For many months the Horn of Africa has been desperate for life-saving rain but, now that rain seems imminent, it is dreaded.

The autumn downpours that may help next year’s harvest will first bring fall flooding, cholera, malaria, typhoid and other disease to tens of thousands of starving people wandering the countryside or crammed into squalid camps. Perhaps the only place on Earth worse than Somalia today will be Somalia tomorrow.

Untold thousands, mainly women and children, have already died in East Africa’s famine and the United Nations is forecasting 13 million perilously underfed people and 750,000 deaths before the grave-digging is done. An urgent UN appeal for $2.5 billion in international aid has been muffled by the noise of European debt problems and the possibility of another world recession. The UN is still $1 billion short of its fund-raising goal.

Four hundred years ago a pair of brave, but no doubt anxious, French Jesuit missionaries landed at Port Royal in Acadia on the shores of the Bay of Fundy. In 1611 the small fort was a gateway to the vast, unexplored territory called New France.

Over the decades that followed, the Jesuits moved steadily inland and, while fulfilling their mission as evangelists, they also became explorers, cartographers, educators, chroniclers and pastors. More so than any other religious order, the Jesuits not only witnessed the birth of Canada, they shaped significant parts of its history.

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of their arrival to the “New World” and to celebrate their many spiritual and temporal contributions to Canada, The Catholic Register has published this 36-page homage to the Jesuit priests and brothers whose courage brought them to our shores in 1611 and whose faith and commitment to service has entwined them in the fabric of Canadian life to this day.

We originally envisioned this tribute as a 12-page section. But it tripled in size over the summer due to an outpouring of support from the many organizations on these pages that wanted to extend their own congratulations in an advertisement. As a result, when the special section is combined with our weekly 20-page paper, the 56-page Catholic Register you are holding is probably the largest we’ve ever published.

The story of the Jesuit martyrs is an important part of the Canadian education curriculum. Therefore, in addition to being delivered to subscriber homes, an additional 14,000 copies of the Jesuit section have been printed for distribution to more than 1,000 Catholic elementary and high schools in Ontario at the expense of The Register.

This 400-year milestone is worthy of celebration. We hope you enjoy it.

Jim O’Leary
Publisher and Editor

Jesuits in Canada 400 Years of Service

Browse print edition Jesuits are a key part of our history 400 years of giving Wherever they went, Jesuits embraced local ways Jean de Brébeuf's rules on interacting with the Hurons Loyola's Spiritual Exercises still at Jesuits' core A developed mind takes us on a path to God Setting the world 'on fire with the love of God' Social justice Jesuit-style is for God's greater glory Martin Royackers was first English Canadian Jesuit killed in service Three martyred at China mission Arts are a tool towards the Jesuit mission goal The Jesuit Relations opened up the New World to Europe Finding Jesus through Loyola's Spiritual Exercises Exhibit unearths gems from Jesuits' history The formation process for a Jesuit is laborious, lengthy Experiencing God in ecology A chronology of the Jesuits in Canada Jesuit heroes through the years

Thomas Dowd became the second youngest bishop in the world last week when, a day before his 41st birthday, he was ordained along with Christian Lépine as auxiliary bishop to the archdiocese of Montreal.

Dowd is affectionately known as the “Blogfather” because, for the past eight years, he has incorporated the Internet into his ministry. He is credited as Canada’s first priest to maintain a regular blog, and intends to keep blogging from his bishop’s office. As he said in a recent interview, he can’t give Communion over the Internet but he can build communion through digital technology.

“The Church is fundamentally a communication organization,” he said. “Jesus was a communicator par excellence. As a communication body, we need to use the latest and greatest ways to pass on the Good News.”

The Vatican has engaged the Irish government in an unpleasant war of words that is unlikely to help restore its battered image in that country.

At issue is a government report into Ireland’s sex-abuse scandal and the failure of Church hierarchy to identify and punish abuser priests. The “Cloyne Report,” released in July, asserts that the Vatican shares responsibility for the crisis with local bishops because it fostered a see-no-evil culture that reassigned, rather than punished, abuser priests. It also accused the Vatican of being “entirely unhelpful” to Irish bishops who sought to get tough on abuser priests.

If that wasn’t enough, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny accused the Holy See of attempting to “frustrate” the enquiry and, in an unprecedented blistering reproach applauded nationally, he railed: “The Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and the narcissism that dominates the culture of the Vatican to this day.”

Markham, Ont. - Alyce Daly is 96 but she vividly remembers the special visits Brother André, Canada’s new saint, made to her family’s home in the 1920s. But, she adds apologetically, she doesn’t recall any miracles.

What she does retain are fond memories of a saintly man sitting in the parlour and at the dinner table in the family home on Curzon Avenue in Toronto’s east end. The Dalys lived just steps from St. Joseph Church, and outside its doors people lined the sidewalks and spilled into a nearby park to glimpse or touch the famous Miracle Man of Montreal.

Brother André was devoted to the father of Jesus and the many miracles attributed to Brother André were, he always maintained, the work of St. Joseph.

On October 17 Brother André, founder of Montreal's St. Joseph's Oratory, will become just the second Canadian-born saint when he is canonized at a Vatican ceremony presided over by Pope Benedict XVI. To celebrate the event, The Catholic Register has produced its own homage to the life of this remarkable man.

In a series of articles and photos, we have examined the life and legacy of Brother Andre, a poor, illiterate, orphan who, after moving between several menial jobs, was accepted by the Congregation of Holy Cross in Montreal where he lived a remarkable life of faith, hope and charity until his death in 1937. He is credited with hundreds of miraculous healings and, through his determined efforts, became the driving force behind construction of the spectacular St. Joseph Oratory atop Mount Royal in Montreal.

Forced to flee from Iraq, a refugee recounted to Catholic Register editor Jim O’Leary the story of his family’s flight to Syria and start of new life in a Toronto suburb. Along with his wife, two daughters and mother-in-law, he arrived in 2009 after being sponsored by a Toronto-area parish. To protect his children’s privacy, he requested his name be withheld.

Our family is blessed to be in Canada. We have received wonderful support and we hope some day we can pay everyone back.

In Baghdad, our situation became dangerous when the American war started in 2003. There were tanks in the streets and bombs and fighting.

Fawaz Fatohi received an envelope at his home containing a knife and an anonymous letter: “If you don’t leave Iraq, you will be killed.”

Fatohi is an Iraqi Christian. He was raising a young family in Baghdad when the death threat arrived. Soon thereafter he was among an estimated half-million Iraqi Christians who had fled for their lives. He eventually found refuge in Canada, leaving behind his forsaken brothers in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

TORONTO - You never know what you’ll spot in the parish bulletin. One Sunday last summer Deacon Michael Hayes read a plea from a woman seeking a liver donor to save her critically ill sister. He put down the bulletin, booted up his computer and sent an e-mail to his pastor.

In a subtle nod to the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, some Quebeckers are calling the case of Saguenay Mayor Jean Tremblay the “Prayer Trial.”

In the Scopes case a small-town Tennessee high school teacher, John Scopes, faced charges of teaching evolution in a trial that pitted church against state and traditionalists against modernists. The trial sparked a local furor and national debate that made international headlines.

Tremblay’s case is unlikely to attain such notoriety but, from the perspective of church vs. state, the two cases do indeed bear some resemblance.