CNA Staff, Dec 30, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- A Catholic archbishop called Tuesday for renewed prayers for a kidnapped bishop following “misleading” reports about the bishop’s fate.
Archbishop Anthony Obinna urged “all Christ&rsqu… […]
Vatican City, Dec 30, 2020 / 03:25 am (CNA).- Catholics can change the world by being “bearers of gratitude,” Pope Francis said at the general audience Wednesday.
In his address Dec. 30, the pope said that thanksgiving was a hallmark … […]
One of Dr. LeRoy Carhart’s “Clinics for Abortion & Reproductive Excellence” – named to yield the Orwellian acronym CARE – is located about a mile away from my parish in Bethesda, Maryland. Earlier this year, […]
CNA Staff, Dec 29, 2020 / 09:57 am (CNA).- The White House on Tuesday issued a proclamation praising St. Thomas Becket, an English archbishop who was martyred 850 years ago after conflict with King Henry […]
Note: This account of the Catholic martyr saints who died in the Wuchang district of Wuhan, China, was delivered after the Holy Mass offered by Bishop Thomas Daly at the Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral, […]
Before he became a literary master, Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) sang (like a “little convict”) in the church choir that his father conducted. Punctually the acolyte assisted at the altar, arose early for matins, and ascended […]
Vatican City, Dec 29, 2020 / 01:27 pm (CNA).- The Vatican’s COVID-19 commission said Tuesday it is working to help promote fair access to the coronavirus vaccine, especially for those who are most vulnerable.
In a note published Dec. 29, the com… […]
Los Angeles, Calif., Dec 29, 2020 / 12:52 pm (CNA).- Jesse Martinez, a COVID-19 patient who beat a fellow patient to death with an oxygen tank at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, will be arraigned on December 31st for murder, elder abuse, and religion-motivated hate crime, authorities announced on December 28.
The victim, David Hernandez-Garcia, an 82-year-old Catholic Latino man, was a resident of Lancaster, a suburb north of Los Angeles in California. He was being treated for a COVID-19 infection in a two-person room.
According to a report from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, on Thursday, December 17, 2020, at approximately 9:45 a.m., “the victim was at Antelope Valley Hospital receiving treatment for Covid-19. He was housed in a two-person room inside the hospital with the suspect, who was also there receiving treatment. The suspect became upset when the victim started to pray. He then struck the victim with an oxygen tank.”
“The victim succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced deceased on December 18, 2020, at approximately 10:20 a.m. The victim and suspect did not know each other”, the statement added.
Martinez was arrested at the scene after hospital staff detained him until police arrived, according to Lt. Brandon Dean, a spokesman with the Sheriff’s Department.
City officials said there is little the hospital could have done to prevent the violence, given that the hospital, an urgent care center, was “drastically understaffed and medical staff is suffering from exhaustion.”
The sheriff’s department told CNA that the investigation was still ongoing and that it could not comment further. A spokeswoman for the hospital provided the same reason for not commenting.
According to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Martinez’s arraignment was rescheduled from Monday, December 28 to New Year’s Eve because he was unable to come to court for medical reasons. Sheriff’s jail records indicate that he is being held at Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles in lieu of $1 million dollars bail.
He could face up to 28 years to life in state prison if convicted as charged.
Vatican City, Dec 29, 2020 / 11:05 am (CNA).- Msgr. Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish priest who hid Italian Jews from the Nazis and went on to baptize the former head of the Gestapo in Rome, is world renowned for the heroism he displayed during and after World War II.
They called him the “Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican.”
Many of his exploits were portrayed in the 1983 movie “The Scarlet and the Black.” But more details could soon be revealed to the public, as the Vatican archives from the pontificate of Pius XII (1939 – 1958) were opened to historians earlier this year, and mention of O’Flaherty’s work is sure to draw the interest of scholars.
Born in County Cork in 1898, O’Flaherty grew up in Killarney playing golf on the course where his father worked as a steward before discerning his vocation to the priesthood.
As a seminarian, O’Flaherty studied theology in Rome at the Urban College of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, and went on to earn doctorates in both canon law and philosophy in Rome.
He was ordained to the priesthood in 1925, and became a Vatican diplomat during which time he served in posts in Haiti, Egypt, and Czechoslovakia.
During World War II, O’Flaherty lived in the German College inside Vatican City State, and worked at the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, then known at the Holy Office.
The Holy See assigned O’Flaherty the task of visiting the Italian prisoner of war camps, where he brought books, cigarettes, chocolate, and hope to the English-speaking Allied prisoners, according to the Hugh O’Flaherty Memorial Society. After these visits, the priest used Vatican Radio to contact the prisoners’ relatives.
When the Nazis occupied Rome for nine months following the fall of Mussolini, O’Flaherty created what came to be known as the “Rome Escape Line” — a network of priests, diplomats, and expatriates in Rome who helped to hide more than 6,000 escaped Allied POWs and Jews in convents, monasteries, and residences.
Secret meetings among members of the Rome Escape Line to exchange documents and information on safe houses took place inside of St. Peter’s Basilica at the foot of Michaelangelo’s Pieta or near the Altar of the Chair, according to Vatican News.
The Museum of the Liberation of Rome is today located in the building that formerly served as the headquarters of the German SS under Kappler, near the Basilica St. John Lateran.
After the liberation in Rome in 1944, the head of the German SS Herbert Kappler was sentenced in 1948 to life imprisoned in solitary confinement in Italy. O’Flaherty went to the prison to visit Kappler, who had previously threatened to torture and kill the Irish priest, every month for ten years.
In 1959, O’Flaherty baptised Kappler and received the converted war criminal into the Catholic Church.
The Vatican honored O’Flaherty in 2016 with a plaque on the wall of the Teutonic Cemetery inside Vatican City. The cemetery sits above the former site of Nero’s circus, where early Christians were martyred in ancient Rome.
O’Flaherty’s Vatican plaque reads: “Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, born in Ireland 28.2.1898. Founder of the Rome Escape Line. Tireless defender of the weak and oppressed. Resident at this College 1938-1960 from where he saved over 6000 lives from the National Socialists. Died 30.10.1963. Buried in Cahersiveen, County Kerry, Ireland.”
This article was originally published on CNA March 17, 2020.
Vatican City, Dec 29, 2020 / 10:06 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Tuesday named theologian Bishop Dermot Farrell of Ossory, Ireland, as the next archbishop of Dublin.
Farrell, 66, takes over leadership of the metropolitan archdiocese from Archbishop Diarmuid… […]
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