News Briefs

Pope Francis: You cannot over-invest in spreading God’s Word through media

September 23, 2019 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, Sep 23, 2019 / 10:18 am (CNA).- When it comes to spreading the Word of God through media, no investment is too big, Pope Francis told officials and consultors of the Dicastery for Communication Monday.

In a prepared text given to participants in the Vatican’s Sala Regia Sept. 23, the pope spoke about communication as a mission of the Church. “No investment is too high for the diffusion of the Word of God,” he said. “At the same time, every ‘talent’ should be well spent, taken advantage of.”

Pope Francis went on to say that “in reality, our strength alone is not enough,” and referenced an address of St. Paul VI in 1964, in which he told the Vatican’s then-social communications department that “a thought of faith must therefore support the smallness of our humble efforts.”

“The more we make ourselves instruments in the hands of God, that is, small and generous, and the more the probability of our efficiency will grow,” Paul VI said.

“We know,” Pope Francis said, “that since then [1964] the challenges in this area have grown exponentially and our forces are never enough. The challenge to which you are called, as Christians and communicators, is really high. And that is why it is beautiful.”

The pope addressed the group of bishops and media professionals at the start of the plenary assembly of the Dicastery for Communications, being held at the Vatican Sept. 23-25.

This is the first plenary assembly of the dicastery since its institution in 2015. In attendance are the officials of the dicastery together with consultors from the international media realm, among whom is EWTN Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael P. Warsaw. Catholic News Agency is a service of EWTN.

The pope commented, “I therefore rejoice that the theme chosen for this Assembly is ‘We are members of one another’. Your, our strength lies in unity, in being members of one another. Only so we can better respond to the needs of the Church’s mission.”

In addition to his prepared speech, which was dispersed in written form, Pope Francis gave lengthy impromptu remarks to the assembly, counseling them to have the “signature of testimony” in everything they do.

“If you want to communicate only the truth without goodness and beauty, stop yourselves, do not do it. If you want to communicate a kind of truth, but without involving yourselves, without giving witness to that truth with your very lives, with your very flesh, stop yourselves, do not do it,” the pope said.

He also warned them against falling into an attitude of resignation when confronted by the worldliness of society.

Worldliness is not new to this century, he said, “it was always a danger, it was always a temptation, it was always the enemy”

In this vein, the pope said he has heard people think the Church should close itself off a little, “be a tiny, but authentic Church.”

“That word that gives me an allergy,” he stated. “If something is, it is not necessary to say ‘authentic.’”

The Church should be small “like leaven, small like salt,” he urged. “This is the Christian vocation!”

To think the Church of the future will be a “Church of the elect” is to risk falling into “the heresy of the Essenes,” he said, which is how “Christian authenticity is lost.”

Francis added that “the resignation to cultural defeat… comes from the bad spirit, it does not come from God.”

“Do not be afraid,” he encouraged. “We are few? Yes, but with the desire to ‘missionize,’ to show others who we are. With witness.”

He said he also is a “little allergic” to when people say something is “truly Christian.” “We have fallen into the culture of adjectives and adverbs, and we have forgotten the strength of nouns,” he argued.

“This is the mission of communication: to communicate the reality, without sweetening it with adjectives or adverbs.”

Just say something is “a Christian thing,” he said. It is unnecessary to say something is “authentically Christian.”

The communicator must show the “true, the right, the good, and the beautiful,” he said, and he does this with “the soul and with the body; he communicates with the mind, with the heart, with the hands; you communicate with everything.”

“And it is true that the greatest communication is love: in love there is the fullness of communication: love for God and among us.”

Something those working in Catholic communications should not do is proselytism, the pope said, adding that as “Benedict XVI said with great clarity: ‘The Church does not grow because of proselytism, but because of attraction,’ that is, testimony.”

“And our communication should be testimony.”

Pope Francis concluded by thanking the members of the dicastery for their work, telling them to “communicate the joy of the Gospel: This is what the Lord asks of you today.”

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The important legacy of the US’ sole Catholic historically black university

September 22, 2019 CNA Daily News 2

New Orleans, La., Sep 22, 2019 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- This week the country marked National HBCU Week to recognize the accomplishments of historically black colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Earlier this month, leaders from the country’s 101 HBCUs convened in Washington, D.C. for the annual National HBCU Conference, where they spoke to Congress of the ongoing importance of HBCUs, and where President Donald Trump announced that religiously affiliated HBCUs would now receive full federal funding.

“Previously, federal law restricted more than 40 faith-based HBCUs and seminaries from fully accessing federal support for capital improvement projects. This meant that your faith-based institutions, which have made such extraordinary contributions to America, were unfairly punished for their religious beliefs,” Trump said in his Sept. 10 address to the conference.

“This week, our Department of Justice has published an opinion declaring such discriminatory restrictions as unconstitutional. It was a big step. And from now on, faith-based HBCUs will enjoy equal access to federal support,” Trump added.

Among the leaders present was President Reynold Verret of Xavier University of Louisiana, the only Catholic historically black college or university in the United States.

In his testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor, Verret emphasized the “critical role” of HBCUs in education.

Verret told CNA that in his testimony, he emphasized that as the U.S. grows in diversity, “the majority of our talents will be black and brown. And if we fail to cultivate that talent, we will actually do ourselves a great damage,” he said.

Students are not always fortunate enough to attend good schools, he added, and if black talents, such as those of Dr. Ben Carson, are not fostered, they will be lost. Carson was a prominent pediatric neurosurgeon before his run for president in 2016 and his current position as U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary,

Speaking about Xavier in particular, Verret said that the faculty encourages their students to consider the needs of their communities and their country when choosing their majors.

“The education of the student at Xavier or at a school like ourselves, it’s not just a benefit to that individual student, but a benefit to the larger community that he is contributing to, and to the nation,” Verret said.

The notion of putting one’s talents at the service of another is a critical part of Xavier University’s Catholic foundation, Verret added.

“It’s very much in our legacy at Xavier, that that expectation of contributing to more than just me…and we speak of that to our students,” he said. “That the majors that they engage in, whether it’s preparing for medicine, preparing for law, or becoming a major artist, will only have meaning when they put it in service of people. It’s not so much about my BMW, or my salary.”

The seeds of Xavier University were planted by then-Mother Katherine Drexel in 1915, when she and her Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament founded schools to serve Native American and African American populations throughout the United States, including a Catholic secondary school for African-Americans in Louisiana.

By 1917, she also established a preparatory school for teachers, one of the few career tracks available to Black Americans at the time. A few years later, that school was able to offer other degrees as well, and became a full-fledged university in 1925.

In a sense, Verret said, Mother Katherine “rescued the Church from herself” at the time, because she opened an institution where students of all colors were welcome. Xavier University was also the first Catholic university where men and women studied together, he added.

The spirit of Mother Katherine, now St. Katherine Drexel, and her mission to provide a quality education to those in need is still foundational to the mission of Xavier today, Verret said.

“Mother Katherine, when she came here with her sisters in 1915…she had in her mind those who needed an education,” Verret said. “…and every 15 years, maybe even 25 years, we look at ourselves and say – who else needs our service? If Mother Katherine was beginning today, she would have others on her list as well, because this is our mission.”

When it comes to academic performance, Xavier is a school that “is punching above our weight,” Verret said.

Though the school enrolls only 3,000-some students, Xavier ranks first in the country for the number of black graduates who will go on to complete medical school, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

It is also ranked among the nation’s top four colleges of pharmacy in graduating African Americans with Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm D) degrees, and is number one in the nation in awarding bachelor’s degrees to African American students in the biological and biomedical sciences, the physical sciences, and physics, and number three in the nation for the number of African American graduates who go on to earn a Ph.D. in science and engineering fields.

Verret said that Xavier’s achievements show the important role that smaller, specialized colleges, such as HBCUs, or women’s colleges, or other religiously-affiliated colleges, can play in American higher education.

“That diversity of education (options) to satisfy young people’s needs is important to us, and HBCUs are one part of that landscape.”

HBCUs were founded at a time where it was illegal for black students to attend other institutions of higher education, and so they catered to black students out of necessity. Xavier is still predominately black, Verret said, but it always has been and continues to be accepting of students of all ethnicities and creeds, which was something Mother Katherine anticipated.

“We have an important reservoir of experience and knowledge and intuition about what America should become, which came from the children and descendants of former slaves,” Verret said, but students of all races and creeds are able to receive a good education at Xavier.

Among the other ethnicities at Xavier are a large group of Vietnamese students, as well as students from Iraq who came to the United States during the Iraq war, Verret said. More than 71 percent of Xavier students are African American, while just 19 percent are Catholic, in large part because African Americans in the south are primarily from Protestant or Evangelical ecclesial communities, Verret said.
Still, Verret said, it is important to have HBCUs as predominately black institutions, where black students who are still a minority in this country can go and not feel like they stand out.

Speaking from his own experience as a young college student, Verret said that HBCUs offer students a place where their race is “not an issue.”

“I’m not the representative (of blacks or African Americans). I am the editor of the school newspaper. I am one of the members of the chemistry club, I’m not the black member of the chemistry club,” he said. “It’s a certain freedom that many whites in the United States cannot understand because they’re not experiencing that.”

As for it’s Catholic identity, Verret said the school has a strong sense of Catholic service and social justice engrained into its mission.

As one example of service, Verret said that every year, student deans and other peer leaders volunteer their time to help move in new students on campus. When asked why they did so, Verret said one of the student leaders told him: “So that they’ll know next year, it’s their turn.”

The school’s sense of service can be seen in its mission statement, which notes: “The ultimate purpose of the University is to contribute to the promotion of a more just and humane society by preparing its students to assume roles of leadership and service in a global society.”

Another example of the school’s Catholic mission, Verret said, is in its spirit of camaraderie and solidarity in its successful pre-med program. Often schools will try to scare off medical or pre-medical students by telling them: “Look to your right and look to your left. One of you won’t be here (by the end),” Verret said.

“That notion, that doesn’t exist at Xavier. We gather and pull each other so that we should all go cross that finish line together.”

Enrollment is back up at Xavier after a couple of years of decline following Hurricane Katrina, Verret noted, and the way that the school, as well as other HBCUs, will preserve their legacy is by “telling their stories” and telling of their current successes, Verret said.

“The other HBCUs are of very different sizes and very different complexions. But at the same time, what I can say is the uniting theme is that they continue to educate and graduate students who go on and are at the core of what America needs to be.”

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Hong Kong Catholic leaders: Vatican involvement in protests unlikely

September 22, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Hong Kong, China, Sep 22, 2019 / 11:01 am (CNA).- Catholics in Hong Kong are continuing to participate in large-scale protests on the island territory, which have been going on now for over 100 days.

Despite the protests’ importance to people of faith, two Catholic leaders in the movement— the island’s auxiliary bishop and a student leader— told CNA that they do not expect the Vatican to weigh in on the situation in Hong Kong.

“It doesn’t seem to me that it’s necessary for the Holy See to get involved in the protests of Hong Kong. On the other hand, I have not spoken with anyone from the Holy See regarding the movement,” Bishop Joseph Ha Chi-shing told CNA Sept. 19.

Bishop Ha has been publicly supportive of the protests, as has Hong Kong’s bishop emeritus, Cardinal Joseph Zen. Ha has taken part in ecumenical prayer rallies with protesters in the past, urged an increase in prayer and said he is concerned for the safety of the many young people involved in the protests.

A controversial extradition bill, now officially withdrawn, sparked the first large protest on the island in June, when an estimated 1 million marchers took to the streets, chanting and singing.

The bill would have allowed alleged criminals in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China, leading to fears from Catholics and Christians that the Communist Chinese would use the bill to exert pressure on the free exercise of religion in Hong Kong.

Edwin Chow, acting president of the Hong Kong Federation of Catholic Students, told CNA that he thinks the Vatican’s delicate relationship with the Chinese government will make it unlikely that Pope Francis will come out in support of the protesters.

“I don’t really think that the Vatican will say something on the protests in Hong Kong. I hope they will support, but I don’t think that they will,” Chow told CNA.

“I don’t think that Pope Francis or the Vatican will say anything [about] the protests, because I think at the same time they are trying to deal with the Chinese government…so they will not do this thing, they will not support Hong Kong, because [to] support Hong Kong will make China angry.”

Sept. 22 marks one year since the Vatican signed a deal with the Chinese government on the appointment of bishops, the details of which have still not been made public.

The provisional deal was intended to unify the underground Church, which is persecuted and faithful to Rome, and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which is Communist government-sanctioned. It reportedly allows the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association to choose a slate of nominees for bishop, and has drawn significant criticism.

Beijing has for years sought to control religion in China, leading to widespread persecution. The U.S. Commission on International Religion wrote in its 2018 report that last year China “advanced its so-called ‘sinicization’ of religion, a far-reaching strategy to control, govern, and manipulate all aspects of faith into a socialist mold infused with ‘Chinese characteristics.’” Christians, Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners have all been affected.

Cardinal Zen, in particular, is a sharp critic of the Vatican-China deal, and has called the deal a step towards the “annihilation” of the Catholic Church in China.

Chow said his student group invited Cardinal Zen to celebrate an annual Mass for students Sept. 20.

He said a new protest anthem called “Glory to Hong Kong,” which has recently spread virally online, has even made its way into the Masses that the federation have held.

“People in Hong Kong really like this song, and it’s become a new anthem of the whole protest,” he said.

“At the end of the Mass, we sang…’Glory to Hong Kong,'” he said.

He said a local parish started the practice of singing the anthem at the end of Mass last week, but this week the diocese published a set of guidelines warning against the singing of political anthems at Mass.

“Although the parish is sure that the Lord’s ceremonies and the devotees are deeply concerned about the current turmoil in Hong Kong society, they do not agree that the social movement songs are applicable to the sacrificial ceremonies,” the diocese Secretary General wrote Sept. 19.

Chow said the young people see the situation differently.

“But we don’t think that the diocese has a very good argument. We don’t think that they’re right, so we still sing the song in today’s Mass. And why we sing the song is because we want to pray for Hong Kong.”

Last weekend, he said, there was a large protest in the city center, which Chow attended. He said like at many of the previous protests, the police used tear gas and water cannon to break up the protesters.

One of the protesters’ demands is a full investigation into what they see as brutal tactics by the police throughout the protests.

“I think the police are trying to suppress the protests, so sometimes they don’t actually approve the protest, but [people] still go outside. But actually for the protests that are not allowed by the police, some people may be afraid that they will be arrested, and will not go out. So I would say that actually the people trying to protest are decreasing.”

The protests are becoming more and more aggressive with more and more use of force, he said. Many protest activities, at least one almost every day, are scheduled for the coming two weeks, he said.

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Pope Francis: The Church is a home for the lost

September 21, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Sep 21, 2019 / 10:59 am (CNA).- No one is lost to Jesus, neither should they be considered lost to the Church and her members, Pope Francis told Catholics in Albano Laziale Saturday.

The pope reflected on the story of Zacchaeus the tax c… […]

Medical migrant ordered to leave gets hope of reprieve, highlights similar cases

September 21, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., Sep 21, 2019 / 08:00 am (CNA).- An immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for more than 16 years while receiving life-saving medical treatments is hoping for a reprieve after being given weeks to leave the country. 

Maria Isabel Bueso, a 24 year-old immigrant from Guatemala, has lived in the U.S. without citizenship since 2003 through temporary extensions of “deferred action,” or delays of deportation, so that she can stay and receive treatment for her rare medical condition.

Bueso traveled from Guatemala to the U.S. with her family in 2003 to participate in clinical trials for her rare genetic disorder. After more than 16 years, she was notified in August that she would not be able to renew her status in the U.S. because the administration would stop considering non-military requests for deferred action. She was given 33 days to leave the country.

On Sept. 19, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it would resume granting non-military deferred action on a case-by-case basis, 

Bueso was “thrilled” by the news, her nurse, Wendy Bloom, told CNA, but remained only “cautiously optimistic” until she has full certainty of her status and hopes her case will draw attention to the plight of others like her.

“She’s really nervous until she actually gets an official letter that says ‘you are allowed to stay here,’ then she’ll be ready to have a party,” Bloom, a member of the California Nurses Association, told CNA.

Bueso has become an advocate for other patients with rare diseases—some of who needed to travel from outside the U.S. for treatment.

She has Maroteaux-Lamy Syndrome (MPS-VI) which is a rare genetic disorder, and was invited to the U.S. at age seven to participate in clinical trials conducted by Dr. Paul Harmatz at Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Oakland, California.

Bueso traveled to the U.S. on a B-2 visa with her family, and has since remained in the country for weekly treatments. Bloom says she has known Bueso for 13 years, and that Bueso has been coming to the hospital for almost 17 years.

After she initially participated in clinical trials for her condition, that program helped develop a commercial drug—Naglazyme—that is now used to treat patients with MPS-VI.

In 2009, Bueso applied for and was granted deferred action of deportation, with a renewal every two years.

Several weeks after her notice to leave the U.S., Bueso testified before the House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at a hearing held on September 11 on “The Administration’s Apparent Revocation of Medical Deferred Action for Critically Ill Children.”

“The medical treatment I need is not available in Guatemala. If I’m sent back, I will die,” she told members of the subcommittee. Bloom explained that the treatment is expensive and requires special skills to administer; Bueso would not be able to receive the necessary treatment in Guatemala.

On Sept. 2, DHS had announced that it would review the change in policy for “deferred action,” but Bueso’s status was still in limbo.

“It was incredibly stressful for the family, incredibly stressful, and for all of us that care for her and love her too, it was really heartbreaking,” Bloom said.

Then on Sept. 19, DHS informed the House Oversight Committee that it would once again consider deferred action on a case-by-case basis for non-military immigrants in the U.S.

In the statement, DHS said that USCIS would resume consideration of “non-military deferred action requests on a discretionary, case-by-case basis, except as otherwise required by an applicable statute, regulation, or court order.”

Oversight Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) stated in response that “it appears that the Trump Administration is reversing its inhumane and disastrous decision to deport critically ill children and their families who are receiving life-saving medical treatment in the United States.”

The decision draws attention to the importance of allowing immigrants like Bueso to come to the U.S. for treatment.

“Medical research needs to be ongoing, and if we can’t have the type of patients enrolling in these studies then we have a problem,” Bloom said.

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