TORONTO - A hero to many in Canada's pro-life movement, Spiritan Father Edward (Ted) Colleton leaves behind a legacy of life, said Fr. Bob Cobourne, provincial superior of the Spiritans.

At 97 years old, Fr. Colleton passed away peacefully April 26 at La Salle Manor in Scarborough, Ont., where he had lived since 2007.

“He worked tirelessly for the unborn, for the pro-life movement and worked to ensure that the unborn would be protected and that life from the moment of conception to death would be sacred,” Cobourne told The Catholic Register.

Although Fr. Colleton spent the first 30 years of his priesthood as a missionary in Kenya, the most important work he did was in Canada for the rights of the unborn, said Jim Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition.

TORONTO - Proposed changes to Ontario’s adoption laws will make more children in care eligible for adoption, said Dina MacPhail of the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto (CCAS).

“I think it can only benefit the children who are crown wards and in our care,” said MacPhail, speaking of the Building Families and Supporting Youth to be Successful Act 2011.

The changes to the Child and Family Services Act, brought forth in mid-April by Children and Youth Services Minister Laurel Broten and still to be voted upon, include removing access orders that prevent 75 per cent of children and youth in children’s aid care from being eligible for adoption.

“You might have a child who is in a group home or a foster home and his adoption is blocked because he sees his birth parents once every year,” said MacPhail, a child protection worker in the adoption department at CCAS. “We cannot do an adoption for a child that has an access order.”

TORONTO - All the money that Rose of Sharon sees through the generosity of donors to ShareLife goes a long way in supporting young mothers and their children in York Region, said executive director Anna Pavan.

“We provide services to pre-natal and parenting teens,” Pavan, the executive director of the not-for-profit charitable organization, told The Catholic Register. “So it’s allowing us to have five counsellors, to be able to provide parenting programs to our young mothers and a child development centre where babies are cared for while the mothers are attending school or parenting programs.”

Rose of Sharon is one of the more than 30 agencies supported by ShareLife, the charitable fundraising arm of the archdiocese of Toronto.

As part of its parish campaign — with a goal of $12.3 million this year — the first ShareLife Sunday took place on April 3. The reported results added up to $4.16 million, an increase of about 10 per cent over the same reporting time last year, according to Bill Steinburg, communications manager at ShareLife.

TORONTO - From prayer vigils and film viewings to special devotions and Mass, communities — Polish and others — across the Greater Toronto Area are joining the celebration of Pope John Paul II’s May 1 beatification.

St. Maximilian Kolbe parish in Mississauga, Ont., will be holding a prayer vigil for Pope John Paul II from 8 p.m. to midnight on April 30, said Fr. Pawel Nyrek.

“We’ll finish it with Holy Mass at midnight in thanksgiving for the beatification of Pope John Paul II,” said Nyrek.

Then, on May 2, the parish will be holding another thanksgiving Mass at 6 p.m. The Polish ambassador to Canada, the consul general of Toronto and representatives of the Canadian Polish Congress will be among those in attendance. Even Stephen Harper was expected to attend, before it conflicted with election day, Nyrek said.

TORONTO - Barbara Kowalski usually walks through the streets of Toronto without showing outward signs of faith. But that changed on Palm Sunday.

Walking in a procession from St. Paul’s Basilica to St. Michael’s Cathedral as part of the Office of Catholic Youth’s World Youth Day Palm Sunday event on April 16, she helped to carry the World Youth Day commemorative cross down Queen Street.

“It was nice to show others that this is my religion,” said Kowalski, 23, a legal communications clerk at a law firm in Toronto.

Palm Sunday is recognized internationally as the World Day of Youth.

TORONTO - In 1986, Elena Orrico was asked to organize and prepare the first feast day celebrations in honour of St. Rita, the patron saint of impossible causes, at Marylake Shrine. Twenty-five years later, what she made possible is still going strong.

Devoted to St. Rita of Cascia from a young age, Orrico said she was thrilled when Augustinian Father Cyril Smetana, prior at Marylake Augustinian Monastery in King City, Ont., at the time, asked her to take on this task.

“When I read the letter, I was so happy to hear I could help to keep the St. Rita tradition here in Canada,” Orrico told The Catholic Register. “I worked with all my heart for St. Rita.”

St. Rita’s feast day is celebrated on May 22.

MARKHAM, Ont. - The Serra Club of Markham and Scarborough has kicked off a travelling vocations chalice program aiming to shine the light on vocations.

“The one and only mandate is for families to pray for the vocation to the priesthood and religious life,” said Fran Pulumbarit, chairperson of the travelling vocations chalice program and vice-president of vocations of the Serra Club of Markham and Scarborough.

There will be two chalices involved in the program, which will serve as a reminder for families to pray for vocations. The first has been passed among families at St. Patrick’s parish in Markham since April 3.

The second chalice begins circulating at St. Barnabas parish in Scarborough next month.

TORONTO - By giving a voice to the voiceless, Sr. Clare Garcillano is helping build a culture of peace, gender equality and solidarity in East Timor as acting director of the Justice and Peace Commission (JPC).

On April 4, Garcillano, a missionary sister with the Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres, told the commission’s story, delivering a talk at the Paulist Centre in Toronto.

Visiting Canada at the invitation of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, which has partnered with the JPC, Garcillano has been working and living in East Timor for the last five years. East Timor only gained independence in 2002 after 500 years of colonization and foreign occupation, first by Portugal and then by neighbouring Indonesia. The small island nation is 96.5 per cent Catholic.

The JPC was established in 1995 by Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo in the diocese of Dili with the support of Development and Peace, as a result of a conversation between the bishop and Jess Agustin, regional director of Development and Peace in Asia. It was created solely to promote the rights and dignity of every person and was set up at a time when human rights abuses were rampant as a result of the Indonesian occupation.

Peterborough, Ont. - The faith of Catholic youth in Peterborough, Ont., will be out in the open during Good Friday’s seventh annual Way of the Cross on April 22 with a re-enactment of Christ’s Passion.

“It’s a way of evangelizing in a unique way,” said Mary Helen Moes, program manager for youth for the diocese of Peterborough and director of this year’s re-enactment.

“They’re certainly not pushing their faith on top of anybody. They’re just demonstrating their faith in a very public way and I don’t think there’s many opportunities for that any more.”

Run by the diocese of Peterborough’s Vocations, Evangelization and Youth Office, the Way of the Cross has about 100 youth participating this year, up from the 30 participants of seven years ago when it originated, said Moes.