Vatican grants 14 New York churches delay on mergers amid challenges to bishop’s plan

The Knights of Columbus announced the selection of this icon of St. Joseph holding the Child Jesus as the centerpiece of this year’s KofC prayer program. / Courtesy of Knights of Columbus

CNA Staff, Nov 9, 2021 / 16:14 pm (CNA).

As the state deputies of the Knights of Columbus gathered for their semi-annual meeting last weekend in Nashville, Tennessee, Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly encouraged the order’s leaders to grow in faith, expand the Order’s membership, and advance the Knight’s mission.

Kelly also introduced the Order’s new pilgrim icon prayer program, which features an icon of St. Joseph holding the child Jesus from St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, Canada. 

The Knights of Columbus (KofC) is the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization, with more than two million members in 16,000 councils worldwide. 

The pilgrim icon prayer program is a longstanding tradition for the KofC, in which every few years a new icon of a saint is selected to inspire the Knights and their communities. The icon is distributed to each of the Knight’s more than 75 jurisdictions and travels from council to council.

Councils at parishes will use the icon as centerpieces for “rosary-based” prayer services, a press release said. Our Lady of Guadalupe was the first icon during the conception of the program in 1979. Since the initiation of the program, almost 175,000 council and parish prayer services have been held with about 22 million participants.

Past images commissioned by the council have been icons of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Our Lady of Częstochowa, Our Lady of Pochaiv, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Charity, Our Lady Help of Persecuted Christians, and the Holy Family.

Following a Votive Mass in honor of St. Joseph on Saturday, Nov. 6 celebrated by Supreme Chaplain Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, Kelly announced the featuring of the St. Joseph icon, which is inspired by Pope Francis’ Apostolic letter, Patris Corde. Pope Francis’s letter announced the year of St. Joseph that stretches from Dec. 8, 2020 to Dec 8, 2021. 

Kelly, who received a private audience with Pope Francis last month, said that the Holy Father was grateful that the Knights chose St. Joseph to be “a central focus of our spiritual efforts.”

Kelly was accompanied at the meeting by his predecessor, Past Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, as well as Lori.

The choice for the newly commissioned icon of St. Joseph is no surprise, as Kelly has advocated for devotion to the saint since his installation as the Supreme Knight. 

During his June installation, Kelly consecrated his administration to St. Joseph. “The example of St. Joseph teaches us how to be Knights of the Eucharist. He was the guardian of the first tabernacle — beginning with Mary herself when she bore Christ in her womb, and then in the home where he and Mary lived with Jesus,” he said at his installation address.

Also, in October, the Knights released a new documentary on St. Joseph, inspired by Pope Francis’s declaration of the Year of St. Joseph.

During his address on Saturday, Kelly encouraged Knights and their communities to again entrust themselves to St. Joseph. Kelly implored the men to “give thanks to God for the gift of his fatherly example and ask St. Joseph to be a father to us” as we seek to “grow in our own imitation of St. Joseph’s quiet strength, integrity, and fidelity.” 

Lori said that St. Joseph’s obedient faith and trustworthiness are “two virtues [that] ought to stand out in us as Knights of Columbus, and especially in us who are leaders among our brother Knights in the Order.”

“St. Joseph’s vocation to foster the earthly life of Jesus is, of course, unique, but all of us have been called to the obedience of faith,” Lori added. “Father McGivney envisioned his Knights, above all, as men of obedient faith, who, with their wives and children, would live their vocation to the fullest.”

“In choosing Joseph to care with a father’s love for the Incarnate Son of God, the Eternal Father recognized in St. Joseph a man of utmost integrity, a man who perhaps had no idea what God had in mind for him but nonetheless went about his daily life and work with honesty and reliability,” he said.

“A lot of men, especially young men, are looking for meaning and answers,” he said. “We offer both — a life of service and a life of meaning. Don’t just encourage men to adopt our initiatives; explain to them why our initiatives matter, and how the Knights can help them be the kind of men God is calling them to be,” he said.

Speaking of the Knight’s founder, Blessed Michael McGivney, Kelly told the state deputies on Friday, Nov. 5 that McGivney was a “man of action.” He said that McGivney “rose to meet the struggles” of his parishioners and community “head on,” and that by establishing the Knights of Columbus, he “gave men a place to stand as brothers, bound together in charity, unity, and fraternity.”

Kelly implored the Knights to fulfil the mission that McGivney started in his time. Kelly also called on the men to expand the Order’s membership by growing “deeper, as men of faith.”

On Nov. 7, at the meeting’s closing session, Kelly presented four Knights with the St. Michael Award for exemplary service to the Order. 

The four recipients were: former director of chaplains for the KofC, Augustinian Father John Grace; former Supreme Warden George W. Hanna; Supreme Master Dennis Stoddard; and Col. Charles “Chuck” Gallina (USMC-Ret.), the supreme knight’s advisor for military and veterans affairs.

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Baltimore, Md., Nov 12, 2018 / 04:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the afternoon of the first full day of the US bishops’ autumn general assembly, two speakers pleaded with the bishops to listen deeply to abuse victims and to lay experts in the Church about how to move forward.

Christina Lamas, Executive Director of the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry, told the bishops they must not ignore the pain of the victims of clergy sex abuse.

Many young people, she said, “have been hurt twice by the Church,” first when they were abused by a cleric, and then again when they were ignored by Church leadership after the abuse.

“We need words of compassion when speaking about those disconnected from the Church, to view them as sisters and brothers, not as prize objects,” Lamas said.

“We need bishops to stop seeing conspiracy and malice, instead we look for our bishops and those who work with them to assume the good” on the part of those who come forward, she added.

While the Vatican has ordered the U.S. bishops conference not to vote on proposals aimed at sex abuse reforms until after a meeting of the world’s bishop conference presidents in February, the subject has still featured prominently at the meeting of U.S. bishops, which is being held in Baltimore Nov. 12-14.

Lamas, who spoke during a Monday afternoon session, also called the bishops to examine and root out the causes of sexual abuse.

“From you our bishops, we need you to address the root of the problem – abuse of power. We need soul-searching about clericalism and its roots,” she said.

There have been “glimmers of hope,” Lamas said, noting that some bishops have opened investigations, created review boards, and held listening sessions in their dioceses.

Young people are also now being taught “not to keep secrets, and that no person is above question or above the law,” she said.

Lamas asked the bishops to “walk with” the laity at this time, “rather than ignore us. You are not spiritual fathers of only the clergy” but of all, she said.

Following a period of prayer and reflection, Sr. Teresa Maya, CCVI of San Antonio and past president of Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) addressed the bishops, expressing her disappointment at the scandals and urging them to learn from some of the lessons that women religious have learned through their own times of crisis.

“I accepted your courageous invitation (to speak at the conference) because of my deep love for the Church,” she said, although she said she had hoped a snowstorm might have cancelled the whole event.

While she loves the Church, Maya said she has found it “painful” in recent months to recite the words of the Creed: “One, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.”

Maya said she was tempted to stop saying that part of the Creed “until something concrete happened. Then I realized this was my Church and wondered what was mine to do.”

She said she was recently asked by a friend why Catholics should stay in the Church after all of the scandals, and Maya said after a long silence, she responded: “We stay because of Jesus Christ.”

“How do we return to (Christ) for mercy and reconciliation, for the grit to do what is our to do?” she asked the bishops.

She said she prayed that the bishops would have a “deep capacity” to listen to the survivors of clerical abuse, to hear their anger and their pain.

The bishops are entrusted with the task of being the “phsycians and healers” of the Church, but “the best physicians are first good listeners,” she said.

Maya then offered the bishops three ways they could learn from orders of women religious, who have gone through their own trials and crises, and who now face sharply declining numbers and aging populations.

The bishops must face the scandals together, with a listening and contemplative heart, and must be willing to root out anything that goes against discipleship with Christ, she said.

“You are called to renewed spiritual depth,” which will enable the bishops to discern the good spirits from the bad, she said.

She urged the bishops to renewed communion among themselves, and to have the willingness to listen to other bishops who have put policies and procedures in place that have actually worked to help bring healing and reconciliation to survivors of abuse.

“You should not expect the Vatican to resolve what is yours to resolve,” she said. “The Vatican doesn’t have the knowledge, resources and gits that you do. You can be models for the rest of the world. I urge you to seize this opportunity.”

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Lansing, Mich., May 24, 2019 / 03:26 pm (CNA).- Five men who served in Michigan as Catholic priests have been charged with 21 counts of sex abuse, the state attorney general announced Friday.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said at May 24 press conference, reported by the New York Times. “We anticipate many more charges and arrests.”

She added: “Although we have charged these men with very serious crimes, I want to remind everyone that they are innocent until proven guilty by a court of law.”

The five men are accused of abusing five individuals: four of them male, and one of them female, M-Live in Michigan reported. Four of the alleged victims were minors.

Those charged are: Timothy Crowley, 69, and Vincent DeLorenzo, 80, of the Diocese of Lansing; Patrick Casey, 55, of the Archdiocese of Detroit; Jacob Vellian, 84, of the Syro-Malabar Archeparchy of Kottayam, who served in the Diocese of Kalamazoo for one year in the 1970s; and Neil Kalina, 63, of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, who served in the Archdiocese of Detroit.

One of the men was arrested in Michigan, while three others were arrested in Arizona, California, and Florida. The fifth, Vellian, could be extradited from his home country of India.

Casey was removed from ministry in 2015, and faces an ongoing canonical process. Kalina left active ministry in 1993. DeLorenzo was removed from ministry after the Lansing diocese receiving a complaint against him in 2002, and the diocese is seeking to have him dismissed from the clerical state. Crowley was removed from ministry after an allegation was made against him in 1993, and he has been dismissed from the clerical state.

Vellian is retired and resides at Bethsleehe Seminary, according to the MSP Society at the website of his archeparchy.

The charges were made during the ongoing statewide investigation into clergy abuse in the Catholic Church.

Michigan launched an investigation into Catholic clergy in September 2018, following the release of a Grand Jury report in Pennsylvania which detailed decades of abuse allegations against 300 Catholic priests in that state. It also followed the suspension of the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was accused of multiple counts of sexual abuse of minors and sexual misconduct with seminarians. McCarrick was suspended from public ministry in July 2018, and was dismissed from the clerical state in January 2019.

After the announcement of the investigation in the fall of 2018, the dioceses said they welcomed the investigation and pledged their full cooperation.

A statement from the Archdiocese of Detroit said at the time that they “looked forward” to cooperating with state officials and actively participating in the investigation. The archdiocese also emphasized its confidence in its safe environment practices already in place, but added that the investigation would be the next step toward healing.

So far, the Michigan investigation team has reviewed hundreds of tips, as well as hundreds of thousands of abuse-related documents that were seized in police raids of all seven Catholic dioceses in the state, M-Live reported. Most of the tips have come through a hotline established specifically for abuse.

Nessel said at the press conference that she believed only 5-10 percent of the documents had been reviewed thus far.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg…This is about taking on large-scale institutions that turn a blind eye to victims and making certain we hold all of them accountable – that includes unapologetically pursuing any and all individuals who abuse their power by victimizing our residents,” she said.

Ned McGrath, the public affairs director for the archdiocese, said at the news conference that the Archdiocese of Detroit continues to promise its full cooperation with authorities in the investigation.

In March of this year, Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer asked the state’s legislature for an additional $2 million in funding for the abuse investigation, which is expected to last two years.

In April of this year, Michigan State Rep. Beau LaFave told CNA that he was concerned that Nessel appeared to demonstrate an anti-Catholic bias over multiple previous statements made either in public or on social media.

Similar clergy sex abuse investigations have been launched in multiple states throughout the country, including in Georgia, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Nebraska.

Last year Michigan extended the statue of limitations in sexual assault cases to 15 years after the incident in criminal cases and 10 in civil cases. Indictments for abuse of minor victims can be filed within 15 years of the crime or by the victim’s 28th birthday, whichever comes later. First-degree criminal sexual abuse, such as rape of a minor, has no statute of limitations in the state.

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