The history of American musical theatre has served up plots and song lyrics so brainless they could make opera blush. But a new Canadian musical set among the homeless children of Rio de Janeiro takes on serious issues as it dances, sings and jokes its way across the stage.

Rio: The Musical is getting a critical test run at the New York Musical Theatre Festival this month. If it passes the test it could wind up playing to New York audiences on Broadway, telling a story of murder, homelessness and family to a samba beat.

“There are certainly frivolous musicals,” veteran musical composer Joey Miller told The Catholic Register. “I save my money.”

From South Pacific’s take on racism to Cabaret’s exploration of Nazi rule, there are plenty of examples of serious theatre in the guise of musicals. Miller and his writing partner Mitch Magonet want to fit their musical into that tradition.

“There has to be a theatricality to it, but it has to be truthful,” said Miller.

Miller and Magonet have worked on Rio off and on for eight years. Getting into both the New York Musical Theatre Festival July 9 to 29 after having already been in last year's National Alliance for Musical Theatre festival Oct. 11 and 12, both in New York, gives their project a certain cachet among new musicals.

Miller frankly admits he and Magonet stole the plot from Oliver Twist. Twelve-year-old Pipio arrives in Rio from Brazil’s poor northeast during Carnival on an impossible quest to find his mother. He falls in among homeless children who steal for an older master thief and he befriends a young woman trapped in an abusive relationship. A murder right off the top sets things in motion.

Musically, Brazil was the right place to set the story, said Miller. A percussionist by trade, Miller has spent decades studying samba, bossa nova, forro, choro and countless Brazilian rhythms.

“They say about Brazilians, without music they can’t exist,” said Miller.

Miller and Magonet use rhythms as leitmotifs, signature music attached to each character.

“It was the music that drove us. It’s like an inspiration,” said Miller.

But Brazil is also right culturally, he said.

“There’s something special about Brazil. It’s the samba, it’s the favela, it’s the whole culture with the importance of family,” Miller said.

Once in the New York festivals, Catholic University of America chose Rio as an ideal challenge for students of its Benjamin T. Rome School of Music musical theatre division. Dark, gritty subject matter set in a very different culture was part of the attraction for Denise Puricelli, Catholic University assistant professor of music. For Puricelli, serious intent fits with a Catholic university.

“One of the things we’re charged to do, actually, is to encourage people to contemplate social ills and contemporary problems,” she said. “It is a question — what kind of material should we do? You can either hide from it and only do things that are very wonderful or you can talk about things that make people stop and ponder... Schools that hide these strong, ugly parts of life are doing the students a disservice.”

Puricelli was musical director for a two-week workshop of Rio. It was opportunity for students to be part of the process as the writers and director edited, pruned and added songs and dialogue.

“For the kids, being able to have the composers right in the room, being able to ask questions from them — it was a great experience all the way around,” said Puricelli.

Crowdsourcing on Kickstarter.com raised $40,000 to mount a bare-bones production for the NYMF festival, along with $80,000 from a private backer. Very early in its development Mirvish Productions in Toronto workshopped the first act. Miller doesn’t yet know what will happen to the play after the New York festivals. Miller would love to see a full production on stage in Toronto, in New York, even in Rio.

“This is where we turn to prayer,” he said.

Somewhere in Toronto today there’s a 10-year-old kid who got a second lease on life at World Youth Day 2002. Dr. Katherine Rouleau remembers that premature baby with all the awe and confusion doctors regularly bring to miracles.

“We had a baby who was quite sick. Actually, it was a newborn of a couple who were so grateful that their premature child had survived that they showed up at Downsview at the crack of dawn in the sweltering heat,” recalled Rouleau.

Rouleau was medical director of World Youth Day 2002. On July 28 a decade ago she had 800,000 potential patients corralled into an open field at the north end of Toronto. Many of them had endured a night of cold and rain, praying the Divine Office and singing through the night. Under the morning sun, people continued streaming in. And then it was raining again as Pope John Paul II arrived to celebrate Mass with them.

MARKHAM, ONT. - Markham's 140-year journey from village to city has taken the Toronto suburb from near perfect uniformity of German Lutheran farmers lured north from Pennsylvania to a religious mosaic that includes a mosque and synagogue that share the same parking lot.

Canada's newest city of more than 300,000 on the northeast shoulder of Toronto celebrated its religious diversity with a visit from Cardinal Thomas Collins July 17.

"We're the most diverse city in Canada," declared Mayor Frank Scarpitti before presenting Collins with a commemorative scroll. Collins also presented Scarpitti with a framed message of encouragement.

When a union declares itself pro-choice and tries to shut down debate about the legal status of a fetus, its stand is neither progressive nor representative of its membership, said Toronto pro-life feminist Martha Crean.

The Canadian Auto Workers wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper June 7 objecting to any debate in Parliament over the legal definition of a human being, as proposed by Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth’s Motion-312. The nation’s largest private sector union, representing over 200,000 workers, also organized counter protests to denounce a series of anti-abortion protests organized by the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform.

The CAW-led protests backfired in Windsor June 24 when more people showed up for a protest against the CAW position, and Local 444 president Dino Chiodo distanced himself from the official CAW protest by telling the media it had been organized above the heads of Windsor union officials.

TORONTO - After serving on a host of Catholic boards, including the senate of the University of St. Michael’s College, John McGrath came to the archdiocese of Toronto in 2001 to be chancellor of temporal affairs, a rough equivalent to chief financial officer. He intended to stay five years and had an opt-out clause at two-and-a-half years, just in case. He stayed 11.

Shortly after turning 70, McGrath welcomed his 20th grandchild and let it be known it was time for the archdiocese to start searching for his replacement. After a lengthy search, the changeover took effect on July 1. But retirement won’t change McGrath’s life. He will continue to serve on the boards of St. Joseph’s Hospital, Catholic Charities, the Southdown Institute, the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute and the Patrons of the Arts for the Vatican Museum.

As the sprawl crawls toward them, the Canadian Church’s first option for helping and healing priests with addictions, depression and other psychological issues is pulling up stakes.

The Southdown Institute has broken ground on a new address at the north end of East Gwillimbury, Ont. Surrounded once again by farm country, the new Southdown facility in Holland Landing will aim to better serve an aging population with up-to-date strategies for dealing with everything from eating disorders to dementia, said Southdown CEO Sr. Miriam Ukeritis of the Congregation of St. Joseph.

With 18 million people either starving now or facing near term shortage of food, the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace and its Caritas partners are ramping up fundraising efforts with a new video that explains the crisis through the eyes of people in Niger and Mali.

The eight-minute video (embedded at the bottom of this article) aims to make people aware of how Caritas is fighting for people’s lives. The English version is called Niger: On the Hunger Frontline.

TORONTO - Doctors are extending efforts to regain full medical coverage for all refugees even as the federal government backed down on health insurance cuts to one class of refugees.

"Basically it leaves people sicker and dead," Dr. Katherine Rouleau, a family physician at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital, told The Catholic Register just three days after cuts to the interim federal health program ceased coverage for medications, many diagnostic tests, prosthetics, vision care and dental care for most refugees. "That is not an option, so the fight will go on pretty fiercely."

Rouleau is one of hundreds of doctors who have protested the cuts under the banner of Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care.

TORONTO - English Canada’s missionary orders will not go gentle into that good night without first issuing a warning.

“The missionary groups, are they the canaries of the Church? If they die out, do we cease to be Church?” asks Fr. Brian Swords, newly elected moderator of the Scarboro Missions. “If we cease to be, does that not suggest there’s something wrong?”

The majority of Scarboro priests are now past retirement age. The youngest ordained member is 53. There are two men in formation, with one just recently ordained a deacon and the other studying theology. The Scarboros also include a dozen lay missionaries.

TORONTO - Toronto politicians aiming to eliminate handguns and ban ammunition have Church teaching on their side, says one Toronto councillor with a PhD in theology.

“We’re not a pacifist Church. We have been the Church that has argued for a just war position,” said Joe Mihevc.

But that doesn’t put the magisterium on the side of private gun owners, according to Mihevc.