{mosimage}TORONTO - It’s been 25 years since Pope John Paul II lit the eternal flame in Toronto’s Peace Garden, and every year the city’s Hiroshima Day Coalition magnifies that flame of hope and memory with an Aug. 6 commemoration of the first atom bomb used in war.

This year’s ceremony featured a Japanese lantern ceremony, which floated dozens of paper lanterns — each containing a single tea light lit from the eternal flame — across the water of the reflecting pool at Nathan Phillips Square.

{mosimage}TORONTO - In 1999, when the nuns and religious sisters of Toronto decided to build some affordable housing in their city to celebrate the millennium Jubilee along with Pope John Paul II they thought they were addressing an urgent local problem.

Ten years on, as people finally move into their homes in Scarborough, Mughtar Yarow has news for them. (See photos of project homes here .)

{mosimage}TORONTO - In an age when medicine and religion seem to frequently collide, the three Abrahamic faiths and medical science have found common ground on organ donations.

On Sept. 20, the archdiocese of Toronto will distribute 200,000 brochures to parishes explaining the theology, science and morality of organ donation. But they won't be alone.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Praying for the homeless on Thanksgiving Monday morning at Toronto’s Peace Garden, Ambrose declared himself God’s comedian.

The grey, five-degree morning was already cold enough to make a soul wince for those who slept outside the night before. Prayers were offered for Toronto’s street population and the homeless throughout the world. Ambrose joined the circle after having spent the previous night in front of the Thomson Building on Queen Street West, across the street from City Hall.

{mosimage}TORONTO - If Christians and Muslims are going to talk, Christians are going to have to unlearn what they think they know about Muslims, particularly Muslim women, according to a Wilfred Laurier University professor of religion and culture.

From the images of protesting women in burkas to the idea Western armies can liberate women in Afghanistan, cliches and gross simplifications are overwhelming conversation, Meena Sharify-Funk told about three dozen students along with church and mosque representatives at the annual dinner of the National Muslim Christian Liason Committee held in the University of Toronto’s Multifaith Centre Oct. 1.

{mosimage}TORONTO - There are 17,000 people living in 19 high-rise buildings crammed into just two city blocks in St. James Town — Canada’s most densely populated neighbourhood. Two of those 17,000 chose St. Jamestown over an historic, six-bedroom brick home in a quiet, leafy neighbourhood near High Park.

Jesuit provincial superior Fr. Jim Webb, and his right hand man, or socius, Fr. Peter Bisson have been living in a three-bedroom apartment in one of Toronto’s poorest neighbourhoods for 10 months.
Webb believes the Jesuit vow of poverty has to be more than a theory.

“If you say that material things are not important but then there’s no sign of it, it lacks credibility,” he said.

{mosimage}TORONTO - “Peace is hard,” Justin Trudeau told more than 4,000 Catholic students gathered in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Peace Garden Sept. 29.
Nobody disagreed with him.

“We need your ideas, we need your vision, we need your dreams,” the Liberal Member of Parliament and ex-teacher declared.

Twenty-five years after his father, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, turned the sod on Toronto’s Peace Garden, his son was entrusting the ideals of peace and social justice to teenagers struggling with homework and hormones.

{mosimage}TORONTO - With Filipinos still digging their homes out of the mud, and many more with no homes to return to after Typhoon Ketsana swept through the region just north of Manila Sept. 26, Canadians continue to add to the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace’s relief fund.

Following an initial $50,000 contribution, Development and Peace has raised a further $108,000 to help Caritas in the Philippines. That total does not include $70,000 sent in so far by Toronto parishes to ShareLife.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Msgr. Thomas Barrett Armstrong, a priest who knew the inner workings of beauty and shared the gift of music with hundreds of students, his city and his church, passed away peacefully at the Cardinal Ambrozic Houses of Providence Nov. 14, just days before his 80th birthday.

Ripples from the former director of music at St. Michael’s Choir School  lifetime of teaching and conducting are preserved everywhere in the musical life of Toronto and Canada, said Lydia Adams, conductor of the Elmer Iseler Singers. 

TORONTO - Canada's first non-white bishop along with a man who has spent 20 years forming young priests are ready to share in the leadership of Canada's biggest, richest and most diverse diocese.

Fr. Vincent Nguyen (Nguyen Manh Hieu), who came to Canada as a teenaged refugee in 1984 and is a great-grandson of one of 117 Vietnamese Martyrs canonized in 1988, will make the transition from chancellor of spiritual affairs and moderator of the curia to auxiliary bishop with a Toronto ordination likely some time in January