Month: September 2020

Denver Newsroom, Sep 28, 2020 / 04:31 pm (CNA).- Two Eastern Catholic churches in San Diego County suffered graffiti vandalism attacks over the weekend, and while authorities are treating the incidents as connected, they have not yet determined the perpetrators’ motives.

St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Cathedral in El Cajon, California on Sept. 25 was defaced with graffiti depicting “pentagrams, upside down crosses, white power, swastikas,” as well as slogans such as “Biden 2020,” and “BLM” (Black Lives Matter).

The cathedral is the seat of the Chaldean Eparchy of St. Peter the Apostle of San Diego.

The same evening, Our Mother of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, also in El Cajon, was similarly attacked, with the pastor discovering spray-painted swastikas on an exterior wall of the church the next day.

Our Mother of Perpetual Help is a Syriac Catholic church, part of the Syriac Eparchy of Our Lady of Deliverance of Newark.

The sheriff’s department has not officially announced any suspects, but is investigating the incidents as hate crimes.

Monsignor Emad Hanna Al-Shaikh, pastor of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, told CNA he alerted all the relevant authorities when he discovered the vandalism, and later painted over the graffiti.

Msgr. Al-Shaikh said he strongly suspects the same perpetrators who hit St. Peter cathedral also defaced his church, though he does not yet have proof. The churches are located three miles apart.

He said he does not know of any reason why someone would vandalize his church, and does not know who might have carried out the attack.

“We’re friends with everybody, we love everybody, and we’re at peace with everybody,” he said.

Sargent Mike Hettinger, a detective investigating the incidents, told CNA that the Sheriff’s Department does currently have some “good leads” in the case, including surveillance video, tips from the community, and physical evidence collected that they do not yet want to make public.

The department does believe the two crimes are related, he said. There appear to have been five perpetrators, and based on the video evidence they appeared to be juveniles, he said.

The motive for the crimes remains unclear, especially since the messages of the graffiti— which included, for example, both swastikas and “BLM”— appear to be at odds with each other.

There were protests taking place in downtown San Diego that evening, so the graffiti could be related to that, he said, but investigators are not yet certain on that point.

The vandalism comes amid a spate of similar incidents at Catholic churches that has lasted for months. Earlier last week a man burned pews in an arson attack in a Florida Catholic church, and a man with a baseball bat damaged a crucifix and several doors at a Texas seminary.

Last week a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was destroyed in a Texas cathedral.

Also last week, a parish in Midvale, Utah, saw back-to-back attacks. St. Therese of the Child Jesus Catholic Church had its namesake statue beheaded followed by burglary on subsequent nights.

A historic church built by St. Junipero Serra was burned in California this summer, in a fire being investigated as arson. A Florida man was arrested for setting flame to a parish church in the Orlando diocese.

Fires have been started and statues of Christ, Mary, and saints have been beheaded or destroyed at parishes across the country, while in California numerous public statues of St. Junipero Serra have been torn down, defaced, and destroyed.

While some attacks on statues have been committed by large groups with clear political affiliations, the perpetrators of other acts have not been identified.

A poll conducted at the end of August by RealClear Opinion Research in partnership with EWTN News found that 83 percent of Catholic likely voters are concerned about attacks on churches in recent months.

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 28, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Following President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Sept. 26, party leaders are at odds over the nomination process, and over Barrett as a nom… […]

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 28, 2020 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court sets in motion a highly-anticipated confirmation process, less than six weeks before a presidential ele… […]

CNA Staff, Sep 28, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).-  

The U.S. Department of Justice on Sept. 25 warned San Francisco officials that its current restrictions on public worship in the city may be unconstitutional, drawing praise from Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.

“Catholics in San Francisco have been patiently suffering injustice for months. At last, a competent legal authority is challenging the city’s absurd rules, which have no basis in science, but are grounded in hostility to religion and especially the Catholic Church,” Cordileone said Friday.

The DOJ on Sept. 25 sent a letter to Mayor London Breed, warning that the city’s rule allowing only “one worshipper” in places of worship at a time regardless of their size— while allowing multiple patrons in other indoor establishments— is “draconian” and “contrary to the Constitution and the nation’s best tradition of religious freedom.”

San Francisco’s restrictions on public worship remain among the strictest in the country. Until Sept. 14, public worship in the city was restricted to 12 participants outdoors, with indoor services prohibited.

As of Sept. 14, houses of worship are allowed to have 50 people at religious services outdoors, with indoor services still prohibited until at least Oct. 1.

San Francisco’s revised health order from Sept. 14 states that “[o]nly one individual member of the public may enter the house of worship at a time,” with no reason given.

The DOJ letter called on the mayor to treat places of worship equally with other venues where people share enclosed spaces, such as gyms, tattoo parlors, hair salons, massage studios, and daycares.

At those establishments, San Francisco city authorities already allow capacities of between 10 and 50 percent, depending on the type and provided that sanitary measures and 6-foot distancing is followed.

California’s church service limits earlier this year were challenged by a Pentecostal church, which argued houses of worship were being unfairly treated more strictly than other secular venues, including restaurants, hair salons, and retail stores.

In May, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the state of California. In a 5-4 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the court lacks the expertise and authority to second guess the decisions of elected officials in the context of public health decisions during a pandemic.

The DOJ cited Chief Justice John Roberts’ concurrence in the May 2020 case, in which he wrote that “restrictions on places of worship” may be consistent with the First Amendment, but only when such restrictions “apply to comparable secular gatherings.”

The DOJ said it is reviewing their options and may take further action.

San Francisco City attorney Dennis Herrera defended the city’s actions in a statement Friday. He did not address the apparent disparity between restrictions on worship and on secular activities.

“Maybe the federal government should focus on an actual pandemic response instead of lobbing careless legal threats. San Francisco is opening up at the speed of safety,” Herrera said. 

“Religious gatherings indoors and outdoors are already set to expand in a few days. This expansion is beyond what is described in the federal government’s letter. It’s consistent with San Francisco’s careful approach and follows closely behind what the State of California allows.”

The mayor has said the city will allow indoor worship services with a 25 person limit by Oct. 1. The Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption has a capacity of nearly 2,500 people.

“One person at a time in this great Cathedral to pray? What an insult. This is a mockery. They are mocking you, and even worse, they are mocking God,” Cordileone said in an outdoor homily Sept. 20.

Catholics in San Francisco had marched in Eucharistic processions across the city that day to protest the city’s continued restrictions on public worship, culminating in several concurrent outdoor Masses as the Cathedral.

Priests at many parishes around the archdiocese, including the Cathedral, are celebrating multiple Masses every Sunday— outside, and spaced out— in order to adapt to the restrictions.

Outdoor Masses pose their own health challenges, as the Bay Area is experiencing some of the worst air quality in the world, due to smoke and other pollutants coming from wildfires ravaging the West Coast.

Hotels in San Francisco are fully reopened; indoor gyms are set to reopen at 10% capacity; and most retail stores are allowed to operate at 50% capacity, while malls are restricted to 25%. Gyms operated in government buildings for police officers and other government employees have already reopened.

In addition, Archbishop Cordileone has noted, businesses requiring extended, close one-on-one contact reopened Sept. 14, such as hair salons, nail salons and massage parlors, but “we are allowed only one person in church at a time for prayer.”

While Cordileone has said city officials have been “cordial and respectful” in their dialogue with the archdiocese, he said the city still has not responded to the archdiocese’s safety plan— outlining how churches could be safely opened for indoor services— which they submitted in May.

Becket, a religious liberty law firm, has a page tracking restrictions on public worship related to the pandemic. By their estimation, six states— California, Nevada, Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Maine— are treating religious activities unequally as compared to similar secular activities.

The City of San Francisco has been closely monitoring Catholic churches in the city and has repeatedly issued warnings to the archdiocese for apparent health order violations.

In advocating for a safe reopening of indoor Masses, Cordileone has cited an article on Mass attendance and COVID-19, authored Aug. 19 by doctors Thomas McGovern, Deacon Timothy Flanigan, and Paul Cieslak for Real Clear Science.

By following public health guidelines, Catholic Churches have largely avoided viral spread during the more than 1 million Masses that have been celebrated across the United States since the lifting of shelter-in-place orders, the doctors found.

They said in their article that there is no evidence that church services are higher risk than similar activities when guidelines are followed, and no coronavirus outbreaks have not yet been linked to the celebration of the Mass.

Even while protesting the city’s apparent unequal application of health restrictions, the archbishop has encouraged his priests to lead their parishes in following the city’s guidelines.

More than 19,000 people have signed a petition supporting Archbishop Cordileone’s call to end “unfair” restrictions on the Mass.
 

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Los Angeles, Calif., Sep 28, 2020 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Reprinted with permission from Angelus News.

After being brought into this world against the odds, losing his father at 8 years old, and surviving a battle with cancer, Father Adrian San Juan knew one thing for certain: that he would “rather be with the Lord.”

That attitude — and memories of the young priest’s zeal for Christ — are what is left to console grieving parishioners, relatives, and fellow priests stunned by the news of the 43-year-old’s sudden passing Saturday, Sept. 19, after collapsing at the start of a wedding at St. Linus Church in Norwalk, California, where he served as administrator.

“He passed away doing what he loved: celebrating the Eucharist,” said Rafael Alvarez, a St. Linus parishioner and seminarian at the Queen of Angels Center for Priestly Formation. “That was one of his most joyful moments.”

Alvarez was there assisting Father San Juan as he entered the parish’s canopied “outdoor church,” kissed the altar, and waited for the wedding party to process toward the altar. But a few moments later, something “didn’t feel right”: to Alvarez’s surprise, Father San Juan went to sit in the presider’s chair before falling to the ground.

Paramedics were called and attempted CPR on Father San Juan, who had suffered an apparent heart attack, before taking him to PIH Whittier Hospital while another priest at St. Linus, Father Marco Reyes, stepped in to continue the wedding.

Father San Juan was pronounced dead a short while later. A small group of family members were briefly allowed into the hospital, and a priest was able to give him the last rites.

Despite the shock over the apparently healthy priest’s death, though, those who knew the priest told Angelus they were comforted that his passing came before the altar, after a “second life” in which he lived his vocation to the fullest.

Father San Juan was born the last of six children in 1976 in Valenzuela, Philippines, outside the capital city of Manila. His birth was welcomed as a miraculous surprise, coming 11 years after the family’s next oldest child.

“Because of my mom’s advanced age, she had a very critical pregnancy [with Father San Juan],” said Victoria Siongco, the late priest’s sister. “She almost lost him.”

His mother, Gloria, spent the final months of the pregnancy confined to bed rest, begging God for her son’s life.

“We would see her every day praying with her arms outstretched, like a manifestation of a sacrifice, praying not to lose him,” recalled Siongco.

Both Father San Juan and his mother survived what his family says was a complicated childbirth. Eight years later, hard times struck the family again when his father, Carlos, succumbed to lung cancer.

As Siongco remembers it, her little brother showed signs of a vocation even before starting elementary school. He was fascinated by religious processions and was already singing in church by age 3.

“He loved the saints, he loved praying, he loved singing, he loved everything about the Church,” said Siongco.

By the time he had finished high school in 1994, he had broken up with his girlfriend at the time with the intention of entering the seminary.

Those closest to Father San Juan say his life was marked above all else by a life-and-death experience during that time: a testicular cancer diagnosis in 2002 a few months before his ordination to the diaconate.

Chemotherapy left him hairless, pale, and thin, but he vowed to follow through with his ordination to the diaconate. Family, friends, fellow seminarians, and even professors rallied behind him in prayer, and the cancer went into remission in 2003. He was ordained to the priesthood the following year.

“This is my second life, no doubt,” Father San Juan told Manila’s Phillipine Sunday Inquirer Magazine in an interview after his ordination in 2004. “I see myself in the hands of a loving Father. A second life is his revelation to me that I have a mission to do in His Name.”

In the same interview, the new priest shared that the cancer battle had given him more joy and a stronger faith.

“Life will not always be a journey of certainty, of controlling it the way we plan it,” he continued. “Doubts and so-called trials will come. But if we seek God in all things, then we learn that God’s love is everywhere.”

The priest credited his “second life” in particular to Divine Mercy, the Virgin Mary, and the miraculous intercession of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, to whom he had a fervent devotion for the rest of his life.

After spending six years ministering in parishes and schools in Manila, Father San Juan transferred to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2010 to be closer to his family. He served in several parishes, and was officially incardinated as a priest of the archdiocese in 2015.

Among his brother priests, Father San Juan was known as a “holy priest who had a wonderful sense of humor, and always had a smile on his face,” according to Vicar for Clergy for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles Msgr. Jim Halley.

Auxiliary Bishop Alex Aclan remembered how shortly after arriving in the archdiocese, then-Msgr. Aclan relied on Father San Juan twice to write the music for two fundraiser musical plays benefitting the Filipino Priests Association of Los Angeles.

And during the annual Christmastime Simbang Gabi Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, it was Father San Juan who was charged with leading his brother Filipino priests in singing in Tagalog after Communion.

“That’s how he endeared himself to the Filipino priests here,” recounted Bishop Aclan. “He was an excellent composer, pianist, and vocalist.”

One of those priests, Father Rizalino “Riz” Carranza, spent four years with him at St. Peter Claver Church in Simi Valley, where Father Carranza is pastor and Father San Juan served as associate pastor from 2015 to 2019. He said Father San Juan was the ultimate “people priest,” a gifted preacher whose enthusiasm while celebrating the Eucharist was infectious.

“He really appealed to a lot of people of different ages, from the older to the younger,” recalled Father Carranza.

In private, his former pastor says Father San Juan was a man of deep prayer. Walking past the door to his room, Father Carranza would sometimes catch a glimpse of Father San Juan on his knees with a lit candle burning.

“He always expressed that he would rather be with God,” said Father Carranza.

At St. Linus, where Father San Juan spent the last year of his life, parish business manager Ana Engquist said the impact from his short time there will be felt for a long time.

“He brought a strong spirituality to the parish,” said Engquist, including starting a Divine Mercy prayer group as he did at St. Peter Claver.

“When he came on board he made it very clear we’re going to be a family, and that was kind of a strange concept to me. I was used to just having a working relationship with my pastors.”

Instead, Father San Juan told parish staff that they would be eating, praying, and even fighting together, as long as it was followed, of course, by forgiveness.

“His goal was to get us to heaven and to really live our faith, not just on Sundays, but day-to-day, to do the little things to get to heaven,” said Engquist.

Engquist and Alvarez agreed that the new administrator was a unifying presence for the parish over the last year.

“He was able to bring healing to the parish staff, and restored the ministries that were broken,” said Alvarez, whom Father San Juan guided and encouraged in his decision to enter the seminary this year.

During the recent months of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Father San Juan took a “hands-on” approach in bringing the sacraments to his parishioners, whether through organizing a team to livestream Masses or building a dignified “outdoor church” in the parish parking lot with a stage and canopy when COVID-19 restrictions forced religious services to be held outdoors this summer.

“He died doing what he loved to do, and I think that he came to our parish to heal us in a lot of ways. And he fulfilled that mission,” said Engquist.

Part of that mission was accompanying young people like Alvarez and the couple that he had prepared for marriage on that fateful day to embrace their vocations. Among them also was his own niece, whom Father San Juan was also helping prepare for marriage with her fiancé.

Siongco told Angelus that she and her sister “Fely” (both of whom live in nearby Walnut) will miss her brother’s visits on his days off to eat together, plan vacations, and take 6,000-step walks to help them stay in shape.

Even in the face of losing their little brother, family chaplain, and travel companion, Siongco said her family is consoled by the outpouring on social media about the lives Father San Juan touched, evidence of the good fruit that his vocation bore.

“It’s an honor for Father Adrian to be summoned by the Lord,” said Siongco. “When our heavenly boss calls us, who should say no?”

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CNA Staff, Sep 28, 2020 / 10:05 am (CNA).-  

The EWTN network has invited Catholics to join a novena to the Mother of God that will begin Tuesday, and be offered for unity and truth amid challenges facing the United States.

“As Catholics, we turn instinctively to our Blessed Mother in times of need,” said EWTN Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer Michael P. Warsaw in a statement on the novena.

“America’s first bishop, John Carroll of Baltimore, chose Our Lady as the patroness of the United States. And throughout our country’s history, we have always entrusted our nation to Mary’s motherly protection.”

“In this present moment, when there is so much division and unrest in our country, and when many of the values that formed our nation seem to be at risk, we again need to turn to our Blessed Mother. We need to pray for her intercession that leaders and all who seek public office will follow the path of Truth, guarantee religious liberty, and ensure that all human life is valued and protected, most especially the unborn,” Warsaw added.

The novena will begin Sept. 29 and be prayed through Oct. 7, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Fr. Fred Miller, a well-known theologian and the spiritual director at the College Seminary of the Immaculate Conception, is the author of the novena’s meditations and prayers, which ask the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary the U.S.

The network will broadcast the novena’s prayers daily, and has created an ebook that aims to make the novena available to Catholics.

The novena comes five weeks ahead of the U.S. presidential election, and as hearings will soon get underway regarding the nomination of federal judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and amid the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing protests in some parts of the country.

“In this critical moment, I hope that everyone will join in this powerful prayer for the nation and its leaders,” Warsaw said.

EWTN Global Catholic Network is the largest religious media network in the world. EWTN’s 11 global TV channels are broadcast in multiple languages 24 hours a day, seven days a week to over 300 million television households in more than 145 countries and territories.

EWTN platforms also include radio services transmitted through SIRIUS/XM, iHeart Radio, and over 500 domestic and international AM & FM radio affiliates; a worldwide shortwave radio service; one of the largest Catholic websites in the U.S.; electronic and print news services, including Catholic News Agency, The National Catholic Register newspaper, and several global news wire services; as well as EWTN Publishing, its book publishing division.

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