Month: July 2018

Phoenix, Ariz., Jul 28, 2018 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- More than 100 Catholics will attend the 2018 People of Life awards next week to honor three pro-life individuals for their dedication to the Gospel of Life.

The awards will go to Janice Benton, a proponent for disability rights; Monsignor Joseph Ranieri, an advocate for post-abortion healing; and James Hanson, who campaigned against medically assisted-suicide and who will be honored posthumously.  

The awards will be presented in Phoenix as part of the Diocesan Pro-Life Leadership Conference July 29 – Aug. 1, sponsored by the US bishops’ Secretariat on Pro-Life Activities.

More than 125 people are expected to attend, including Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, Bishop Brendan Cahill of Victoria in Texas, and Bishop Eduardo Nevares, Auxiliary Bishop of Phoenix.

The awards are given to men and women who have made significant and longtime contributions to the pro-life movement, promoting a culture of life and respect for the human person.

Janice Benton has served as the executive director of National Catholic Partnership on Disability for 15 years. Before that, she spent 25 years ministering to people with disabilities, working in areas such as a camp counselor for people with intellectual disabilities.

She also worked for the American Coalition of Citizens in Washington D.C., beginning in 1979, where she advocated for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Education for All Handicapped Children Act.

Monsignor Ranieri has served as a parish priest of the Archdiocese of Washington for more than 60 years. There, he involved himself with Project Rachel Ministry, a post-abortion resource group.

According to the Catholic Anchor, Monsignor Ranieri encouraged priests, who will hear about abortions in the confessional, “to listen, to be open and to be patient. These people need to talk about what happened, often more than once.”

James Hanson was a U.S. Marine Corp veteran and president of the Patients Rights Action Fund, a strategic and financial support group advocating against assisted suicide legislation. Hanson suffered from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. Before he passed away in December 2017, Hanson campaigned against legislation permitting assisted suicide.

The People of Life award was established in 2007 by the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities. The award seeks to honor Catholics dedicated to the pro-life movement as described by St. John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical on the value and inviolability of human life, Evangelium Vitae.

According to the USCCB website, the People of Life award “is presented to individuals who have consistently answered this call of the Gospel of Life.”

“Recipients are recognized because, through their personal or professional contributions, they have demonstrated their lifetime commitment to the pro-life movement, to promoting respect for the dignity of the human person, and to advocacy for an end to the culture of death in this nation.”

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Washington D.C., Jul 28, 2018 / 09:54 am (CNA).- A letter sent this week to priests of the Archdiocese of Washington claims that Cardinal Donald Wuerl did not know until recently about settlements made by two New Jersey dioceses in response to allegations misconduct on the part of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

“Neither the Archdiocese of Washington nor Cardinal Wuerl knew about these confidential settlements until this most recent credible and substantiated allegation against Cardinal McCarrick was made public,” said the July 25 letter, sent to Washington priests by archdiocesan vicar general Monsignor Charles Antonicelli.

“For clarity, the Archdiocese of Washington did not participate in, make any contributions to, nor was invovlved in any way with these settlement agreements,” the letter added.

The settlements in questions were reached in 2005 and 2007 by the Diocese of Metuchen,  the Archdiocese of Newark, and two men who claim they were sexually assualted by McCarrick while they were seminarians and young priests.

McCarrick was Bishop of Metuchen from 1981-1986, Archbishop of Newark from 1986-2000, and Archbishop of Washington from 2000-2006. Wuerl succeeded McCarrick in Washington and is the current Archbishop of Washington.

The first settlement took place while McCarrick was still Archbishop of Washington, and the second was reached after Wuerl had taken the helm of that archdiocese. Neither settlement, according to Antonicelli’s letter, was reported to Wuerl.

The letter also said that the Vatican is “overseeing any further decisions,” regarding McCarrick, and added that “our offices are aware only of the same information regarding these allegations that you are seeing in media reports…We know from past experience with failings of the Church, that this is not an issue that will simply fade away.”

Wuerl, according to the letter, encouraged anyone with information regardin abuse of harrassement to “bring it forward as soon as possible so that it may be promptly and fully investigated.”

Sources close to the Archdiocese of Washington have also told CNA that Wuerl was not informed of settlements until June, when a substantial and credible allegation of child sexual abuse against McCarrick was made public.

In recent weeks, McCarrick has faced several additional allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct, including charges that he pressured seminarians and priests into sexual relationships, and an another reported allegation that he had a serially sexually abusive relationship with a child.

On July 28, Pope Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals, and consigned him to a period of prayer and penance until a canonical process regarding the investigations is concluded. McCarrick is 88.

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Harrisburg, Pa., Jul 27, 2018 / 05:20 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday ordered that a redacted version of a grand jury report detailing sex abuse in six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses be released next month.

News outlets, victims, and the state attorney general have pressed for the release of the report.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had stayed the release of the report June 20, after numerous individuals named in the report objected to its release, citing concerns of due process and reputational rights guaranteed by the state constitution.

Lawyers for the media outlets requesting the report’s release have said a redacted version could be released to respond to those concerns, while the court considers challenges to the full report’s release.

The court’s July 27 order effectively adopted that suggestion.

“The Commonwealth is directed to prepare a redacted version of Report 1, which removes specific and contextual references to any petitioner who has an appellate challenge pending before this Court,” read the opinion of the supreme court.

Petitioners who have appeals pending with the court can appeal over the redactions by Aug. 7. If no challenges are made, the interim report and responses are to be publicly released by Aug. 8; but if challenges are made, the public release of the redacted report can be delayed until Aug. 14.

The supreme court wrote that the grand jury had undertaken “the salutary task of exposing alleged child sexual abuse and concealment of such abuse, on an extraordinarily large scale, which the grand jurors have pronounced was perpetrated by trusted members of a religious institution.”

“Thus, the grand jury submitted a report for publication specifically finding that more than 300 people, identified by name, committed criminal and/or morally reprehensible conduct,” the supreme court wrote.

“Ideally, living persons so identified would have been afforded the opportunity to appear before the grand jury and to respond, in some reasonable fashion, to the grand jury’s concerns. For those among the present challengers who were denied such opportunity, and who otherwise have submitted proper appeals seeking the remedy of a pre-deprivation hearing, we hold that they are entitled to this Court’s further consideration of whether additional process can and should now be provided as a curative measure.”

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Oklahoma City, Okla., Jul 27, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- On Saturday, parishes across Oklahoma will celebrate the first feast day of the first U.S. born martyr, Blessed Stanley Rother, marking the 37 anniversary of his death.

Special masses, relic veneration services, and other events will take place throughout the Oklahoma City-area on the weekend of July 28. Catholics from Guatemala, where Rother served as a priest and was killed, are expected to attend.

His feast day will be celebrated in churches in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, the Diocese of Tulsa, and the Diocese of Little Rock, Arkansas.

The first Catholic Church dedicated to Rother is located in Decatur, Arkansas, and was dedicated shortly after Rother’s beatification.

The Diocese of Sololá-Chimaltenango, where the priest served the native people of Guatemala for 13 years, will also celebrate the feast day.

Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City has prepared readings for churches to use in honor of Blessed Stanley Rother.

The Heritage Gallery of the Oklahoma archdiocese was open to facilitate pilgrimages throughout the month of July. The gallery also includes a museum with Rother artifacts and information on the life of the martyr.

On July 28, a special Mass will be celebrated at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church. Here, relics and medals of Rother will be given to members of the martyr’s family. Another Mass will be led by Archbishop Coakley later that evening at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Okarche, the martyr’s hometown.

Other churches and pastoral centers will host prayers services, including times to venerate a first-class relic of Rother at St Francis de Sales Chapel on Saturday and Sunday. The church’s gift shop will feature Blessed Rother’s medals, prayer cards, and posters.

Last September, more than 20,000 people attended a beatification Mass in downtown Oklahoma City, making Blessed Rother the first U.S. born martyr to be officially beatified. Pope Francis approved Rother’s martyrdom in December 2016.

In 1968, the Oklahoma priest arrived at his Guatemala parish in Santiago Atitlan, a poor rural community of mostly indigenous people.

As a missionary priest, Blessed Rother was called on to say Mass, but also to fix the broken truck or work the fields. He built a farmers’ co-op, a school, a hospital, and the first Catholic radio station, which was used for catechesis to the even more remote villages.

Over the years, the violence of the Guatemalan civil war inched closer to the once-peaceful village. Disappearances, killings and danger soon became a part of daily life, but Fr. Stanley remained steadfast and supportive of his people.

In 1981, armed men broke into his rectory, intending to abduct him. He resisted and struggled, but did not call for help, so others at the mission would not be endangered. He was shot twice and killed.

“He is a model of priestly holiness and fidelity. He came from an ordinary home and a small town, growing up on a farm where he learned to work hard. He knew the importance of family and community,” said Archbishop Coakley in a July 25 press release.  

“He placed all his natural gifts and talents at the service of his priestly ministry and missionary endeavors. With so many challenges facing our priests today, here is a priest we can embrace and celebrate – the shepherd who didn’t run.”

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Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Jul 27, 2018 / 04:54 pm (CNA).- Life used to be very isolated for Ho Ngoc Linh, an 11-year-old girl living in central Vietnam.

She lived at home with her family and went to school with her peers. But she could never make the… […]