Washington D.C., Nov 8, 2018 / 11:45 am (CNA).- A Capuchin priest was arrested in Washington D.C. Nov. 7 after he was accused of sexually abusing a teenager in 2015. Fr. Urbano Vazquez, OFM Cap., had served as parochial vicar of Shrine of the Sacred Heart in northwest Washington since 2014. He has been charged with second-degree child sexual abuse.
The charges concern a claim that Vazquez had put his hand down the shirt of a 13-year-old girl on two occasions and had touched her bare chest.
The Archdiocese of Washington said they learned about the allegation Oct. 26, after being informed by the Capuchin Order of Friars Minor. The archdiocese confirmed to CNA that they immediately removed Fr. Vazquez from the parish, suspended his priestly faculties in the diocese, and informed local police who then arrested Vazquez.
Since Vazquez’s arrest, the archdiocese said they had recieved additional alleagations against the priest. Due to the nature of the police investigation, this information was kept private until Wednesday.
The Shrine of the Sacred Heart, while within the Archdiocese of Washington, is administered by the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, and the church is home to many of the D.C.-area’s Hispanic Catholics. Vazquez was not ordained by the Archdiocese of Washington, but like his brother Franciscans, was permitted by the archdiocese to work within its boundaries. The Archdiocese of Washington has since forbidden Vazquez from exercising ministry, but it will be the Capuchin Order which handles further disciplinary action.
The Archdiocese of Washington said in a statement that Vazquez had passed all required background checks and other investigative measures prior to his arrival in the city.
Also in the statement, the Archdiocese of Washington said that Vazquez’s superior at the shrine, Fr. Moises Villalta, OFM Cap. had been removed from his post as pastor.
The Archdiocese determined that Villalta “failed to follow appropriate protocols related to reporting claims” and had previously known about the allegations and had not reported them to either the police or the archdiocese.
The parish’s child protection coordinator was also placed on administrative leave.
The Archdiocese of Washington recently published a list of 28 clergy to have served within the archdiocese who had been credibly accused of sexual misconduct or abuse over the last 70 years.
Since the publication of that list, three additional names have been added, Fr. Vazquez will be the fourth.
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A police officer blocks access to the road to Sparetime Recreation on Oct. 26, 2023, in Lewiston, Maine. Police are still searching for the suspect in the mass shooting, Robert Card. / Credit: Scott Eisen/Getty Images
Religious sisters show their support for the Little Sisters of the Poor outside the Supreme Court, where oral arguments were heard on March 23, 2016, in the Zubik v. Burwell case against the HHS mandate. / Credit: CNA
Nebraska Capitol. / Credit: Steven Frame/Shutterstock
CNA Staff, Nov 1, 2024 / 14:55 pm (CNA).
Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has released an advisory clarifying that the state’s preborn protection law does not prohibit miscarriage care or lifesaving care amid a pro-abortion advertisement campaign that told the public otherwise.
“The Department of Health and Human Services has received several inquiries, from physicians and health care providers, expressing concern regarding recent radio and television ads that included incorrect and misleading information regarding the Preborn Child Protection Act,” the Oct. 28 advisory reads.
The health advisory came amid an advertising campaign by advocates of Nebraska’s Right to Abortion Initiative 439, which advocates for a right to abortion up to fetal viability in the state constitution. The campaign featured multiple ads that stated that women couldn’t receive miscarriage care and necessary health care because of Nebraska’s current law.
“Any time misleading information causes confusion among health care professionals, it could cause harm to the health and well-being of their patients,” stated the advisory by Dr. Timothy Tesmer, the chief medical officer of the DHHS in Nebraska.
In the health advisory, Tesmer didn’t name which ads the department was responding to, but he clarified that the current law, which protects unborn children after 12 weeks’ gestational age from abortion, provides exceptions for medical emergencies and for cases of rape or incest.
But an advertisement campaign by pro-abortion group Protect Our Rights: Nebraska for 439 told the public otherwise. In one advertisement, advocates said that in Nebraska, there is “an abortion ban that threatens women’s lives” and that “doctors can’t help them even if the pregnancy won’t survive. It puts their lives in danger.” Other advertisements by the same group state that doctors “can’t properly care for patients” and claim that women get sent home “because of the confusing abortion ban” when they have miscarriages.
Allie Berry, the campaign manager for Protect Our Rights, told NBC News that she believed the advisory referred to her group’s ads but said the advisory was designed to “confuse voters.”
The advisory noted that a medical emergency is legally defined as either a threat to the pregnant woman’s life or a “serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”
“The act does not require a medical emergency to be immediate,” Tesmer noted in the advisory. “Physicians understand that it is difficult to predict with certainty whether a situation will cause a patient to become seriously ill or die, but physicians do know what situations could lead to serious outcomes.”
Nebraska also has a competing pro-life amendment, Initiative 434, which would prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions for medical emergencies and cases of rape or incest. Another advertisement by Protect Our Rights claimed that Initiative 434 would make Nebraska’s current law permanent and “opens the door” to banning miscarriage care and IVF.
The health advisory clarified that a variety of medical treatments are not prohibited by the Preborn Child Protection Act, including the removal of a child’s remains after pregnancy loss and the termination of a preborn child produced by in vitro fertilization (IVF) but not implanted in the mother’s womb. The advisory noted that any act intended to save the child’s life, as well as treatment for ectopic pregnancies, is not prohibited under the current law.
“Physicians should exercise their best clinical judgment, and the law allows intervention consistent with prevailing standards of care,” the advisory continued. “The law is deferential to a physician’s judgment in these circumstances.”
Political context
With two contradicting abortion-related measures on the 2024 ballot, Nebraskans will decide Nov. 5 on protection for unborn children in the nation’s only competing abortion ballots.
Marion Miner, the associate director of Pro-life and Family Policy for the Nebraska Catholic Conference, told CNA that “these lies … are abortion activists’ attempt to terrify voters into approving a radical pro-abortion constitutional amendment they would never otherwise support.”
“Abortion activists are putting women’s lives at risk in a gambit to advance a pro-abortion political agenda,” Miner added. “There are real potential human costs, including lost lives.”
She noted that “misinformation by abortion activists …is putting women’s lives at risk.”
“These lies have become so rampant in the weeks leading up to this election that public health officials felt the need to correct the record to prevent this misinformation from provoking a public health crisis,” Miner said.
Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, pointed out that this pro-abortion rhetoric is not isolated to Nebraska.
“This falsity that has been parroted by [Vice President] Kamala Harris and unchecked by most of the media leads women to delay seeking care and gives doctors pause when they need to act immediately,” Pritchard said in a statement shared with CNA.
“This falsity that has been parroted by Kamala Harris and unchecked by most of the media leads women to delay seeking care and gives doctors pause when they need to act immediately,” said Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Credit: EWTN News/Screenshot
“Every state with a pro-life law, including Nebraska, protects women who experience a miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, or any other medical emergency in pregnancy,” Pritchard emphasized. “This care continues to be available under ‘life of the mother’ exceptions, which allow physicians to rely upon their reasonable medical judgment.”
Recently, Harris amplified claims by several news outlets that two women died as the result of Georgia’s pro-life laws. But doctors say one woman, Amber Thurman, died because of the abortion pill and medical malpractice, while the other woman, Candi Miller, died of side effects from the abortion pill after she didn’t seek medical help.
“Women who need medical care should not be made to believe, because of ads they have seen on TV or in political mailers, that they have no option but to stay home instead of seeking treatment,” Miner said.
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