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CNA Staff, Jul 23, 2020 / 02:16 pm (CNA).- The statue of Christopher Columbus outside of Worcester’s Union Station will remain, the city council decided Tuesday, citing the need to respect the local Italian community despite a spate of vandal attacks on statutes of historic figures and a wave of critical commentary on American monuments.

The Worcester City Council voted 8-2 on July 21 to shelve a proposal that would have ordered the removal of the Christopher Columbus statue and its replacement with a different statue or memorial to honor the Italian community.

Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson, who claims Italian ancestry, moved to shelve the proposal. She cited the recent razing of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church and the closing of the cultural center there, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reports.

“As someone who is Italian, that statue does represent our heritage,” said Mero-Carlson. “The Italian community has been through hell and back the last couple of years having lost their church and cultural center.”

“We don’t get the right to tell the Italian community what they should think about a statue,” she said. “Italians are proud people. We don’t get the right to tell them what to do with their statue; it should be up to the Italian community to decide. We get to make those decisions on who we are.”

The statue was donated to the city by Italian-American attorney Nunziato Fursaro in memory of his wife and erected in 1978.

Columbus has long been an American Catholic and Italian-American folk hero. They have seen his pioneering voyage from Europe as a way of validating their presence in a sometimes hostile majority-Protestant country and as the means by which Christianity reached the New World.

Columbus was long depicted as a symbol of exploration and discovery, critical for launching the encounter between Europe and the Americas. He was also a symbol of immigrants, and honors for Columbus drew opposition from nativist and anti-Catholic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

While Columbus never set foot in North America, the District of Columbia bears his name and he is the namesake of the Knights of Columbus, now the largest Catholic men’s fraternal organization in the world.

In recent decades, Columbus has drawn critical coverage. Some blame him for the launch of the transatlantic slave trade, and fault him for the enslavement and other mistreatment of some Native Americans under his command. Some critics blame him for the subsequent sufferings of Native Americans under Spanish rule, or under the rule of European colonists generally.

Councilor Sarai Rivera had introduced the failed proposal. She said the statue should be removed because of atrocities and devastation caused for indigenous people in the Caribbean, Central America, and North America.

Rivera identifies as Afro Taina and claims descent from the Taino indigenous people of Puerto Rico. She said she never participated in Worcester’s annual Columbus Day Parade.

“I could never go to celebrate someone who committed genocide on my ancestors,” she said, according to the Worcester Gazette & Telegram.

“Columbus is not about heritage. Columbus is about hate,” Rivera said to the council meeting, according to the Boston Globe. “And when you think about the amazing contributions the Italian community has done, even within our own community … that’s who we should be honoring. That’s who we should be talking about.”

The explorer had good relations with a Native American leader on Hispaniola. There, a Taino chief named Guacanagari aided Columbus after the wreck of his main ship the Santa Maria. Columbus adopted one of his sons. That son took the name of Columbus’ natural son, Diego, and accompanied Columbus on his final three voyages

In June the Worcester Columbus statue was vandalized with red paint, with the word “genocide” written on it. A Columbus statue in Boston’s historically Italian North End was beheaded.

This followed protests originally launched in response to the death of Minnesotan George Floyd, a black man, while he was being detained by Minneapolis police. Violence and vandalism, rejected by protest organizers, have caused massive damage to American cities.

Vandals particularly targeted statues of Confederate leaders, but also moved against statues of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, and Spanish missionary St. Junipero Serra, a major figure of early Californian history. Catholic churches and statues have also come under attack.

In Worcester the Columbus statue’s location at Union Station is owned and operated by the Worcester Redevelopment Authority, but the statue itself belongs to the city.

Councilor Kathleen M. Toomey also spoke against removing the statue.

“I feel very strongly that we need to respect each other and not tear each other down,” she said. “And when you start taking away other peoples’ symbols without having conversation, without trying to understand what things mean, I think that’s a problem.”

The proposal cannot be brought again for 90 days unless the city council agrees to to reconsider it.

The Italian American Alliance welcomed the shelving of the proposal, and voiced hope the city would “take special care to protect the statue against vandals.”

Worcester Mayor Joseph M. Petty recused himself from voting.

[…]

CNA Staff, Feb 19, 2021 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- A federal judge has temporarily blocked South Carolina’s heartbeat-based abortion ban just days after its passage, in response to court filings from Planned Parenthood. However, the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office has argued that Planned Parenthood can’t be sure the U.S. Supreme Court will reject the law.
 
Lawyers for Planned Parenthood said the state is “openly flouting” federal precedent allowing abortion.
 
In court papers filed Feb. 19, the state attorney general’s office cited the three justices appointed to the Supreme Court under President Donald Trump as reason to believe the court could overturn Roe v. Wade and other precedents mandating legal abortion nationwide.
 
“My office will vigorously defend this law in court because there is nothing more important than protecting life,” South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said Feb. 18.
 
Judge Mary Geiger Lewis placed a 14-day temporary restraining order on the law Feb. 19, an order that is renewable until a more substantial hearing on March 9, the Associated Press said.
 
She said it was not her role to determine whether the Supreme Court would change abortion precedent. Rather, she must follow current precedent, and the state’s new law is more strict than this precedent.
 
Gov. Henry McMaster had signed the bill Feb. 18, calling it “a major step forward in the pro-life movement here in South Carolina.”
 
The Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act restricts abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as six weeks into pregnancy. It requires doctors to check for a heartbeat before an abortion. Exemptions would allow abortions in cases where the child was conceived in rape or incest or where the mother’s life is in danger.
 
The state currently bans abortion after 20 weeks into pregnancy.
 
If the heartbeat-based abortion ban survives legal challenge, doctors who are found guilty of violating the law could face a felony charge, up to two years in prison, and fines of up to $10,000.
 
Women seeking abortions would not be subject to criminal prosecution.
 
The Diocese of Charleston supported the legislation.

The director of the state’s Catholic Conference, Michael Acquilano, called the passage of the bill “a historic day for the pro-life movement in South Carolina,” according to The Catholic Miscellany.

The Catholic conference drafted a sample message for voters to send to legislators in support of the bill. The message said that, given changes at the supreme Court, “it is our sincere hope that the legislation will withstand constitutional challenge and be implemented in order to save innocent, unborn babies’ lives when a heartbeat is present.”

“As we know, abortion stops a beating heart,” the message continued.
 
In court papers seeking a restraining order on the law, Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights said more than 75 women were scheduled to have abortions in the state over the next three days.
 
Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville each have abortion clinics, none of which perform abortion after the first trimester. Two of the clinics perform abortion twice a week.
 
Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit said the abortion ban would hurt low-income women the hardest as they could not travel to a nearby state with more lax abortion laws.
 
Critics of the law have objected that many women don’t know they are pregnant six weeks into pregnancy, and the law doesn’t give them time to consider an abortion.
 
Other states have passed “heartbeat” abortion bans, including Georgia, Missouri, Louisiana, Ohio, Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, and North Dakota. However, they have not prevailed in court.
 
In other states, pro-abortion legislators have acted to strengthen legal abortion at the state level in case federal precedent on legal abortion is changed or overturned.
 
A heartbeat-based abortion ban had passed South Carolina’s House of Representatives several times in previous years, but the legislation lacked the votes to overcome a procedural vote in the Senate, the Associated Press reports. After Republican candidates won three more Senate seats in the 2020 elections, their party held a 30-16 advantage.
 
Sen. Sandy Senn of Charleston was the only Senate Republican to vote against the bill.
 
The House passed the legislation by a 79-35 vote Feb. 17.
 
During legislative debate over the bill that day, Democrats walked out of the state House chamber in protest.
 
However, two South Carolina House Democrats voted in favor of the bill, including Rep. Russell Ott.
 
“I feel like I need to continue to be consistent,” Ott told CNA Feb. 17. “An unborn child is still a human being,” he said, adding that “I can’t separate myself from that.”
 
Ott said the life issue “has always been an internal struggle for me.” He emphasized other needs including education reform, the lack of affordable quality food in areas known as “food deserts,” and the lack of broadband access in rural areas.
 
Acquilano said litigation was expected.
 
“However, the battle to preserve life must include the courts in our system of government. We welcome litigation to continue to build a culture of life,” he said, according to The Catholic Miscellany.

[…]

null / ArtOlympic / Shutterstock.

Washington D.C., Feb 20, 2023 / 16:20 pm (CNA).
An 18-inch pipe bomb was found behind a Catholic church in Philadelphia and removed by the police department’s bomb squad.According to a police report, a passerby… […]