Jesuits in Chile to compensate four victims of sexual abuse by former priest

Armida Barelli. / Archdiocese of Milan

Rome, Italy, Apr 15, 2021 / 12:11 pm (CNA).
Armida Barelli, a lay Catholic leader who formed “generations of conscious and motivated women” in the faith, will be beatified after the Church approved a miracl… […]

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 24, 2022 / 13:15 pm (CNA).

Amid a shortage of baby formula in the U.S., experts recommend parents scour smaller drug stores, check online, and join social media groups sharing information.

But here’s another, perhaps lesser-known, option they can also turn to for help: pregnancy resource centers.

Nearly 3,000 pro-life pregnancy centers serve millions of people each year in the United States. They offer women and parents in need everything from health care and material assistance to educational classes and job support — at little to no cost. Right now, for many of these centers, their work also includes connecting struggling families to baby formula. 

One center in Michigan, an affiliate of Heartbeat International, a pro-life pregnancy resource center network, revealed to CNA that it has a surplus of formula. 

“At this time, we haven’t heard of formula shortages at the pregnancy centers,” Andrea Trudden, vice president of communications and marketing at Heartbeat International, told CNA. “Quite the contrary, actually!”

Trudden recommended families turn to their local pregnancy help organizations for assistance and use OptionLine.org as a tool to find the center closest to them. 

“Since pregnancy centers are equipped to help pregnant women and new families with practical resources such as diapers and formula,” Trudden said, “they have been able to step into that gap during this time.” 

Some pro-life maternity homes in states such as Virginia and North Carolina said mothers are in desperate need and exploring all of their options, including feeding their babies with formula samples. But, these homes tell CNA, they are walking with mothers in their search, every step of the way.

What is this shortage about?

The nationwide baby formula shortage was caused, and then exacerbated, by a series of factors: supply-chain issues, recalls, the closure of a major production plant in February, and even U.S. trade policy. The result, data-firm company Datasembly found, is that more than 40 percent of baby formulas were out of stock in early May.

Babies with special needs and allergies rely on formula, along with babies in general. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 63.3% of infants were exclusively breastfeeding seven days after birth in 2018. Three months after birth, only 46.3% of infants exclusively breastfed. Six months after birth, that percentage changed to 25.8%

The trouble with formula began partially with the Covid-19 pandemic. Parents stockpiled baby formula at the beginning, which increased production, only to later discover that they had a surplus to use up, which decreased production. 

After consuming formula from an Abbott plant in Sturgis, Michigan, four babies became sick, including two who died, from bacterial infections. This led to a recall and the plant shutting down in February.

These incidents exposed the formula market as one not structurally prepared for emergencies, with just four companies largely in control of supply in the United States. U.S. and regulatory trade policy only added to the problem, restricting the exchange of formula internationally, The Atlantic reported. 

Months into the shortage, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reached an agreement with Abbott, one of the largest U.S. baby formula manufacturers, to reopen its Sturgis plant in the coming weeks. President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to prioritize the production of formula. And, in the meantime, the U.S. military has begun importing formula from Europe.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have called for action. Senate Democrats are pushing a bill that would send $28 million in emergency funding to the FDA. Congress passed, and Biden signed into law, a bill to expand access to formula for lower-income families during emergencies.

In the meantime, before the shelves are fully stocked once more, pregnancy centers and maternity homes around the country are helping parents in need.

Michigan

Helping Hands Pregnancy Resource Center, located in Hillsdale, Michigan, told CNA it has extra baby formula ready and waiting for parents in need.

“I have never seen this much formula. We have an overflow!” Lois Stoll, a volunteer who manages the formula supply at the center, said in a press release. The center, one of Heartbeat International’s 1,857 affiliate locations, accumulated its surplus over the last two years, during the pandemic. 

“It really is the result of an unexpected set of circumstances,” Bryce Asberg, the executive director, added in the release. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of clients fell but donations continued to come in.”

Asberg told CNA that the center has been running a material assistance program for several years where it provides mothers and families with baby clothes, diapers, wipes, and baby food or formula.

“We still offer all those items to clients who come in, but recently we have noticed a surge of interest in formula,” he said. “God has been building our supply of formula for many months, and we didn’t know why we had so much. Now we do!”

Washington, D.C.

In Washington, D.C., Janet Durig, the executive director of Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center, said that her center also has baby formula on hand.

“We’ve had some phone calls seeking help and we’ve had formula to give them,” she told CNA. But, she emphasized, the supply is limited because they rely on donations. 

“We have it to help people on a limited basis and are helping people on a limited basis,” she said, adding that the center welcomes donations of unopened bottles or cans of formula as long as they have not expired. 

Connecticut 

Leticia Velasquez, executive director and co-founder of Pathways Pregnancy in Norwich, Connecticut, encouraged moms and families to reach out if they need formula. 

She told CNA that the three-year-old center is there for any woman or mom in need. 

“We just say, ‘How can we fill the need? That’s what we’re here for,’” she said. “We definitely stand with them in any crisis, whether it be a formula shortage or an unplanned pregnancy.”

Parents in eastern Connecticut looking for baby formula can text the center at (860) 222-4505.

North Carolina 

Debbie Capen, the executive director of MiraVia, said that the baby formula shortage is affecting her group’s work in supporting and providing resources to new moms in need. The Catholic nonprofit runs an outreach center in Charlotte and a free college residence at nearby Belmont Abbey College where a pregnant student — from any university or college — can stay until her child turns two years old.

“Yes, the mothers we serve are very concerned about the baby formula shortage,” Capen told CNA. “We always encourage breastfeeding for our expectant mothers, but for those who cannot breastfeed, they usually rely on vouchers for baby formula through the USDA’s WIC program.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s WIC program, also known as the “Special Supplementation Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children,” offers federal grants to states for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant and postpartum women, and young children at nutritional risk.

Capen highlighted that WIC only covers one specific brand of formula, which means that moms must pay full price for any other label. Formula is at a premium price right now, she added, which only puts more stress on their limited resources.

In each state, baby formula manufacturers bid for exclusive rights to provide formula to WIC participants in that state. In return, they offer the state discounts, or rebates. For those who rely on WIC, this means that they face limited options.

In response to the scarcity, the mothers at MiraVia are turning to alternatives: food pantries and the MiraVia community.

“They communicate with our staff and each other when they find formula at a certain location, as well as contact stores to find out when shipments are expected,” Capen said. “They substitute with generic brands when possible and reach out to their pediatricians for recommendations and even free samples.”

Capen listed some ways that people can help during this shortage, beginning with communication and the sharing of resources.   

“For example, you can help by searching posts on social media and community apps like NextDoor or OfferUp to find those with formula and suggest where it can be donated,” she said. “Remind friends and family not to stockpile so that the supply of formula can flow to those in most urgent need. If you are pregnant and have received free samples of formula, donate what you won’t use to food pantries or programs for new mothers.”

Virginia

Kathleen Wilson, the executive director of Mary’s Shelter, a faith-centered maternity home in Fredericksburg, Virginia, agreed that “our moms have had many difficulties.” 

She told CNA about one of their mothers who gave birth to her fourth baby three months ago. At first, she used a formula brand called Enfamil Reguline. After it became unavailable, she began switching between brands and using whatever she can find, Wilson said. The mother has also tried ordering on Amazon and turned to her pediatrician for samples. 

“This is a mom who is trying to hold down a job, with an infant and other children to tend to,” Wilson stressed the “very difficult” situation.

Wilson said that two of the other mothers spent days driving around at one point to try to find formula for their babies. When necessary, they are also turning to sample packets of baby formula.

“Our staff and volunteers have been assisting with this and picking up and delivering formula when they can get their hands on it,” Wilson said, adding that donors have also pitched in.

“We are blessed with wonderful donors,” she said. “A friend just stopped in this morning with two cans of formula that he was able to find.”

“If donors are willing and can find formula, we would be thrilled to take their donation,” she said, concluding that she is “praying this comes to an end soon.”

[…]

Bogotá, Colombia, Sep 7, 2017 / 02:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic Church must avoid a sense of superiority and clericalism and instead teach forgiveness, reconciliation, and justice, Pope Francis said in forceful comments Thursday to a gathering of Latin American bishops.

“The Church is not present in Latin America with her suitcases in hand, ready, like so many others over time, to abandon it after having plundered it,” he said Sept. 7.

“Such people look with a sense of superiority and scorn on its mestizo face; they want to colonize its soul with the same failed and recycled visions of man and life; they repeat the same old recipes that kill the patient while lining the pockets of the doctors. They ignore the deepest concerns present in the heart of its people, the visions and the myths that give strength in spite of frequent disappointments and failures.”

He warned against those who “manipulate politics and betray hopes, leaving behind scorched land and a terrain ready for more of the same, albeit under a new guise.”

“Powerful figures and utopian dreams have promised magic solutions, instant answers, immediate effects,” he said.

The Pope spoke to the executive committee of the Latin American Episcopal Conference, known also by its Spanish acronym CELAM. He spoke at the apostolic nunciature in Bogota during his visit to Colombia.

“The Church, without human pretensions, respects the varied face of the continent, which she sees not as an impediment but rather a perennial source of wealth. She must continue working quietly to serve the true good of the men and women of Latin America,” Pope Francis said. “She must work tirelessly to build bridges, to tear down walls, to integrate diversity, to promote the culture of encounter and dialogue, to teach forgiveness and reconciliation, the sense of justice, the rejection of violence. No lasting construction in Latin America can do without this invisible, yet essential, foundation.”

“The Church appreciates like few others the deep-rooted shared wisdom that is the basis of every reality in Latin America,” the Pope continued. “She lives daily with that reserve of moral values on which the life of the continent rests.”

He advocated continued dialogue with this reality. The Church cannot lose contact with this moral foundation, this “vital humus which resides in the heart of our people.” In this soil, he said, “we see the subtle yet eloquent elements that make up its mestizo face – not merely indigenous, Hispanic, Portuguese or African, but mestizo: Latin American.”

He warned against the habitual traps this part of the world faces: a lack of focus, the squandering of the continent’s diversity, and “a constant process of disintegration.”

“To speak to this deepest soul, to speak to the most profound reality of Latin America, the Church must continually learn from Jesus. The Gospel tells us that Jesus spoke only in parables. He used images that engaged those who heard his word and made them characters in his divine stories. God’s holy and faithful people in Latin America understand no other way of speaking about him,” he said. “We are called to set out on mission not with cold and abstract concepts, but with images that keep multiplying and unfolding their power in human hearts, making them grain sown on good ground, yeast that makes the bread rise from the dough, and seed with the power to become a fruitful tree.”

The Pope warned of a “deficit of hope” in Latin America, but also pointed to Christians’ supernatural hope.

“Once you think hope is gone, it returns where you least expect it,” he said. “Our people have learned that no disappointment can crush it. It follows Christ in his meekness, even under the scourge. It knows how to rest and wait for the dawn, trusting in victory, because – deep down – it knows that it does not belong completely to this world.”

In Latin America, hope has a youthful face, he said. Some people point to young people’s alleged shortcomings and lack of motivation, and others see them as potential customers or seek to enlist them in violence and trafficking.

“Pay no attention to these caricatures of young people. Look them in the eye and seek in them the courage of hope,” Pope Francis said. “Look them in the eye and seek in them the courage of hope.”

“It is not true that they want to return to the past,” he claimed.

“It is our task us to present the young with lofty ideals and to encourage them to stake their lives on God, in imitation of the openness shown by Our Lady.”

Hope in Latin America also has a woman’s face, the Roman Pontiff reflected.

“From their lips we learned the faith, and with their milk we took on the features of our mestizo soul and our immunity to despair,” he explained. “I think of indigenous or black mothers, I think of mothers in our cities working three jobs, I think of elderly women who serve as catechists, and I think of consecrated woman and those who quietly go about doing so much good. Without women, the Church of this continent would lose its power to be continually reborn. It is women who keep patiently kindling the flame of faith.”

He stressed the grave obligation to understand, respect, appreciate, and promote women’s impact on society and the Church. He invoked the example of the women who accompanied Christ and did not abandon him at the foot of the cross.

“Please, do not let them be reduced to servants of our recalcitrant clericalism,” he said, declaring that women are on “the front lines” of the Church.

He stressed that hope must pass through the hearts, minds, and arms of the laity. He challenged a clericalism that treats the laity as children and impoverishes the identity of clerics.

Hope must also look at the world with “the eyes of the poor.”

“Hope is poor, like the grain of wheat that dies, yet has the power to disseminate God’s plans,” said the Pope.

Wealth frequently blinds us to “both the reality of the desert and the oases hidden therein,” and offers “textbook answers and repeats platitudes,” he said.

“It babbles about its own empty ideas and concerns, without even coming close to reality. I am certain that in this difficult and confused, yet provisional moment that we are experiencing, we will find the solutions to the complex problems we face in that Christian simplicity hidden to the powerful yet revealed to the lowly. The simplicity of straightforward faith in the risen Lord, the warmth of communion with him, fraternity, generosity, and the concrete solidarity that likewise wells up from our friendship with him.

The Pope stressed that God does not speak to us as if we were strangers or as if he were a solicitor delivering a personal summons, nor does he “lay down rules to be followed like certain functionaries of the sacred.”

Rather, “God speaks with the unmistakable voice of the Father to his children; he respects the mystery of man because he formed us with his own hands and gave us a meaningful purpose.”

“Our great challenge as a Church is to speak to men and women about this closeness of God, who considers us his sons and daughters, even when we reject his fatherhood,” the Pope told the bishops. “For him, we are always children to be encountered anew.”

The Gospel cannot be reduced to “a programme at the service of a trendy gnosticism, a project of social improvement, or the Church conceived as a comfortable bureaucracy, any more than she can be reduced to an organization run according to modern business models by a clerical caste.”

“The Church is the community of Jesus’ disciples. The Church is a Mystery and a People. Better yet, the Church the Mystery becomes present through God’s People,” he said.

Missionary discipleship is “a call from God for today’s busy and complicated world.”  In this discipleship, the Christian is constantly setting out with Christ “in order to know how and where the Master lives.”

“Only a Church which is Bride, Mother and Servant, one that has renounced the claim to control what is not her own work but God’s, can remain with Jesus, even when the only place he can lay his head is the cross,” he said.

Closeness and encounter are the means that God uses, with the mystery of the Church being “the perennial place of this encounter.”

He told the bishops that the most essential and urgent activities are to pray and foster their relationship with the living Christ, where unity is always found: “How greatly we need to be alone with the Lord in order to encounter anew the heart of the Church’s mission … How greatly we need to be recollected, within and without! Our crowded schedules, the fragmentation of reality, the rapid pace of our lives: all these things might make us lose our focus and end up in a vacuum. Recovering unity is imperative.”

“If we do not we set out with [Christ] on our mission, we quickly become lost and risk confusing our vain needs with his cause. If our reason for setting out is not Jesus, it becomes easy to grow discouraged by the fatigue of the journey, or the resistance we meet, by constantly changing scenarios or by the weariness brought on by subtle but persistent ploys of the enemy,” he said.

Yielding to discouragement is not part of the Christian mission, and Christ “does not feed our fears.”

“The Gospel is always concrete, and never an exercise in sterile speculations. We know well the recurring temptation temptation to get lost in the byzantinism of the doctors of the law, to wonder how far we can go without losing control over our own demarcated territory or our petty portion of power.”

He stressed the importance of Christ’s encounter with persons, and how he draws near to them, talks to them, touches them, and brings them healing and salvation.

“His aim in constantly setting out is to lead the people he meets to the Father,” the Pope said. “We must never stop reflecting on this. The Church has to re-appropriate the verbs that the Word of God conjugates as he carries out his divine mission. To go forth to meet without keeping a safe distance; to take rest without being idle; to touch others without fear … We cannot let ourselves be paralyzed by our air-conditioned offices, our statistics and our strategies. We have to speak to men and women in their concrete situations.”

He summed up his message by saying the bishops must serve with passion: We need to have the passion of young lovers and of wise elders, a passion that turns ideas into viable utopias, a passion for the work of our hands, a passion that makes us constant pilgrims in our Churches … My brothers, please, I ask you for passion, the passion of evangelization.”

He commended the bishops, their local Churches, and all the people of Latin America and the Caribbean to Our Lady of Guadalupe and to Our Lady of Aparecida, the patron saint of Brazil.

“I do so, in the serene certainty that God who spoke to this continent with the mestizo and black features of his Mother, will surely make his kindly light shine in the lives of all.”

[…]