Cardinal Sarah offers five ways to deal with ‘crisis of faith’ in the world

Lima, Peru, Feb 10, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- A terminally ill Peruvian woman filed a lawsuit Friday requesting that the state recognize a right to euthanasia.

The Peruvian ombudsman’s office presented the case on behalf of Ana Estrada Feb. 7.

Walter Gutiérrez Camacho, the ombudsman, said that his office is representing Estrada because of “our role as guarantor and promoter of fundamental rights so that the free and informed will of a person to decide to cease his life is repected and guaranteed, when by certain conditions, as in this case, their human dignity is gravely and irreversibly affected.”

Voluntary euthanization of a person with intolerable pain is the criminal offense of homicide in Peru, and can be penalized with up to three years imprisonment.

Estrada, 43, has polymyositis, a chronic muscle inflammation, which has left her paralyzed.

Peru’s Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will hear the case.

The ombudsman’s office argues that the prohibition of voluntary euthanasia violates one’s right to live with dignity, and that the courts have “recognized and developed fundamental rights intimately tied to the right to death in dignified conditions,” such as “the right to dignity, to integrity, to a dignified life and the free development of personality.”

It also claims that Peru’s treaty obligations oblige it “to respect, protect, and guarantee the aforementioned rights.”

At a press conference announcing the suit, Gutiérrez said: “We mold the stories of our lives with our decisions, and it does not make sense that in the last chapter of our life we are not allowed to make the decision” to die.

Estrada told Reuters that she wants a right to euthanasia “to avoid the suffering,” and “because this is about how I live my life, about liberty. I do not feel free right now. I don’t have the freedom to choose over my own body.”

Euthanasia or assisted suicide have been legalized in Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, and in some parts of the US and Australia.

In this 1995 encyclical Evangelium vitae, St. John Paul II taught that “euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person.”

He reflected that there was a growing temptation “to have recourse to euthanasia, that is, to take control of death and bring it about before its time, ‘gently’ ending one’s own life or the life of others. In reality, what might seem logical and humane, when looked at more closely is seen to be senseless and inhumane. Here we are faced with one of the more alarming symptoms of the ‘culture of death’, which is advancing above all in prosperous societies, marked by an attitude of excessive preoccupation with efficiency and which sees the growing number of elderly and disabled people as intolerable and too burdensome. These people are very often isolated by their families and by society, which are organized almost exclusively on the basis of criteria of productive efficiency, according to which a hopelessly impaired life no longer has any value.”

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Talca, Chile, Jul 26, 2018 / 05:21 pm (ACI Prensa).- Former nuns of the Congregation of the Good Samaritan in Chile reported a series of sexual abuses committed by priests visiting the community, which belongs to the Diocese of Talca and is dedicated to caring for the sick.

The new accusations come amid a growing sexual abuse scandal rocking the Church in Chile that led Pope Francis to summon the bishops to the Vatican in May to address the crisis, their resignation en masse, and the pope accepting some of the resignations.

Currently this diocese in Southern Chile has as apostolic administrator Bishop Galo Fernandez Villaseca, after Pope Francis accepted the resignation of the local bishop, Horacio Valenzuela.

In a report broadcast July 24 by Televisión Nacional de Chile, five former nuns said that there was sexual abuse and the abuse of authority inside the congregation. They added that they were mistreated when they reported the incidents to the superior.

“My silence stings my conscience. We have more than 23 sisters who in one year were expelled from the congregation because they were sexually abused, there was abuse of authority,” said Yolanda Tondreaux, who in the report charged that she was harassed by a priest.

Without mentioning names, the women charged that at least three priests sexually abused the nuns. They were able to deliver their testimonies to Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Msgr. Jordi Bertomeu when they came to Chile the second time to gather information on abuse cases.

Another of the complainants, Eliana Macías, said she was abused by a priest who during the night “would go into the nuns’ rooms.”

Consuelo Gómez charged that she was the victim of sexual abuse by nuns of the same community:

The former nuns said that when they related the incidents to the superior, Patricia Ibarra Gómez, she mistreated them until they were expelled from the community.

The complainants maintained that the then local bishop Horacio Valenzuela was aware of these events but did nothing.

Tondreaux, who also served in the Apostolic Nunciature of Chile, said in addition that Bishop Valenzuela and the priest Fernando Karadima – found guilty of sexual abuse by the Vatican in 2011 – received checks with huge amounts of money, without specifying from whom.

On May 29 the diocesan congregation issued a statement acknowledging one case of abuse, that of Consuelo Gómez, and asked forgiveness. However, when the journalist doing the television interview  consulted them regarding the new complaints they provided no comment.

Bishop Galo Fernández responded in the report, saying: “You see the pain there, where there’s a lot of pain and situations that merit being investigated with an openness to find the truth and to listen.”

He also added that the former religious need to be listened to “not only in the framework of a criminal investigation in order to verify or not, but to listen so that the situations and pain they have experienced can hit home.”

The Apostolic Administrator stressed that the congregation of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan “have a beautiful history, but that does not necessarily mean  that there could not have been situations that were clearly out of line.”

Regarding the total lack of support the women were left in after they were expelled from the community, Bishop Galo said that “A congregation clearly has a duty to care for the people that leave as well as examining the conditions under which they left. It’s a duty.”

Finally, concerning the poor reception given to the victims by the Church authorities, the bishop said that “there’s a new sensitivity today in the culture and also by the Church.”

“There are things that are not normal, that aren’t right, and it’s our responsibility to face them, correct them and where there has been a crime there certainly ought to be sanctions.”

This article was originally published by our Spanish language sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Photos of the six nuns from the same Brazilian convent who died within one week. Five died from COVID-19. / Facebook Congregación de las Hermanas Franciscanas de la Sagrada Familia de María

Denver Newsroom, Sep 7, 2021 / 16:31 pm (CNA).
Six nuns… […]