Vatican City, Sep 5, 2018 / 04:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The commandment to rest on Sundays is an invitation to be centered on Christ and to give praise and thanksgiving for the gift of life, not to waste the day in distraction, Pope Francis said Wednesd… […]
Washington D.C., Sep 5, 2018 / 03:00 am (ACI Prensa).- Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick made several overseas trips with the U.S. State Department, including some documented on Wikileaks, but a State Department spokesman avoided direct questions about whether his alleged sexual misconduct has prompted a review of his work under U.S. auspices.
“These are very serious allegations. We refer any questions about the ongoing investigations to the appropriate law enforcement authorities,” a State Department spokesman, speaking on background, told CNA Aug. 30.
“The United States condemns the abuse or exploitation of children wherever it exists, and we offer sincere condolences to victims,” the spokesman continued.
CNA had asked for information about McCarrick’s roles with the State Department, a summary of his trips, and whether the State Department is reviewing the trips for potential misconduct. The department was also asked whether it had any knowledge of misconduct or rumored misconduct by McCarrick and whether it had been informed of any Catholic disciplinary action taken against the former Archbishop of Washington.
McCarrick served in diplomatic roles for both the Holy See and the U.S. State Department. In November 1996, McCarrick was invited to serve on the U.S. Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad. From 1999 to 2001 he was a member of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom.
In the year 2000, the U.S. Secretary of State recommended him for the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, a recommendation approved by then-President Bill Clinton. At the award ceremony Dec. 6, 2000 Clinton said that two years prior he had sent McCarrick as one of his representatives on “a groundbreaking trip to discuss religious freedom with China’s leaders.”
“In tough places, where civilians are struggling to get out, chances are you will find Archbishop Theodore McCarrick working hard to get in and to help them,” Clinton said. “The litany of countries he has visited sounds more suited to a diplomat than an archbishop: the former Soviet Union, the Balkans, the countries devastated by Hurricane Mitch, East Timor, Ethiopia, Burundi, Cuba, Haiti, Colombia.”
The Archdiocese of New York’s June 2018 announcement of a credible accusation that McCarrick had abused a minor decades previously set in motion a wave of allegations about misconduct, including misconduct with seminarians. It is now known that Archbishop McCarrick was the subject of two legal settlements in 2005 and 2007 with men who said he sexually abused them while they were seminarians for the New Jersey dioceses he headed until his move to the Washington archdiocese in 2001.
McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals on July 27, the first American ever to do so, and Pope Francis ordered him to observe “a life of prayer and penance in seclusion” until the conclusion of the canonical process against him.
Questions about his alleged misconduct became even more controversial after Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former apostolic nuncio to the U.S., released an 11-page statement charging that senior bishops and cardinals for more than a decade had been aware of the allegations of his misconduct against priests and seminarians. Archbishop Viganò also stated that, in either 2009 or 2010, Pope Benedict XVI imposed sanctions on McCarrick “similar to those now imposed upon him by Pope Francis” and that McCarrick was forbidden from traveling and speaking in public.
Most controversially, Archbishop Viganò alleges that Pope Francis acted to lift the restrictions on McCarrick shortly after his election as pope, in 2013. Viganò says that he met McCarrick in June 2013 and was told by the then-cardinal, “The pope received me yesterday, tomorrow I am going to China.” Vigano said he met with the pope the next day and told him there was a record of misconduct.
Whether these actions, and McCarrick’s record of abuse of adult men, were known to Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, the Holy See’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and Pope Francis is now an intense matter of debate.
In his statement Vigano said in 2014 he read in the Washington Times a front-page report on McCarrick’s State Department-backed trip to the Central African Republic. While Vigano did not name the story, a report about McCarrick’s visit by reporter Meredith Somers appeared in the Washington Times on April 17, 2014. Titled “No rest for the retired: Cardinal McCarrick on a mission for peace in Africa,” it says the trip was a humanitarian visit.
Vigano said he then wrote to Parolin asking if the sanctions were still in effect, but received no reply.
McCarrick, who was ordained a priest by the deeply influential Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York in 1958, has spent decades in global affairs.
His record can be tracked through various websites, such as Wikileaks’ Public Library of U.S. Diplomacy. This includes declassified sets of State Department cables from 1973 to 1976, 1978 and 1979, as well as a set of diplomatic cables ranging in date from 1966 to February 2010 that were anonymously leaked to Wikileaks.
The document sets are incomplete and even those which mention McCarrick do not necessarily show direct State Department collaboration.
The earliest cables mentioning McCarrick, from the U.S. mission to the United Nations in 1975, discuss McCarrick’s work as secretary to Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York to help bring thousands of Vietnamese orphans and abandoned children from Saigon area to the United States. The effort included collaboration with Catholic Relief Services.
Some year 2007 cables include reports from McCarick’s visit the Balkans at a time when Croatia was preparing to join NATO and the European Union. These cables discuss McCarrick’s advice to State Department officials and his outreach efforts to leading Croatian Cardinal Vinko Puljic of Sarajevo. Local State Department personnel were focused on support for a continued Bosnian Croat presence in Bosnia-Herzegovina, lest these ethnic Croats leave for Croatia and possibly destabilize relations among Bosnian and Serb peoples in the country.
A 2007 cable from the U.S. Embassy to Israel discusses the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land. According to the embassy, the council was founded in late 2006 “at the initiative of Cardinal McCarrick” and Tony P. Hall, the Rome-based U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Agencies for Food and Agriculture. The council, which aimed to help religions serve as a peace-building force in the region, had financial support from USAID and the Norwegian Government.
A July 2007 cable from Damascus, summarizing news sources, reported that McCarrick visited Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to discuss Iraqi refugees. He was joined by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of the Brooklyn Diocese.
Year 2009 cables discuss McCarrick as a potential resource in advancing U.S.-Indonesia interfaith dialogue, and also his long-time role in China.
In a 2009 visit to China, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi conveyed McCarrick’s greetings to Bishop Aloysius Jin of Shanghai, a priest who was a leading Chinese Jesuit, then spent decades in prison on charges of aiding counterrevolution before his release in 1982. He was ordained an auxiliary bishop without Vatican approval in 1985, though he received Vatican recognition in 2005. The bishop said he and Cardinal McCarrick had exchanged visits “beginning when the latter was Bishop of Newark(sic.).” Pelosi said she would convey the bishop’s greetings back to Cardinals McCarrick and William Keeler, then an Archbishop emeritus of Baltimore.
In September 2011 McCarrick was part of a religious leaders’ delegation to Iran to secure the release of American hikers detained on accusations of espionage. A reference to this trip is made in the State Department website’s record of the emails of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a Sept. 12 email from then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice to Jacob J. Sullivan, Director of Policy Planning at the State Department. Sullivan forwarded to Clinton the email, in which Rice said that the delegation was fully expected to succeed.
While CNA had sought information on the State Department’s internal response to reports of McCarrick’s alleged misconduct, the department spokesperson instead discussed Catholic Church action and policy.
“We note that Pope Francis has committed the Church to ‘act decisively with regard to cases of sexual abuse, first of all by promoting measures for the protection of minors, as well as in offering assistance to those who have suffered abuse, and carrying out due proceedings against the guilty’.”
“The United States expects the Holy See fully to meet its obligations to criminal justice and to ensure full implementation of its reforms and policies designed to protect minors,” the spokesperson said. “We would refer you to U.S. law enforcement and church officials on the current state of those efforts.”
The spokesman also left unanswered CNA’s questions about current State Department policy in response to misconduct by someone in McCarrick’s roles.
McCarrick’s international work included a founding role at the Papal Foundation and service as a Catholic Relief Services board member from 2000 to 2014. He served on the relief agency’s Foundation Board from 2006 to 2018, when he was removed.
After McCarrick was suspended from active ministry in June 2018, Catholic Relief Services said it had recently completed a “thorough global review” and asked staff to report “any knowledge of previously unreported or unresolved allegations of misconduct.”
“There were a few issues that needed attention and have been addressed, but none of them were related to program visits,” the July 28 statement said, which noted that agency policy barred any visitors or CRS employees from being alone with children and program participants.
CNA sought additional comment from CRS, including clarification whether the review was implemented as a result of the McCarrick revelations, but did not receive a response by deadline.
Gdansk, Poland, Sep 5, 2018 / 12:00 am (CNA).- Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising, has said that the Church must support social and political unity in Europe.
In a Sept. 1 interview with Deutsche Welle, Cardinal Marx discussed a recent visit to Gdnask, Poland, where the cardinal paid tribute to the Polish labor union, Solidarnosc, or “Solidarity,” which played a central role in restoring democracy to Soviet-controlled Poland.
The cardinal said the union is an example “that we can make a difference. That things don’t have to just stay the way they are.”
“We have a reminder of the value of freedom, and we cannot take that for granted,” he added.
“It is always necessary to stand up for individual liberties, for minorities, for respect and for the fundaments of democracy – for what it takes for a free and open society to function with stability,” the cardinal said.
“It is a kind of symbiosis that requires constant work. And if you turn away for just a second, you’ll soon find out. The dangers [of neglect] become apparent very quickly.”
The cardinal said that in his view, protecting rights in the European Union depends upon “making progress towards a social Europe.”
We are interconnected with each other through various forms of solidarity,” he said.
“Through the European Union, for example, through treaties, through parliament, through guiding principles. We can’t do this without each other. We are staring down the barrel of Brexit right now. Our interconnectedness necessitates that we stand up for each other so that something positive can be the outcome.”
Asked about popular movements in Poland and other eastern European nations that seem to represent a shift toward “non-liberal democracy,” the cardinal said that “dialogue is necessary and takes place within the framework of the EU. There are cornerstones on which the various constitutions are based. But there are differences in Europe. And they are legitimate.”
A critical factor, Marx said, is that “a political majority does not reflect the whole population,” he said. “The population includes everyone, including minorities. An incumbent party cannot say: We are ‘the people’ to justify turning things upside down and no longer taking other positions and minorities into account.”
“People should be free to choose a political party, for – or against – a religion. In any case, I would like to live in a society in which freedom of opinion, conscience, and religion prevail – even a society where people do not agree with me or my religious convictions.”
Marx discussed the challenge of the European refugee crisis.
“The issue of migration is a common challenge. It is a wide field that we must tackle together, and I hope that this will happen. It is essential to move forward now and to develop common guidelines for a refugee and migration policy in Europe. It is about solidarity within Europe, but also with the countries from where refugees and migrants come.”
The cardinal said that the Church should work to counter European trends toward nationalism, which he called “one of the biggest causes of war.”
“Europe does not run by itself. I believe that the Church must never cease working or doing something for the unity of Europe,” he said.
“As a church, we should stand up for a society of responsible freedom. That is why democracy is the mode of governance to be sought,” he added.
Glasgow, Scotland, Sep 4, 2018 / 05:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Archdiocese of Glasgow has welcomed the city council’s decision Monday to reroute a Protestant march which was to have passed by a Catholic parish where a priest was allegedly assaulted when a similar march passed by in July.
“We are grateful that common sense has prevailed,” a spokesman for the archdiocese said Sept. 3.
“The re-routing of the march will bring relief to the people of St Alphonsus parish and the surrounding area, who viewed with anxiety and fear the prospect of another march past the church so soon after the disgraceful scenes earlier this summer.”
The Glaswegian public processions committee imposed an alternate route on a proposed march by the Rising Star of Bridgeton Royal Black Preceptory No. 672.
The preceptory is a Protestant, loyalist fraternal order separate from, but closely linked to, the Orange Order.
Orange marches are organized by the Orange Order, largely in Northern Ireland and Scotland, to commemorate the defeat of James II by William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. James had been deposed as king of England, Ireland, and Scotland in a 1688 revolution by the Parliament of England after he had expanded toleration of Catholics and Protestant nonconformists in the officially Protestant kingdoms.
A spokeswoman of the Glasgow City Council said the public processions committee “heard evidence from Police Scotland that disorder was likely should the march take place on the original route – requiring around 20 times the number of officers that would otherwise attend.”
John McBride, a Police Scotland Superintendent, told the city council that “this parade causes a serious concern for the police in terms of public order and disruption to the life of the community … because it can be reasonably expected that there will be a significant protest to the parade should it occur.”
“It is my view that the resources which would be required to police the parade would be disproportionate to the numbers involved in the parade,” McBride added.
The Orange walk is expected to include about 60 marchers.
The Royal Black Preceptory is considering appealing the council’s decision.
Opposition to Orange walks have increased since a July 7 incident.
Canon Tom White, 43, was greeting parishioners after Mass that day when an Orange march approached St. Alphonsus parish.
According to the Archdiocese of Glasgow, Canon White was spat at, verbally abused, and lunged at.
A 24-year-old man was later arrested and charged in connection with the alleged assault.
The Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland has denied any involvement in the assault on the priest.
Some subsequent Glaswegian Orange walks were cancelled after outcry over the attack on Canon White.
Police Scotland Superindendent Stephen Hazlett told the city council that “this is an area that needs to heal itself. It might take several years to de escalate back to where we were before July 7. We need to give the community time to reconcile themselves and return to normality. The feeling I get is that the time at this present moment is not right. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
A petition at change.org posted after the July 7 attack calling on Glasgow City Council to end the Orange walks has gained more than 83,000 signatures.
James McLean, spokesman for the Rising Star of Bridgeton Royal Black Preceptory said, “We feel we are being marginalised and demonised and that Glasgow City Council are acting clearly at the behest of the Roman Catholic Church.”
Scotland has experienced significant sectarian division since the Scottish Reformation of the 16th century, which led to the formation of the Church of Scotland, an ecclesial community in the Calvinist and Presbyterian tradition which is the country’s largest religious community.
Sectarianism and crimes motivated by anti-Catholicism have been on the rise in Scotland in recent years.
An April poll of Catholics in Scotland found that 20 percent reported personally experiencing abuse of prejudice toward their faith; and a government report on religiously-motivated crime in 2016 and 2017 found a concentration of incidents in Glasgow.
Washington D.C., Sep 4, 2018 / 04:36 pm (CNA).- As Cardinal Donald Wuerl spoke about the sex abuse crisis after Mass in Washington D.C. on Sunday, one man stood up and yelled, “Shame on you!” in protest.
“We need to hold close in our… […]
Washington D.C., Sep 4, 2018 / 04:29 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh began Tuesday. Before Kavanaugh could utter a word, Senate Democrats repeatedly interrupted the proceedings and attempted to delay the hear… […]
Chicago, Ill., Sep 4, 2018 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- Two priests from the Archdiocese of Chicago were arrested Monday in Miami, after the men were reportedly found engaged in a sex act within a parked car. At least one of them was a participant in a program for Hispanic seminarians that was suspended by the Archdiocese of Chicago.
One of the priests, Fr. Diego L. Berrio, is the pastor of Mision San Juan Diego in Arlington Heights, Illinois. He was also appointed this summer the interim “coordinator of the Office for Extern and International Priests.”
The other priest, Fr. Edwin Cortes listed the parish as his address when he was arrested. A Sept. 4 statement from the Archdiocese of Chicago said that Cortes is “an extern priest from Soacha, Colombia who served at St. Aloysius Parish in Chicago for one month, August 1 to August 31, 2018.”
The statement said that Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago “has removed Fr. Berrio from ministry and withdrawn his faculties to minister in the Archdiocese of Chicago, effective immediately. The archdiocese will appoint an administrator for the Misión San Juan Diego as soon as possible.”
“Archdiocese representatives have been in contact with Fr. Cortes’ home diocese of Soacha, Colombia and informed them that Fr. Cortes will not be granted additional faculties to minister in the Archdiocese of Chicago,” it said.
The priests were both charged with lewd conduct, and Cortes was also charged with indecent exposure.
Berrio was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2008. The priest, a native of Colombia, came to Chicago through the Casa Jesus program, a “house of discernment” in which prospective seminarians from Latin America were invited to consider the priesthood during a year-long program sponsored by the archdiocese. The program was founded in 1987.
The Casa Jesus program was suspended in 2016. In that year, NBC 5 Chicago reported homosexual activity among Casa Jesus participants, and said that in 2015 three participants had been dismissed after visiting a gay bar.
In September 2016, Fr. Octavio Munoz was arrested on child pornography charges. Munoz was the rector of Casa Jesus from 2008 to 2015, when he was transferred to a parish in the archdiocese.
On July 7, 2015, Fr. Kevin Hays, who had been appointed to replace Munoz as rector, toured the priest’s apartment with a Church employee, according to an ABC 7 report.
The employee claimed that a laptop belonging to Munoz was streaming child pornography while he and Hays were in the apartment. The employee reportedly contacted archdiocesan officials about the pornography more than a week later, and was surprised to learn that Hays had not yet reported the matter.
The archdiocese contacted private investigators after the matter was reported, but did not contact police until July 28, the same day Munoz was removed from ministry, according to the Chicago Tribune.
ABC 7 reported that Hays told archdiocesan officials he had not seen pornographic videos playing while visiting the apartment. Hays is now the pastor of Notre Dame de Chicago Parish in Chicago.
In a statement issued shortly after Munoz was charged, the Archdiocese of Chicago said that: “On July 28, 2015, Archbishop Blase J. Cupich removed Father Muñoz from ministry and withdrew his faculties, his authority to minister, after the archdiocese learned that the inappropriate material might involve minors. Given the nature of that material, the archdiocese reported it promptly to the civil authorities and have cooperated fully with their investigation.”
Another Chicago priest, Fr. Clovis Vilchez-Parra, was also arrested on child pornography charges in 2015. The priest had been serving as parochial vicar at Mision San Juan Diego, where Berrio is currently pastor. Vilchez-Parra was sentenced to four years in prison in 2017.
NBC 5 Chicago reported in 2016 that Vilchez-Parra had ties to Casa Jesus, but did not say whether he had been a participant in the program.
Also in 2015, the Archdiocese of Chicago removed Fr. Marco Mercado, who had been a Casa Jesus participant, from his position as pastor of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Des Plaines, Illinois. The archdiocese said that Mercado had had an “inappropriate relationship with an adult man.”
The Archdiocese of Chicago could not be reached for comment.
Editor’s note: This story was updated after a Sept. 4 statement from the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Kottayam, India, Sep 4, 2018 / 11:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Catholic priest in India spoke to a Muslim congregation on Friday to thank them for bringing food, water, and medicines for the more than 500 people who sought shelter in his church amid devastating flooding in Kerala in recent weeks.
Severe rains led to flash floods and landslides in Kerala in recent months, with some 400 people killed and more than 1 million displaced from their homes.
Press Trust of India reported that more than 580 people took refuge at Fr. Sanu Puthussery’s St. Antony’s parish in Achinakom, and the church soon ran out of food and water.
“I straightaway went to the Masjid, apprised the maulvi about our difficulty and requested his help. After the day’s prayers, Muslim brothers came to the church with a large quantity of food and water,” Fr. Puthussery told PTI.
“Pope Francis had said build bridges, not walls. The devastating floods has now given us an opportunity to destroy the walls and build the bridges of togetherness,” Fr. Puthussery told the 250 Muslims Aug. 31 at the Juma Masjid in Vechoor, about 15 miles northwest of Kottayam, during Friday prayers.
“I cannot express my gratitude to them in words,” the priest said, for the “help and support they had extended during the time of difficulties.”
He said youth of the mosque had also brought medicine to his parish.
Fr. Puthussery said he had gone to thank the Muslim leaders personally, but that “they invited me to their prayer hall and offered me their platform to speak. It was a rare gesture of togetherness.”
Those now returning to their flooded homes in the southwestern Indian state are encountering snakes and insects, contaminated water, and ruined crops.
Water-borne diseases are now a threat to Keralites. The state has declared a health alert, after 11 people died of leptospirosis, the BBC reported.
Washington D.C., Sep 3, 2018 / 04:49 pm (CNA).- At a time when labor unions are weak, Catholics still have a place in the labor movement, said a priest who emphasized the Church’s historic efforts to teach the rights of labor and train workers to… […]
Vatican City, Sep 3, 2018 / 05:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Monday that to division and scandal the answer should be silence and prayer; and asked the Lord for the grace to discern when it is better to speak or to remain quiet.
“Wit… […]
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