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Last Updated: Friday - 09/24/2010

Week of November 15, 1999

Canadian and Foreign News Highlights

Pope vigorous in defending right to evangelize:

Pope John Paul called for a new, energetic program of evangelization in Asia but told the continent's non-Christians that they have nothing to fear from the Catholic Church. Asians are thirsting for the Gospel, and the start of the next millennium should bring "a great harvest of faith on this vast and vital continent," the pope said during a Mass in New Delhi Nov. 7. On the sensitive topic of religious conversion, he defended the Church's right to evangelize in Asia and the right of individuals to "change their religion."

China plans crackdown on Catholic Church:

China's communist leadership has outlined plans for a full-scale crackdown on the country's underground Catholic Church should diplomatic ties be re-established with the Vatican, according to Fides, the Vatican's missionary news service. The plan calls for the destruction of underground churches, seminaries and convents. It also includes the "re-education" through hard labour of underground clerics who fail to submit to the government-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association, Fides said Nov. 10. Fides said it obtained from sources in Beijing large sections of a secret 16-page policy paper prepared by the Communist Party's central committee.

Court allows preferential hiring:

Fifteen years after Ontario Catholic schools won full government funding, the courts have confirmed their right to prefer Catholic teachers when hiring. The long court battle over Catholic hiring practices stemmed from a clause in the 1985 Bill 30, the legislation that gave Ontario Catholic schools access to provincial funding through the end of high school. Section 136 of the bill stated that fully-funded Catholic school boards could not consider faith in hiring. As part of the political deal when Bill 30 was passed, section 136 was delayed 10 years. In October, the Supreme Court refused leave for the appeal, in essence confirming a lower-court decision to allow Catholics schools to give preference to Catholics in hiring.

Abortion puts women in hospital - researcher:

An independent health researcher says up to one out of 13 women are hospitalized "in a life and death situation" after undergoing abortions. Isabelle Begin told reporters Nov. 5 that she had just obtained data from Statistics Canada's Hospital Morbidity file that contains "never-before-published" information. It shows that for the fiscal year 1992-93, the last year for which published data was available, there were 7,894 hospitalizations with an average stay of two days. "With 103,244 abortions performed in Canada that year, this yields a hospitalization rate of 7.7 per cent, or one out of 13 women," said Begin.

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