Welcome to the Canadian National Multilingual News Group (CNMNG). This is a project made possible through funding by Canadian Heritage. CNMNG aims to gather news researched and written by a corps of Canadian-based journalists/writers from the country’s multilingual community groups. The overall goal is to inform, analyze and critique the issues of the day in a professional manner and to provide that to publishers and editors active in the ethnocultural-multilingual press and media whose experience provides them with a perspective that is sensitive to news relevant to their own language group.
TORONTO – The majority of the world’s wealth is in the hands of 1% of the population. A disconcerting figure, what emerges from the latest report by Oxfam, published in conjunction with the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland, according to which in the last two years the 1% of the richest people have accumulated almost two thirds of all the new wealth created in the world. →
NAPLES – She travels 1,600 kilometers a day by train to go to work and back home. Apparently it’s less expensive given the rental prices. These days, it is no exaggeration to define the worker Giuseppina Giuliano, a 29-year-old school worker, stoic: every day the Naples-Milan route (and back) is made by train because the city of the Madonnina, where she works as a janitor at the art school ” Boccioni” in piazzale Arduino, is too expensive and therefore, on balance, it is more advantageous to take the train and stay and live with her parents in Naples. →
TORONTO – Backlash: Misogyny in the Digital Age, the feature documentary that, in its French-language version, has already become a smash theatrical hit in Quebec, will have its English theatrical premiere in Toronto at the Hot Docs Cinema on Friday, January 13 at 7 PM, with additional showings Saturday, January 14 at 3PM, Sunday, January 15 at 5PM, and Tuesday, January 17 at 4PM. Premieres in other Canadian cities will follow.
TORONTO – The extreme weather. This is the cause of the inconvenience suffered by thousands of passengers in Canadian airports during Christmas departures according to the airlines and according to the federal Minister of Transport, Omar Alghabra, protagonists of a “pass the buck” in front of the Transportation Commission of the House of Commons which called them to understand the reasons for the Christmas chaos. →
TORONTO – Today’s Media and Press cannot resist succumbing to the temptation of finding fault with any and all things Catholic, even as the Vatican prepares to bid its last adieu to one of Catholicism’ leaders. Backhanded compliments abound. I will not speak ill of the deceased, especially in the case of the former Pope Emeritus.
I knew Pope Benedict XVI only by reputation, that is, only by the reputation attributed to his views and leadership by commentators who had the means and desire to impart their passing impressions on the rest of us.
But I did see him in person…once. It was on a cold and overcast day, April 8, 2005, uncommon weather in Springtime for Rome. Along with Prime Minister Paul Martin, eleven MPs (including Cabinet Ministers), one Senator and the Grand Chief of First Nations (Phil Fontaine), I was among the privileged one million plus attendees outside the entrance of Saint Peter’s Basilica for the funeral of the recently deceased [Saint] Pope John Paul II.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was the Celebrant. We waited in St. Peter’s Square from 7:00 AM until the soon to be Pope Benedict XVI began the funeral at 11:00 AM. The Mass lasted a full two hours. As members of an official “State delegation”, my colleagues and I were afforded the luxury of folding chairs to relax any discomfort over the six-hour open-air event.
Five million and more other attendees spread over the piazzas of Rome had only their faith and their respect for the Pope to give them strength. An estimated two million Catholics had made the trek from Poland to pay their last respects to their hero.
No wonder, from my perspective, Pope John Paul II was the key political dynamic in the dissipation of the Cold War tensions that threatened world peace following WWII, and the integration of new political dynamics following the break-up of the USSR. That dissertation is for another day.
The inheritor of that narrative was Pope Benedict XVI, the first German pontiff in one thousand years. Irrespective of his personal social views (it is important for any leader to have them), his election as Pontiff will always be associated with the philosophical and moral rectitude associated with the concept and the act of Reconciliation everywhere.
For Canadians, it is especially significant that he invited leaders of our Aboriginal communities to Rome (including Phil Fontaine) to embark on the ways and means to mitigate and resolve the negative impacts of Residential schools.
During his papal mandate, the Church also recognized and named her first Aboriginal Saint, the Lily of the Mohawks – Saint Kateri Tekakwitha.
But he was above all, a humble and compassionate man who recognized his limitations and who admitted when he could bear no more. The papacy was and continues to be more important than any one individual. He was humble enough to say: “This has been more than enough for me; Lord let this cup pass from my hands”.
He resigned and stepped aside. Tomorrow the Universal Church and the World say goodbye and RIP to Joseph Ratzinger the man and Benedict XVI the Pope.
