Catholic bishops in Latin America and the Caribbean will join Pope Francis’ consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25.
The Episcopal Conference of Latin America (CELAM) said on March 15 that it had invited Catholics, church organizations, and 22 bishops’ conferences to “join the intentions of the Holy Father.”
The conference said it had received the news of the Marian consecration “with great joy and hope,” especially as there is a need “to redouble our prayer for peace and universal brotherhood.”
“We reiterate our affection and filial communion with the Bishop of Rome, raising our pleas to God our Father so that through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, he will grant us the gift of peace,” CELAM said.
“With our prayer and solidarity, we embrace our most vulnerable brothers and sisters and victims of violent and fratricidal actions, with the certainty that ‘God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God (1 John 4:6),” the bishops added.
The Vatican announced on March 15 that Pope Francis will consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25, the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord. The consecration will take place during a penance service in St. Peter’s Basilica at 5 p.m. local time.
Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner, will carry out the same act on the same day at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal.
The Latin American bishops said that they would participate in the consecration “in accordance with the time zones of our countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
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Father Cayetano Giménez Martín, a martyr of the Spanish Civil War who will be beatified along with 15 companionions in Granada, Feb. 26, 2022. / Archdiocese of Granada.
Granada, Spain, Dec 1, 2021 / 18:00 pm (CNA).
The beatification ceremony fo… […]
Volunteer drivers in Ukraine, working with the Vulnerable People Project evacuate vulnerable populations from war-torn areas of Ukraine. / Courtesy of Vulnerable People’s Project
Boston, Mass., Mar 10, 2022 / 06:52 am (CNA).
Jason Jones has a saying he often repeats to his staff at the humanitarian organization he founded, The Vulnerable People Project.
“The vulnerable are not weak people,” he says. “They’re strong people that have been placed in impossible situations.”
The Vulnerable People Project (VPP), which Jones describes as a Catholic apostolate animated by Catholic social teaching, was launched last year to respond to one such “impossible” situation: the humanitarian crisis that erupted after the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan, which quickly fell to the Taliban.
Now VPP is helping people escape another dire emergency: the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“We’re seeing the people of Ukraine stuck between these two powerful actors, the same way the people of Afghanistan were trapped between the United States and Taliban,” Jones, a Catholic film producer, speaker, author and activist, told CNA.
VPP is still helping to evacuate Christians and other minorities from Afghanistan every week, Jones said.
Now the organization is doing similar work in Ukraine, where Jones says it has transported thousands of people away from the fighting and destruction.
Many of them have Aleksi Voronin to thank for that.
The 35-year-old native of Kyiv manages a team of drivers, himself among them, who voluntarily take residents of Kyiv and Kharkiv, major Ukrainian cities now in the crosshairs of Russian forces, to the relative safety of western Ukraine or across the border into Poland.
The drivers are mostly driving vans but some passenger vehicles, as well. With the vans, Voronin said, up to a dozen passengers can be evacuated. He told CNA he’s working on getting a bus which could evacuate 50 people.
The vans are tightly packed, but Voronin says that he tries to provide the people with blankets to at least give them “minimal comfort.” He estimates that he’s helped evacuate more than 200 people, so far.
“I cannot find the right words to explain the condition of people when I pick them up,” Voronin told CNA, fighting back tears.
Providential connections
Because of VPP’s success in Afghanistan, a Ukrainian friend of Jones asked him to help rescue some family members from the Ukraine following the invasion. As a result, VPP’s newest humanitarian effort, Hope for Ukraine, was born.
Jones doesn’t speak Ukrainian, though. So getting in touch with Ukrainians on the ground posed difficulties, he said.
But as providence would have it, one of Jones’ friends is Los Angeles comedian Irina Skaya, a Ukrainian-born American.
“Jason said, ‘Look, we’ve been working with Afghanistan, but now this is a crisis.’ So he knew that I was super connected in Ukraine on the ground and we started evacuations,” Skaya, who is leading Hope for Ukraine, told CNA.
Skaya, who speaks Russian, Ukrainian, and English fluently, has about 200 relatives in Ukraine. Through her contacts, she was put in touch with Voronin.
Skaya had a comedy show planned in Kyiv Feb. 25-26, but that was canceled due to the Russian invasion on Feb. 24. She was supposed to be the opening act for Louis C.K. a popular American comedian.
Skaya said she always thought her purpose in life was to do comedy.
“Comedy is great. I love comedy. And when this is over, I’m gonna perform in Ukraine and try to bring as many American comedians into Ukraine as I can,” she said.
But war has reordered her priorities. “My absolute life purpose now,” she said, “is to defend my country, to save my country, to save my people.”
How to help
Jones says that Hope for Ukraine has about 100 Ukrainian volunteers, with other volunteers coming from Poland, Ireland, the United States, and elsewhere.
Even a volunteer-driven humanitarian effort is expensive, however. Keeping Aleksi Voronin’s passenger vans and other vehicles on the road gets more costly by the day, due to rapidly rising fuel prices.
Jones told CNA that VPP has raised $15,000 for Hope for Ukraine, but has spent about $50,000 buying resources.
The organization’s response to the invasion will soon include an ambulance and a trauma team of four Emergency Medical Technicians, or EMTs, one critical care paramedic, and two ambulance drivers.
Leading the team will be Andrew Hamilton, 23, a Virginia resident who has worked as an EMT at a construction site and has served as a combat medic while he volunteered with Kurdish military units in northern Syria.
Hamilton, a devout Christian, told CNA his mission is to support the Ukrainian people and if a wounded person needs his care, “they’ll receive the best medical treatment possible.”
Donations to VPP’s Hope for Ukraine initiative can be made online at TheGreatCampaign.org. Jones said he has secured a $200,000 matching gift grant, if the organization can raise $200,000 on its own.
Somehow, Jones said, VPP will meet that goal. “We seek to stand with those who have been abandoned because it’s dangerous to serve them, or because it comes at a social cost,” he said. “When everyone else flees, that’s when we show up.”
A man holds a sign at a pro-life rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial on June 24, 2023, marking the first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. / Joseph Portolano/CNA
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 7, 2023 / 16:20 pm (CNA).
Two recently instituted federal abortion provisions have raised the possibility of legal challenges under the decades-old Hyde Amendment that outlaws federal funding for most abortion procedures.
Both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Veterans Affairs recently instituted new policies offering abortion coverage for employees and veterans, respectively. The Department of Justice said it would cover travel expenses for servicewomen who seek abortions out of their respective states, with the DOJ promising in February to offer coverage of “travel allowances for non-covered reproductive health care.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs also recently instituted a rule allowing VA employees “access to abortion counseling and — in certain cases — abortions to pregnant Veterans and VA beneficiaries.” Both the DOJ and the VA’s new policies were passed in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court repeal of Roe v. Wade.
Political questions aside, it is uncertain whether the new rules run afoul of the Hyde Amendment, a longstanding provision in federal law that prohibits the government from using taxpayer dollars to fund abortion.
Named in honor of the provision’s chief sponsor, Illinois Sen. Henry Hyde, the rule — which has been updated several times since 1976 — outlaws federal abortion funding except in cases of rape, incest, or if the mother’s life or health is in danger.
Mary Ziegler, professor of law at the University of California-Davis School of Law, told CNA there’s “definitely a plausible argument under the Hyde Amendment” that the rules could run afoul of federal law.
“I don’t know if it will work,” she said. “But it’s not a completely ridiculous argument.” A conservative shift in federal judges in recent years, she said, means federal courts ”would not be an unfriendly place to make that sort of argument.”
Challengers to the abortion policy, Ziegler said, could argue that money is ultimately “fungible,” or interchangeable within intra-department budgets. Funding travel for abortion, she said, could mean “you’re in effect subsidizing abortion, and that’s disallowed under the Hyde Amendment except for the exceptions.”
Joshua Huder, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, was skeptical of the potential for the new rules to run afoul of Hyde.
“On its face, the Hyde Amendment is attached to the Labor, HHS, and related agencies appropriations bill and affects funds only in that bill,” he said.
“So funds appropriated in other bills for other agencies (like defense or the MilCon-VA bill) would not be bound by the Hyde Amendment provision since they are separate bills.”
The Hyde Amendment has regularly been at the center of contentious political debate in the decades since its passage. The measure survived a 1980 Supreme Court challenge. Republicans in 2017 tried and failed to make the rule a permanent part of federal law. The GOP over the past decade also attempted — again unsuccessfully — to write its provisions into Affordable Care Act rules.
During her failed 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton proposed abolishing the Hyde Amendment; Joe Biden during his successful 2020 campaign made a similar proposal, though Democrats have not succeeded in doing so in the first two-and-a-half years of his presidency.
Michele Swers, a professor of American government at Georgetown University, told CNA that the new abortion rules could generate intensive political fighting in Congress in the near future.
“Republicans are clearly making the argument that these provisions run afoul of the Hyde Amendment,” she said. “With a split Congress and 60 votes needed in the Senate, I think it will be hard for Democrats or Republicans to make any changes to existing Hyde Amendment language.”
“The provisions included in the House Appropriations bills will likely fall out,” she said, “but the fight over them could end up contributing to a potential government shutdown.”
Last year’s Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade will remain a powerful motivator for both factions in Congress, Swers said.
“With the Dobbs decision, Democrats see taking a strong stand for abortion rights as even more important for motivating their voters,” she said.
Pro-life groups, meanwhile, “are very focused on these funding issues in addition to getting a commitment for a national ban of some type.”
Neither the Department of Justice nor the VA responded to queries about their new abortion rules.
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