Washington D.C., Jul 11, 2018 / 11:11 am (CNA).- The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops applauded a recent federal ruling that barred the Trump administration from detaining asylum seekers without case review.
“The ruling is extremely … […]
Vatican City, Jul 11, 2018 / 05:57 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican announced Wednesday Pope Francis’ appointment of Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces, New Mexico to be coadjutor bishop of San Jose, California.
As coadjutor, Cantú will assist Bishop Patrick J. McGrath, 73, in the administration of the Diocese of San Jose. It is customary for the coadjutor bishop to succeed the diocesan bishop upon his retirement or death.
Cantú, 51, has served as bishop of Las Cruces, New Mexico since February 2013. He is fluent in English, Spanish, Italian, and French.
In 2016, the bishop was one of two delegates chosen to represent the U.S. bishops’ conference during Pope Francis’ visit to Mexico. After the pope’s visit, the bishop told CNA it showed Mexico “that the Holy Father cares about you, and that God is with us even in difficult moments, even in the darkness of life.”
Cantú has served as chairman of the United States bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace and is a member of the subcommittees on the Church in Latin America and Hispanic Affairs.
Born in Houston Dec. 5, 1966, he is the fifth of eight children. His parents, Ramiro and Maria de Jesus Cantú, are from small towns near Monterey, Mexico.
“There’s no dichotomy in being a Mexican-American. We love both countries because we have part of ourselves in both countries,” Bishop Cantú told CNA in a February 2016 interview
Houston Catholic schools were vital to the bishop’s formation and the formation of six of his siblings. Although Bishop Cantú’s father only received schooling up to 6th grade, he taught the value of education to his children, four of whom graduated college and three of whom have earned master’s degrees.
As a seminarian, Cantú worked on a committee with then-Bishop James Tamayo of Laredo to promote Hispanic ministry.
Ordained to the priesthood May 21, 1994, Cantú was made a bishop in 2008, at the age of 41, when Pope Benedict XVI appointed him auxiliary bishop of San Antonio.
During his 14 years as a priest of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston, he was involved in the Christian Family movement leading youth retreats; Engaged Encounter ministry; and the Metropolitan Organization (TMO), which addresses social issues in the community.
He earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Dallas, and a master’s in divinity and a master’s in theological studies from the University of St. Thomas in Houston. He also earned his Doctorate of Sacred Theology in dogmatic theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
Before being ordained a bishop, he was pastor of his childhood parish, Holy Name, in Houston. He also served as parochial vicar of St. Christopher Parish and taught at the University of St. Thomas and St. Mary’s Seminary.
The Diocese of San Jose was canonically established in 1981 and belongs to the ecclesiastical province of San Francisco.
Denver, Colo., Jul 10, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- While the average age of first marriages is higher than ever before, more Americans are cohabiting and having children outside of marriage, according to recent data from the Pew Research Center and the Cen… […]
Cebu, Philippines, Jul 10, 2018 / 06:29 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A gunman was fatally shot by police after he forced his way into the residence of Archbishop Jose Palma of Cebu on Tuesday morning and sought to speak to the absent bishop.
“We enjoin … […]
Some pro-life and religious liberty advocates have raised concerns about Kavanaugh. […]
Islamabad, Pakistan, Jul 10, 2018 / 05:17 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A candidate for prime minister in Pakistan’s upcoming general election has defended the country’s controversial blasphemy laws, which have been used to harass, jail, and kill members of religious minorities disproportionately.
Imran Khan, chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, a centrist party, said he fully supports the blasphemy law of the Pakistan Penal Code. The statement was made July 7 after giving an address at the Ulema and Mashaikh Conference at Golra Sharif in the capital of Pakistan, Islamabad.
“We are standing with Article 295c and will defend it,” said Khan, according to the Guardian.
A former member of the National Assembly of Pakistan, Khan will be considered for prime minister along with Shehbaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim Leage (N) and Bilawal Zardari of the Pakistan Peoples Party.
The general election will take place July 25. PML-N is forecast to win the election, though there have been allegations of vote rigging in favor of PTI.
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws impose strict punishment on those who desecrate the Quran or who defame or insult Muhammad. Pakistan’s state religion is Islam, and around 97 percent of the population is Muslim.
Although the government has never executed a person under the blasphemy law, accusations alone have inspired mob and vigilante violence.
Blasphemy laws are reportedly used to settle scores or to persecute religious minorities; while non-Muslims constitute only 3 percent of the Pakistani population, 14 percent of blasphemy cases have been levied against them.
Many of those accused of blasphemy are murdered, and advocates of changing the law are also targeted by violence.
In 2011 the Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, a Muslim critic of the blasphemy laws, was assassinated. Shahbaz Bhatti, a Catholic and the only Christian in Pakistan’s cabinet, was also assassinated the same year by militant supporters of the blasphemy laws. Bhatti’s cause for beatification was opened by the Diocese of Islamabad-Rawalpindi in 2016.
The blasphemy laws were introduced between 1980 and 1986. The National Commission for Justice and Peace said over 1,300 people were accused under this law from 1987 until 2014. The Centre for Research and Security Studies reported that at least 65 people have been killed by vigilantes since 1990.
Pakistan’s authorities have consistently failed to implement safeguards on behalf of religious minorities, despite numerous policies in favor of economic and physical protections for members of non-Muslim religions.
In 2013, PML-N, the governing party, promised a quota for jobs in the educational institutes and the public sector for members of religious minorities. That same year, the PPP discussed an Equality Commission to monitor job quotas in Sindh.
After Muslim extremists attacked All Saints Church in Peshawar, killing over 70 people in 2014, Chief Justice Tassaduq Jillani issued an eight-point decree to improve access to jobs, education, and protective forces.
However, none of these safeguards have moved beyond verbal affirmation into action.
Last year, Bethel Memorial Methodist Church in Quetta was attacked by two suicide bombers. The attack killed 9 people and injured 35 others, according to the New York Times.
A member of the Implementation of Minority Rights Forum said government support was not made available after the attack.
“The government was not ready to even disburse compensation cheques among families, and none of the minority parliamentarians were interested in making noise about it,” said Imtiaz, according to Dawn, Pakistan’s largest English-language newspaper.
Managua, Nicaragua, Jul 10, 2018 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A group of bishops in Nicaragua who went Monday to free a group of protesters who had taken refuge in a basilica the previous day were themselves assaulted by a pro-government group.
Protests against president Daniel Ortega which began April 18 have resulted in more than 300 deaths. The country’s bishops have mediated on-again, off-again peace talks between the government and opposition groups.
Cardinal Leopoldo José Brenes Solorzano of Managua, 69; his auxiliary, Bishop Silvio José Baez Ortega, 60; and Archbishop Waldemar Sommertag, 50, apostolic nuncio to Nicaragua, were surrounded July 9 when they tried to enter San Sebastian basilica in Diriamba, about 25 miles south of Managua.
Their route was blocked, and the pro-government groups called them murderers and liars. Among those trapped in the basilica were volunteer medics.
Bishop Baez posted a tweet showing a cut on his arm, and saying, “Besieged by an angry mob who wanted to enter the Basilica of San Sebastian in Diriamba, I was wounded, hit in the stomach, robbed of my episcopal insignia and verbally attacked. I am well, thanks be to God. The basilica was liberated, and those who were within.”
Asediado por una turba enardecida que quería ingresar a la Basílica San Sebastián en Diriamba, fui herido, golpeado en el estómago, me arrebataron las insignias episcopales y agredido verbalmente. Estoy bien gracias a Dios. Se liberó la basílica y a quienes allí estaban. pic.twitter.com/9qTgugBjic
— Silvio José Báez (@silviojbaez) July 9, 2018
The Archdiocese of Managua called the attack committed “by persons close to the government and paramilitaries” was “condemnable and repudiable.”
The bishops were visiting Diriamba after what the Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights reported as deadliest day in the country since the country’s unrest began more than two months ago.
The rights group said that 38 people were killed during clashes July 8. Of these, 31 were anti-government protesters, four were police officers, and three were members of pro-government groups. Most of those killed were in Diriamba and nearby Jinotepe.
The Nicaraguan bishops’ conference said the delegation of bishops was “fulfilling the mission of Jesus Christ, to be at the side of the suffering people, a pastoral visit to the priests and faithful of the Carazo department, the victims of police, paramilitaries and crowds producing death and dolour.”
Cardinal Brenes said he had “felt the brutal force” exercised against his priests. “We have gone to the parishes to console our priests, to accompany them in their suffering, and we have received aggressions.”
«Padre, perdónalos, porque no saben lo que hacen» (Lc 23,34). Orando en la capilla de la Catedral de Managua hoy después de ser agredidos. pic.twitter.com/NiKxORL9lh
— Silvio José Báez (@silviojbaez) July 10, 2018
Barricades and roadblocks are now found throughout the country, and clashes frequently turn lethal. Bishops and priests across Nicaragua have worked to separate protesters and security forces, and have been threatened and shot.
The violence in Diriamba and Jinotepe was focused on police and paramilitaries trying to clear barricades set up and manned by protesters.
Bishop Rolando José Alvarez Lagos of Matagalpa said the government efforts to clear roadblocks were made “at the price of blood and death,” and that the government has become blinded by “arrogance and pride”.
Shortly after the bishops were assaulted in Diriamba, paramilitaries and government sympathizers were profaning and sacking St James the Apostle parish in Jinotepe.
The parish showed on Facebook that it had been desecrated by “persons, paramilitaries accompanied by police forces” who were “destroying pews, tables, and medications”.
The medications had been used in part to provide medical care for those wounded in the July 8 riots in Diriamba.
The profaners threw garbage at the parish’s priests, and threatened to burn the church.
The Nicaraguan bishops’ conference has called off the working groups meant to mediate in the country’s crisis, and protesters are planning a strike July 12.
Nicaragua’s crisis began after Ortega announced social security and pension reforms. The changes were soon abandoned in the face of widespread, vocal opposition, but protests only intensified after more than 40 protestors were killed by security forces initially.
Anti-government protesters have been attacked by “combined forces” made up of regular police, riot police, paramilitaries, and pro-government vigilantes.
The Nicaraguan government has suggested that protestors are killing their own supporters so as to destabilize Ortega’s administration.
The Church in Nicaragua was quick to acknowledge the protestors’ complaints.
The pension reforms which triggered the unrest were modest, but protests quickly turned to Ortega’s authoritarian bent.
Ortega has been president of Nicaragua since 2007, and oversaw the abolition of presidential term limits in 2014.
The Church has suggested that elections, which are not scheduled until 2021, be held in 2019, but Ortega ruled this out July 7.
Ortega was a leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which had ousted the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and fought US-backed right-wing counterrevolutionaries during the 1980s. Ortega was also leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990.
Vatican City, Jul 10, 2018 / 02:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- St. Catherine of Siena Church was built by immigrants in a Catholic Boston neighborhood, in the late nineteenth century. For more than a century, it welcomed the poor, the lost, and the searching. Then in 2008, the church was closed.
A decade later the building opened its doors again, welcoming a new generation of seekers. But while the sanctuary is empty, the basement of the building has become a Dollar Tree, and those who enter are searching mostly for a bargain.
Around the world, with demographic shifts and a decline of worshippers in some countries, a growing number of church buildings are being closed. Safeguarding the sanctity of the once-hallowed ground where believers prayed and worshiped is becoming a perplexing problem for Church leaders.
To answer the tough question about what to do with shuttered churches, the Vatican has decided to host a conference from Nov. 29-30, addressing the issue from a multi-disciplinary perspective, in light of a growing interest in protecting the historic and cultural significance many churches still hold, even if they are unused.
The“God No Longer Lives Here?” conference is being organized by the cultural goods department of the Pontifical Council for Culture, the Italian bishops conference, and the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Faculty of History and Cultural Heritage of the Church.
At a July 10 press conference announcing the November event, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Vatican’s culture office, said the problem of what to do with churches or sacred places that are no longer used is a “transversal” problem, with historic, spatial, socio-cultural and even academic and legal dimensions.
When the idea to host a conference about the topic was initially pitched, Ravsi said he was skeptical, thinking the issue would only be of interest to a small pool of experts, however, instead there was an “extraordinary reaction” not only from bishops conferences, but also academics and even UNESCO, who in the past has sent representatives to episcopal conference meetings to hear their thoughts on the closing of ancient religious structures believed to hold special cultural and historic significance.
In comments to the press, Ravasi said that while the issue of what to do with churches that have been closed has always been an issue, the current increase in interest is “one of the mirrors of the decline of religious practice, of secularization,” and of “a lack of priests.”
The prime reasons churches are shut down is due to the small size of the congregation that attends services, to a lack of priests, or when parishes merge for pastoral reasons, Ravisi said.
The conference, then, will help to highlight the crisis in the decline of belief, but it will also ensure that churches and other sacred places are not sold off to buyers who will but them to profane use given the history of the structure.
Part of the goal of the November conference will be to draft guidelines for what to do with churches that are de-consecrated and potentially sold.
The first day of the conference will be dedicated to several talks pitching ideas for solutions, followed by discussion. The second and final day will be dedicated to further discussion and the drafting of the guidelines, which will either be published as a directive from the Vatican’s Council for Culture, or they will be adopted and published at a more universal level as a document from the Holy See, though modifications will likely be made if the latter is the case.
Representatives of bishops’ conferences, the Vatican’s culture office and university professors will add their voice to the discussion, offering their own contribution for what the guidelines should include.
Conference organizers also announced a photo contest that will take place primarily on Instagram, with the hashtag “#nolongerchurches,” and will encourage photographers to document what happens to de-consecrated churches. The photos selected will also be displayed in an exhibit, and they will be published in the Italian Magazine “Arte cristiana, Casabella e Chiesa: architettura e communicazione.”
In comments to the press, Archbishop Nunzio Galantino, president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (APSA) and until now secretary general of the Italian bishops conference, said the topic of what to do with de-consecrated churches is a “salient issue,” and one that is important for the Italian bishops.
Though the question of what to do with an increase in churches being closed is primarily a problem in France, Belgium, Holland, Germany and Switzerland, according to a press release on the conference, Italy, the United States and Canada have also faced similar dilemmas.
And opposition to the sale of sacred spaces has increased even among non-believers, many of whom believe churches, even if unused, add historic, cultural and artistic value to their communities.
“What is the situation today? We have a change of context,” he said, pointing to the problem of decreasing Mass attendance, priest shortages and the closing of rural churches which have gone unused for years.
The issue is a social, cultural and economic problem, he said, explaining that when these churches belong to dioceses and parishes, it is easier to keep them in use and take care of them, but when these churches are no longer associated with a diocese or parish, often and unfortunately “there is a private interest” involved in what happens to it.
Professor Ottavio Bucarelli, who works at the Faculty of History and Cultural Heritage of the Church at the Gregorian University in Rome, was also present at the press conference, and told journalists the “sacred nature” of places of worship must always be respected.
“A church remains a church even when it is no longer a church, even when it has been transformed into something else,” he said, “so at a certain point we have to respect the faith of so many believers who have prayed and worshiped there for centuries.”
Does the Church still grow young as the world grows old? […]
Lincoln, Neb., Jul 10, 2018 / 10:42 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The general chapter of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a society of apostolic life which celebrates the extraordinary form of the Roman rite, on Monday elected Fr. Andrzej Komorowski as its next superior general.
The July 9 election was made at the FSSP’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Neb., about 10 miles southwest of Lincoln. The general chapter is being held July 3-18.
Fr. Komorowski was born in Poland in 1975, and studied economics at the University of Poznań. He then joined the FSSP’s European seminary, St. Peter’s Seminary in Wigratzbad, Germany, and was ordained a priest in 2006.
He has ministered at FSSP apostolates in Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. He has served as assistant of the superior general since 2012, and as general bursar.
Fr. Komorowski succeeds Fr. John Berg as superior general of the FSSP, and is the fourth man to the hold that position.
The FSSP forms priests for the use of the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, and having formed them, deploys priests in parishes for the service of the Church.
The priestly fraternity was founded in 1988 by 12 priests of the Society of St. Pius X. The founders left the SSPX to establish the FSSP after the society’s leader, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, consecrated four bishops without the permission of St. John Paul II.
There are currently almost 287 priests and 150 seminarians in the fraternity. It has parishes and chapels in North America, Europe, Oceania, Nigeria, and Colombia.
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