News Briefs

Knights of Columbus celebrate 100 years of charity in Rome

February 11, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Rome, Italy, Feb 11, 2020 / 10:05 am (CNA).- A group of the Knights of Columbus are on pilgrimage in Rome to celebrate 100 years of their charitable presence in the Eternal City.

The Knights of Columbus have been working in Rome through nine pontificates and a world war in which Italy and the United States were on opposing sides, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson highlighted in a news conference Feb. 11.

“Our motto was everybody welcome and everything free,” Anderson said.

The Knights of Columbus’ permanent presence in Rome began in 1920, in the aftermath of World War I, when Benedict XV invited the order to offer charitable aid in the city, particularly to youth who were victims of the war.

The Knights had run hospitality centers for American troops in Europe, including Italy, during World War I.

After the invitation of Benedict XV, the group’s first project in the Eternal City was the construction of playgrounds for young people, Anderson said, something the order continues today with five sports centers for Roman youth.

During World War II, many of these playgrounds also became distribution centers for aid.

These centers were followed by numerous other initiatives. At the Vatican, some notable contributions of the order were the donation of the land on which the Paul VI Hall was built, and the restoration of various Vatican landmarks and artworks, including the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica and the statues of St. Peter and St. Paul in the square.

The group was also instrumental in the history of Vatican Media, providing financial assistance for the transmissions of Vatican Radio in the 1960s and the funding of a television satellite for the broadcast of papal events and Masses.

The Knights continue to support these broadcasts, bringing the “sounds, words, and images of the pope” to people around the world, as well as other initiatives of the Dicastery of Communication, the department’s secretary, Msgr. Lucio Ruiz, said at the press conference.

Guzmán Carriquiry, vice president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, spoke about the Knights of Columbus’ contribution to the work of the commission and its participation in the 1999 synod on America.

The Knights of Columbus has also partnered with the Fabric of St. Peter, which is responsible for the care and restoration of St. Peter’s Basilica. Anderson said upcoming projects with the office include work in the Vatican excavations, where there is the tomb of St. Peter, and at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.

In 2020, “The Knights of Columbus, an Illustrated History,” was published. It was written by Knights’ vice president of communications Andrew Walther and his wife, Maureen.

Anderson and the supreme council of the Knights of Columbus met with Pope Francis in a private audience Feb. 10.

The pope praised the order’s “work of evangelical charity and fraternity in a variety of fields,” also recalling their “faithful witness to the sacredness and dignity of human life, evident at both the local and national levels.”

“In our world, marked by divisions and inequalities, the generous commitment of your Order to serve all in need offers, especially to young people, an important inspiration to overcome a globalization of indifference and build together a more just and inclusive society,” Pope Francis said.

The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal order, was founded in New Haven, Conn., in 1882 by Venerable Michael McGivney, a parish priest. It has 1.8 million members worldwide who perform volunteer service and advance the order’s key principles of charity, unity, fraternity and patriotism.

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Catholic community mourns death of Arizona priest in car crash 

February 10, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Tucson, Ariz., Feb 11, 2020 / 12:26 am (CNA).- The Diocese of Tucson has announced the death of a local priest, who was killed in a car crash Friday.

“It is with a very heavy heart that I inform you that our dear Fr. Raul Valencia, Pastor of Santa Monica Parish in Tucson, was in a tragic car accident today and has died,” said Bishop Edward Weisenburger of Tucson in a Facebook post Friday.

“This news comes as a tremendous shock to his family, parishioners, and friends. Department of Public Safety officers informed his family that death was instantaneous,” the bishop said.

“I kindly ask your prayers for our dear Fr. Valencia, his family, and his parish. Of course, the death of a priest also affects the body of the presbyterate profoundly. Let us keep one another in prayer as well.”

According to local media, Valencia was involved in a two-car collision along Interstate 19 on the morning of Feb. 7, as he travelled to visit family in Nogales, which is near where the accident occurred.

The diocese announced that a viewing for Valencia will take place Feb. 10 from 6-10 p.m. A funeral Mass will take place the following day at 10 a.m. at Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Nogales, with local Bishop José Leopoldo González of Nogales as the main celebrant.

Another funeral Mass will be held Feb. 11 at 1:30 p.m. at St. Augustine Cathedral in Tucson. The priest will then be buried at Holy Hope Cemetery in Tucson.

Valencia, 60, was ordained a priest in 2003 following a career as a dentist. He owned his own practice for 11 years in Nogales, Mexico – a border town opposite of Nogales, Arizona – where he was born and raised.

He ended his practice in 1997 when he began attending Seminario Juan Navarrete y Guerrero. The next year, he transferred to Assumption Seminary in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, Texas, where he finished his theological studies in 2002.

Following his ordination, Valencia was assigned to St. Monica’s, where he served for a year in 2003. He was then assigned to St. Jude Thaddeus in San Luis, Arizona, where he served until he became the pastor of St. Monica’s in 2011.

Father Edson Elizarras, the pastor at Saint Christopher’s in nearby Marana, had known Valencia since high school. He told KVOA 4 that the priest was a man of tremendous character.

“He was very supportive and always said ‘Si se puede, you can do it, don’t be afraid, take courage in the Lord’,” Elizarras said.

 

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‘A disturbing time in America’: Pro-life Dems respond to Sanders

February 10, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Washington D.C., Feb 10, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- Pro-life Democrats responded on Monday to Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ suggestion that there is no room in the party for pro-lifers.

“It’s a disturbing time in America,” Louisiana state senator Katrina Jackson (D) told CNA, “when the party that’s supposed to be the big tent party, that has always had differing views not only on abortion but also on other issues, begins to have candidates that try to close off the party to those with diverse views.”

“Across our country, there are pro-life people of all political persuasions and I don’t believe it makes sense for any party to try to exclude people because of their position on life,” Rep. Colin Peterson (D-Minn.) said to CNA on Monday.

Democratic presidential candidates continued their support of legalized abortion over the weekend, while in New Hampshire for Tuesday’s primary.

At a debate at St. Anselm College in Manchester, hosted by ABC News on Friday evening, candidates pledged that they would implement a litmus test on abortion for judicial candidates, and push to codify legal abortion.

On Saturday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—the longest-serving politically independent member of Congress in U.S. history—said that support for abortion “is an absolutely essential part of being a Democrat.”

Sanders, in addition to running for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, ran for the party’s nomination in 2016 but has always served as a political independent while in the House and Senate.

“By this time in history, I think, when we talk about what a Democrat is, I think being pro-choice is essentially—an essential part of that,” Sanders said on Saturday at a presidential forum co-hosted by the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the Demand Justice Initiative.

Jackson, in response, told CNA on Monday that Sanders’ rhetoric is unpresidential.

“What you’ve said to America is ‘I cannot assume the role as president and represent all Americans’,” Jackson said.

She said that abortion is a “Christian issue,” and thus “for Christians who read the Word and understand the Word,” to say the party has no room for pro-lifers, “you’re essentially saying is there’s no room in the party for a Christian who follows God’s Word.”

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who was the unofficial winner of last week’s Iowa caucuses, on Saturday reiterated previous campaign trail statements that he supports legal abortion even if pro-life Democrats oppose him because of the issue.

“We are a big tent,” he said, acknowledging that some people identify both as a Democrat and as pro-life. However, he added, he will not soften his pro-abortion platform to get pro-life Democratic votes.

“What I’m not going to do is get somebody’s vote by tricking them,” he said, noting that any attempts to criminalize abortion and punish women or doctors “is simply not consistent with the values that draw me to the Democratic party.”

Candidate Andrew Yang at Saturday’s forum that one “pro-life voter” told him his policy of providing $1,000-per-month universal basic income would support women in need, and that the voter would support Yang because of this.

“I have zero compromise when it comes to women’s reproductive rights,” said Yang, who has previously said abortion at any point in pregnancy should be up to the woman.

However, Yang said that abortion should not be celebrated—an answer that drew a rebuke from the head of NARAL.

“I think we have to get back to the point where no one is suggesting that we should be celebrating an abortion at any point in the pregnancy,” Yang said

He added that “it’s a tragedy, to me, if someone decides that they don’t want to have a child, and they’re on the fence, and that maybe at some point later—it’s a very, very difficult personal decision, and it should be something that we’re very, very sensitive to.”

Ilyse Hogue,  the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, tweeted in response, “This was a bad take” which “shows a dangerous ignorance about abortions later in pregnancy and it perpetuates stigma of women who choose not to have families for reasons that are varied and very much none of our business.”

At Friday’s debate, candidates also promised they would only appoint pro-abortion candidates to the federal judiciary, and said they would codify Roe v. Wade.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said that legal abortion is “a fundamental value of the Constitution, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) advocated for “a national law to protect the right of a woman’s choice.”

Sanders pledged not to “nominate any person to the Supreme Court, or the federal courts in general, who is not 100% Roe v. Wade,” and pushed to “significantly expand funding for Planned Parenthood.”

On Saturday, Buttigieg said that “the American people” largely support the Roe v. Wade “framework” of few restrictions on abortion earlier in pregnancies and “very few exceptions” late in pregnancy.

Buttigieg, however, did not give limits on late-term abortion that he supported, saying instead that “the time has come to trust women to make decisions for themselves.”

For late-term abortions, he said, “usually we’re talking about cases where, by definition, if it’s late-term, a parent, a family, a woman is expecting to carry a pregnancy to term and then gets devastating medical news” about her health or the health of the baby.”

“That creates an unthinkable situation,” he said, and “that decision will not be made any better, medically or morally, because it is being dictated by some government official.”

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Cardinal Dolan making pastoral visit to Cuba

February 10, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Havana, Cuba, Feb 10, 2020 / 03:45 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York is in the midst of a visit to Cuba, having been invited to the country by its bishops and its president.

During his Feb. 7-12 visit, he is saying Mass at the Havana cathedral and at the Basilica Santuario Nacional de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre; meeting with the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Giampiero Gloder; visiting Catholic charities and a seminary; and meeting with president Miguel Diaz-Canel.

According to the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal Dolan “accepted the invitation after consultation with the United States State Department and the Holy See.”

Diaz-Canel had met Cardinal Dolan in 2018, and while in New York to speak to the United Nations, he met with the cardinal and gave him a statue of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre.

Accompanying the cardinal are Bishop Octavio Cisneros, Auxiliary Bishop of Brooklyn; Msgr. Kevin Sullivan, executive director of the New York archdiocese’s Catholic Charities; Wanda Vasquez, Hispanic ministry director for the archdiocese; and Fr. Leopoldo Perez, Christopher Ljungquist, and Richard Coll of the US bishops’ conference.

Communist rule in Cuba was established soon after the conclusion of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, which ousted the authoritarian ruler Fulgencio Batista. Since the revolution, relations between the US and Cuba have been frigid.

Relations improved under the Obama administration, but many of the reforms were reversed shortly after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The US bishops said that president Trump’s changes to US policy on Cuba would end up weakening human rights on the island.

“The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in solidarity with the bishops of Cuba and the Holy See, has long held that human rights and religious freedom will be strengthened through more engagement between the Cuban and American people, not less,” said Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces said in June 2017.

Bishop Cantú said Trump was correct that serious human rights concerns remain in Cuba.

“The Cuban government must be urged to respect religious freedoms and to extend greater social, political and economic rights to all Cubans,” he said. “The fruits of investment in Cuba should benefit individuals and families, and not the security forces.”

Cuba has seen some increase in religious freedom in recent years.

Under communism churches and schools were closed, and priests were exiled or assigned to re-education camps. The Church was driven underground until religious tensions in the country began to ease in 1991. St. John Paul II then visited the island in 1998. Pope Francis played a role in the 2015 restoration of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US.

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Newman relic reported stolen from Birmingham Oratory

February 10, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Birmingham, England, Feb 10, 2020 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- A first-class relic of St. John Henry Newman was stolen from the Birmingham Oratory sometime in late January, the Oratory announced in its weekly newsletter.

“Sadly, the only piece of bone thought to have been St John Henry’s was stolen from its casket in the Newman Shrine. If anyone has seen any suspicious activity, please inform one of the Fathers or Brothers,” read a notice in the Oratory’s Feb. 2 newsletter.

The though reported at the beginning of the month, the most recent edition of the Oratory’s newsletter does not include any further mention of the theft, and the West Midlands Police told CNA that they were “unable to find a report of theft from Birmingham Oratory.”

The Birmingham Oratory did not respond to CNA’s request for comment. 

News of the theft was first reported on Saturday, Feb. 8, in The Catholic Herald.

The bone fragment is one of very few existing first-class relics of St. John Henry Newman, who was canonized last October. 

A first-class relic is part of the physical body of a saint. A second-class relic is an item that was owned or used by a saint, such as an article of clothing or a rosary bead, and third-class relics are things that have been put into contact with first- and second-class relics. The bone fragment belonging to St. John Henry Newman was discovered in 2008, when his gravesite was excavated as part of the canonization process.

Due to accelerated decomposition in the Birmingham graveyard where Newman was buried, and the nearly 120 years between his death and disinterment, very few relics were recovered from the site. 

“The oratory cemetery is extremely damp, on the side of the Lickey hills and with a stream running through it,” said Peter Jennings of the Archdiocese of Birmingham in 2008, when Newman’s cause was under examination. “The undertakers hadn’t been digging for long when they warned us that we’d be lucky to find any recognizable remains at all.”

Newman was a 19th century theologian, poet, Catholic priest and cardinal. Born in 1801, before his conversion he was a well-known and much-respected Oxford academic, Anglican preacher, and public intellectual.

His conversion to the Catholic faith in 1845 was controversial in England, and resulted in the loss of many friends, including his own sister, who never spoke to him again.

He became a priest in 1847 and founded the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England. He was particularly dedicated to education, founding two schools for boys and the Catholic University of Ireland. His “Idea is a University” became a foundational text on Catholic higher education. He was a prolific author and letter writer. Newman died in Birmingham in 1890 at the age of 89.

At the time of his canonization last year, St. John Henry Newman became Britain’s first new saint since the canonization of St. John Ogilvie in 1976.

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Vatican official claims Canon law required giving communion to pro-choice Argentine president and consort

February 10, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, Feb 10, 2020 / 01:55 pm (CNA).- A Vatican official has defended his decision to administer the Eucharist to Argentina’s president, despite the leader’s effort to legalize abortion in his country. The official also administered the sacrament to the president’s consort, who is by protocol Argentina’s first lady.

Argentine Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, administered Holy Communion during a Mass offered Jan. 31 in the grotto of St. Peter’s Basilica, shortly before a meeting between Fernández’ and Pope Francis.

Argentine newspaper La Nación posted a video of the Mass, in which Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández and Fabiola Yáñez, the president’s domestic partner, can be seen approaching the bishop to receive the Eucharist.

Fernández has pledged to promote a bill in the country’s legislature that would legalize abortion. In 2018, Argentina’s Senate defeated a bill that would have legalized abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.

The Argentine bishops have responded to the president’s abortion advocacy with a planned pro-life Mass and other pro-life activities.

Fernández was divorced in 2005. Yanez has been his consort since 2014; in 2019 she moved into Argentina’s presidential residence.

Sorondo was asked by online newsite LifeSiteNews last week about the distribution of Holy Communion to Fernandez.

The bishop said that according to canon law “you are obliged to give communion if somebody asks you for communion. Only in the case that he is excommunicated. The President is not excommunicated, so I can give communion if he asks me for communion.”

Canon 915 of the Church’s Code of Canon Law says that Catholics who are ”obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.”

In 1994, the Congregation from the Doctrine of the Faith clarified that “Members of the faithful who live together as husband and wife with persons other than their legitimate spouses may not receive Holy Communion.”

With regard to advocacy for the legal protection of abortion, in 2004 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a memorandum to US bishops which stated that a Catholic politician who consistently campaigns and votes for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws “should not present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin” and that his pastor should warn him “that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist.”

Also present at the Mass were members of Fernández’ government, accompanying him on a European trip: Foreign Minister Felipe Solá; Secretary for Strategic Affairs, Gustavo Beliz; Justice Minister, Marcela Losardo; and the Secretary for Religious Affairs, Guillermo Oliveri.

 

 

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