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{mosimage}TORONTO - With more than 1,700 tickets sold and 400 high school students expected to attend, this year������Ƶapp Ordinandi Dinner will be the biggest in its 19-year history.

Among the 1,700 guests for the March 2 dinner will be Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, several priests and hundreds of Catholics from across the archdiocese.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Valentine������Ƶapp Day meets with spirituality through a special dinner some parishes have adopted to help couples strengthen their relationship and rekindle romances.

Table for Two surfaced for the first time at St. Patrick������Ƶapp parish in Toronto this year, hosted by the Redemptorists. It is modelled on a similar event at a Redemptorist parish in Winnipeg.

{mosimage}TORONTO - A religious sister who survived the January earthquake in Haiti reflected on her experience at a prayer vigil in Nathan Phillips Square Feb. 9.

“When you pray ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ think of the Haitians,” said Sr. Mary Alban, CSJ.

{mosimage}TORONTO - In prayer and silence, the brains behind Toronto������Ƶapp Listening Post patiently await visitors to their unique ministry at Danforth and Broadview three times a week. 

Deacon Robert Kinghorn and Eusebia da Silva, both experienced in spiritual direction, have opened a space for the city������Ƶapp spiritually starved to sit in silence or find a listening ear to their problems.

{mosimage}TORONTO - A new Scarborough interfaith group says it plans to buy a home to help homeless people off the local streets.

This was just one of several ideas as the Scarborough Interfaith Affordable Housing Association tries to find solutions to homelessness. The group held a Jan. 23 affordable housing forum called “In From the Cold” attended by about 50 faith leaders, community activists and concerned citizens at Knox United Church.

It is astonishing and sad that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is advocating that Canada fund overseas abortions, charged Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins.

Collins released a statement on Feb. 4 in response to Ignatieff's public calls for the government to include contraception and abortion funding as basic components of a new foreign aid strategy to improve maternal and childhood health.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Catholics in the archdiocese of Toronto have responded overwhelmingly to the destructive January quake in Haiti, raising more than $1.1 million in just three weeks.

As of Feb. 2, the tally included donations made by schools, parishes and personal donations to ShareLife, the fundraising arm of the archdiocese.

{mosimage}TORONTO- Less than a month after a devastating earthquake flattened the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Christian leaders in Toronto rallied the faithful to continue praying and supporting those touched by the disaster.

In light of the powerful Jan. 12 earthquake, and the many violent aftershocks the country has suffered, Archbishop Thomas Collins called on Christians attending an ecumenical prayer service for the people of Haiti Feb. 1 to respond in solidarity.

{mosimage}AJAX, Ont. - It was a day of song and multicultural dance, along with prayers for earthquake-ravaged Haiti, as parishioners celebrated the 150th anniversary of St. Francis de Sales Church.

Long-time parishioner Rita Jatoe says the parish community is a “very loving, caring family.” Wearing a traditional West African dress, Jatoe read a prayer petition in her African dialect and cut the celebratory cake after the noon-time Mass on Jan. 24, the Feast of St. Francis de Sales.

{mosimage}TORONTO - With an assist from the United Nations, the Archdiocese of Toronto has sprung a 14-year-old refugee from a three-year bureaucratic purgatory of waiting for the government of Canada to act.

Within days of receiving a letter from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Canadian visa post in Accra, Ghana recognized Piratheeprajh SriVijayarajarajan, who had fled the civil war in Sri Lanka, as an urgent case and a week later had him on a plane to join family in Toronto. For four months Citizenship and Immigration officials at the Canadian embassy in Accra had insisted the boy refugee living alone in the West African city did not qualify for special treatment.