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Last Updated: Friday - 09/24/2010

Week of October 4, 1999

Canadian and Foreign News Highlights

Pope calls Canadians to be evangelizers:

A new missionary thrust is needed to meet the needs of a new century, Pope John Paul told a group of Canadian bishops. And much of that missionary thrust must come through the laity challenging religious indifference, the pope said Sept. 27. The pope was speaking to bishops from Atlantic Canada and Toronto who were on their ad limina visits to Rome which bishops make every five years.

Winnipeg Archdiocese closes 5 churches:

Too few priests and too many buildings means closing down five churches and reducing service at five others in the Winnipeg Archdiocese. The archdiocese has announced it is taking this action and putting the five churches up for sale. "Our churches are jam-packed and yet there are not enough priests to go around," Richard Osicki, communications director for the archdiocese, told The Catholic Register.

Vatican continues to push for end to abortion, contraception:

The Vatican said its position on family planning remains unchanged, despite a UN official's claim that the Church no longer presses for references to natural family planning in UN documents. While presenting the 1999 World Population Report Sept. 22, Nafis Sadik, executive director of the UN Population Fund, claimed the Holy See had ceased opposing UN family planning programs. But in a two-page statement Sept. 27, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said that "the Holy See has not changed at all its well-known position."

Church leaders blast attack on Mary:

Cardinal John O'Connor of New York and other Catholic leaders criticized contents of an exhibit to be held Oct. 2-Jan. 9 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The exhibition, which features young British artists and was previously shown in London and Berlin, includes a portrayal of Mary with cutouts from pornographic magazines and shellacked clumps of elephant dung. The work is by Chris Ofili, who is identified as a Catholic. In a homily at St. Patrick's Cathedral Sept. 26, O'Connor called it "profound irreverence for our Blessed Mother."

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