Notre Dame rescinds McCarrick’s honorary degree

Denver Newsroom, Sep 15, 2020 / 04:54 pm (CNA).- Catholic aid groups are expressing disappointment at a recent court decision that furthers the end of temporary protected status for immigrants from certain countries, saying that ending TPS will likely lead to the separation of thousands of families.

The 9th Circuit Appeals Court ruled Sept. 14 that the Trump administration can end the TPS program, which affects several hundred thousand immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan, many of whom have children who are American citizens.

TPS is an immigration benefit that allows persons who are unable to return safely to their home countries because of armed conflict, other violence, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions to remain in the United States while the situation in their home country resolves. It protects them from deportation and grants them permission to work.

“We urge the administration and Congress to find solutions that help families affected by TPS to remain together in the United States,” Catholic Charities USA said in a Sept. 15 statement.

“More than 270,000 U.S citizens have parents with TPS. If appeals are not granted, this decision will likely lead to more family separations within our borders.”

Since Congress established temporary protected status in 1990, U.S. immigrants with the designation from countries suffering natural disasters, armed conflict, or other major problems are not deported. There are about 200,000 Salvadorans, 50,000 Haitians, 2,500 Nicaraguans and 1,000 Sudanese in the United States who have temporary protected status.

The Trump administration had terminated the TPS designations of El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan in 2017 and 2018. The administration said the residents from the four countries no longer merited TPS, arguing that natural disasters from years previously should not continue to justify irregular residency.

At the time, U.S. bishops from California and Texas spoke out about the DHS decision. Bishop Joe Vásquez of Austin, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ migration committee, called the decision “heartbreaking.” Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles called for a permanent path to residency and citizenship for the affected families.

The Haitian population with protected status arrived in the U.S. after a 2010 earthquake killed 200,000 and displaced 1 million people. In addition, the landfall of Hurricane Matthew in 2016 destroyed much of the island’s infrastructure.

Beth Caroll, Head of Programs for Catholic Relief Services in Haiti, told CNA that conditions in Haiti remain dire, and the country’s problems would be greatly compounded if 50,000 people return there from the US.

Hurricane Laura, which passed over Haiti as a tropical storm in late August, caused extensive damage and loss of life on the island, and recovery efforts are still underway.

Compounding Haiti’s already poor economy, the coronavirus pandemic has caused a major economic hit to the country.

Catholic leaders in Haiti have been warning that the combination of economic woes, the pandemic, and natural disasters make this a “terrible time” to be considering an influx of 50,000 Haitians back to the island, Carroll said, especially since so many of those immigrants now consider the United States their home.

Another effect of so many Haitians leaving the US would be a loss of remittances from the US to families in Haiti, which by some estimates makes up nearly 34% of Haiti’s income, one of the highest percentages in the world.

A large influx of returning Haitians would likely frustrate the country’s efforts to manage the coronavirus pandemic, Carroll said. In addition, many of those returning would likely have difficulty finding work.

Nobody wants to leave their family or home, Carroll noted, and the Haitians who left the island in 2010 left out of necessity, because of root causes— in this case the earthquake— in Haiti.

Carroll said CRS remains committed to addressing those root causes in Haiti through humanitarian aid, with the goal of keeping Haitians from having to leave their home again.

The rejection of TPS for Haitians was “a sad decision,” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told CNA in November 2017. Haitians “cannot go back to a situation that still is very difficult,” said Tomasi, who has served as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations in Geneva and as a counselor for the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

In April 2018 a group of Salvadoran bishops and other Church officials visited the U.S. and asked the Trump administration to reconsider its decision ending the protected status for Salvadorans, who received TPS status after a massive earthquake in 2001.

The situation in El Salvador is still dangerous due to gang violence and severe poverty, they said. It is unsafe for people to live in the country and there are very few employment opportunities.

The influx of people returning to El Salvador from the United States could overwhelm the already-fragile economy, they warned. Additionally, many Salvadorans living in the United States send remittances to El Salvador, which provides a boost to their economy. These remittances would end if they were forced to leave.

The administration has extended the validity of work permits for El Salvadorans with TPS through Jan. 4, 2021, and has said that Salvadorans will have one additional year after the end of TPS-related lawsuits to return to their home country.

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A view of the nave of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels where the funeral Mass for Bishop David O’Connell will be celebrated / David Leigh Ellis|Wikipedia|CC BY-SA 3.0

Boston, Mass., Feb 24, 2023 / 11:17 am (CNA).

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has announced the funeral arrangements for the late Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell, who was murdered in his Hacienda Heights home on Feb. 18.

Three days of services will be held for O’Connell, beginning on Wednesday, March 1. 

On Wednesday, there will be a memorial Mass for O’Connell at St. John Vianney Catholic Church, 1345 Turnbull Canyon Rd. in Hacienda Heights, at 7 p.m. PST. The Mass will be livestreamed here.

There will be a public viewing on Thursday at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels at 555 West Temple St. in Los Angeles. The viewing will take place from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., and 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.  

A vigil Mass will be held following the public viewing at 7 p.m. and will be livestreamed both here and here.

O’Connell’s funeral Mass will be held on Friday, March 3, at the same Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels at 11 a.m. local time. The funeral Mass will be livestreamed both here and here.

O’Connell, who was known as “Bishop Dave,” served the San Gabriel Pastoral Region of the archdiocese, which covers East Los Angeles through the San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys.

Born in 1953 in County Cork, Ireland, he was ordained a priest in 1979 in Dublin, Ireland. O’Connell then began serving in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and held many different positions during his priesthood, in which he ministered to immigrants and those affected by both gang violence and poverty.

Pope Francis named him an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2015.

O’Connell was pastor at St. Frances Cabrini Parish when the violent 1992 L.A. riots took place after the acquittal of four police officers who had been videotaped beating an unarmed black man, Rodney King.

He worked to restore trust between law enforcement and residents by bringing the two together in people’s homes for dialogue.

“That was part of our work as a Church, to try to provide spaces for conversations,” he told CNA in a 2020 interview. “And we thought we really had achieved a lot of progress. Killings were way down in south Los Angeles. There was a trust built up between LAPD and residents. This level of trust has helped us over many different crises over the last almost 30 years to be able to talk things through.”

Father Jay Cunnane, pastor of St. Cornelius Parish in Long Beach, California, and a close friend to O’Connell, told EWTN News Nightly that the bishop had a “great heart” for people on the margins of society, specifically immigrants and the poor. 

Cunnane called O’Connell “an effective organizer” for those on the margins. 

When he heard the news of O’Connell’s murder, Cunnane said he was “speechless” and “shocked.”

“I’m still sort of stunned. But grateful to God for having had all those years a good friend to walk the road with,” he said.

That interview can be seen below.

In a Wednesday press conference, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón said that Carlos Medina of Torrance, the suspect in custody, has admitted to murdering the bishop.

It was revealed in a press conference Monday that Medina is the husband of O’Connell’s housekeeper, who remains unnamed. Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Sheriff Robert Luna said at that press conference that Medina had done work at the bishop’s residence as well.

It’s currently unclear what the motive for the killing was. Bail was set at $2 million.

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South Bend, Ind., Sep 1, 2017 / 03:19 am (CNA).- With hopes of leading Catholics to a deeper search for Christ, a new puzzle book from Ave Maria Press challenges readers to expand their interaction with God’s mysteries.

“I open the book with a quote from Proverbs 25:2, ‘It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out’,” said Matt Swaim, author of Catholic Puzzles, Word Games, and Brainteasers: Volume 1.

“Properly understood, the idea of God as a mystery shouldn’t cause us to throw up our hands and stop searching him out; it should draw us to engage with him and get a window into his magnificence,” he told CNA.

Catholic Puzzles, which will go on sale Sept. 22, contains interactive word problems such as anagrams, code scrambles and crypto quizzes. The puzzles empower readers to learn more about saints, the mysteries of the rosary, Holy Scripture, and Church doctrine.

Swaim started developing fun interactive puzzles to aid his 8th grade CCD students with understanding Church teachings. After connecting with Ave Maria Press, a suggestion was made to put together a similar project for a broader adult audience.

“I think adults see their kids doing worksheets for religious ed classes and wish there were more of that kind of thing for their skill level out there.”

He said the puzzles are meant to be a challenge for older Catholics, but not so difficult as to deter anyone from giving it a try.

So far, he said, the response has been positive: “Most people are just excited to discover that something like this exists, and that it’s not at the elementary school level.”

Watching people wrestle with thought-provoking questions is one of his favorite things about the new book, Swaim said, noting that the struggle to solve a problem can help bring us to a deeper knowledge of it.

“Think about it – if you’re working on solving a particular encrypted saint quote for a half an hour, that’s 30 minutes for your brain to mull it over, let it sink in, and have it stay with you.”

He clarified that searching for truth and for Christ does not mean that we treat God like he is a Sherlock Holmes murder mystery. Rather, delving into the mystery of God’s creation gives us “a greater insight into just how wonderful and big and mind-blowing it is to be in relationship with him.”

Seeing God as a mystery doesn’t stop us from pursuing him, Swaim said, adding that growing in our relationship to God’s mystery is similar to the experience of getting to know another human person through friendship, marriage or parenting.

“If every person in this world is a unique, unrepeatable mystery to learn about and learn from, then how much more the God who created all of them?”

“God has hidden himself in his creation, in the faces of our neighbors, in the most minuscule aspects of our days. He’s constantly searching after us, but he also wants us to be searching after him.”

But we do not always search for God, he said. Instead, “we devote hours to studying the intricacies of the NFL” or memorizing quotes of “our favorite television shows.”

Swaim challenged Catholics: “What if we applied a fraction of that inquisitive fervor toward exploring our faith?”

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