Supreme Court to hear arguments about California abortion law

CNA Staff, Jun 22, 2020 / 06:40 pm (CNA).- The Catholic bishops of California have defended St. Junipero Serra, after statues of St. Junipero were torn down in both San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The bishops said June 22 that the saint was “ahead of his time” in defending the rights of indigenous peoples and that those who have called for statues of him to be removed or torn down “failed the test” of history.

A statue of Serra was torn down in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park June 20, along with statues of Francis Scott Key and Ulysses S. Grant. In Los Angeles the same day, rioters pulled down a statue of Serra in the city’s downtown area.

“The movement to confront racism within our society during these past weeks has been, at times, challenging,” said a statement from the California Catholic Conference of Bishops on Monday, “but it has provided bold new hope for every American that our nation can begin to transform key elements of our racist past and present.”

The bishops said that they “vigorously and wholeheartedly support” efforts to identify, and repair historical instances of racism against members of the African-American and Native American communities, but that on the specific question of removing statues and other public images, the actual history of the individuals must be considered.

“If this process is to be truly effective as a remedy for racism, it must discern carefully the entire contribution that the historical figure in question made to American life, especially in advancing the rights of marginalized peoples,” they said.

“In calling for the removal of images of Saint Junipero Serra from public display in California, and in tearing down his statue in San Francisco and in Los Angeles, protesters have failed that test.”

Serra, who was canonized a saint by Pope Francis in 2015, was an eighteenth century Franciscan missionary who founded nine Catholic missions in the area that would later become California; many of those missions would go on to become the centers of major California cities.

The saint helped to convert thousands of native Californians to Christianity and taught them new agricultural technologies.

Some California activists view Serra, an 18th-century Franciscan missionary, as having contributed to the destruction of Native American way of life through his founding of the first nine of California’s mission churches. Many of the priest’s biographers dispute those claims.

Referring to a statement by San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone on Saturday, the state’s bishops defended the saint’s life and mission.

“The historical truth is that Serra repeatedly pressed the Spanish authorities for better treatment of the Native American communities,” they said. 

“Serra was not simply a man of his times. In working with Native Americans, he was a man ahead of his times who made great sacrifices to defend and serve the indigenous population and work against an oppression that extends far beyond the mission era.”

If that is not enough to legitimate a public statue in the state that he did so much to create,” the bishops observed, “then virtually every historical figure from our nation’s past will have to be removed for their failings measured in the light of today’s standards.”

On Saturday, Archbishop Cordileone said that Serra made “heroic sacrifices to protect the indigenous people of California from their Spanish conquerors, especially the soldiers,” recalling how Serra, despite having an infirm leg, walked to Mexico City to obtain special authority from the Spanish viceroy to discipline the military who were abusing the indigenous people.

“Then he walked back to California,” the archbishop said.

Cordileone it is important not to “deny that historical wrongs have occurred, even by people of good will, and healing of memories and reparation is much needed. But just as historical wrongs cannot be righted by keeping them hidden, neither can they be righted by re-writing the history.”

[…]

Washington D.C., Mar 13, 2017 / 04:46 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid war and famine in South Sudan, the Catholic Church is still serving the most vulnerable even as the government has collapsed.

The Church is the “only functioning institution in civil society,” Neil Corkery, president of the Sudan Relief Fund, told CNA in an interview, and “is really the only thing that’s left trying to help people” who live “in the remotest parts of the country.”

Famine was recently declared in parts of South Sudan, where there has been an ongoing civil war, interrupted by tenuous peace, since December 2013.

42 percent of the population, an estimated 4.5 million people, are facing “severe food insecurity,” Corkery said, and that number is expected to rise to half the country’s population – or 5.5 million – by July.

There have been 2.5 million refugees created by the conflict, he added. A confidential UN report warned that the conflict had reached “catastrophic proportions for civilians,” the South China Morning Post reported last month.

“This crisis is man-made, the direct consequence of a conflict prolonged by South Sudanese leaders who are unwilling to put aside political ambitions for the good of their people,” State Department acting spokesperson Mark C. Toner stated on February 21.

“We call on President Kiir to expeditiously make good on his promise that humanitarian and developmental organizations will have unimpeded access to populations in need across the country,” Toner added.

Recently, President Salva Kiir called for a day of prayer for the country ahead of a national dialogue. The auxiliary bishop of Juba, however, dismissed it as a “political prayer” and “a mockery” amid violence inflicted by government troops.

Because of the conflict and the “scorched earth” policies of government troops, many have been “unable to plant their crops,” Corkery said.

At a parish in the Diocese of Tombura-Yambio, in the southwestern portion of the country and an area that is “very fertile” and was once a bread basket for the country, “these people are now in hiding, or taking refuge in the parish compound, and unable to plant crops,” he said. “Things are obviously just getting much worse.”

“It is a real crisis that’s coming down the pike,” Corkery warned.

The country’s bishops have spoken out against the violence there, accusing soldiers of committing war crimes and saying that the violence has interrupted the harvesting of crops.

“Despite our calls to all parties, factions, and individuals to STOP THE WAR, nevertheless killing, raping, looting, displacement, attacks on churches and destruction of property continue all across the country,” the bishops of South Sudan stated in a Feb. 23 pastoral message.

“Much of the violence,” they added, “is being perpetrated by government and opposition forces against civilians,” especially those of ethnicities deemed to be in alliance with rebel factions. And those victims “are prevented from harvesting their crops,” the bishops added.

Some members of the government have frustrated local peace deals brokered by the Church, the bishops said, and churches, priests, and nuns have been attacked.  

The U.S. has sent “$2 billion since 2014 in humanitarian aid alone,” Corkery said, but the United Nations humanitarian workers only operate in “certain pockets” of the country.

Amid this crisis and growing famine, Catholic priests, nuns, and missionaries have been laboring to bring food and supplies to remote areas and are “reaching these people who are truly destitute and starving.”

It is not an easy task. Aside from the ongoing conflict where soldiers could seize food and supplies if they were aware they were being transported, the country’s logistical infrastructure is so poor there are no paved roads outside the capital city of Juba, Corkery noted. During the country’s rainy season, this problem is expanded.

“The real heroes that I see there,” Corkery said, are the “missionaries toiling away on the front lines.”

“These people are looking at the long-term solution in terms of the eternal scheme of things, people’s souls.”

Several aid workers with Samaritan’s Purse were detained or kidnapped by opposition fighters near Mayendit March 13.

South Sudan announced earlier this month it plans to charge $10,000 per visa for foreign aid workers.

“The government and the army have largely contributed to the humanitarian situation. And now, they want to create profit from the crisis they have created,” Elizabeth Deng, South Sudan researcher with Amnesty International, said in reaction to the announcement.

Despite the heroic efforts of missionaries, the Sudan Relief Fund, and other aid groups like Aid to the Church In Need and Samaritan’s Purse, a long-term peace is the only lasting solution to the country’s problems, Corkery insisted.

Prayer is the most important thing Catholics in the U.S. can do to help the situation, he said, as peace can only come about through “prayer and grace working in the hearts and the minds of these warring tribes and factions.”

However, citizens can also ask members of Congress to “push the U.S. government to put more pressure” on South Sudanese leaders. The U.S. has already begun listing “top leaders as war criminals” there, he said.

Pope Francis has spoken about the crisis in the country and has expressed his desire to visit there. No details of the trip have yet been released, Corkery said.

“The Pope and the Church,” he said, “are the only people that have the ability to convene, bring the parties together” for a peaceful solution. Pope Francis will try to “refocus the international community on the gravity of this crisis that’s there” and “convene the warring parties to try to bring them to the table to get some peace.”

[…]

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco / CNA stock

Washington D.C., May 17, 2021 / 11:59 am (CNA).
The Archbishop of San Francisco on Monday responded to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who said last week she was “pleased” with … […]