Washington D.C., Mar 18, 2020 / 03:35 pm (CNA).- Congress has passed a second bill responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, including paid leave for coronavirus-related reasons for many Americans.
On Thursday, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to pass the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (H.R. 6201), a $2.5 billion stimulus package. The White House has previously said that President Trump would sign the legislation.
The House passed the stimulus package early on Saturday morning by an overwhelming vote of 363 to 40. Of those voting in favor, 140 Republicans joined 223 Democrats while 40 other Republicans voted against the bill.
Although the bill received broad bi-partisan support, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), James Lankford (D-Okla.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), and Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) all voted against the bill.
The coronavirus (COVID-19) was declared to be a pandemic by World Health Organization (WHO) officials last week. There are more than 7,000 confirmed cases in the U.S. and 97 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Wednesday.
Among other provisions, the bill helps fund free Coronavirus testing for all Americans and requires commercial insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, Indian Health service and TRI-CARE plans to cover testing diagnosis without cost-sharing.
Additionally, the legislation requires businesses with fewer than 500 employees to provide 14 days of paid sick leave for employees who are infected with the virus, are under quarantine, are caring for a family member with the virus, or who have children sent home from school closings.
“The vast majority” of businesses with more than 500 employees already provide paid sick leave, House Republican leadership said, commenting on the bill, but the New York Times editorial board reported on Saturday that some large corporations did not have an across-the-board provision for paid sick leave in their company policies.
Technical changes were made to the bill on Monday allowing for expanded tax credits for small businesses to provide paid leave, reportedly at the request of the Trump administration. Speaker Pelosi on Tuesday called for expanded paid leave in an expected third stimulus package.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Tuesday that the chamber planned to pass the House bill, but that the Senate would not adjourn for the week until “a far bolder package” was passed.
Congress previously passed a $8.3 billion response package that was signed into law by President Trump on March 6.
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Washington D.C., Nov 15, 2018 / 02:44 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. bishops’ conference and the Holy See face a class action lawsuit filed by six men who claim they were sexually abused by Catholic clergy during their childhoods. They are seeking financial damages as well as public contrition and reparation from the Church.
The 80-page suit filed Nov. 13 claims that the Vatican and the bishops knew about – and covered up for – the “endemic, systemic, rampant, and pervasive rape and sexual abuse” of the plaintiffs and others at the hands of active members of the clergy, religious orders, and other Church representatives.
The suit opens by invoking two passages of Scripture: “(B)ut people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed,” and: “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather, expose them.”
Rather than protect the plaintiffs, the lawsuit says Church leaders protected and – “incredibly” – promoted the offenders.
These kinds of “wrongful actions, inaction, omissions, cover-up, deception, and concealment” create a “conspiracy of silence to their financial and reputational benefit and to Plaintiffs’ and Class Members’ personal, mental, psychological, and financial detriment.” These actions are “ongoing and continuous” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday at U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. by four attorneys representing six individuals who lived in six different states at the time the abuse occurred – Iowa, California, Mississippi, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. It does not specifically detail the cases of abuse reportedly suffered by the individuals.
The attorneys who filed the suit are Mitchell Toups, Richard Coffman, Joe Whatley Jr., and Henry Quillen, who have previous experience with similar lawsuits on behalf of victims of clerical sex abuse.
Coffman, one of two attorneys on the case from Beaumont, Texas, told the Beaumont Enterprise that he has been watching the unfolding of the recent sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church and felt the “time was right” to file this lawsuit.
“(S)omething needs to be done about this problem,” he told the Enterprise.
“There’s just a louder and louder outcry going on across the United States for the Catholic church to do something about this situation,” Coffman added.
The lawsuit was filed during the autumn plenary assembly of the USCCB in Baltimore, during which the bishops voted down a proposal that would have “encouraged” the Vatican to “release soon” all documents related to the allegations of misconduct against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, whose case has been at the center of the abuse scandals in the Church in the U.S. that have unfolded over the past five months.
At the beginning of the meeting, president of the conference Cardinal Daniel DiNardo also announced a Vatican order that the bishops not vote on any proposed solutions to the abuse crisis until a meeting in Rome in February with other bishops’ conferences, a move that the lawsuit said was merely “kicking the can down the road again.”
Several U.S. bishops expressed their disappointment with the order, and the sex abuse crisis still featured as a prominent point of discussion at the meeting, though no action was taken.
The suit also claims that the bishops and the Vatican violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, aimed at organized crime, because the bishops engaged in federal mail fraud and wire fraud in the cover-up of abuse. The Catholic Church in the U.S. is an “unincorporated association” and therefore qualifies as an organization that can be held to RICO standards, it states.
The plaintiffs are seek “compensatory damages, economic damages, punitive damages, RICO treble damages, medical monitoring, pre- and post-judgment interest, and attorneys’ fees, litigation expenses, and court costs.”
They also seek relief that would compel the Vatican and the bishops to “comply with various state statutes requiring them to report the abusive Clergy to law enforcement or other responsible authorities, terminate the abusive Clergy, identify the abusive Clergy to the general public so that parents may protect their children going forward, release documents evidencing such Clergy abuse to achieve transparency, and such other relief the Court deems just and proper.”
Spokespersons for the USCCB have told several mediaoutlets that the conference will not comment on the lawsuit because it is pending litigation.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 29, 2021 / 17:09 pm (CNA).
A Catholic organization is calling on Oklahoma to stop executing prisoners following yet another botched execution Thursday afternoon. Oklahoma… […]
Patrick Norton stands near Sister Annella Zervas’ grave, October 2022. / Credit: Patti Armstrong
St. Paul, Minn., Dec 10, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Pointing toward the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto at the Saint Benedict Monastery cemetery in St. Joseph, Minnesota, 61-year-old Patrick Norton recounts the day 13 years ago when he was painting light posts in front of a statue of the Blessed Mother and encountered who he believes was Sister Annella Zervas, OSB.
Zervas, a Benedictine sister, died in 1926 at the age of 26 of a debilitating skin disease.
Norton, who was plucked from the streets of Bombay as a child by Mother Teresa and later adopted by an American family, had been hired by the College of Saint Benedict on Oct. 27, 2010, to do some painting. He told CNA that while finishing up the last light post in front of the grotto he thought to himself, “I wonder if the Blessed Mother thinks I am doing a good job?” When he looked down, there was a nun in full Benedictine habit.
“‘You are doing a good job,’ she told me. We talked a little, but I don’t remember what it was about. Then I watched as she disappeared,” he told CNA.
The encounter was so astonishing that Norton kept it to himself for a year. But in a chance conversation, he was told “there is a holy nun buried in that cemetery” and he came to learn it was Zervas. Eventually, he saw a picture of her and was certain that she was the one who had appeared to him.
Patrick Norton stands beside the lamp post he was painting near the Marian grotto when he saw a woman in full Benedict habit who he believes was Sister Annella Zervas. Credit: Patti Armstrong
An elderly religious sister at Saint Benedict Monastery — who also happened to be named Sister Annella — shared with Norton pictures of Zervas and a booklet about the young sister’s life called “Apostles of Suffering in Our Day” by Benedictine priest Joseph Kreuter, published in 1929.
“Why isn’t she a saint yet?’ Norton asked.
“Oh, I’m in my 80s and I’m the only one promoting her cause,” she replied.
“Sister, why can’t I help you out?” he replied.
Norton said she just looked at him. “I didn’t have any experience but felt compassion for her, and also, I did see Sister Annella, so I felt I had to promote her cause.”
He read in the booklet that Zervas entered the convent at age 15 and died from a painful, unsightly, and odiferous skin disease at age 26. She was also subjected to attacks from the devil and from a heartburn that made it hard to keep food down. At the time of her death, she weighed only 40 pounds. Yet, she asked God to allow her even more suffering and for the strength to bear it so she could offer it up for the Church.
Every week, Norton made 10 copies of the booklet to pass out. “I went to Sister Annella’s grave and told her, ‘If I am going to make more books, I need money.’”
A short time later he had a conversation with someone he had just met and told about Zervas. “How can I help?” the person asked him.
“Can you help me make 20 books a week instead of just 10?”
“How about 20,000?” the donor, who wanted to remain anonymous, replied.
The number of books Norton has now distributed is about 100,000. It was also previously published in French and Sri Lanken.
Another good Samaritan arranged for Norton to be interviewed for a video called “The Sanctity of Two Hearts.”
A friend of Norton’s located Joanne Zervas, a niece of Sister Annella’s, and Norton met with her. She gave him many of her aunt’s personal effects for safekeeping, including family letters, a silver spoon used to give holy Communion when Zervas was incapacitated, her rosary, a book stained with what is believed to be her blood, and candles that burned in her room when she died.
Word spread about the sister and there were reports of answered prayers through her intercession. Yet, it seemed unlikely that a cause for her canonization would open.
Norton recounted that Bishop Donald Joseph Kettler of the Diocese of St. Cloud encouraged him to keep telling his story but declined to take further steps in order to respect the wishes of the Benedictine sisters who were not interested in opening a cause for Zervas.
In a SC Times article in 2017, a spokesperson for the Sisters of the Order of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, said it was not the Benedictine way to promote one sister above another as it would “be contrary to humility.” A spokesperson from the diocese said that without their support, there would be no cause.
But Norton and a small group that had formed to pray that her cause be opened met monthly at the cemetery and kept praying.
After years of disappointment, Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis informed Norton that he was appealing to the wrong diocese. Zervas had died in her parents’ home in Moorhead, Minnesota, which is in the Crookston Diocese. But again, there was no interest in opening a cause there.
“I went through darkness,” Norton admitted. “I would say, ‘Really Lord, are you hearing me?’ One day I said, ‘I’m not getting any younger you know.’”
Norton questioned if he was even the right person to promote Zervas. “I’m not a doctor or a lawyer; I’m just a painter,” he said. But he had told the Lord: “Let me live each day for you, and I will tell people about her through my nothingness.”
Patrick Norton speaks during event at the grotto in the cemetery during event where the bishop’s letter was read in October 2023. Credit: Patti Armstrong
Then in 2021, Bishop Andrew Cozzens was appointed to the Diocese of Crookston. Norton heard that Cozzens had known about Zervas since he was a boy. Then on Oct. 15 Norton heard — through a letter from the bishop that was read at the cemetery to the prayer group — that initial steps are being put in place by the diocese to begin an investigation into Zervas’ life, which will make it possible for a cause to be opened.
Norton has now been promoting Zervas’ story for more than a decade.
“I couldn’t fall asleep that night,” Norton told CNA. “I was overwhelmed. The first thing I did was to thank Our Lord and Our Lady. Before going to bed, every night, I always kiss the cheek of Our Lady of Fátima statue [in his home] and say, ‘Good night, Mother.’ And I kiss the feet of Our Lord on a big crucifix from a monastery in Spain and say, ‘You are my Lord and my God. There is no other God, and I love you.’”
“Even before Sister Annella appeared to me, every Mother’s Day, I brought roses to the grotto and would tell [Mary], ‘You are the best Ma in the whole world. Happy Mother’s Day, Ma.’ I’d sit there and look at the big crucifix and pray the rosary.”
Norton said he is at peace with his efforts over the years to make Zervas’ life and holiness known. “Since the diocese is taking over, I’m going to just be silent and do my best to live in humility and pray,” he said. “I will pray a lot and thank the Lord for the work he is doing.”
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