CNA Staff, Oct 7, 2020 / 08:00 am (CNA).- When Hurricane Alex roared through the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon in 2010, the wind tore a metal sculpture of Our Lady of Guadalupe from its base in the city of Monterrey, and flung the statue into the Santa Catarina River.
An unsuccessful attempt was made to retrieve the image but it had become buried too far under the riverbed, and local authorities replaced it with a replica.
But then another hurricane came through the state.
In July, Hurricane Hanna tore through the area where Hurricane Alex had been ten years ago. And Hurricane Hanna’s winds and flooding reshaped the Santa Catarina’s riverbed. When it did, the statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe was partially exposed in the river.
A local bricklayer, Esteban Ramírez, found the statue while he was looking for scrap metal in the rocky riverbed.
The statue, nearly 42 feet high and weighing ten tons, was retrieved from the riverbed. Work began to restore it.
The Archdiocese of Monterrey reported October 1 that restoration work on the image is progressing.
“In a few days the structural part of the image will be ready,” the archdiocese said in a statement.
The statue was originally placed in Monterrey in 1990, amid preparations for a visit to the city from Pope St. John Paul II. The pope blessed the statue during his visit.
A construction company is working on the renovation of the statue and paying for expenses. When the work is almost complete, the statue will be placed at Our Lady, Queen of Mexico Parish in the city.
One part of the statue’s metal framing will not be restored. Officials hope the unadorned pieces of the statue tell the story of its ten years in a riverbed, and the Providence of God.
The rediscovery of the image in July this year was a sign of hope to Catholics during the coronavirus pandemic, that Our Lady always accompanies them in their trials, the Monterrey archdiocese said.
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Escuintla, Guatemala, Jun 5, 2018 / 04:59 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Three Catholic churches in Guatemala have opened their doors to shelter victims of Sunday’s sudden volcano eruption that devastated villages and left at least 70 people dead.
“What I’ve seen so far is complete destruction. Hundreds of people have lost everything,” said Luis Rolando Sanchez, Catholic Relief Services’ emergency coordinator for Latin America.
Both Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Caritas Escuintla have staff on the ground in Guatemala providing hot meals, food, water, and other basic necessities to the displaced, as rescuers continue to search for survivors in villages buried in ash.
“The Church sprang into action immediately by opening shelters and getting lifesaving relief to those who need it. But there is a lot of work to do with so many people impacted by this disaster,” Sanchez continued. Local authorities estimate that nearly 2 million people were affected by the Volcan de Fuego or fire volcano.
All three of the church shelters are located in Escuintla, Guatemala, near ground-zero for the volcano, whose eruption spewed ash clouds nearly 33,000 feet into the air. The Escuintla district, along with Chimaltenango and Sacatepéquez, are among the areas most affected by the blast, according to CRS.
Kim Pozniak, Catholic Relief Services’ communications coordinator, told CNA that their staff on the ground in Guatemala heard many tragic stories as more than 100 people arrived at one of the church shelters in Escuintla on June 4.
One woman, Julia, could barely hold back tears as she explained to Catholic Relief Services staff that she had lost her daughter, granddaughter, and son-in-law.
Julia had stayed behind with her three granddaughters while their parents left the house to go sell pineapples, the family’s source of livelihood, when the volcano erupted, burying the parents under lava.
“Everyone has lost someone,” said Pozniak, “People are traumatized.” She added that more volunteers from other parts of Guatemala are beginning to arrive at the shelters to provide some trauma relief.
“Despite the unimaginable damage and heartbreak, I have hope that these communities will recover. People in Guatemala are nothing if not resilient,” said Sanchez.
“I encourage U.S. Catholics to pray for their brothers and sisters who are suffering through this terrible ordeal,” he continued.
Pope Francis said he was “deeply distressed in hearing the sad news of the violent eruption” in a telegram on June 5 and offered his prayers for the victims and their families.
Geologist Trevor Nace explained that the Volcan de Fuego’s eruption of felsic lava was much more sudden, vicious, and deadly than Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, which has been slowly erupting for the past month.
“Combined with the steep slopes and high rainfall in Guatemala, mud, and rock is easily swept down slopes only to destroy more homes and threaten more lives,” Nace said in an article on Forbes.
Guatemalans have been warned to avoid waterways, where ash and water can combine to create mudslides that can flow up to 120 miles per hour.
Roger Foley enjoys taste-testing three different kinds of hummus, his favourite food, on the day of a video shoot with Amanda Achtman of the Dying to Meet You project in Canada. The two spoke about Foley’s difficulty accessing quality care for his needs and being offered Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) “several times.” / Courtesy of Amanda Achtman
CNA Staff, Jun 23, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Amid ongoing efforts to expand euthanasia in Canada under the name of “medical aid in dying” (MAID), one Ottawa man says he has been offered euthanasia “multiple times” as he struggles with lifelong disabilities and chronic pain from a disease called cerebellar ataxia.
Roger Foley, 49, shared some of his story in a recent video interview with Amanda Achtman of the Dying to Meet You project, which was created to “humanize our conversation on suffering, death, meaning, and hope.” The project seeks to “[restore] our cultural health when it comes to our experiences of death and dying” through speaking engagements and video campaigns.
Roger Foley, a Canadian man with disabilities, says he’s been offered euthanasia “multiple times.”
Listen to him speak out against being devalued as he fights for the support he needs to live. pic.twitter.com/yY8N4NILkS
In the video, the fourth of a series, Foley said he has struggled with subpar medical help in his own home, where he is supposed to be getting quality care. Canada has a nationalized health care system but Foley said that individuals with illnesses are “worked at … not worked with.” He spoke out against being devalued as he fights for the support he needs to live.
In one case, he said, a home worker helped him into his bathtub and then fell asleep in the other room; Foley was left to crawl out of the bathroom on his own. “I reported to the agency, and then he confessed, and the agency, they really didn’t care,” he said.
Asked by Achtman if he has ever been offered euthanasia, Foley said: “Yeah, multiple times.”
“One time, [a doctor] asked me, ‘Do you have any thoughts of self-harm?’ I’m honest with them and tell them I do think about ending my life because of what I’m going through, being prevented from the resources that I need to live safely back at home.”
“From out of nowhere, he just pulls out, ‘Well, if you don’t get self-directing funding, you can always apply for an assisted.’”
Foley said the offers from doctors to help end his life have “completely traumatized me.”
“Now it’s this overlying option where in my situation, when I say I’m suicidal, I’m met with, ‘Well, the hospital has a program to help you with that if you want to end your life.’”
“That didn’t exist before [MAID] was legalized, but now it’s there,” he said. “There is not going to be a second within the rest of my life that I’m not going to have flashbacks to [being offered suicide]. The devaluing of me and all that I am.”
Noting that he’s “not religious,” Foley said: “Saying that it’s just religious persons who oppose euthanasia in society is completely wrong.”
“These people who usually say it, they have an ableist mindset,” he said. “And they look at persons with disabilities and see us as just better off dead and a waste of resources.”
Achtman told CNA there is a need for euthanasia-free health care spaces, not only for protecting the integrity of Catholic institutions but also because many patients — including nonreligious patients like Foley — want to be treated in facilities that do not raise euthanasia with patients.
“Having euthanasia suggested, in a sense, already kills the person. It deflates a person’s sense of confidence that doctors and nurses are going to truly fight for them,” Achtman told CNA. “When euthanasia is suggested ostensibly as one ‘treatment’ option among others, there are all-too-frequently no other real options provided.
She continued: “This is why I always say that a request for euthanasia is not so much an expression of a desire to die as it is an expression of disappointment. Responding to such disappointment with real interventions that are adequate to the person is demanding, but that’s what people deserve. It is wrong to concede or capitulate to a person’s suicidal ideation — instead, every person deserves suicide prevention rather than suicide assistance.”
Roger Foley enjoys taste-testing three different kinds of hummus, his favorite food, on the day of a video shoot with Amanda Achtman of the Dying to Meet You project. The two spoke about Foley’s difficulty accessing quality care for his needs and being offered Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) “several times.”. Courtesy of Amanda Achtman
Canada has become one of the most permissive countries in the world when it comes to euthanasia. The country first began allowing doctors to help kill terminally ill patients nearing death in 2016; the law was then expanded in 2021 to include patients whose death is not imminent.
In February the country paused a proposal to allow mentally ill individuals access to MAID, with the proposal set to be reconsidered in 2027. Earlier this year, Canadian health researchers alleged that MAID will “save” the Canadian health care system between $34.7 and $136.8 million per year.
A couple in British Columbia is currently suing the provincial government, as well as a Catholic health care provider, after their daughter was denied euthanasia while suffering from a terminal illness. The suit demands that the government remove the religious exemption from the Catholic hospital that protects them from having to offer MAID.
A judge in March, meanwhile, ruled that a woman with autism could be granted her request to die by MAID, overruling efforts by the woman’s father to halt the deadly procedure.
Asked what gives him hope, Foley told Achtman that he aspires one day to “be able to break through [the health care system] and get access to the resources that I need and to live at home with workers who want to work with me and I want to work with them and that we can work as a team.”
“I have a passion to live,” he said. “I don’t want to give up my life.”
ACI Prensa Staff, Sep 6, 2023 / 18:50 pm (CNA).
In a brief post on X (formerly Twitter), the Mexican Supreme Court announced Wednesday that in response to a legal challenge it has ruled that the articles criminalizin… […]
Nossa Senhora de Guadalupe – Ora Pro Nobis.