Vatican takes climate activists to trial for damage to base of famous statue in Vatican Museums

Vatican City, Dec 3, 2020 / 06:05 am (CNA).- People with disabilities must have access to the sacraments and, as missionary disciples, the ability to be full and active participants in the life of their Catholic parish, Pope Francis said Thursday…. […]

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other government officials held bilateral meetings with Pope Francis and Cardinal Pietro Parolin on July 27, 2022, during the pope’s trip to that country. / Credit: pool VAMP

Denver Newsroom, Oct 27, 2022 / 19:00 pm (CNA).

The Catholic population in Canada has declined by almost 2 million people in the last 10 years, the Canadian census has found in a report that indicates the religiously unaffiliated now outnumber Catholics.

The latest census figures, compiled in 2021, show the Catholic Canadian population has declined to 10.9 million. Catholics now make up about 29.9% of the country’s people. According to the 2011 census, the Catholic population that year was 12.8 million.

Just 53.3% of Canadians, 19.3 million people, now identify as Christian, a decline from 67.3% in 2011 and 77.1% in 2001. Statistics Canada, Canada’s national statistical office, presented the latest figures in an Oct. 26 report.

Catholicism is still the most popular religious affiliation in all provinces and territories except for Nunavut, the sparse population of which has a large Anglican component.

Quebec is the only majority Catholic province, but Catholic numbers declined “considerably,” Statistics Canada said. In 2011, 74.7% of Quebec residents reported that they were Catholic. The 2021 figures indicate 53.8% of Quebec residents identified as Catholic.

CNA contacted the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Archdiocese of Quebec for comment but did not receive a response by publication.

Among other Christian identities in Canada, the most numerous are the 7.6% of Canadians who identify as Christian without specifying a denomination. This is double the proportion from 2011.

About 3% of Canadians are adherents to the United Church of Canada, a mainline ecclesial community, and another 3% belong to the Anglican Church. Orthodox Christians, Baptists, and Pentecostal and other Charismatic Christians make up the remainder.

Among Christians, only the Orthodox Christian population and the non-specific Christian population grew in the last decade.

Religious practice has also declined. A separate Canada Statistics summary, released in October 2021, said that in 2019 only about 20% of Canadians attended group religious activities at least monthly. This compares to 40% of Canadians who reported the same in 1985. Women were more likely than men to declare a religious affiliation, as were people born in older generations.

The religiously unaffiliated now make up 34.6% of the Canadian population, according to Statistics Canada’s latest report.

Some regions are less affiliated than others. Almost 60% of the people in Yukon are religiously unaffiliated, as are 52% of those in British Columbia.

Non-Christian religious adherents make up 12.1% of Canada’s population.

About 5% of Canadians are Muslim. Their population has doubled in size since 2011. About 2.3% of Canadians are Hindu and 2.1% are Sikh. The Jewish population numbers about 335,000, a slight increase over the last decade, but their proportion of Canadians has declined to 0.9%. They are slightly outnumbered by self-identified Buddhists.

Non-Christian religious adherents disproportionately live in large urban centers and their numbers have increased largely due to immigration. They make up 16.3% of the population in Ontario, with Muslims and Hindus the most populous. About 16.7% of British Columbia residents adhere to non-Christian religions and Canada’s Sikhs have their largest presence there.

Canada’s 1.8-million indigenous people are largely unaffiliated, with 47% reporting no affiliation. About 26.9% identified as Catholic. Only 81,000 people overall, about 0.2 percent of the total Canadian population, reported adhering to a traditional Indigenous spirituality.

Catholic involvement with government-subsidized residential schools for Indigenous Canadians has come under scrutiny in recent decades because of these schools’ efforts to eradicate indigenous culture and assimilate children to the dominant culture. Many of the schools were poorly run and poorly funded, while staff could be negligent or even abusive towards children. Thousands of children died of injury, neglect or diseases like tuberculosis, often at a rate far higher than other children in Canada.

In 2021, reports suggested there were several hundred unmarked graves at two former residential schools. Though the suspected graves have not been exhumed, the reports led to a wave of protests and burnings and vandalism of churches, including churches that still serve Indigenous communities.

The number of hate-based incidents targeting Catholics increased by more than 260% between 2020 and 2021, according to crime figures from Statistics Canada.

Pope Francis visited Canada in 2022 to apologize for Catholics’ role in the residential schools.

In addition to abuse scandals, Canadian law and culture continue to diverge from Catholic belief on abortion, euthanasia, and LGBT issues. There are also disputes over the identity and effectiveness of Catholic schools, some of which are state-funded but supervised by elected lay Catholics, not Church officials. These could be other factors in the decline of Catholic numbers in Canada.

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Ottawa, Canada, Mar 12, 2021 / 05:18 pm (CNA).- Canada’s vulnerable populations are at risk due to Bill C-7’s expansion of euthanasia and assisted suicide to those with disabling, non-terminal conditions including mental illness, a member of the Canadian parliament has said.

An amended version of Bill C-7 passed the Canadian House of Commons March 11 by a vote of 180-149. Should the bill be approved by the Senate, which is likely, Canada’s euthanasia and assisted suicide laws will become some of the most permissible in the world.

“Bill C-7 is legislation that was a purported response to a Quebec superior court decision called ‘Truchon'”, Conservative MP Michael Cooper told CNA March 12. 

“In the Truchon decision, the judge determined that the ‘reasonably foreseeable’ criteria–that death must be reasonably foreseeable in order to qualify for medical assistance in dying–contravened Canada’s charter of rights and freedoms,” he explained.

In the case, Jean Truchon, a Quebec man who had cerebral palsy, filed suit after his request to end his life was denied as his condition was not terminal.

A judge ruled that Truchon and his co-plaintiff Nicole Gladu, who has post-polio syndrome, could not be denied a euthanasia or assisted suicide if they wished to end their lives, and that MAiD should be available to Canadians without terminal conditions.

Truchon received MAiD in April 2020. Gladu is still alive.

Cooper told CNA that “the normal course of action” following a court’s action such as the Truchon decision, “would have been the attorney general to have appealed the decision.”

“This, after all, was a lower court decision of one judge that was not binding on any courts in any other provinces. Indeed, it’s not binding on any upper court in the province of Quebec,” he said. Given that the Truchon decision was made “a mere three and a half years” following the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada, Cooper believes the attorney general should have appealed the decision.

“It’s the responsibility of the attorney general to defend the laws passed by parliament,” said Cooper. “And that would’ve meant appealing the decision, taking a decision if necessary all the way to the Supreme Court. That very least would have provided clarity in the law.”

Instead, the Canadian federal government announced that the decision would not be appealed, and new laws will take effect in Quebec in April. Parliament was instructed to write a law codifying the decision. Bill C-7 was introduced in parliament Feb. 23, 2020.

Initially, the bill would “remove the requirement for a person’s natural death to be reasonably foreseeable in order to be eligible” for euthanasia or assisted suicide and would “introduce a two-track approach to procedural safeguards” depending on if a person’s natural death is “reasonably foreseeable.”

The Senate, which has the ability to propose amendments to legislation, received the bill after it passed on a second reading in the House of Commons. The Senate introduced “radical” amendments to the bill, including one where euthanasia or assisted suicide would be permitted for people with mental illness as the sole underlying cause for ending their lives.

That amendment passed.

“The government has effectively rewritten the bill to something far more expansive than it was a year ago,” said Cooper.

Cooper was critical of the speed in which the legislation moved with the new amendments.
“I mean, this is a case where the government has proceeded with this radical expansion [of MAiD] absent a meaningful parliamentary study, absent a consensus amongst professionals, amongst experts and, in the face of leading mental health professionals who say the persons suffering from mental illness will prematurely end their lives,” he said. 

“It’s the height of recklessness on the part of the government,” said Cooper.

Once the bill has received Royal Assent, it will become law. Cooper said this is likely to happen before the end of the month, as a stay issued by the Quebec court will expire March 26.

Disability activists in Canada have been among the most vocally opposed to the passage of Bill C-7 and the expansion of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Over 120 disability groups have spoken out against the bill, saying that the bill amounts to coercion for people with disabilities to end their lives.

Disability Filibuster, an organization of Canadians with disabilities and their allies who are opposed to Bill C-7, noted that the day the bill was passed–March 11, 2021–was also the tenth anniversary of Canada ratifying the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

“Bill C-7 expands Medical Assistance in Dying beyond those who are actually dying, but only for persons with a disabling medical condition,” said Disability Filibuster’s website.

“The Bill, and its ableist subtext have already been harmful and traumatizing for a great many disabled people in Canada.”

[…]