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PRESS CLIPPINGS
Jesuit retreat centre silences retail giant
A Jesuit retreat centre in Ontario, Canada, has won a 10-year battle with
the US retail giant Walmart to ensure that a proposed store will not be seen
or heard by retreatants.
The Globe and Mail reports that in an agreement announced on Tuesday,
Wal-Mart will install high berms designed by acoustical engineers and a
"living wall" of willows and six-metre-high cedars between its development
and the Jesuits' 240-hectare spiritual retreat.
If the store's presence and traffic noise still intrude on religious
practices at the Jesuit centre - typically people go there for weekend-long
or eight-day silent retreats - the agreement requires Walmart to take
further action.
The Jesuits and a local interfaith coalition in return will drop a court
case claiming infringement of their rights to freedom of religion.
An appeal of an Ontario Municipal Board decision allowing the store to be
built also will be abandoned.
The negotiations were tough, said Toronto lawyer Eric Gillespie, counsel for
the faith group. Both sides agreed not to talk about what went on.
Fr James Profit, spiritual director of the Jesuit centre - a 93-year-old
tract of farmland, meadows, woodlots and hermit cabins - would say only that
he and Walmart officials "walked the land" together.
He also acknowledged some disappointment that the courts won't be asked to
rule on whether silence and the night's darkness have legal as well as
spiritual sanctity in the exercise of religion.
"It would have been nice. But it would have consumed a lot of resources. It
would have been a very expensive answer," the The Globe and Mail quoted him
as saying.
The centre, in Guelph about 80 kilometres southwest of Toronto, attracts
retreatants from all over the world, but mainly from heavily populated
Southern Ontario and upstate New York.
The hermit cabins on the property are used for solitary living. The land is
also used for aboriginal and eastern religious practices.
"This was never about blocking commercial development, but about the
protection of sacred spaces," Fr Profit said.
The Catholic News
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