Month: February 2020

No Picture
News Briefs

Knights of Columbus celebrate 100 years of charity in Rome

February 11, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Rome, Italy, Feb 11, 2020 / 10:05 am (CNA).- A group of the Knights of Columbus are on pilgrimage in Rome to celebrate 100 years of their charitable presence in the Eternal City.

The Knights of Columbus have been working in Rome through nine pontificates and a world war in which Italy and the United States were on opposing sides, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson highlighted in a news conference Feb. 11.

“Our motto was everybody welcome and everything free,” Anderson said.

The Knights of Columbus’ permanent presence in Rome began in 1920, in the aftermath of World War I, when Benedict XV invited the order to offer charitable aid in the city, particularly to youth who were victims of the war.

The Knights had run hospitality centers for American troops in Europe, including Italy, during World War I.

After the invitation of Benedict XV, the group’s first project in the Eternal City was the construction of playgrounds for young people, Anderson said, something the order continues today with five sports centers for Roman youth.

During World War II, many of these playgrounds also became distribution centers for aid.

These centers were followed by numerous other initiatives. At the Vatican, some notable contributions of the order were the donation of the land on which the Paul VI Hall was built, and the restoration of various Vatican landmarks and artworks, including the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica and the statues of St. Peter and St. Paul in the square.

The group was also instrumental in the history of Vatican Media, providing financial assistance for the transmissions of Vatican Radio in the 1960s and the funding of a television satellite for the broadcast of papal events and Masses.

The Knights continue to support these broadcasts, bringing the “sounds, words, and images of the pope” to people around the world, as well as other initiatives of the Dicastery of Communication, the department’s secretary, Msgr. Lucio Ruiz, said at the press conference.

Guzmán Carriquiry, vice president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, spoke about the Knights of Columbus’ contribution to the work of the commission and its participation in the 1999 synod on America.

The Knights of Columbus has also partnered with the Fabric of St. Peter, which is responsible for the care and restoration of St. Peter’s Basilica. Anderson said upcoming projects with the office include work in the Vatican excavations, where there is the tomb of St. Peter, and at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.

In 2020, “The Knights of Columbus, an Illustrated History,” was published. It was written by Knights’ vice president of communications Andrew Walther and his wife, Maureen.

Anderson and the supreme council of the Knights of Columbus met with Pope Francis in a private audience Feb. 10.

The pope praised the order’s “work of evangelical charity and fraternity in a variety of fields,” also recalling their “faithful witness to the sacredness and dignity of human life, evident at both the local and national levels.”

“In our world, marked by divisions and inequalities, the generous commitment of your Order to serve all in need offers, especially to young people, an important inspiration to overcome a globalization of indifference and build together a more just and inclusive society,” Pope Francis said.

The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal order, was founded in New Haven, Conn., in 1882 by Venerable Michael McGivney, a parish priest. It has 1.8 million members worldwide who perform volunteer service and advance the order’s key principles of charity, unity, fraternity and patriotism.

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

Catholic community mourns death of Arizona priest in car crash 

February 10, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Tucson, Ariz., Feb 11, 2020 / 12:26 am (CNA).- The Diocese of Tucson has announced the death of a local priest, who was killed in a car crash Friday.

“It is with a very heavy heart that I inform you that our dear Fr. Raul Valencia, Pastor of Santa Monica Parish in Tucson, was in a tragic car accident today and has died,” said Bishop Edward Weisenburger of Tucson in a Facebook post Friday.

“This news comes as a tremendous shock to his family, parishioners, and friends. Department of Public Safety officers informed his family that death was instantaneous,” the bishop said.

“I kindly ask your prayers for our dear Fr. Valencia, his family, and his parish. Of course, the death of a priest also affects the body of the presbyterate profoundly. Let us keep one another in prayer as well.”

According to local media, Valencia was involved in a two-car collision along Interstate 19 on the morning of Feb. 7, as he travelled to visit family in Nogales, which is near where the accident occurred.

The diocese announced that a viewing for Valencia will take place Feb. 10 from 6-10 p.m. A funeral Mass will take place the following day at 10 a.m. at Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Nogales, with local Bishop José Leopoldo González of Nogales as the main celebrant.

Another funeral Mass will be held Feb. 11 at 1:30 p.m. at St. Augustine Cathedral in Tucson. The priest will then be buried at Holy Hope Cemetery in Tucson.

Valencia, 60, was ordained a priest in 2003 following a career as a dentist. He owned his own practice for 11 years in Nogales, Mexico – a border town opposite of Nogales, Arizona – where he was born and raised.

He ended his practice in 1997 when he began attending Seminario Juan Navarrete y Guerrero. The next year, he transferred to Assumption Seminary in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, Texas, where he finished his theological studies in 2002.

Following his ordination, Valencia was assigned to St. Monica’s, where he served for a year in 2003. He was then assigned to St. Jude Thaddeus in San Luis, Arizona, where he served until he became the pastor of St. Monica’s in 2011.

Father Edson Elizarras, the pastor at Saint Christopher’s in nearby Marana, had known Valencia since high school. He told KVOA 4 that the priest was a man of tremendous character.

“He was very supportive and always said ‘Si se puede, you can do it, don’t be afraid, take courage in the Lord’,” Elizarras said.

 

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

‘A disturbing time in America’: Pro-life Dems respond to Sanders

February 10, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Washington D.C., Feb 10, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- Pro-life Democrats responded on Monday to Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ suggestion that there is no room in the party for pro-lifers.

“It’s a disturbing time in America,” Louisiana state senator Katrina Jackson (D) told CNA, “when the party that’s supposed to be the big tent party, that has always had differing views not only on abortion but also on other issues, begins to have candidates that try to close off the party to those with diverse views.”

“Across our country, there are pro-life people of all political persuasions and I don’t believe it makes sense for any party to try to exclude people because of their position on life,” Rep. Colin Peterson (D-Minn.) said to CNA on Monday.

Democratic presidential candidates continued their support of legalized abortion over the weekend, while in New Hampshire for Tuesday’s primary.

At a debate at St. Anselm College in Manchester, hosted by ABC News on Friday evening, candidates pledged that they would implement a litmus test on abortion for judicial candidates, and push to codify legal abortion.

On Saturday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—the longest-serving politically independent member of Congress in U.S. history—said that support for abortion “is an absolutely essential part of being a Democrat.”

Sanders, in addition to running for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, ran for the party’s nomination in 2016 but has always served as a political independent while in the House and Senate.

“By this time in history, I think, when we talk about what a Democrat is, I think being pro-choice is essentially—an essential part of that,” Sanders said on Saturday at a presidential forum co-hosted by the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the Demand Justice Initiative.

Jackson, in response, told CNA on Monday that Sanders’ rhetoric is unpresidential.

“What you’ve said to America is ‘I cannot assume the role as president and represent all Americans’,” Jackson said.

She said that abortion is a “Christian issue,” and thus “for Christians who read the Word and understand the Word,” to say the party has no room for pro-lifers, “you’re essentially saying is there’s no room in the party for a Christian who follows God’s Word.”

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who was the unofficial winner of last week’s Iowa caucuses, on Saturday reiterated previous campaign trail statements that he supports legal abortion even if pro-life Democrats oppose him because of the issue.

“We are a big tent,” he said, acknowledging that some people identify both as a Democrat and as pro-life. However, he added, he will not soften his pro-abortion platform to get pro-life Democratic votes.

“What I’m not going to do is get somebody’s vote by tricking them,” he said, noting that any attempts to criminalize abortion and punish women or doctors “is simply not consistent with the values that draw me to the Democratic party.”

Candidate Andrew Yang at Saturday’s forum that one “pro-life voter” told him his policy of providing $1,000-per-month universal basic income would support women in need, and that the voter would support Yang because of this.

“I have zero compromise when it comes to women’s reproductive rights,” said Yang, who has previously said abortion at any point in pregnancy should be up to the woman.

However, Yang said that abortion should not be celebrated—an answer that drew a rebuke from the head of NARAL.

“I think we have to get back to the point where no one is suggesting that we should be celebrating an abortion at any point in the pregnancy,” Yang said

He added that “it’s a tragedy, to me, if someone decides that they don’t want to have a child, and they’re on the fence, and that maybe at some point later—it’s a very, very difficult personal decision, and it should be something that we’re very, very sensitive to.”

Ilyse Hogue,  the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, tweeted in response, “This was a bad take” which “shows a dangerous ignorance about abortions later in pregnancy and it perpetuates stigma of women who choose not to have families for reasons that are varied and very much none of our business.”

At Friday’s debate, candidates also promised they would only appoint pro-abortion candidates to the federal judiciary, and said they would codify Roe v. Wade.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said that legal abortion is “a fundamental value of the Constitution, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) advocated for “a national law to protect the right of a woman’s choice.”

Sanders pledged not to “nominate any person to the Supreme Court, or the federal courts in general, who is not 100% Roe v. Wade,” and pushed to “significantly expand funding for Planned Parenthood.”

On Saturday, Buttigieg said that “the American people” largely support the Roe v. Wade “framework” of few restrictions on abortion earlier in pregnancies and “very few exceptions” late in pregnancy.

Buttigieg, however, did not give limits on late-term abortion that he supported, saying instead that “the time has come to trust women to make decisions for themselves.”

For late-term abortions, he said, “usually we’re talking about cases where, by definition, if it’s late-term, a parent, a family, a woman is expecting to carry a pregnancy to term and then gets devastating medical news” about her health or the health of the baby.”

“That creates an unthinkable situation,” he said, and “that decision will not be made any better, medically or morally, because it is being dictated by some government official.”

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

Cardinal Dolan making pastoral visit to Cuba

February 10, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Havana, Cuba, Feb 10, 2020 / 03:45 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York is in the midst of a visit to Cuba, having been invited to the country by its bishops and its president.

During his Feb. 7-12 visit, he is saying Mass at the Havana cathedral and at the Basilica Santuario Nacional de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre; meeting with the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Giampiero Gloder; visiting Catholic charities and a seminary; and meeting with president Miguel Diaz-Canel.

According to the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal Dolan “accepted the invitation after consultation with the United States State Department and the Holy See.”

Diaz-Canel had met Cardinal Dolan in 2018, and while in New York to speak to the United Nations, he met with the cardinal and gave him a statue of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre.

Accompanying the cardinal are Bishop Octavio Cisneros, Auxiliary Bishop of Brooklyn; Msgr. Kevin Sullivan, executive director of the New York archdiocese’s Catholic Charities; Wanda Vasquez, Hispanic ministry director for the archdiocese; and Fr. Leopoldo Perez, Christopher Ljungquist, and Richard Coll of the US bishops’ conference.

Communist rule in Cuba was established soon after the conclusion of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, which ousted the authoritarian ruler Fulgencio Batista. Since the revolution, relations between the US and Cuba have been frigid.

Relations improved under the Obama administration, but many of the reforms were reversed shortly after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The US bishops said that president Trump’s changes to US policy on Cuba would end up weakening human rights on the island.

“The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in solidarity with the bishops of Cuba and the Holy See, has long held that human rights and religious freedom will be strengthened through more engagement between the Cuban and American people, not less,” said Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces said in June 2017.

Bishop Cantú said Trump was correct that serious human rights concerns remain in Cuba.

“The Cuban government must be urged to respect religious freedoms and to extend greater social, political and economic rights to all Cubans,” he said. “The fruits of investment in Cuba should benefit individuals and families, and not the security forces.”

Cuba has seen some increase in religious freedom in recent years.

Under communism churches and schools were closed, and priests were exiled or assigned to re-education camps. The Church was driven underground until religious tensions in the country began to ease in 1991. St. John Paul II then visited the island in 1998. Pope Francis played a role in the 2015 restoration of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US.

[…]