Supreme Court rejects Ohio Christian school discrimination case

Chicago, Ill., Mar 31, 2021 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Amid a plan to merge and close dozens of parishes, the Archdiocese of Chicago has disproportionately closed parishes that minister to black Catholics due to low attendance, according to an archdiocesan official.

“There have been disproportionate numbers of closings in the Black Catholic community, but this is going on all across the Diocese,” Cliff Barber, chief strategy officer of the archdiocese, said in a March 29 interview with the Chicago Crusader, a publication that focuses on the African American community.

“There has been some shared pain here, but it’s just been disproportionate in the Black Catholic community.”

Barber also heads the archdiocese’ Black Catholic Initiative, which seeks to support the Black Catholic community in the city. Barber said there are about 6,000 Mass-attending Black Catholics in the archdiocese, heavily concentrated in the south and west sides of the city.

The Chicago archdiocese has been closing and merging parishes for several years, with the latest round of mergers announced March 9-10.

One such parish is the predominantly African-American St. Peter Claver Mission, which will join the parishes of St. Benedict and St. Walter under a new parish name.

The Chicago archdiocese lists nearly forty parishes on its website as ministering specifically to the black community; Baker said there are nearly 800 predominantly Black Catholic parishes across the U.S., most of which are located in the east and south.

Overall, the church closures and mergers are part of Cardinal Blase Cupich’s project “Renew My Church,” which he announced in 2016. At the time, around 100 parishes were expected to close due to a shortage of priests and church buildings in need of repair.

Barber told the Crusader that the Black Catholic Initiative is relaunching itself in 2021 with an updated mission.

Chicago has been home to communities of Black Catholics for several hundred years. Following the evangelization of black slaves and freed men by Jesuit missionaries in the decades before the American Revolution, large African-American Catholic populations settled in cities including Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, and numerous cities throughout the South.

Chicago has at least one prominent African American Catholic who may someday be canonized — Venerable Augustus Tolton, who was born a slave in Missouri and was the first African-American priest. He was ordained a priest in the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran on Holy Saturday 1886, and was sent back to serve in Illinois in the Diocese of Alton. He worked at a parish in Quincy, but met with opposition from a white priest, and in 1889 secured permission to transfer to the Archdiocese of Chicago.

In Chicago he founded a black parish, Saint Monica’s. He died July 9, 1897 from heat stroke and heart failure, at the age of 43.

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Washington D.C., Apr 5, 2019 / 05:01 pm (CNA).- Catholic leaders issued a letter Thursday to United States government officials asking for a temporary legal status for thousands Venezuelan nationals who would otherwise risk returning to a hazardous crisis.   

The April 4 letter asks of the Secretaries of Homeland Security and State that Venezuela be designated for temporary protected status for 18 months.

TPS allows people who are unable to return safely to their home countries because of armed conflict, other violence, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions to remain in the United States while the situation in their home country resolves. It protects them from deportation and grants them permission to work.

The letter was signed by Bishop Joe Vásquez of Austin, chairman to the USCCB Committee on Migration, and by Sean Callahan, president of Catholic Relief Services.

“Given the unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, its nationals cannot safely be returned home at this time,” the letter read.

According to the letter, an estimated 150,000 Venezuelans would qualify for TPS.

Since Nicolas Maduro became president of Venezuela in 2013, the country has been marred by violence and social upheaval. Under the socialist government, the country has seen severe shortages and hyperinflation, and an estimated 3 million have emigrated.

“Our nation has the legal ability, as well as the moral responsibility, to provide Venezuelans in the U.S. with temporary protection,” wrote Callahan and Bishop Vasquez.

“As you well know, while stability in Venezuela hasbeen tenuous since 2015, it is continuing to deteriorate at an alarming rate,” they added. To evidence this claim, they noted that the State Department issued a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Venezuela last month, shortly after it withdrew its diplomatic personnel from the country.

In issuing the travel advisory, the State Department “explained that in addition to violent political demonstrations and shortages in basic necessities (food, water electricity, and medical care), the country suffers from high rates of violent crime, such as homicide,armed robbery, and kidnapping.”

Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo himself suggested that the Organization of American States should be concerned with the crisis in Venezuela (along with those in Cuba and Nicaragua), rather than with lobbying for abortion.

The Catholic leaders noted that “distressing conditions discussed above show that such a designation would be appropriate and could be made either on the grounds that: (1) Venezuela is suffering from ‘ongoing armed conflict within the state’ and, consequently, return of nationals to the country would ‘pose a serious threat to their personal safety,’ or (2) that it isfacing ‘extraordinary and temporary conditions’ that prevent nationals ‘from returning to the state in safety,’” making note of the conditions required for TPS under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Callahan and Vasquez said that “providing a TPS designation for Venezuela is also a moral, compassionate and needed response.”

TPS would ensure that Venezuelans resident in the US “are not returned to dangerous and life-threatening situations7and give them an opportunity to live with dignity, work lawfully, andprovide for their families’ well-being until they can safely return home,” they added.

The Trump administration has for the most part been hesitant to extend existing TPS designations.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security extended TPS for El Salvador, Haiti, Sudan, and Nicaragua to January 2020 only as the result of a federal court order. The administration had perviously determined this status was no longer merited, and it was set to lapse.

Another lawsuit is seeking to extend TPS for Honduras and Nepal.

[…]

Crookston, Minn., Feb 4, 2020 / 12:45 pm (CNA).- The Diocese of Crookston announced Tuesday that the Vatican has ordered additional investigation into the conduct of Bishop Michael Hoeppner, the first U.S. bishop to be investigated through a process developed by Pope Francis last year.

Hoeppner will not be permitted to oversee sexual abuse cases in his diocese during the follow-up investigation.

“Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis has recently been authorized by the Congregation for Bishops in Rome, to conduct further investigation related to claims that Bishop Michael J. Hoeppner had engaged in ‘acts or omissions intended to interfere with or avoid civil or canonical investigations of clerical sexual misconduct’ as prescribed by the motu proprio, Vos estis lux mundi,” the Crookston diocese announced Feb. 4.

Hoeppner, 70, has been accused of mishandling the cases of priests accused of sexual misconduct: the bishop is reported to have pressured an alleged victim to drop his allegation of abuse against a priest, failed to follow mandatory reporting laws, and neglected to follow protocols designed to monitor priests accused of misconduct.

In depositions released Nov. 5 as part of a legal settlement, Hoeppner is seen to admit to several of the charges against him. In those depositions, Hoeppner also defended a diocesan decision to allow a priest to remain in ministry, without notifying parents or parishioners, after the priest admitted that while he was teenager he had sexually abused a younger child.

The first stage of the Vatican investigation was also undertaken by Hebda, under the auspices of Vos estis lux mundi, 2019 norms from Pope Francis on investigating bishops accused of mishandling or obstructing allegations of clerical sexual abuse.

It is not clear how many of the allegations against Hoeppner fell within the mandate of Hebda’s initial investigation, and how many will only be formally examined by the Vatican after the follow-up investigation.

Hebda sent his initial findings and recommendations to the Vatican in late October, leaving the matter in the hands of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops.

Vos estis lux mundi allows the Vatican “to provide for a supplementary investigation” after initial steps are taken, if Vatican officials deem it necessary.

Judge Timothy O’Malley, Director of the Archdiocesan Office of Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment, will serve as Hebda’s delegate for the second investigation, presumably overseeing day-to-day responsibilities.

The move announced Tuesday comes as a surprise to observers, though because Hoeppner is the first bishop to face a Vos estis investigation, there is no precedent from which to set expectations.

Tuesday’s announcement comes after several months in which local Catholics have called for Hoeppner’s ouster, and accused him of mistreating a popular priest removed from ministry under vague terms.

Priests in the diocese told CNA in recent weeks that they expected Hoeppner to be removed from office, and that given the bishop’s record, the credibility of the Vos estis procedures could be called into question if he is eventually permitted to remain in office.

At the same time, several U.S. bishops told CNA that they are watching the investigation against Hoeppner carefully, to see whether he is afforded the opportunity to defend himself during the investigation.

The Crookston diocese also announced Tuesday a Vatican decision “that for the duration of the investigation, the faculty to deal with cases of sexual abuse against clerics of the Diocese of Crookston has been transferred from Bishop Hoeppner to Archbishop Hebda.”

Sources in the diocese tell CNA that Hebda has already begun overseeing at least one case of a priest in the Crookston diocese accused of unspecified misconduct.

Hoeppner, alongside other bishops from Minnesota and neighboring states, met with Pope Francis Jan. 13 for nearly two hours, during the bishops’ ad limina visit to Rome, which is required by canon law to take place every five years.

A timeline for the next phase of the investigation has not been released.

[…]