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Florence, Italy, Feb 23, 2017 / 06:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- She is one of the oldest religious sisters in the world, but this week, she turned 110 years young.
Despite her advanced age, Sister Candida Bellotti retains the enthusiasm of a young woman. On Monday, Feb. 20, she celebrated her 110th birthday and received a special message from Pope Francis.
“To the Reverend Sister Candida Bellotti, Sister Minister of the Sick, who with gratitude to God is celebrating her 110th birthday, the Holy Father Francis spiritually participates in the joy we all share for this happy occasion and sends warm congratulations and heartfelt wishes,” said the pontiff in his message.
At age 80, Pope Francis is 30 years her junior.
Sister Bellotti celebrated her birthday with the Bishop of the Italian Diocese of Lucca, Benvenuto Italo Castellani. She resides in the diocese along with the convent’s sisters and the provincial superior, Sister Giuliana Fracasso.
In a recent interview, she said that her vocation was “sown” in a Christian family.
“Love, love and love still more, with joy,” is the advice she gives everyone, especially the new generations. She has a special invitation for young people: “Have confidence in the future, and strive to the utmost to accomplish your desires.”
Sister Bellotti belongs to the Congregation of San Camillus de Lellis, which this year observes the 150th anniversary of the death of its founder, Blessed Maria Domenica Brun Barbantini.
The 110-year-old sister was born in Quinzano, in the Italian province of Verona, on February 20, 1907. Since the 1930s, she has dedicated herself to serving those in need as a professional nurse in various Italian cities. Since the year 2000 she has been living Lucca, at her congregation’s mother house.
Washington D.C., Feb 23, 2017 / 02:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Recent American guidelines for human gene modification have raised important ethical questions, especially with regard to modifying the genes of unborn children and of reproductive cells.
The National Academy of Sciences last week released a 261-page report on guidelines for editing the human genome to treat diseases and other applications. The report covers a wide array of topics, from the editing of adult cells for therapies such as cancer treatment, to the editing of embryos and germ cells (reproductive cells, i.e. ova and sperm), to the question of human enhancement.
John DiCamillo, an ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, spoke to CNA about the perils and the promises of gene editing, as well as the oversights contained in the National Academy of Sciences’ report.
“Gene editing generally can be morally legitimate if it has a directly therapeutic purpose for a particular patient in question, and if we’re sure we’re going to limit whatever changes to this person,” DiCamillo explained. In this regard, the report’s guidelines for laboratory treatment of somatic – or non-reproductive – cells and human trials of somatic cell treatments were reasonable, he noted.
DiCamillo pointed to upcoming clinical gene therapy trials for cancer and proposed gene therapy treatments for disorders such as sickle cell disease. However, it’s important to limit these trials to non-embryonic persons, to ensure that the modifications – intended as well as unintended – are not carried in the patient’s reproductive cells.
While this would mean that patients treated for inheritable diseases “could still transmit it to their children,” any children who then developed the disease could themselves be treated through the same process.
The question of transmission to descendents opens up two more points discussed in the National Academy of Sciences report: the modification of ova and sperm, as well as edits to the genomes of embryos. Both of these changes would mean that people would maintain these edits in all of their cells for all of their lives – and could pass on these edited genes to new generations.
“There could be limited situations that could exist where the germ line could be legitimately edited. In other words, making changes to sperm, to eggs, or to early embryos as a way of potentially addressing diseases – inheritable diseases and so forth,” DiCamillo stated.
However, permitting edits to germ line cells could also be “very dangerous on multiple levels,” he warned.
There are considerable, and not yet fully controllable, risks to genetic manipulation. A person conceived with edited genes could experience a range of “unintended, perhaps harmful, side effects that can now be transmitted, inherited by other individuals down the line.” An embryo who experiences gene modification could also carry and pass on edited genes, particularly if edits were performed before his or her reproductive cells began to differentiate themselves.
The National Academy of Sciences’ regulations surrounding germ cells and embryos are also problematic for what they overlook, DiCamillo commented.
Manipulating sperm and ova requires removing them from a person’s body; if conception is achieved with these cells, it is nearly always through in vitro methods. This practice of in vitro fertilization is held by the Church to be ethically unacceptable because it dissociates procreation from the integrally personal context of the conjugal act.
In addition, scientific researchers rarely differentiate between experimentation on sperm or ova – which are cells that come from a human subject – and embryos, which are distinct persons with their own distinct genomes, DiCamillo noted.
The National Academy of Sciences’ guidelines reflect this lack of distinction between cells and embryos. “That’s very misleading because embryos are not germ line cells; they are new human beings,” DiCamillo said.
For research on embryos to be ethical, he continued, therapies should be ordered to treating and benefitting that “that particular embryo, not just for garnering scientific knowledge or seeing what’s going to happen.” DiCamillo condemned policies that see destruction of embryonic persons as a back-up if research does not go as planned, as well as current policies that require destruction of embryos as standard procedure.
“We’d be in that area of very dangerous exploitation of human life and destruction of human life,” he warned.
While the guidelines stumble across ethical roadblocks in regards to gamete and embryo research, the new report’s rules regarding human enhancement are strong, DiCamillo said.
The ability to edit genomes could also be used for purposes other than medical treatment. A whole host of human traits could be enhanced or changed, such as vision, intelligence, or abilities. “There’s any number of things that we could do to change the qualities of human beings themselves and make them, in a sense, super-humans … this is something that would also be an ethical problem on the horizon,” he warned.
The existence of these gene altering therapies raises a question of how much modification and enhancement is permissible. DiCamillo praised the report for its recommendation “entirely against enhancement efforts and that these should not be allowed.”
Currently, gene editing of both germ cells and somatic cells is legal in the United States, including on embryos. However, various US government institutions have policies in place prohibiting federal funding of such research efforts on germ cells and on embryos.
Furthermore, Food and Drug Administration regulations prohibit gene modification on viable human embryos – meaning that human embryos who receive gene modification are always destroyed.
The new guidelines from the National Academy of Sciences are significant because they lay a groundwork for future policy on human gene modification. They cautiously welcome the use of gene therapy on human embryos who are not later targeted for destruction after experimentation concludes.
DiCamillo recalled, however, that “they are merely guidelines – they are advice from the National Academy of the Sciences to the government in regards to future policy. This is not itself a new regulation or policy that the government has established.”
The ethics of gene editing has been questioned for several years – the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith addressed the issue in Dignitas personae, its 2008 instruction on certain bioethical questions. It has become more pressing recently, however, because a new technique known as CRISPR is easier to use and less expensive than previous means of gene editing.
Although the ethical questions surrounding gene modification are many and there are a number of problematic applications of these technologies, DiCamillo cautioned Catholics not to renounce completely human gene modification: “We don’t want to be hyper-reactive to the dangers. We have to realize there’s a great deal of good that can be done here.”
He pointed again to the kinds of modifications that can treat deadly genetic diseases and treatments that can be done in an ethical manner, with full respect to the dignity of human persons.
“We do need to be attentive to where the dangers are,” he warned, “but we don’t want to … automatically consider any kind of gene editing to be automatically a problem.”
Caracas, Venezuela, Feb 23, 2017 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After speaking against alleged government misconduct, human rights abuses and delay of free elections, Catholic churches and clergy around Venezuela are facing a wave of protests from pro-government supporters.
A string of incidents began on the morning of Jan. 29, as supporters of the current government interrupted a Mass at San Pedro Claver Church in a poor neighborhood of Caracas, Reuters reported.
The crowd of around 20 people hurled insults at the clergy, calling them “Satan in a cassock!” and “Fascist!” The protesters also used the chant “Chavez lives!” – in honor of late president and former leader of the ruling Socialist party, Hugo Chavez.
After the death of the socialist leader from cancer in 2013 and his succession by current Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the country has faced both increases in violence and a number of social and political challenges, including the delay of the country’s regional elections.
The bishops’ strong stance against the current Venezuelan government – and other opinions echoed by priests around the country– has prompted backlash not only in the capital of Caracas, but in around the country. The cathedral of Caracas was hit with rocks, and protestors went to the home of the Archbishop Antonio Lopez of Barquisimeto after he said in a speech that socialism has brought “misery” to the country.
The same day as the protests in the Caracas parish of San Pedro Claver, police interrupted Mass in the city of Maracaibo. In the last week of January, gun-toting robbers attacked, threatened monks and stole from a Trappist monastery in the state of Merida.
Current head of the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference, Archbishop Diego Padron, told Reuters that “this list, in my opinion, shows they are not isolated events.”
One of the most contentious issues the country faces is the economy, where the world’s highest inflation rates, price controls and failed economic policies have resulted in severe shortages of basic necessities like medicines, milk, flour, toilet paper and other essentials.
The shortages have their roots in policies enacted by Chavez in 2003 that control the price of nearly 160 products such as flour, milk, oil and soap. While these products are affordable at the government listed price, they are in short supply and fly off the shelves, ending up on the black market at much higher rates.
To complicate matters further, there have been numerous reports of the Venezuelan army’s use of their position in guarding food supply and distribution as a means of participating and making money off the black markets. The supply shortages and other opportunities for corruption have also allowed other government officials and businesspeople to profit off of the troubles facing the Venezuelan people.
Since Maduro took office, Venezuela has also experienced a spike in violent crime, with one of the world’s highest murder rates. Opponents of the Maduro regime also report that the government has used its power to jail protesters and circumvent elections – essentially becoming a dictatorship.
Some of these opponents include the Venezuelan Bishops.
In a Feb. 7 interview with the archdiocese, the Archbishop of Caracas, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino criticized the suspension of regional elections and his displeasure with the government’s approach to political processes.
“Without a doubt, it’s not a modern democracy,” the cardinal said. “Democracy is respect for the people, observance of the constitution, division and functioning of public powers, enforcement of all the promises, absence of political prisoners, free elections.”
“It’s already a dictatorship.”
The regional elections – which were scheduled for late 2016 and then delayed by the government – will take place later this year. According to the government, the delays were put in place to allow time for the reorganization of political organizations.
Before the delay of the elections, the Church helped to facilitate talks between the Maduro government and the opposition coalition. However, the talks collapsed with tensions and accusations from both sides.
The former president of of the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference, Bishop Ovidio Pérez Morales has also criticized the government and assured that the Church cannot remain quiet in the face of the government’s human right abuses.
“Morally, I cannot accept the violation of human rights,” he said in a Feb. 1 interview with Union Radio. “I can’t accept that the state considers itself the owner of persons.”
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Richmond, Va., Feb 22, 2017 / 04:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The bishops of Virginia’s two dioceses on Tuesday decried Governor Terry McAuliffe’s veto of a bill which would have redirected state funding away from abortion providers and toward community health centers.
“Surrounded by Planned Parenthood supporters at a veto ceremony outside the Governor’s Mansion this morning, Gov. McAuliffe said his actions protected the rights and dignity of Virginia women – when, in fact, his actions harm the dignity of the women deceived by the multi-billion dollar abortion industry as well as the tiniest females, those still in the womb whose lives are brutally eliminated by abortion,” read a Feb. 21 statement of the Virginia Catholic Conference.
The conference said it “upholds the timeless truth that every human being, born and unborn, has an equal right to life. The Conference finds Gov. McAuliffe’s pride in protecting an organization that destroys life and harms women and their families deeply offensive. We will continue to fight for the day when Virginia law protects all human life, at every stage of development, from conception until natural death.”
The conference represents the public policy interests of Bishop Francis DiLorenzo of Richmond and Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington.
McAuliffe, a Democrat, had vetoed an identical measure in 2016. The bill, HB 2264, had been introduced to the House of Delegates, the lower house of the Virginia legislature, by Ben Cline (R – Rockbridge). McAuliffe claimed that the bill would disincentivize businesses who wish to invest in Virginia.
It would have barred Virigina’s health department from providing funds to any entity that performs abortions not covered by Medicaid, and would have redirected the money to other health clinics which provide more comprehensive health care services.
The bill passed in the House of Delegates Feb. 7 with a 60-33 vote that fell along party lines. A week later, Feb. 14, it passed in the state Senate with a 20-14 margin.
After the veto, Cline expressed his hope that the Virginia General Assembly would override the decision. “This important legislation would have prioritized taxpayer dollars toward providers of more comprehensive health care services, and the governor’s veto undermines those efforts to improve health care in rural and underserved areas,” Cline said in a prepared statement.
The Virginia bill and McAuliffe’s veto come on the heels of the national legislature’s moves to block funding to Planned Parenthood on both the state and the national levels. Last week, the House of Representatives rolled back Obama Administration regulations blocking individual states from defunding Planned Parenthood. Furthermore, both the House and the Senate have set in place measures that could lead to the eventual blockage of Planned Parenthood receiving federal funds.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R- Wisc.) has repeatedly advocated using funds earmarked for Planned Parenthood on community health centers and other forms of health access for low-income citizens.
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