Stolen relic of St John Bosco’s brain recovered

A guide to Dante’s Walk, a 235-mile route from Ravenna to Florence in Italy. / Terre di Mezzo.

Ravenna, Italy, Nov 11, 2021 / 04:20 am (CNA).
The poet Dante famously traveled through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise in his masterpiece the “Divine … […]

Mother Elvira, the founder of the Comunità Cenacolo, based her efforts to help young people struggling with addiction around the concept of radical trust in God’s mercy and providence. / Courtesy of the Comunità Cenacolo

National Catholic Register, Aug 5, 2023 / 13:00 pm (CNA).

Mother Elvira Petrozzi, who founded Comunità Cenacolo in 1983 to provide hope and healing to those suffering from addiction, died on Aug. 3 in the formation house and residence of her congregation in Saluzzo, Italy. She was 86.

Her death, following a long illness, came just weeks after thousands of people gathered in Saluzzo, a hilltop town in Italy’s northwest Piedmont region about an hour’s drive south of Turin, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Cenacolo Community’s founding there in an abandoned home on July 16, 1983.

In the decades since, the community has grown to encompass 72 Cenacolo houses in 20 countries, including four in the United States.

Mother Elvira called the Cenacolo a “School of Life” because it took people off the streets and gave them a “rebirth” that was “based on a simple, family-oriented, orderly life” with the foundation of prayer, physical labor, discipline, and fraternal sharing.

“How could I invent a story like this? Everything happened without me even realizing it,” she once remarked.

“I dove into God’s mercy and I rolled up my sleeves to love, love, love … and serve!” she said. “I am the first to surprise myself with what has happened and what is happening in the life of the Cenacolo Community. It’s a work of God, the Holy Spirit, and of Mary.”

Bishop Robert Baker, bishop emeritus of Birmingham, Alabama, first met Mother Elvira in 1991. The two developed a close friendship and together they co-founded four Comunità Cenacolos in the U.S. Southwest, including one near Hanceville, Alabama.

Baker was among Mother Elvira’s many friends, supporters, and community members who were able to visit with her in her final days.

“I had the blessing of being invited to come to be at her bedside,” he told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s partner news outlet. “I was with her and I was able to give her a blessing.”

Humble beginnings

Born Rita Petrozzi, Mother Elvira was born in Sora, Italy, in 1937 and grew up in a poor family, taking the name Elvira upon entering the Sisters of Charity of St. Jeanne Antide Thouret as a teenager.

It wasn’t until 27 years later that she felt inspired to help young addicts and other youth to change their lives. Rooted in her Catholic faith and God’s love for every person, her methods were so effective that they led to others wanting a Comunità Cenacolo established in their region.

Prior to meeting her, Baker founded a drug addiction center called Our Lady of Hope Community in St. Augustine, Florida. Then visiting Rome when he was rector of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine, he learned of Mother Elvira, spoke with her, and at his invitation agreed to establish a Cenacolo community with her entire program at Our Lady of Hope in 1992. The two friends went on to co-found two other houses in the St. Augustine area and a fourth house in Alabama.

Baker celebrated one of the Masses for the thousands of people attending the 40th anniversary celebration in Saluzzo. In his homily, he reflected on the time when he arranged to use an ornamental nursery to raise funds for the Cenacolo program in Florida, but when community members arrived from Italy they explained that Mother Elvira had instructed them to rely instead on divine providence.

“It was the result of her own closeness to the Lord in the Eucharist, which enabled her to see the immensity of God’s love. And if God loves us so immensely, he will provide for us,” he said.

After 30 years, no one has gone hungry in that Florida house or any of the community’s houses. “The point being, she was right,” Baker said.

The daily schedule at these houses includes Mass, eucharistic adoration, Marian devotion with three rosaries minimum a day, and devotion to St. Joseph. Every day members pray simply: “St. Joseph, provide for us.”

“The heart of it is, of course, the Eucharist,” Baker explained.

“Part of Elvira’s training is to divest to get rid of the stuff you don’t need,” he said. “So, the divesting, the trust in divine providence, and then … the Eucharist, praying before the Lord. That’s where her greatest strength was — the Eucharist, where she had all these insights. [You] have to have the sense of God’s immense love, which she had from praying before the Eucharist. And then because you know God loves you immensely, he will provide for you.”

When Baker visited Mother Elvira shortly before her death, he noted upon entering the house a mosaic on the floor that spells out the words “Dio Provvede” (God Provides).

‘Consumed with God’s love’

Florida residents Sean and Elaine Corrigan, who met Mother Elvira in 2000, lived in her community for some time and served in its missions in Brazil.

The couple credits her for saving their marriage.

“She had an extraordinary impact on our lives and on our marriage,” Elaine Corrigan told the Register. “Mother Elvira was a person fully in love with her Savior. She knew, she accepted, and she believed completely in his merciful love, and her great desire was to share him with others.

“I wanted to run after her and soak up all that she had,” she continued. “When we met Mother Elvira, we knew we had encountered a woman completely consumed with the love of God. She knew in the core of her being that he could and would heal people. She shared this hope and mercy with everyone she met.”

Albino Aragno, who started with the Cenacolo more than 30 years ago and today is the director of Comunità Cenacolo America, said Mother Elvira taught him many valuable lessons.

“Mother Elvira always encouraged me. She reminded me that life is precious and that life needs to be lived fully … to never be afraid to do God’s will, and always trust in him,” he said.

“Because of this, I can say that in all these years I can see that our community has kept on going even through so many difficulties, because good always prevails!”

Albino’s wife, Joyce, said Mother Elvira had a profound effect on her from the very beginning.

“Mother Elvira said, ‘Lord, let me know your will in the moment you want me to do it.’ This pierced my heart the first time I heard it and moved me to try to live every moment of my life in surrender and abandonment to his will, as Jesus reveals it at that moment,” she explained.

“It’s so radically opposed to control and trusting ‘in my own understanding,’ as the Psalmist says — my own intellect, perception, and analysis. Jesus calls me to live totally in the moment, not depending on myself.”

Pope Francis paid tribute to the Comunità Cenacolo on its 40th anniversary following his July 16 Angelus reflection.

“I send my heartfelt greeting to the Cenacolo Community, which has been a place of hospitality and human promotion for 40 years,” the pope said. “I bless Mother Elvira, the bishop of Saluzzo, and all the fraternity and friends. What you do is good, and it is good that you exist! Thank you!”

Baker said he observed during a recent Mass how “in periods of the Church there are great saints that get us through the eras in which we live.”

He pointed to St. Benedict in the fourth century, the Dominicans and Franciscans in the 13th century during the Albigensian heresy, and St. Ignatius and the Jesuits in the 16th century at the time of the Reformation.

“Mother Elvira,” he believes, is “on that list.”

[…]

New York City, N.Y., May 1, 2018 / 01:36 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Alfie Evans, a disabled British toddler who died Saturday after a contentious legal battle over his treatment, captured the attention of Catholics around the world, including Pope Francis. While he suffered from undiagnosed neurological problems at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Alfie’s parents sought to treat him elsewhere, while physicians opposed the move, arguing that continuing treatment was not in the child’s best interests.

The case raised questions about the right of parents to make healthcare decisions for a child, about ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ means of treatment and life-support, and about the treatment of patients with disabilities.  Alfie Evans died after his parents lost legal appeals, despite diplomatic interventions supporting their efforts. He lived, unexpectedly, for five days after physicians removed life support.

Charles C. Camosy is associate professor of theology at Fordham University and author of several books on Catholic ethical reasoning. Last week, he authored “Alfie Evans and our moral crossroads,” published by the ecumenical magazine and website First Things.

In an interview with CNA editor-in-chief JD Flynn, Camosy discusses some of the ethical aspects regarding the case of Alfie Evans.

Some of the discussion regarding Alfie Evans’ situation centered around ‘extraordinary’ and ‘ordinary’ kinds of life-saving treatment. Questions were frequently raised about whether Alfie was receiving ‘ordinary’ or ‘extraordinary’ treatment by physicians at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.

How does the Church understand the idea of ‘ordinary and extraordinary’ medical treatment?

This is an essential aspect of the Church’s teaching, especially at the end of life.

‘Ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ have nothing to do with the frequency with which a particular culture offers a treatment. Ordinary treatment, rather, refers to treatment that is morally required while other kinds of treatment- extraordinary treatment- may be refused or withdrawn–so long as one is not aiming at death, and has a proportionately serious reason.

The distinction is largely accepted by most medical communities today, and was pioneered by the Catholic Church in the late Middle Ages when thinking about battlefield medicine and whether or not a soldier could refuse a life-saving amputation without aiming at their own death. The answer was “yes,” and the intense pain of an amputation without pain medicine was the proportionately serious reason. In such a case, death is merely foreseen but not intended.
 
The Church generally allows individual patients or their surrogates (with a strong preference for the family) to make this kind of moral judgment for themselves, unless it is perfectly obvious that one is aiming at death or that there is nothing like a proportionately serious reason.

It is important to mention that giving someone food and water, even through technical means, is not considered means of “medical treatment” and is not a medical act according to Catholic teaching. It is care which comes from basic human decency.

You wrote in First Things last week that disabled patients sometimes suffer from “slow coding” or “show coding” in hospital settings. Can you explain what that is?

I wouldn’t say it happens often, but it happens often enough that medical ethicists think it is worthy of debate.

Sometimes a physician and/or other members of the medical team believe that further intense treatment of a disabled child is inappropriate. Sometimes they may have a point–like when pounding on the chest of a child after cardiac arrest is likely to do little more than break her bones. But sometimes, as I believed happened in the Alfie Evans case, it is because physicians and/or other members of the medical team think the child is so disabled–perhaps due to a devastating brain injury or disease–that further life is not in the child’s interest.

Now, a medical team and hospital is rarely forced into caring for a patient, so one option is to refer the parents to another medical team or hospital who will treat the child. But sometimes, despite agreeing with the parents that the child is a “full code” and everything will be done, the physician and/or other members of the medical team will only make a half-hearted effort at treating the child. This is called a “slow” or “show” code, and some medical ethicists defend the practice.

But as I mentioned in my First Things piece, that is only one way that health care providers can and do manipulate parents to get the outcome they want. Numbers can be fudged. Studies can be selectively referenced. Directive language–especially about disability–can be used.

Health care providers have a ridiculous amount of power. We ought to be far more critical in holding them to account.

You have discussed the concept of “ableism.” What does this mean?

Ableism describes a particular kind of unjust discrimination. In this case, it is discrimination in favor of those with able bodies and minds. Physicians tend to be at particular risk for ableism and often rate quality of lives of disabled patients worse than the patients do themselves.
 
How might those biases have impacted decisions made about the medical care of Alfie Evans?

The treatment Alfie was being given were working quite well, doing precisely what it was designed to do. He needed help breathing, but so do many disabled people. His brain damage was profound, even to the point where it is likely he wasn’t conscious of being intubated, and was almost certainly not suffering in any meaningful sense. And though he was likely to die, he was never diagnosed with a disease and we have absolutely no idea how long he would have lived had he been given treatment that is standard in other countries.

Given all these facts, the concern that Alfie’s doctors and Judge Hayden had with his brain seems impossible to miss. Though misleading euphemisms were offered about other matters of concern (as they almost always are when the truth is difficult to name), it is very clear to me the decision was made on an ableist basis.  The decision wasn’t made because, like getting one’s leg cut off without pain medicine, the treatment was too burdensome. It was made because Alfie’s brain was so damaged that his life was no longer consider dignified–and it was [judged to be] in his best interests to die.

His death was not merely foreseen. Those who wanted Alfie’s life support withdrawn were not happy that he started to breathe afterwards. (And, indeed, there is at least some evidence to suggest that Alfie was given drugs after extubation which made it more difficult for him to breathe.) On the contrary, the point was for that for Alfie to die was in his best interest.

This is unlike the amputation example where, if somehow the soldier lived after refusing treatment, everyone involved would be thrilled. The soldier’s death was never part of the object of the act. Not so with refusing to treat Alfie Evans.

What reasoning did some Catholic commentators proffer to support Justice Hayden’s decision? What is your response to that reasoning?

Catholic commentators who support Hayden’s decision are right about a lot of things. They are right that the Church doesn’t make an idol out of preserving life. In fact, we invented the tradition which resists that kind of idolatry. They are right to say that we don’t simply allow parents to do whatever they want with their children in a medical context–especially if it could reasonably be construed as abuse. They are right to say, if it was really about burden of treatment, that Hayden’s decision could be consistent with Catholic teaching.

But I fear much of the commentary has been too deferential to those who hold power in this case: the doctors and the jurists. They deserve a far more skeptical eye, especially given the power they wield over the life and death over the most vulnerable.

Catholic teaching never permits aiming at the death of a patient, either by action or omission. This case, again, was not about the burden of extraordinary treatment, but about the disability of a child. Our job as Catholic Christians is to see the face of Christ in little Alfie–not to accept the position that his treatment was futile because his brain damage prevented him having certain abilities. And when there is legitimate disagreement about what is in a child’s best interest, and abuse is not part of the scenario, the Catholic position is to defer to the parents. They know the child and his interests best. The three of them belong to each other in a special and unique way. The doctors and judges will not be visiting Alfie’s grave. His parents will be.

Two other quick things to mention:

First, the charge of “vitalism” has been thrown at people who didn’t want action aiming at Alphie’s death. It is not always clear what this charge is trying to identify, but if it is the position that human life is valuable as human life–regardless of what it can “do” or how much it can “produce”–then many of us, I hope, will plead guilty. A human person is a living member of the species Homo sapiens. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Second, it has been a shame that so many people have tried to read this issue through the life/choice abortion binary. Once again, it appears, the abortion wars have infected a very different kind of moral and legal issue.

Pro-lifers have, for some time now, been concerned with vulnerable lives beyond birth. Often in close cooperation with disability-rights groups, we fight against euthanasia. We fight against human trafficking laws. Many of us reject the death penalty. We are deeply, concerned, obviously with infanticides perpetrated by people like Dr. Kermit Gosnell. We fight for vulnerable human life, especially when–as Pope Francis warns–our throwaway culture treats it like so much trash.

There is absolutely no reason that the fight for Alfie and others like him needs to be about abortion. People who disagree about that issue should be able to agree that Alfie matters just the same as any other little boy, and that his parents ought to have been able to pursue his best interest in ways that other parents are permitted to do.
 
What might the life and death of Alfie Evans portend for the future of healthcare ethics and policy? What should it teach Catholics about prophetic witness?

We are at a very dangerous moral crossroads. Before the attention that the Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard cases brought with them, these practices were hidden away, with little-to-no public scrutiny. What will we do now that these practices have been brought to light and are defended by some doctors and judges? Will we step up and be heard? Will we be on the side of the disabled and the parents who fight for them? Or will we capitulate to ableist assumptions and the practices of the powerful?

Pope Francis was on the right side of both the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans cases, resisting the throw-away culture’s attempt to dispense with them. Let us get behind the Holy Father and continue to resist the throw-away culture by standing up for the disabled, in this case and the similar cases which are sure to come.

[…]