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{mosimage}TORONTO - The Office of Catholic Youth of the archdiocese of Toronto has unveiled its travel plans for World Youth Day 2011, including details about four major formation events.

The trip will begin with two days in Rome in early August, where pilgrims will visit St. Peter������Ƶapp Basilica, the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel. The next five days will be spent in Cintruenigo, Spain, for “days in the diocese” where pilgrims will pray and interact with a local parish and its families, followed by seven days in Madrid Aug. 15-21 for the World Youth Day celebrations. The OCY will take a maximum of 120 pilgrims between the ages of 18-35.

{mosimage}TORONTO - University of Toronto student Mark Harris, 21, recently returned from Nepal where he was studying in an ashram, getting a small feel for the vast complexities of Hindu culture.

As a co-ordinator for the , this undergraduate hopes to help other young people experience the same thing — a journey into foreign faiths.

{mosimage}TORONTO - By the time she was sweet 16 Miriam Frankel had worn a yellow star, been expelled with her family from Italy by the fascists, lived as a refugee, ridden a cattle car to Auschwitz, worked as a slave on less than 1,000 calories a day, stared Dr. Josef Mengele in the eye and lost her entire family to a planned system of industrialized murder.

“I don’t know why I survived. Maybe it was to tell the story,” Frankel told about 100 people Oct. 28 at one of the first sessions of Toronto������Ƶapp Holocaust Education Week.

Holocaust Education Week has featured hundreds of speakers throughout the years, with 170 programs offered this year alone. But following in the footsteps of this year������Ƶapp first presentation, Catholic schools in particular were quick to claim Holocaust survivors as their main speakers, said organizer Mary Siklos, as most Holocaust survivors like Frankel, who is 80, won’t be telling their story much longer.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Twenty-five years ago, the Presentation Brothers became involved at Brebeuf College, introducing the all-boys high school to the most “Christ-like man it������Ƶapp every seen.”

Brother Henry Spencer is a great influence on the school������Ƶapp students and staff, said gifted and enrichment teacher Michael Da Costa of his former teacher and now co-worker. 

{mosimage}LANGLEY, B.C. - Ten years ago, Tom Hamel responded to the need for Catholic higher education in British Columbia by founding , where he is now president.

As the university celebrates its milestone anniversary this month, Hamel reflects on both the challenges and joys of founding and running a “ground-breaking” college.

{mosimage}October has started out as a difficult month for Catholics in Antigonish and for those of us in New Brunswick too. The news of Bishop Raymond Lahey facing child pornography charges has been hard for all of us to accept. It is devastating to think that somebody in such a position of trust and respect would possess child pornography, especially when he had just been working to help victims of child abuse.

Watching the news and reading people������Ƶapp comments online, it seems that many people have lost faith not only in Bishop Lahey, but in other priests, bishops and the Catholic Church itself.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - Campus for Christ, a worldwide Christian campus organization that has a group at Ottawa������Ƶapp Carleton University, organized its second debate in four years to debate the question many have pondered over the years.

The recent debate “Does God Exist?” drew more than 100 students.

Campus for Christ paired up with the secular campus group Free Thought and the Centre of Inquiry in Toronto to bring in two speakers to face off. Representing Campus for Christ was Evangelical Rev. Joe Boot, while atheist professor Ronald De Souza took the Free Thought position.

{mosimage}TORONTO - There is one Grade 11 physics class that Natalia Blicharska and Mariya Kolomiyets are certain they will never forget.

It was during this class in December 2008 that they had the brilliant idea to start their own charity. The charity������Ƶapp name — 1 Step @ a Time — is reflective of their philosophy that they must first serve the needs of Torontonians before helping others globally.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Nine-hundred students at St. Michael������Ƶapp College School walked to conquer cancer at their first event in honour of a beloved past school president.

The students raised $17,000 which they will donate to Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation on behalf of the late Fr. Daniel Zorzi, C.S.B., their school president who died of cancer at the age of 48 in January.

{mosimage}MARKHAM, Ont. - When Louise Kent sang to about 300 St. Monica Catholic Elementary School pupils that “the power of youth is the power of truth,” the kids were paying attention.

“We should help them (the poor),” said Grade 7 student Katherine Paulino at the end of Kent������Ƶapp two-hour preview of We Day. “They say it all the time, but we should really help them.”

“You’re helping to start a group in Grade 7, a whole group helping the world. But it could be everyone,” said student Renée Lam.

“When I grow up, I want to help the poor,” said Ivana Anderson.