CNA Staff, Apr 15, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- Three Southern California ecclesial communities have filed a lawsuit against Governor Gavin Newsom, alleging that social distancing orders he imposed amid COVID-19 violate their first amendment right to freedo… […]
CNA Staff, Apr 15, 2020 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Chemical abortions in Texas will continue during the coronavirus pandemic after the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to overturn a lower court’s order on Tuesday.
On April 9, the… […]
CNA Staff, Apr 15, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The Justice Department (DOJ) is supporting a Mississippi church after local authorities fined attendees at a drive-in service during the coronavirus pandemic.
The DOJ filed a statement of interest… […]
Vatican City, Apr 15, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The Vatican is creating a commission to provide local aid and tackle issues related to the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, according to a statement released Wednesday.
The group, created at the requ… […]
Vatican City, Apr 15, 2020 / 09:05 am (CNA).- The Vatican has named a new director for its internal financial watchdog.
In a statement April 15, the Holy See press office said that the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin had appointed Giuseppe Schlitzer as director of the Financial Intelligence Authority (AIF). He succeeds Tommaso Di Ruzza, who completed his five-year term of office January 20, according to the Vatican.
Cardinal Parolin also named a new vice-director, Federico Antellini Russo.
The two men will run the watchdog, which combats money laundering, along with AIF President Carmelo Barbagallo, who was appointed after the departure of René Brülhart in Nov. 2019. A Vatican statement at the time said that Brülhart was leaving at the end of his five-year term, but the Swiss lawyer told Reuters that he had resigned from the post.
Schlitzer has held positions at Banca d’Italia, Italy’s central bank, the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., and the General Confederation of Italian Industry. He has served as managing director of AITEC, an association of cement producers, and vice-president of the Jacques Maritain International Institute.
Antellini Russo has worked at the AIF since 2015. He served as an economist in the research and development section of the joint-stock company Consip from 2008 to 2013. He then moved to the research department of the Italian investment bank Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, before joining the AIF.
Pope Benedict XVI founded the AIF in 2010 to oversee Vatican financial transactions. It is charged with ensuring that internal banking policies comply with international financial standards.
In 2013 the AIF became a full member of the Egmont Group, a global network of financial intelligence units. But the Egmont Group suspended the AIF on Nov. 13, 2019, after Vatican gendarmes raided the offices of the Secretariat of State and the AIF. It reinstated the AIF on Jan. 22 this year.
After the raid on the AIF on Oct. 1, 2019, a total of five employees and officials were suspended and blocked from entering the Vatican, including AIF director Tommaso Di Ruzza.
On Oct. 23, the AIF’s board of directors issued a statement expressing “full faith and trust in the professional competence and honorability” of Di Ruzza, but no announcement was ever made by Vatican authorities regarding the results of any investigation into Di Ruzza or his return to work.
During an in-flight press conference after his trip to Japan on Nov. 26, Pope Francis said that Di Ruzza had been suspended “because there were suspicions of poor administration”.
“Let’s hope he is innocent,” he said, “I would like it to be so because it’s a good thing that a person be innocent and not guilty, I hope so.”
Following the raids, the Egmont Group suspension and the exit of René Brülhart, two high-profile figures, Marc Odendall and Juan Zarate, resigned from the AIF’s board of directors. Odendall said at the time that the AIF had been effectively rendered “an empty shell” and that there was “no point” in remaining involved in its work.
Moneyval, the Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering watchdog, is expected to carry out an inspection of the Vatican this spring.
ACI Stampa, CNA’s Italian-language partner agency, quoted outgoing director Di Ruzza as saying: “I thank the Holy Father for the opportunity he has granted me to serve the Holy See. I am confident that in these years AIF has done its best to build a solid and credible anti-money laundering system at the international level.”
Vatican City, Apr 15, 2020 / 08:05 am (CNA).- Pope Francis prayed for the elderly who are afraid of dying alone at his morning Mass on Wednesday.
“Let us pray today for the elderly, especially for those who are isolated or in nursing homes. They are afraid, afraid of dying alone,” Pope Francis said before Mass on April 15.
The pope said that the elderly are “our roots, our story, our history,” and asked the Lord to be close to them as the world faces the coronavirus pandemic.
As COVID-19 has led to the deaths of more than 125,000 people worldwide, dioceses have sought creative solutions to bring the sacraments to the elderly and the dying. In Chicago, a team of 24 priest volunteers — all under age 60 — administer sacramental anointing of the sick to Catholics with the coronavirus.
In his homily, Pope Francis said that God is faithful to his promises. “Our faithfulness is nothing but a response to God’s faithfulness,” he said.
“Our God is a God who works overtime,” the pope said. “Like that shepherd who, when he returns home, realizes that he is missing a sheep and goes, goes back to look for the sheep that has been lost there.”
“God’s faithfulness always precedes us, and our faithfulness is always the answer to that fidelity that precedes us,” he said.
Speaking from the chapel of his Vatican residence, Casa Santa Marta, the pope said that God is patient with his people, as he was with the two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus in the Gospel of John.
“God’s faithfulness is a patient faithfulness: he has patience with his people, listens to them, guides them,” the pope said.
At the end of the Mass, Pope Francis dedicated a moment of prayer to Mary as the “Regina Coeli” Marian antiphon for the Easter season was sung in Latin:
“Queen of heaven, rejoice, alleluia.
For he whom you did merit to bear, alleluia,
Has risen, as he said, alleluia.
Pray for us to God, alleluia.
Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia.
For the Lord has truly risen, alleluia.”
Vatican City, Apr 15, 2020 / 07:25 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Wednesday accepted the resignation of Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli, appointing Brooklyn pastor Fr. Kevin J. Sweeney to be his successor as head of the Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey.
Serratell… […]
Vatican City, Apr 15, 2020 / 04:30 am (CNA).- Peace is often misunderstood today as a subjective psychological idea, Pope Francis said Wednesday, stressing that true peace is found in Christ’s sacrificial love.
“Those who have learned and exercise the art of peace are called children of God, they know that there is no reconciliation without the gift of one’s own life, and that peace must always be sought,” Pope Francis said April 15.
The pope said that there is a widespread sense today that “peace” means “a sort of inner tranquility,” but this idea is deficient and can hinder personal growth.
“This is a modern, psychological and more subjective idea. Peace is commonly thought to be quiet, harmony, internal balance. This … meaning is incomplete and cannot be absolutized, because restlessness can be an important moment of growth in life,” he explained.
“Many times it is the Lord himself who sows uneasiness in us to go to meet him, to find him,” he said.
“It can happen that inner tranquility corresponds to a domesticated conscience and not to a true spiritual redemption,” he warned.
Speaking via livestream due to the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis quoted Christ’s words in the Gospel of John: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.”
“Many times the Lord must be a ‘sign of contradiction’, shaking our false certainties, to bring us to salvation,” Francis said.
“And at that moment there seems to be no peace, but it is the Lord who puts us on this path to reach the peace that He himself will give us,” he added.
Jesus is the prince of peace, who fulfilled the Hebrew concept of shalom by reconciling all things and making “peace with the blood of his cross,” the pope said.
Pope Francis explained that the biblical notion of shalom means “abundance, prosperity, well-being.”
“When in Hebrew we wish shalom, we wish for a beautiful, full, prosperous life, but also according to truth and justice, which will be fulfilled in the Messiah, prince of peace,” he said.
He said that peace is not “the fruit of one’s own abilities,” but a “manifestation of the grace received from Christ.”
Pope Francis’ meditation on peace was a part of an ongoing weekly catechesis on the Beatitudes.
This week, the pope focused on the seventh Beatitude given by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in chapter five of the Gospel of Matthew: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
The pope said that this beatitude, the seventh one, is the most active.
“Love by its nature is creative — love is always creative — and seeks reconciliation at any cost,” he said.
In his message to Polish pilgrims, the pope noted that next weekend is Divine Mercy Sunday, and quoted St. Faustina’s diary: “Humanity will not find peace until it turns to the source of my mercy.”
“True shalom and true inner balance flow from the peace of Christ, which comes from his Cross and generates a new humanity, embodied in an infinite host of inventive and creative saints, who have always devised new ways to love,” the pope said.
“The saints build peace. This life as children of God, who because of the blood of Christ seek and find their brothers, is true happiness. Blessed are those who go this way,” Pope Francis said.
Gallup, N.M., Apr 15, 2020 / 03:01 am (CNA).- Native Americans have not fared well in pandemics and epidemics.
The smallpox virus, which killed the parents and brother of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, is estimated to have wiped out 90-95% percent of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in the span of about two centuries.
The H1N1 flu epidemic of 2009 had a death rate that was four times higher for Native Americans than for any other ethnicity combined, according to the National Library of Medicine.
And now, Native Americans are being similarly hard-hit by coronavirus, and reservation conditions mean the disease spreads quickly, and already-limited resources could soon run out.
“Unfortunately, on top of everything else that people are dealing with, adding this whole (coronavirus) situation is just going to make life that much more difficult for many families on the reservation,” Jeremy Boucher, co-director of the non-profit Southwest Indian Foundation, told CNA.
Since the Navajo Nation announced a shelter in place order March 20, Boucher and the foundation have been making food deliveries to a food pantry on the reservation to ensure that those in quarantine or far away from grocery stores had access to food.
But the Navajo Nation extends into three states – New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah – with several other reservations in the area as well. And local food pantry rules limited Boucher to delivering food within McKinley County, New Mexico.
“The (Navajo) reservation itself is about the size of West Virginia, and there is maybe a total of five grocery stores on the reservation, and most of those grocery stores are close to border towns,” Boucher said.
“And so Gallup (county seat of McKinley County) is really the central town for most people living on the reservation. So people sometimes drive two, two and a half, three hours to come into town to get supplies. And right now, they’re facing a situation where, if they’re home-bound under quarantine for 14 days, it’s really difficult to have someone come into town for you and get a bunch of stuff with all of the limitations that are happening at the grocery stores,” he said.
“So if you’re not able to make it, you’ve got to send someone for you, but then there’s no guarantee that, when you come into town, you’re going to be able to find what you need, because the stores are wiped out,” he added.
To expand the relief efforts, Boucher teamed up with Patrick Mason, a member of the Osage Tribe and the Knights of Columbus board of directors, to bring food to more people.
“We knew just from living out here – I was born and raised here – the need is out there,” Mason told CNA. “Whenever something like this hits, whenever an epidemic or pandemic hit, a lot of times it’s just devastating.”
Besides direct deaths from illnesses, Mason said, ancillary suffering and deaths typically occur in such crises. Many elderly people on the reservation live in simple, traditional hogans and lack running water and electricity and the ability to get themselves supplies.
They rely on family and friends to look out for them, but they’re often the first people forgotten in a crisis, Mason noted. “Not intentionally, it’s just, people are concerned, and they forget to go check on so-and-so. A lot of times they end up suffering in a myriad of ways,” he said.
When Mason heard Boucher needed help, he worked with the Knights of Columbus as well as Life is Sacred, a Native American pro-life organization, to organize and deliver food baskets to the Acoma people, a Pueblo tribe 90 miles away that includes Sky City village, the oldest continuously inhabited place in the United States.
They also consulted Lance Tanner, one of the owners of T and R Market (a family-run grocery store that primarily serves Navajo clientele), for the food baskets.
Tanner, also a member of the Knights of Columbus, knew what staples his customers would like in a food basket, including flour, lard, potatoes, coffee, and spam, as well as toiletries and water; and treats like Crackerjacks and Kool-Aid for the kids.
Once assembled, Mason said the baskets – which were actually three large boxes – contained enough food to feed a family for about two weeks.
“I had a trailer (from the Knights of Columbus) and we called it the COVID-19 Relief Canteen,” Mason said. They made their first delivery during Holy Week.
“Our first delivery went to the Acoma people, which is one of the old Pueblo tribes. Those are Catholic tribes. They’ve been Catholic for hundreds of years,” he said.
“They have some churches there that are hundreds of years old, and they’re very faithful Catholic people. They were suffering, and they said that they had about 140 people that were in desperate need of food, so we did our first delivery there,” Mason said.
When they arrived, they were told by the local volunteers that 60 more people had called in that day looking for food.
Wearing facemasks and gloves, Mason and the Knights and local volunteers unloaded the boxes at a centralized distribution center. Mason said they worked with local organizations who were able to deliver the boxes to the families most in need.
As word spread through the region that the Knights of Columbus were organizing food baskets, “then names kept coming in” of more people in need of help, Mason said.
Mason added that he also learned that another member of Life is Sacred, Dallas Carter in Hawaii, had been organizing similar relief efforts with his local Knights of Columbus for the native and vulnerable people there, and was in need of some additional help.
“Independently from what we were doing, he was doing something similar down in Hawaii. I talked to him and I said, ‘Well hey, we need to support you too.’”
Mason said the New Mexico Knights were able to provide a grant to the Hawaii Knights to keep their efforts going for two more weeks.
“Caring for our kūpuna (elders) has always been an essential value to the people of Hawaii,” the Knights from the Diocese of Honolulu said in a statement provided to CNA.
“With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent mandatory state quarantine many of our kūpuna were required to stay home without regular access to their normal means of acquiring food and other essential items. In fact even many of the regular food pantries, which many kūpuna depend on, were completely shut down for the safety of their volunteers,” they said.
“Several Knights of Columbus in the diocese of Honolulu, with the announcement of the quarantine and its inevitable effects on the vulnerable, stepped into the breach and began their own personal initiatives to help the kūpuna and other vulnerable people in their community,” the statement added.
Like the Knights in New Mexico, the Knights in Hawaii were delivering food supplies for two weeks and other necessities to the elderly and vulnerable populations – and so far have served about 5,000 people in their efforts.
Mason said his group of Knights have enough funding to keep their own relief efforts in New Mexico going for another two weeks, but he is hoping they are able to garner more support to keep it going even longer.
“We want to get the word out there, because really, everybody’s suffering right now,” he said. “But I think sometimes…those people on the peripheries are sometimes the most forgotten and the most suffering. A little old, 80-year-old grandma living by herself an hour from the closest person, is one of the first people forgotten,” he said.
In a statement, the Knights of Columbus in Gallup said that while this has felt like a long Lent for everyone, “by standing together, the light of Easter will be upon us, and together we will sing the Non Nobis and Te Deum as the mists of darkness clear.”
The unanimous decision by Australia’s High Court to quash Cardinal George Pell’s convictions on charges of “historic sexual abuse” and acquit him of those crimes was entirely welcome. Truth and justice were served. An innocent […]
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