Our Father remains.

"It is highly appropriate that the deliberations of those whom we elect as our representatives should begin with prayer," he said. "Religion is not alien or dangerous. It is fruitful and life-giving and any effort to eliminate evidence of it in public assemblies is misguided... The Lord's Prayer has the advantage that it is part of our historical tradition, it is a contribution from the spiritual heritage of almost three-quarters of our citizens and it is at the same time open to wider application by any people of faith, and in fact by anyone."

The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace is hiring, but by the time the new employees are at their desks the Catholic aid agency will have reduced its full-time staff by 15 per cent.

Staff reductions became inevitable this spring when the Canadian International Development Agency reduced funding to D&P by more than $30 million over the next five years.

The six job openings — two full-time permanent positions and four part-time contract jobs — are filling vacancies that have come up over the last year from retirements, expired contracts and voluntary resignations, said executive director Michael Casey. D&P had frozen all hiring over the last year while awaiting a funding decision from the government.

After two years working with CIDA officials on a plan for continued development work in Africa, Asia and Latin America, then CIDA Minister Bev Oda announced in March her government would extend funding to select projects in just seven countries, leaving most of the 186 projects D&P runs in 30 countries unfunded.

In June D&P’s national council approved a restructuring plan that will reduce staffing 15 per cent by Sept. 1. The plan reduces its budget by $5 million this year.

But the Canadian partner in the international Caritas network is also planning for a future with less government support. The organization is shifting resources into fundraising and outreach in what some are calling a “re-launch.”

“The restructuring plan was developed following an extensive consultation process with our membership and staff over the past year as the organization adapts to new challenges in our external environment, most notably the significant reduction in government financial support for our international programs,” wrote Casey in an e-mail to The Catholic Register.

The new positions are posted at www.devp.org and in this edition of The Catholic Register.