Nicaraguan ‘campesino’ leader who refused to falsely accuse bishops shares his testimony

Vatican City, May 16, 2018 / 10:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- When Marina “Nina” Vela learned that she had been selected from the community of homeless people on the streets of Denver to go on an annual pilgrimage to Rome, she did not believe the trip would actually happen.

The process was stressful, and she had some stuff to take care of. Not only did she need to get her documents in order – including a passport and finding a missing birth certificate – but she also needed to clear up some trouble with the law.

Vela, 23, is the 5th person selected to go on pilgrimage to Rome through Denver Homeless Ministries (DHM), an organization working to provide opportunities to serve the homeless as both “equals and friends.” They offer the pilgrimage as a way to encourage those who have made difficult steps to change their lives.

When fundraising started for the May 4-14 trip to Paris and Rome last fall, Vela was on probation for domestic violence. In order to go on the trip, she had to go to court to determine if she would have to serve jail time in order to waive the probation, allowing her to leave the country.

“I have a bad record,” Vela told CNA in an interview, explaining that in general, law enforcement “don’t like when you don’t do probation,” especially when the person has a history.

“If you’ve ever been in the system and you know anything about anything, they don’t like that.”

Vela was selected in autumn of 2017, just months before thet trip was scheduled; it was a gamble as to when a hearing could be scheduled and how close of a margin it would be between when she got out and and when she got on the plane.

However, when the day of her April hearing came, Vela said what happened in the courtroom was nothing short of miraculous.

Instead of sending her behind bars, the judge decided to drop the whole case against her and let her walk completely free, after hearing the testimony of Tanya Cangelosi, who has led homeless ministries for years and has organized the past five pilgrimages taking someone from the streets to Rome.

The judge, after hearing Cangelosi’s conviction that an opportunity like the pilgrimage would inspire real change, began talking about people who changed his own life. Before tossing the case, he said the people he tried to make proud set the direction of his life, and told Nina to never let Cangelosi down.

“It was unbelievable at first. I was totally blown away. I almost started crying,” Vela said, explaining that she had been prepared to go to jail, and was shocked by the judge’s decision. “They let me go. They never do that.”

In comments to CNA, Cangelosi said Vela was chosen for the pilgrimage by God’s providence. “The Lord picked her, whether you believe in him or not, he picked her 100 percent.”

“I knew on that level of the heart that she was supposed to go, so I had to do whatever it took,” she said, voicing her conviction that Nina’s life would change as a result of the pilgrimage.

Vela, she said, “didn’t need all of that garbage in her record holding onto her and pulling her down. I thought that if she got off of all this, it would free her. And it did.”

Vela was born in an apartment in Colorado and raised by her grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s. She started couchsurfing when she was a teenager, and eventually ended up on the streets, where she began experimenting with drugs and found herself in and out of jail.

Despite finding friends who valued her for who she was, Vela said she was consistently “oppressed” by men.

However, in a testimony she provided to fund-raise for the trip, Vela said she wanted to change her life and get off the streets. She said that she wanted to travel and eventually go to art school and start a family.

As an art lover, Vela told CNA that her favorite part about the trip to Rome was just walking through the streets and seeing the city.

“I think the city is so beautiful. I love how the ruins in the forum are combined with these old looking buildings. It’s nothing like the United States. And the people are so interesting. It’s a beautiful place.”

She was also a big fan of St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican Museums, especially the Sistine Chapel. “That church was beautiful, so beautiful,” she said, referring to St. Peter’s.

Vela and Cangelosi also had front row tickets to the May 9 general audience with Pope Francis, meaning they got to shake his hand after the event ended.

Although she is not a believer, Vela said the pope is “a really nice guy” and “really sweet.” He listened as she told him about her father, who considers himself spiritual but not religious, but who loves Pope Francis. Vela said she got a blessing and a rosary from the pope that she will give to her father.

This year the Denver Homeless Ministry pilgrimage was joined by Paul Spotts, who runs Catholic Young Adult Sports (CYAS), and 10 young adults from Colorado.

Cangelosi, who met Spotts through some of the CYAS events, said he approached her last fall saying he wanted to take a group to Rome, and that he wanted to invite a homeless person to travel with them. Cangelosi told CNA that she said yes because “I wanted Nina to experience being around people her age who are working and have graduated from college.”

“Hopefully that is something that will stick in her mind in the future,” she said, adding that having Vela with them was also “a life-changing experience” for the other young adults who came, since they had never really spent time with a homeless person before.

In her comments to CNA, Vela said that while the group dynamic was hard, she bonded with some of the people in the group, and felt respected.

Now working at a coffee roaster, and with housing lined up for the future, Vela said she doesn’t know what the future will hold, but is grateful to have had the opportunity to come to Rome.

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Chicago, Ill., May 11, 2019 / 02:20 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago is distancing himself from the decision of a pastor who invited controversial preacher Louis Farrakhan to speak at his parish, saying that he was not consulted before Farrakhan’s talk.

“Antisemitic rhetoric — discriminatory invective of any kind — has no place in American public life, let alone in a Catholic church,” Cupich said in a May 10 statement.

Farrakhan, 86, is the founder of the Chicago-based group Nation of Islam and has a history of anti-Semitic preaching.

“I’m here to separate the good Jews from the satanic Jews,” Farrakhan said at one point during the talk.

“I have not said one word of hate. I do not hate Jewish people. Not one that is with me has ever committed a crime against the Jewish people, black people, white people. As long as you don’t attack us, we won’t bother you.”

Fr. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Church, invited Farrakhan in response to Facebook’s decision May 2 to ban him from its platforms, due to Farrakhan’s violations of the site’s policies regarding “hate speech.” St. Sabina is a predominantly African American parish in Chicago’s South Side.

The Archdiocese had released a statement May 9 reiterating that the event was not sponsored by the archdiocese.

“Minister Farrakhan could have taken the opportunity to deliver a unifying message of God’s love for all his children. Instead, he repeatedly smeared the Jewish people, using a combination of thinly veiled discriminatory rhetoric and outright slander,” Cupich said.

“He referred to Jewish people as ‘satanic,’ asserting that he was sent by God to separate the ‘good Jews’ from the ‘satanic Jews,’” Cupich noted.

”Such statements shock the conscience. People of faith are called to live as signs of God’s love for the whole human family, not to demonize any of its members…I apologize to my Jewish brothers and sisters, whose friendship I treasure, from whom I learn so much, and whose covenant with God remains eternal.”

The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center has reportedly extended an invitation to Pfleger to meet with their leadership and dialogue with survivors. Cupich encouraged the priest to accept the invitation.

This is reportedly not the first time Plfeger has hosted Farrakhan to speak at his parish, and also not the first time the archdiocese has had to walk back controversial comments by the priest. In 2008, the late Cardinal Francis George had to publicly respond to comments Pfleger made deriding Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton and advocating the candidacy of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

In addition, George suspended Pfleger from his ministry at St. Sabina in 2011 and barred him from celebrating the sacraments because of public statements Pfleger had made, the Chicago Sun Times reports. Pfleger reportedly threatened to leave the priesthood unless George relented.

“He said there were good Jews and there are bad Jews, true. There are good Catholics and bad Catholics,” Pfleger told ABC7 news regarding Farrakhan’s talk.

“I’m doing what I believe the Gospel calls me to do and continue to try and bring people together and try to speak truth.”

Pfleger said he has known Farrakhan for 30 years and embraced him after the talk. Pfleger has said that Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam are respected locally for their anti-violence and anti-drug campaigns, CNN reports.

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Santiago, Chile, Nov 27, 2018 / 08:01 pm (CNA).- The Schönstatt movement confirmed Monday that Francisco José Cox Huneeus, a former bishop who was dismissed from the clerical state last month, will return to Chile to face the civil justice system for his abuse of minors.

Cox, 84, was ordained a priest of the Schönstatt Fathers in 1961, and he has lived at the movement’s headquarters in Germany since 2002, at the request of the Congregation for Bishops.

Cox’s return was confirmed Nov. 26 by Fr. Patricio Moore, Chilean vice provincial superior of the institute, who also reported on Cox’ health: he suffers from diabetes, controlled prostate cancer, and senile dementia.

“He underwent tests, there are 42 pages of a quite exhaustive reports. Although he has quite a few illnesses, the doctor says that he can travel to Chile and therefore we have also decided to take him back to Chile to make him available to the courts and for whatever may be required,” Moore told El Día.

“The exam says that he has senile dementia syndrome,” Moore indicated. “Not impediments, but I don’t know if he’s going to be able to help so much, but it’s not an impediment, he can be interrogated perfectly well.”

Cox’s return trip may take place in January or February 2019, after a micro-surgery on his brain. It is expected that he will be accompanied on the trip for health reasons.

Cox was born in Santiago de Chile in 1933. He was appointed Bishop of Chillán in 1974, and consecrated the following year. He served there until 1981, when he was appointed secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

In 1985 he was appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of La Serena in 1985, succeeding as ordinary in 1990.

He remained Archbishop of La Serena until 1997, when he resigned at the age of 63. The explanation given at the time “was that Cox had mental health problems,” Crux reported last month.

From 1997 to 2002, Cox exercised several administrative tasks in Rome and in Colombia, according to an Oct. 5 statement of  Fr. Juan Pablo Catoggio, superior general of the Schönstatt Fathers.

In 2002 Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa, then-Archbishop of Santiago, acknowledged that Cox had resigned on account of improper conduct. Cardinal Errazuriz retired in 2010. He, too, is a member of the Schönstatt Fathers. He was made a member of Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals in 2013, but said earlier this month he was leaving the advisory body,

In 2002 Cox retired from all public activity and left Chile.

“In the year 2002, at our suggestion and with the formal approbation of the Congregation for Bishops, in response to comments of various kinds about innappropriate comportment with youths, Bishop Cox was made to see that it it best for him to leave his work in the diocese of La Serena,” Fr. Fernando Baeza, Chilean superior provincial of the Schönstatt Fathers, said in an Oct. 4 statement.

Fr. Baeza said Cox has not had any pastoral assignment since then.

Cox was removed from the clerical state Oct. 11 “as a consequence of manifest abuse of minors,” but continues to be a member of the Institute of Schönstatt Fathers. His dismissal from the clerical state may not be appealed.

In an Oct. 13 statement, Fr. Catoggio announced that Cox’ dismissal from the clerical state was the result of his sexual abuse of minors reported in recent months, which were investigated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Fr. Baeza had said that the institute received, at the end of 2017, a complaint of abuse by Cox that had occurred in Germany in 2004. That complaint was sent directly to the CDF, Fr. Baeza said. It was also sent to Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office, Fr. Catoggio said.

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