Italian bishops defend crucifixes in school classrooms

Shrewsbury, England, Dec 17, 2019 / 02:06 pm (CNA).- Gavin Ashenden, a former Honorary Chaplain to the Queen in the Church of England who was consecrated a bishop in a Continuing Anglican ecclesial community, will be received into the Catholic Church on Sunday.

He will receive confirmation Dec. 22 during a Mass at Shrewsbury Cathedral from Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury.

His wife, Helen, became a Catholic about two years ago in the Diocese of Shrewsbury.

“Having come to believe that the claims and expression of the Catholic faith are the most profound and potent expression of apostolic and patristic belief, and to accept the primacy of the Petrine tradition, I am grateful to the Bishop of Shrewsbury and the Catholic community in his diocese for the opportunity to mend 500 years of fractured history and be reconciled to the Church that gave birth to my earlier tradition,” Ashenden has said.

“I am especially grateful for the example and the prayers of St John Henry Newman. He did his best to remain a faithful Anglican and renew his mother Church with the vigour and integrity of the Catholic tradition,” he added. “Now, as then, however, his experience informs ours that the Church of England is inclined to be rooted in secularised culture rather than the integrity and insight of biblical, apostolic and patristic values.”

Ashenden added that St. John Henry Newman’s experience “also inspires ours, and charts the way to our proper ecclesial home which is the rock that is the Petrine charism of faith and witness in our struggle for salvation and heaven.”

Ashenden was raised in London and Kent, and studied Law at Bristol University. He studied for priesthood in the Church of England at Oak Hill College, and received orders in 1980.

He served 10 years as a parish priest, and taught 23 years at the University of Sussex, lecturing in literature and pyschology of religion. He also earned a doctorate writing on Charles Williams, a writer and member of the Inklings. He was a member of the Church of England’s General Synod for 20 years.

Ashenden was appointed an Honoray Chaplain to the Queen in 2008.

He was consecrated a bishop in the Christian Episcopal Church, a Continuing Anglican ecclesial community, in 2013, while remaining an Honorary Chaplain to the Queen, Christian Today reported in 2017.

In 2017 he resigned from the Royal Household and relinquished his Church of England orders after a passage from the Quran denying Christ’s divinity was read at the Glaswegian cathedral of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

“It should not happen in the holy Eucharist and particularly a Eucharist whose main intention is to celebrate Christ the word made flesh come into the world,” he told BBC at the time.

Later that year, Ashenden left the Church of England, “convinced that the consecration of women to the episcopate represented the replacement of apostolic and biblical patterns with the competing culture of the values of Cultural Marxism, and dissenting from the increasing accommodation of the Church of England to radical secular views on gender.”

His episcopal consecration was announced in 2017.

When a Church of England bishop delivered a sermon while sliding down an amusement park ride built inside of Norwich Cathedral in August, Ashenden told the BBC that the event was a “mistake” that misjudged “what a cathedral is good for.”

“For such a place, steeped in mystery and marvel to buy in to sensory pleasure and distraction, is to poison the very medicine it offers the human soul,” he said.

Ashenden has said that praying the rosary and researching Eucharistic miracles helped lead him to the Catholic Church.

Bishop Davies commented that “it is very humbling to be able to receive a bishop of the Anglican tradition into full communion in the year of canonisation of St John Henry Newman.”

“I am conscious of the witness which Gavin Ashenden has given in the public square to the historic faith and values on which our society has been built. I pray that this witness will continue to be an encouragement to many,” he added.

Ashenden wrote in the Catholic Herald that “I watched as Anglicanism suffered a collapse of inner integrity as it swallowed wholesale secular society’s descent into a post-Christian culture.”

“I came to realise (too long after both Newman and Chesterton had already explained why) that only the Catholic Church, with the weight of the Magisterium, had the ecclesial integrity, theological maturity and spiritual potency to defend the Faith, renew society and save souls in the fullness of faith,” he said.

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Bishop David O’Connell. / Credit: KTLA screenshot

St. Louis, Mo., Feb 21, 2023 / 10:40 am (CNA).

David O’Connell, an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles who was shot and killed over the weekend, is being mourned in his home country of Ireland.

O’Connell was born in 1953 in County Cork, on Ireland’s southern coast. He was baptized at Sacred Heart Church in the village of Glounthaune, where he later served as an altar boy. Sacred Heart was also where he celebrated his first Mass following his ordination in 1979, RTÉ reported. 

Father Tom Hayes, a priest of the local Diocese of Cork and Ross, said his entire parish — about an hour’s drive from O’Connell’s — is talking about the tragic killing. O’Connell maintained close ties to Cork, returning at least once a year, most recently last summer, Hayes said. 

“[His murder] is a front-page story here in Ireland since it happened, and it’s on the television and radio news, and so it’s getting quite a lot of news attention,” Hayes told CNA. 

“So almost everybody has heard about it. And, yeah, people are shocked. I met one young woman today, and her issue was that she just couldn’t understand how one human being could take up a gun in close proximity to somebody else and kill them. But that’s kind of a reflection of maybe the difference in cultures as well, because in Ireland, we don’t have gun violence for the most part.”

Appointed a bishop in 2015, O’Connell ministered to immigrants, the poor, and victims of gang violence for 45 years in the South Los Angeles area. O’Connell was 69 when a deacon found him dead in his home Saturday in Hacienda Heights with at least one gunshot wound to the chest. A suspect has been arrested and on Monday was identified as 65-year-old Carlos Medina, the husband of O’Connell’s housekeeper. The investigation is ongoing. 

Father Damian O’Mahony, co-pastor of O’Connell’s home parish of Sacred Heart, told CNA that “Bishop Dave never forgot his native home here in Cork,” describing him as “a proud Corkman, and he always let people know.”

“Naturally, those parishioners who knew Bishop Dave and those who know his family here in the parish were very shocked and upset and there was an air of disbelief,” O’Mahony told CNA. 

“A Memorial Mass will be held in the Sacred Heart Glounthaune at a later date where those in his native parish will gather to pray for, remember, and celebrate the life of a good man who was taken so tragically and so cruelly from this life. It will also be an opportunity to show our continued support for his family as they come to terms with the loss of someone much loved and who will be missed dearly.”

At the regularly scheduled Mass on Feb. 20, O’Mahony noted that O’Connell has several surviving family members in County Cork, including a brother. 

“We also pray for and remember his family at this time in the parish … his many, many friends in this time of heartbreak, shock, tears, sadness, and sorrow and all here in the parish who would have known him as well,” O’Mahony said, as reported by RTÉ. 

The local bishop of O’Connell’s home diocese also spoke out in remembrance of the murdered bishop, urging prayers for him and for his family. 

“Since his ordination in 1979 Bishop David has served as a priest in Los Angeles but has always maintained his connection with family and friends here in Cork, where has been a regular visitor. We pray that the Lord will console Bishop David’s many friends in Cork and throughout Ireland,” Bishop Fintan Gavin of Cork and Ross said in a Feb. 19 statement. 

“We will pray for Bishop David at Mass throughout the Diocese of Cork and Ross in the coming days, asking the Lord to comfort his family, his colleagues, and all the bereaved. Bishop David worked tirelessly for peace and harmony in communities; may he now rest in the peace of the Lord.”

O’Connell was ordained during an era when many of the young men from Ireland becoming priests were sent abroad as missionaries, Hayes noted. For his part, O’Connell decided to come to the United States due in part to meeting fellow Irishman Cardinal Timothy Manning, who was then the archbishop of Los Angeles.

“In that providential conversation, the cardinal convinced him that Los Angeles was where he should go. So then he went and trained for the priesthood here in Ireland. The college that he trained at in Dublin is called All Hallows College, and the vast majority of seminarians who studied in that college studied to serve in dioceses in other countries,” Hayes said. 

Many priests of a similar age to O’Connell came from Ireland to the United States and continue to minister throughout the country, he said. Beyond his visits back to Ireland, O’Connell was a very faithful supporter of his home diocese’s missions to Peru and Ecuador. Hayes said O’Connell would always warmly welcome Irish missionary priests to his parishes in the U.S., allowing them to preach and fundraise for their mission. 

Hayes said his parishioners remain shocked that a person who made such a positive effort in his community could be the victim of such a crime. 

“A lot of the people as well, and they’re also just shocked at the loss of what we see as somebody who was contributing very significantly to the life of his diocese and to the people that he was ministering to. And to have his life cut short is just such a shame,” Hayes said. 

He said that if anything at all good can come from O’Connell’s murder, it would be a wider recognition of the peacemaking work he did for so many years in Los Angeles. 

“It may inspire others to pick up some of the issues that he was advocating for — justice for the people on the margins of society — and to create a world of peace and fairness where people don’t have to be violent to one another. I think if that message gets amplified both in Ireland and in L.A., then that in itself would be a blessing.”

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Szombathely, Hungary, Nov 11, 2017 / 03:03 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Besides the smiling Pope, John Paul I, several other people’s causes advanced towards sainthood this week. Among them is Servant of God János (John) Brenner, a Cistercian Hungarian priest whose martyrdom was acknowledged by Pope Francis this week.

Brenner was born on Dec. 27, 1931 in Szombathely, Hungary. A young person “full of life, joy and mischief,” Brenner attended Catholic schools run by the Cistercian order (a reformed order of Benedictines) for several years until the nationalization of schools by the communist government which came to power after World War II as part of the Eastern Bloc.

He felt called to the Cistercian order. He applied and was accepted as a novice to the order in Zirc in 1950, and took the name Br. Anastasius (Anasztáz).

However, only a few months after Brenner began formation, the communist government began suppressing religious houses. To protect the men in formation, the novice master moved the young brothers from the abbey to private apartments, where they hoped to continue formation in secret.

It was around this time that Brenner, along with a few other novices, moved to the local seminary to begin studying to become a priest, while continuing with his Cistercian formation through correspondence.

Despite the dangers and religious oppression going on around him, journal entries from Brenner at the time display a deep trust in God and a strong desire to do his will.

“There is no greater joy than when man who is nothing, can be even more annihilated in Christ and immerse himself into the infinite world of His soul filled with wonderful riches which are forever given over to us,” he wrote in 1950.

“Even if the road is rough, I look at your pain- ridden face and follow you. I ask you only one thing: May I always fulfill most precisely what you give to me as my vocation.”

Brenner took vows with the Cistercian order and then was ordained a priest in 1955.

Throughout his ministry, he was known for his willingness and readiness to serve and to sacrifice, and took as his priestly motto the verse Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

Brenner was especially talented at working with youth, which all the more made him a target of the communist government.

Even when he was made aware of personal threats against his life, and his bishop offered to transfer him elsewhere for his own safety, Brenner responded: “I’m not afraid, I’m happy to stay.”

On the night of Dec. 14, 1957, Brenner was falsely called to give last rites to a sick person in a neighboring town, amid the reprisals for the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

He left his home, carrying his anointing oils and the Eucharist, but was ambushed in the woods outside Rabakethely and stabbed 32 times. He was found dead the next day, still clutching the Eucharist in his hands, which has earned him the title of the “Hungarian Tarcisius.” St. Tarcisius was a young boy and third century martyr who was also killed while carrying and protecting the Eucharist.

While the communists had hoped that Brenner’s death would intimidate the faithful in the area, they could not stop devotion to Brenner’s memory. The Chapel of the Good Pastor was built in 1989 on the spot where he died, and is a popular place of pilgrimage for people throughout the country. The dirty and bloodied surplice Brenner wore when he was killed has been preserved as a relic.

Because Brenner has received a declaration of martyrdom from the Vatican, his new title is Venerable Servant of God János Brenner. This means that the path is open for Brenner’s beatification, as the usual requirement for a miracle is waived in cases of martyrdom.

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