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TORONTO - For Andrea Rebello, singing sacred hymns is a way to express her love for God.

“(Singing) is an expression of how I like to pray,” said Rebello, cantor and music director at St. Clement Church. “Through the arts, we can really communicate our prayer and love of God, and our faith and devotion.”

Rebello has been doing plenty of praying lately, as she has just recorded a CD, Venite Adoremus, with some of those songs on the playlist at a Christmas concert she was to perform Dec. 17 at St. Clement Church. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the parish.

TORONTO - For Toronto Deacon Anthony Pignataro, penning poems is merely a form of prayer and service to others.

Writing poetry is “another way of serving others as you disseminate the work and share it,” he said.

Drawing from his ministry as a deacon and 20 years of “inspirational walks through his garden,” Pignataro has just published his first book of poetry, personal essays and meditations, From Under a Linden Tree, published by Sarum House.

TORONTO - Singers, dancers, musicians and artists lent their talents to raise about $4,000 to support the pro-life charity Aid to Women at a Dec. 8 fundraiser at the El Mocambo nightclub.

The event was held on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

“The owner of El Mocambo is a Marian devotee and he loves Mary and so he loves to donate his club on Marian feast days to causes that understand those feast days,” said Elena Repka, event organizer and vice-president of Aid to Women������Ƶapp volunteer board of directors. She asked that the club owner not be named to respect his privacy.

The Sitter

Felony child endangerment presented as "life lessons" constitutes the theme, such as it is, of "The Sitter" (Fox).

Director David Gordon Green and screenwriters Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka run the gamut of degradation, tossing in some racism for good measure.

This Christmas season, the stories of five diverse people and their journey to the Holy Land to discover the season������Ƶapp true meaning is airing on CTS������Ƶapp Journey to Christmas.

The goal of the four-part documentary series was to discover if there was more to Christmas than is typically experienced in North America, said producer Karen Pascal.

“We’re so caught up in the commercialism and the busyness and the gift-giving and I think the true meaning of Christmas has become something really distant,” said Pascal.

GATINEAU - A new exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Civilization manages to explore the diversity of religious belief without falling prey to moral relativism.

God(s): A User������Ƶapp Guide also conveys through artifacts from a wide range of faiths and multi-media presentations the amazing diversity of religious expression.

The exhibit, which opened Dec. 2 and will run until Sept. 3, 2012, invites people to contemplate the ultimate questions about meaning that underlie all religious faiths, such as the existence of God, the creation of the universe and life after death.

When I began work as a health care ethicist more than 20 years ago, the discipline was focussed on two main issues: respecting the rights of individual patients, particularly through the practice of informed consent, and working through issues posed by the growth in medical technology. Artificial organs, gene-altering therapies, conceiving children in Petri dishes sounded like the stuff of science fiction. But they were real and ethicists grappled with questions of limits, of preserving human dignity, of trying to understand what death meant when a body could be kept warm and breathing almost indefinitely. This was medical ethics in the first, or developed, world.

With Thanksgiving in the U.S., there are lots of big releases this weekend. If you need help deciding what to see, we've got reviews of Arthur Christmas, Hugo, The Muppets and the latest movie in the The Twilight Saga: "Breaking Dawn - Part 1".

VATICAN CITY - There is "little doubt" that William Shakespeare was a Catholic who was forced to hide his faith in Protestant England while leaving hints about his faith throughout his vast body of work, said an opinion piece in the Vatican newspaper.

Taking a cue from renewed speculation about Shakespeare's true identity sparked by the film "Anonymous," L'Osservatore Romano wrote, "There may be questions regarding his identity, but not his religious faith."

TORONTO - As sculptor Tim Schmalz works on his Nativity sculpture, he compares it to a Christmas carol — one of the songs of absolute happiness.

“Throughout this process, what happened was the figures became more joyous, the designs became more lyrical… And it wasn’t ‘Silent Night.’ It was definitely one of loud celebration as far as the representation is concerned,” said Schmalz.