Madrid, Spain, Nov 29, 2017 / 12:00 am (ACI Prensa).- Spain’s National Court has ruled that the Family Planning Federation, a subsidiary of Planned Parenthood International, can no longer be designated as a “public service organization” in Spain.
Under Spanish law, an organization qualified as a public service organization receives numerous tax, economic, administrative and legal benefits.
The Spanish subsidiarity of the International Planned Parenthood Federation lost its designation in May 2016, when it was discovered the group had been illegally financed for seven years. The National Court temporarily reinstated the designation after reforms were promised.
However, on Nov. 25 the National Court definitively revoked FPF’s public service organization status, ruling in favor of an appeal issued by Minister of the Interior, and the Christian Lawyers Association which sought to have the international organization disqualified.
Christian Lawyers Association president Polonia Castellanos celebrated the decision and stated that “an organization which has systematically failed to comply with the law cannot be granted that status.”
She also asked that the FPF no longer be granted “the more than €400,000 they receive with the money coming out of our pockets.”
Castellanos pointed out that the abortion-provider is also funded by its American counterpart, Planned Parenthood, which has been under congressional investigation in the U.S. for illegally trafficking in the organs and tissues of aborted babies.
The Christian Lawyers Association’s Complaint
The CLA initially filed a complaint with the Minister of the Interior alleging the FPFE had not declared income from ads they ran in a pharmaceutical magazine, prohibited under Spanish law, nor were they penalized for such advertising.
The Interior Ministry withdrew the public service designation from the group, alleging that “such illegal conduct is incompatible with the advancement of the public interest, in this case, protecting the public’s health.”
The ministry also stated that “it involves betraying the confidence that society places in that entity which claims to benefit the community in exchange for receiving important advantages.”
Following the decision, the Family Planning Federation filed suit against the Interior Ministry and the Christian Lawyers Association. The National Court determined in fact that the Interior Ministry had acted properly, and dismissed the lawsuits, requiring the FPF to pay court costs for their failed litigation.
For Luis Losada Pescador, director of Spain’s CitizenGo campaigns, this is “really good news from the Spanish perspective because justice is being done.”
“An organization that hides income and dodges penalties is not serving the public interest. From the international point of view, this comes when the FBI may be starting an investigation into the largest abortion multinational in the world with great influence in Latin America through its subsidiaries,” he said.
Finally, he stated that this Spanish precedent “is very importantt because it opens the door to penalties against the American parent company.”
Qualifying for PSO status
According to Spanish law, institutions can be officially designated as “public service organizations” if their “statutory ends tend to promote the public interest and are of a civic, educational, scientific, cultural, sports or health related nature, promoting constitutional values and human rights.”
In addition the law states “associations designated as public service organizations have the following rights: they can state their PSO status on all types of documents after their name; enjoy exemptions and financial benefits recognized by law for such organizations under the terms and conditions provided by current regulations; enjoy economic benefits established by law; and free legal aid under the terms of the specific legislation.”
PSO legal status is granted by the Spanish Government’s Minister of the Interior.
As a PSO, the Spanish Family Planning Federation received around 377,000 € ($445,000) in public funding a year.
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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A press conference launching a report by a commision of experts on the activities of Polish Dominican priest Paweł M., Sept. 15, 2021. / Screenshot from the Katolicka Agencja Informacyjna YouTube channel.
Jack Traynor (next to child on first row) as a pilgrim to Lourdes in 1925, two years after his healing. / Credit: Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales
In the book he recounts how, during a 10-hour train ride to Lourdes on Friday, Sept. 10, 1937, Royal Navy seaman Jack Traynor told him firsthand how he was healed in 1923 at the Lourdes Shrine from the crippling wounds he had suffered from his participation in World War I.
Over a century later, on Dec. 8 of this year, the archbishop of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, Malcolm McMahon, announced that Traynor’s healing has been recognized as the 71st miracle attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes.
O’Connor described Traynor as a “heavy-set man, 5’5”, with a strong, ruddy face” who, according to his biography, “should have been, if he were alive, paralyzed, epileptic, covered in sores, shrunken, with a wrinkled and useless right arm and a gaping hole in his skull.”
Traynor was, in the missionary’s view, a man “with his manly faith and piety,” unassuming, “but obviously a fearless, militant Catholic.” Despite having received only a primary education, he had “a clear mind enriched by faith and preserved by great honesty of life.”
This enabled him to tell “with simplicity, sobriety, exactness” how he was healed at the place where the Immaculate Conception appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.
O’Connor wrote down the account and sent it to Traynor, who revised it and added new details. He read the official report of the doctors who examined him and searched the newspaper archives of the time to corroborate the account.
Front page of the December 1926 Journal de la Grotte, reporting on the miraculous cure of Jack Traynor. Credit: Lourdes Shrine
How Traynor came to be considered incurable
Traynor was born in Liverpool, according to some sources, in 1883. His mother was an Irish Catholic who died when Traynor was still young. “But his faith, his devotion to the Mass and holy Communion — he went daily when very few others did — and his trust in the Virgin remained with him as a fruitful memory and example,” O’Connor recalled.
Mobilized at the outbreak of World War I, he was hit by shrapnel, which left him unconscious for five weeks. Sent in 1915 to the expeditionary force to Egypt and the Dardanelles Strait, between Turkey and Greece, he took part in the landing at Gallipoli.
Jack Traynor. Credit: Courtesy of Hospitality of Our Lady of Lourdes
During a bayonet charge on May 8, he was hit with 14 machine gun bullets in the head, chest, and arm. Sent to Alexandria, Egypt, he was operated on three times in the following months to try to stitch together the nerves in his right arm. They offered him amputation, but he refused. The epileptic seizures began, and there was a fourth operation, also unsuccessful, in 1916.
He was discharged with a 100% pension “for permanent and total disability,” the missionary priest related, and in 1920 he underwent surgery on his skull to try to cure the epilepsy. From that operation he was left with an open hole “about two centimeters wide” that was covered with a silver plate.
By then he was suffering three seizures a day and his legs were partially paralyzed. Back in Liverpool he was given a wheelchair and had to be helped out of bed.
Eight years had passed since the landing at Gallipoli. Traynor was treated by 10 doctors who could only attest “that he was completely and incurably incapacitated.”
Unable to walk, with epileptic seizures, a useless arm, three open wounds, “he was truly a human wreck. Someone arranged for him to be admitted to the Mossley Hill Hospital for Incurables on July 24, 1923. But by that date Jack Traynor was already in Lourdes,” O’Connor recounted.
Traynor tells about his pilgrimage to Lourdes
According to the first-person account originally written by O’Connor and corrected and adapted by Traynor, the veteran sailor had always felt great devotion to Mary that he got from his mother.
“I felt that if the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes were in England, I would go there often. But it seemed to me a distant place that I could never reach,” Traynor said.
When he heard that a pilgrimage was being organized to the shrine, he decided to do everything he could to go. He used money set aside “for some special emergency” and they even sold belongings. “My wife even pawned her own jewelry.”
The Lourdes Grotto in France. Credit: Courtney Mares/CNA
When they learned of his determination, many tried to dissuade him: “You’ll die on the way, you’ll be a problem and a pain for everyone,” a priest told him.
“Everyone, except my wife and one or two relatives, told me I was crazy,” he recalled.
The experience of the trip was “very hard,” confessed Traynor, who felt very ill on the way. So much so that they tried to get him off three times to take him to a hospital in France, but at the place where they stopped there was no hospital.
On arrival at Lourdes, there was ‘no hope’ for Traynor
On Sunday, July 22, 1923, they arrived at the Lourdes Shrine in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. There he was cared for by two Protestant sisters who knew him from Liverpool and who happened to be there providentially.
The pilgrimage of more than 1,200 people was led by the archbishop of Liverpool, Frederick William Keating.
On arrival, Traynor felt “desperately ill,” to the point that “a woman took it upon herself to write to my wife telling her that there was no hope for me and that I would be buried at Lourdes.”
Despite this, “I managed to get lowered into the baths nine times in the water from the spring in the grotto and they took me to the different devotions that the sick could join in.”
On the second day, he suffered a strong epileptic seizure. The volunteers refused to put him in the pools in this state, but his insistence could not be overcome. “Since then I have not had another epileptic seizure,” he recalled.
Paralyzed legs healed
On Tuesday, July 24, Traynor was examined for the first time by doctors at the shrine, who testified to what had happened during the trip to Lourdes and detailed his ailments.
On Wednesday, July 25, “he seemed to be as bad as ever” and, thinking about the return trip planned for Friday, July 27, he bought some religious souvenirs for his wife and children with the last shillings he had left.
He returned to the baths. “When I was in the bath, my paralyzed legs shook violently,” he related, causing alarm among the volunteers who attended to the pilgrims at the shrine, believing it was another epileptic seizure. “I struggled to stand up, feeling that I could do so easily,” he explained.
Arm healed as Blessed Sacrament passes by
He was again placed in his wheelchair and taken to the procession of the Blessed Sacrament. The archbishop of Reims, Cardinal Louis Henri Joseph Luçon, carried the monstrance.
“He blessed the two who were in front of me, came up to me, made the sign of the cross with the monstrance, and moved on to the next one. He just passed when I realized that a great change had taken place in me. My right arm, which had been dead since 1915, shook violently. I tore off its bandages and crossed myself, for the first time in years,” Traynor himself testified.
“As far as I can remember, I felt no sudden pain and certainly I did not have a vision. I simply realized that something momentous had happened,” Traynor recounted.
Back at the asylum, the former hospital that today houses the offices of the Hospitality of Our Lady of Lourdes, he proved that he could walk seven steps. The doctors examined him again and concluded in their report that “he had recovered the voluntary use of his legs” and that “the patient can walk with difficulty.”
Traynor makes it to the grotto
That night, he could hardly sleep. As there was already a certain commotion around him, several volunteers stood guard at his door. Early in the morning, it seemed that he would fall asleep again, but “with a last breath, I opened my eyes and jumped out of bed. First I knelt on the floor to finish the rosary I had been saying, then I ran to the door.”
Making his way, he arrived barefoot and in his pajamas at the grotto of Massabielle, where the volunteers followed him: “When they reached the grotto, I was on my knees, still in my nightclothes, praying to the Virgin and thanking her. I only knew that I had to thank her and that the grotto was the right place to do so.”
He prayed for 20 minutes. When he got up, a crowd surrounded him, and they made way to let him return to the asylum.
A sacrifice made for the Virgin in gratitude
“At the end of the Rosary Square stands the statue of Our Lady Crowned. My mother had always taught me that when you ask the Virgin for a favor or want to show her some special veneration, you have to make a sacrifice. I had no money to offer, having spent my last shillings on rosaries and medals for my wife and children, but kneeling there before the Virgin, I made the only sacrifice I could think of. I decided to give up smoking,” Traynor explained with tremendous simplicity.
“During all this time, although I knew I had received a great favor from Our Lady, I didn’t clearly remember all the illness I previously had,” he noted in his account.
As he finished getting himself ready, a priest, Father Gray, who knew nothing of his cure, asked for someone to serve Mass for him, which Traynor did: “I didn’t think it strange that I could do it, after eight years of not being able to get up or walk,” he said.
Traynor received word that the priest who had strongly opposed his joining the pilgrimage wanted to see him at his hotel, located in the town of Lourdes, outside the shrine. He asked him if he was well. “I told him I was well, thank you, and that I hoped he was too. He burst into tears.”
Early on Friday, July 27, the doctors examined Traynor again. They found that he was able to walk perfectly, that his right arm and legs had fully recovered. The opening in his skull resulting from the operation had been considerably reduced, and he had not suffered any further epileptic seizures. His sores had also healed by the time he returned from the grotto, when he had removed his bandages the previous day.
Weeping ‘like two children’ with Archbishop Keating
At nine o’clock in the morning the train back to Liverpool was ready to leave the Lourdes station, situated in the upper part of the town. He had been given a seat in first class, which, despite his protests, he had to accept.
Halfway through the journey, Keating came to see him in his passenger car. “I knelt down for his blessing. He raised me up saying, ‘Jack, I think I should have your blessing.’ I didn’t understand why he was saying that. Then he raised me up and we both sat on the bed. Looking at me, he said, ‘Jack, do you realize how ill you have been and that you have been miraculously cured by the Blessed Virgin?’”
“Then,” Traynor continued, “it all came back to me, the memory of my years of illness and the sufferings on the trip to Lourdes and how ill I had been at Lourdes. I began to cry, and so did the archbishop, and we both sat there crying like two children. After talking to him for a while, I calmed down. I now fully understood what had happened.”
A telegram to his wife: ‘I am better’
Since news of the events had already reached Liverpool, Traynor was advised to write a telegram to his wife. “I didn’t want to make a fuss with a telegram, so I sent her this message: ‘I am better — Jack,’” he explained.
This message and the letter announcing that her husband was going to die in Lourdes were all the information his wife had, as she had not seen the newspapers. She assumed that he had recovered from his serious condition but that he was still in his “ruinous” state.
The reception in Liverpool was the culmination. The archbishop had to address the crowd to disperse at the mere sight of Traynor getting off the train. “But when I appeared on the platform, there was a stampede” and the police had to intervene. “We returned home and I cannot describe the joy of my wife and children,” he said in his account.
A daughter named Bernadette
Taynor concluded his account by explaining that in the following years he worked transporting coal, lifting 200-pound sacks without difficulty. Thanks to providence, he was able to provide well for his family.
Three of his children were born after his cure in 1923. A girl was named Bernadette, in honor of the visionary of Lourdes.
He also related the conversion of the two Protestant sisters who cared for him, along with his family and the Anglican pastor of his community.
From then on, Jack volunteered to go to Lourdes on a regular basis until he died in 1943, on the eve of the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
Paradoxically, and despite the factual evidence of his recovery, the Ministry of War Pensions never revoked the disability pension that was granted to him for life.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Armagh, Northern Ireland, Feb 13, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- The Archbishop of Armagh said Thursday that the pope’s apostolic exhortation on the Amazon was foremost a call to preserve the region, and that a focus on its failure to address the priestly ordination of married men is undue.
“I understand there has been disappointment over the airwaves yesterday, and a lot of people feeling that perhaps this was a moment at which Pope Francis was going to express his views on the ordination of married men as priests,” Archbishop Eamon Martin said Feb. 13 to the Irish public broadcaster RTE.
“But I think Pope Francis would be disappointed if this is the issue that we’re all talking about today, because his exhortation is a huge cry from the Amazon and a cry from the heart to protect that region that is being cruelly destroyed by, I suppose, the exploitation of its resources, the destruction of its natural beauty and its life.”
“He says, ‘listen, the whole world has a responsiblity to try and preserve the equilibrum of the planet, which so much depends on the health of the Amazon and the ecosystems there’; so his whole exhortaion is really in line with his thinking from a few years ago, in his famous encyclical Laudato si’; it’s really a call for the protection of the earth.”
While Pope Francis was expected to focus in Querida Amazonia on a proposal to ordain married priests in the Amazon region, the pope instead emphasized the importance of collaboration in apostolic ministry by Catholics in various states of life.
Archbishop Martin noted that the Pope “chose not to mention” the priestly ordination of married men.
“It’s been said he refused this or refused that; he’s actually left the question. I think that he’s done so in order to encourage all of us to focus on much bigger questions about Church ministry, organization, the involvement of lay people in the Church, the involvement of women in the Church, and he calls on the local Church there to actually officially recognize these roles in a way which it hasn’t done until now,” the archbishop commented.
Pressed on the topic, Archbishop Martin said that a call to consider the priestly ordination of married men was made in one of the 120 paragraphs of the Amazon synod’s final document, “so it wasn’t even at the Amazon synod the main theme of the synod, it was on this other issue I’ve been speaking to you about, the corruption, exploitation of the Amazon, the destruction of the indigenous peoples there, their displacement, oppression. These are the issues that he bishops at the Amazonian synod in October were most passionate about.”
He emphasized that Francis is urging the Church “to step back and look at the bigger issues for mission. One of his key themes since he began his pontificate is that the Church needs to go out, and therefore he’s calling on all of us throughout the world to respond to this crisis for priests in the Amazon.”
“I know we think we’re very short on priests, but a Church which loses its missionary spurt and its missionary zeal is a Church which is dying, and I think that’s what Pope Francis is saying to us: stay missionary, get out there, go out and help these people.”
Archbishop Martin said that “if we’re to respond to Pope Francis’ call here in Ireland then we too need to be looking at how are we recognizing the role of our lay faithful, how are we recognizing officially and presenting in our Church the role of women; and these aren’t simply about ordination to the priesthood, but a recognition of the richness and the charisms … that lay people, lay women and men, can bring to our Church in terms of organization, proclaiming the Word, leading prayer, administering parishes, making decisions at a local and diocesan level, even exercising the pastoral care which in the past priests would have done.”
“It’s when we have this worshipping, vibrant, and living Christian community, it’s then that we have new vocations,” he stated.
In a Feb. 12 statement on Querida Amazonia, Archbishop Martin said it “highlights the problems of poverty, economic and social injustice and the violation of human rights which are intertwined in the vicious cycle of ecological and human degradation.”
He added that “Despite the challenges we have here in Ireland with finding enough priests and religious to serve our parishes, we should not forget that Ireland has always been a country which has responded to the Church’s call to mission … It would be wonderful if some Irish priests, religious and lay missionaries today were to consider offering even a five year period of ministry to the Amazon.”
Pressed nevertheless on the topic of priestly ordination of married men by RTE, the archbishop said that “this question is still open, I’m open to this question, I’m open to this question in the universal Church. I think Pope Francis recognizes it’s a question where there’s a lot of divided thinking, and I think that we can recognize the joy and beauty of the gift of the priesthood where a man gives his life wholly and entirely dedicated to God, set apart for the service of Christ and his Church, a real gift to the Church. At the same time, we have to look at other roles, other ministries within the Church.”
He said that “I’m very much open to the idea” of the priestly ordination of married men, “and I think Pope Francis is too. He doesn’t shut the idea down, he leaves it open for further dicussion within the Church.”
The final document of the synod had proposed “that criteria and dispositions be established by the competent authority, within the framework of Lumen Gentium 26, to ordain as priests suitable and respected men of the community … who have had a fruitful permanent diaconate and receive an adequate formation for the priesthood, in order to sustain the life of the Christian community through the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the Sacraments in the most remote areas of the Amazon region.”
Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican’s editorial director, wrote Feb. 12 that “after praying and reflecting,” Pope Francis “has decided to respond not by foreseeing changes or further possibilities of exceptions from those already provided for by current ecclesiastical discipline, but by asking that the essentials be the starting point,” for discussions regarding priestly ministry in the Amazon.
The pope’s failure explicity to permit the priestly ordination of married men in the Amazon has not deterred some of those who are calling for the practice.
Bishop Augusto Martin Quijano Rodriguez, Vicar Apostolic of Pucallpa, told Reuters that “the door is still open,” and that “the pope is asking for reflection. This proposal is still ongoing.”
The Central Committee of German Catholics, an influential lay group which is jointly managing the so-called synodal process with the German bishops’ conference, accused Pope Francis of a “lack of courage for real reforms” in his Amazonian exhortation.
ZdK wrote that the pope “does not find the courage to implement real reforms on the issues of consecration of married men and the liturgical skills of women that have been discussed for 50 years.”
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