News Briefs

‘Sister Strike’ gets her own baseball card

April 8, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Chicago, Ill., Apr 8, 2019 / 12:15 pm (CNA).- A religious sister can expect that if she is faithful to her vows, fervent in prayer, and zealous in following Jesus, her face might someday wind up on the front of a holy card.

But few religious sisters expect ever to find themselves on a baseball card.

Sister Mary Jo Sobiek, OP, though? She’ll premiere on a Topps baseball card this summer.

The sister, a member of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield, caught attention from baseball scouts and casual fans last year, when she threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Chicago White Sox game last August.

The sister bounced the ball off her bicep before delivering a strike straight over the plate.

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Sobiek, a teacher at Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights, Illinois, didn’t expect her pitch to go viral. But it did. Video clips got millions of views, made ESPN’s Sportscenter highlight reel, and were featured in national media.

The sister is no stranger to a baseball diamond. She played shortstop on the softball team at Cathedral Catholic High School in St. Could, Minnesota, and continued playing softball at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth.

“Growing up, I was naturally gifted as an athlete — that was my God-given gift,” Sobiek told the Duluth News Tribune last year.

“To be a good athlete, you have to be strong in body, mind, and spirit,” Sobiek told Runner’s World.

“There will be times that you’ll lose, and you have to know how to prepare your mind for those failures. Striving towards sainthood requires the same level of discipline, humility, and stick-to-it-ness.”

After Sobiek’s pitch, Topps decided to place her on a baseball card in their Allen and Ginter series, which features baseball players along celebrities.

“We wanted to feature her on the set because she is a huge sports fan, a lifelong baseball fan,” Susan Lulgjuraj told Chicago’s WBEZ.
 
“And when we saw her throw that first pitch last year, it kind of clicked. We said, ‘How cool would it be to feature Sister [Mary] Jo on a card?’” she added.

Sobiek, 49, earned $1,000 for appearing on the card, which she intends to donate for a scholarship fund in her name at Marian Catholic High School.

Though her baseball card debut is complete, Sister Sobiek fans and memorabilia collectors will be waiting, most likely a while, for the release of that holy card.

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Holy See tells UN a ‘right to abortion’ defies moral, legal standards

April 8, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

New York City, N.Y., Apr 8, 2019 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- The Holy See’s representative to the United Nations told the UN Commission on Population and Development that insistence upon a “right to abortion” at their annual spring meeting detracts from the commission’s efforts to address the real needs to mothers and children.

After UN representatives from European countries called for “speeding up progress” toward “universal access to sexual and reproductive services, including safe and legal abortion,” Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the UN, spoke out.

“To formulate and position population issues, however, in terms of individual ‘sexual and reproductive rights’ is to change the focus from that which should be the proper concern of governments and international agencies,” Auza said April 3.

“Suggesting that reproductive health includes a right to abortion explicitly violates the language of the ICPD, defies moral and legal standards within domestic legislations and divides efforts to address the real needs of mothers and children, especially those yet unborn,” the archbishop continued.

The Vatican representative also called for action to be taken when migrants are exploited, for “responsible consumption” of the world’s resources, and reaffirmation that the family is the fundamental unit of society.

Auza said that many of the questions involving the transmission of life cannot be adequately dealt with unless in relation to the good of the family.

“Governments and society ought to promote social policies that have the family as their principal object, assisting it by providing adequate resources and efficient means of support, both for bringing up children and looking after the elderly, to strengthen relations between generations and avoid distancing the elderly from the family unit,” he said.

Planned Parenthood’s Director of Advocacy María Antonieta Alcalde also participated in the UN Commission on Population and Developement’s 52nd session April 1-5.

“Every year, millions of women and girls are forced to continue their pregnancies due to a lack of access to safe and legal abortion,” Alcalde told the UN Commission April 3.

Alcalde called for “comprehensive sexuality education; access to sexual and reproductive health services; access to safe and legal abortion; and civil society participation” to be included in the commission’s program of action.

The UN population commission concluded its fifty-second session reaffirming their commitment to the “programme of action” adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo 25 years ago.

Saint Pope John Paul II wrote a letter to the Secretary General of the Cairo conference in 1994 stating that he was gravely concerned about the draft final document of the population and development conference. He noted that there was already a “tendency to promote an internationally recognized right to access to abortion on demand, without any restriction, with no regard to the rights of the unborn.”

“The vision of sexuality which inspires the document is individualistic,” St. John Paul II said.

The pope asked the Secretary General, “What future do we propose to adolescents if we leave them, in their immaturity, to follow their instincts without taking into consideration the interpersonal and moral implications of their sexual behaviour? Do we not have an obligation to open their eyes to the damage and suffering to which morally irresponsible sexual behaviour can lead them? Is it not our task to challenge them with a demanding ethic which fully respects their dignity and which leads them to that self-control which is needed in order to face the many demands of life?”

“Political or ideological considerations cannot be, by themselves, the basis on which essential decisions for the future of our society are founded. What is at stake here is the very future of humanity,” St. John Paul II said.

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French Catholic university encourages African bishops in self-reflection

April 6, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Paris, France, Apr 6, 2019 / 03:01 pm (CNA).- The Institut Catholique de Paris hosted a conference Tuesday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the leadership organization for Catholic bishops’ conferences in Africa, at which the Church in Africa was invited to reflection on inculturation and its relationship with the Church in Europe.

The Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar will hold its golden jubilee in Kampala July 26-30.

Brigitte Cholvy, a professor who directs post-graduate courses at the Institut Catholique de Paris, discussed the April 2 conference with La Croix, a French Catholic daily.

She told the publication that the interation between African and European theology means there is a need to discuss “the task of inculturation within a globalized context.”

“We need to be careful not to lean towards exoticism, while preserving all that has meaning in a given culture at a liturgical, ecclesial and Christological level,” Cholvy told La Croix.

The professor noted that those to be evangelized must be considered, while remembering also “that even in the most remote places in Africa, globalization has already arrived.”

According to Cholvy, the Institut Catholique de Paris “welcomes 50% of all doctoral students of Sub-Saharan origin,” and La Croix noted that many African priests and religious are educated in Europe.

The conference discussed Africa’s responsibility for mission; the family; and the relationships between faith and culture, and the Church and society.

Among the speakers at the conference was Fr. Leonard Santedi, rector of the Catholic University of the Congo, who said that SECAM “pursues common reflection above all,” and that “our voice needs to become stronger, less timid and be raised as it has been against Boko Haram in Nigeria.”

According to La Croix, self-reflection on the Church in Africa is hardly a new phenomenon; it noted the 1956 publication of “Des pretres noirs s’interrogent” (“Black priests challenge us”), which has been called “the birth of African theology”. The work, which La Croix said “led to the launch of reflection on African Christianity”, is a collection of more than 10 essays, with a preface by the then-Archbishop of Dakar, Marcel Lefebvre.

In May 2018 SECAM met with representatives of the German bishops’ conference to discuss integral human development, with both groups affirming their need to continue the work of evangelization. Such meetings have been occuring every four to five years since 1982.

The bishops pointed to poverty, misery, disease, and despair in Africa “caused by human greed and corruption, injustices of all kinds and violence and fratricidal wars,” and in Europe, a “dearth of spiritual values, excessive materialism and consumerism, individualism, little or no of respect for the life and rights of the unborn, of the aged and the infirm.”

“All of these evils .. point to the fact that as Church we still have a lot to do in our evangelization mission,” they affirmed.

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The last Irish priest in Wyoming

April 6, 2019 CNA Daily News 3

Cheyenne, Wyo., Apr 6, 2019 / 04:00 am (CNA).- “I am the last F.B.I.: foreign-born Irish,” Father Tom Sheridan, a retired priest of the Cheyenne diocese, told CNA.

Sheridan speaks with an Irish accent mixed with the slow drawl of a longtim… […]

After Guam archbishop removed for ‘horrible’ sex abuse, Catholics pledge reform

April 5, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Hagatna, Guam, Apr 6, 2019 / 12:00 am (CNA).- The sexual abuse of minors is “a deep and sorrowful shame,” Archbishop Michael Jude Byrnes has said after Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron’s conviction in a church court, adding that the Church on Guam must “ensure that the horrible harm inflicted to the innocent is never repeated.”
 
“Our focus shall remain on making penance and reparation in our Church on Guam, attending to justice for the numerous victims of clergy sexual abuse on Guam and continuing our mission to proclaim the love of God to the people of Guam and the Marianas,” Byrnes, the new Archbishop of Agana said April 5, according to the Guam-based news site the Pacific Daily News.
 
Byrnes said the Church doesn’t rejoice when its members “plummet from grace and are found guilty of grave wrong,” such as cases of “the grievous sin of child abuse.”
 
The Apostolic Tribunal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in March 2018 found Archbishop Apuron, 73, guilty of several abuse-related charges. He immediately appealed the decision. The Vatican court upheld the original decision Feb. 7, and the final sentencing was announced April 4 by the CDF.
 
As punishment, Apuron was deprived of his office as Archbishop of Agana; forbidden from using its insignia including the bishop’s miter and ring; and banned from living within the jurisdiction of the archdiocese.
 
He was not removed from ministry and remains a priest under church law.
 
Apuron has denied the charges. He said he was “deeply saddened” when the Pope confirmed the church court’s ruling.
 
“I believe that the facts and evidence presented demonstrated my total innocence,” he said.
 
Archbishop Byrnes offered “deepest apologies” to the victims of Apuron, whom he listed by name. The victims were altar boys. They included the former archbishop’s nephew and a former seminarian. They said the crimes happened while Apuron was a parish priest.
 
“I am truly sorry for the betrayal and severe anguish that you suffered and continue to suffer,” Byrnes said.
 
Walter Denton, who accused Apuron of raping him at the age of 13, thanked Byrnes for “all his support.”
 
“He has made the Catholic Church a better place for the people of Guam and especially for our beautiful children who are altar servers,” he said, the Pacific Daily News reports.
 
Roland Paul Sondia, who was also abused in 1977, voiced hope that Byrnes “would do his best to try to make the Church whole again, and that’s what we want.”
 
Byrnes had been serving as coadjutor Archbishop of Agana and became full Archbishop upon Apuron’s removal.
 
Speaking to CNA last year, a source close to the Apuron case noted a contradiction between the penalty and the sentence of sexual abuse against minors – a grave offense which usually carries the penalty of removal from the clerical state.
 
On Thursday Apuron called the sentence, which prevents him from living in Guam, a penalty “analogous to a death sentence,” adding: “I lose my homeland, my family, my church, my people, even my language, and I remain alone in complete humiliation, old and in failing health.”
 
He professed his obedience to the Pope and said he submits to his judgment and thanked him for “allowing me to continue serving as a priest and archbishop without insignia.”
 
The former archbishop said the pontifical secret prevents him from “litigating my good name in public,” but claimed that “many individuals” have come forward privately and publicly in his defense “despite threats and the climate of fear in my beloved home of Guam.”
 
He blamed a climate of fear and publicity in the local media for hampering the court’s work. This climate “testifies to the presence of a pressure group that plotted to destroy me, and which has made itself clearly known even to authorities in Rome,” he said.
 
Apuron claimed that some people have told him they were asked to make false allegations against him in return for money.
 
He offered his suffering for the Pope, for his accusers, and for “those who have plotted for my removal.”
 
The archdiocese is working to settle civil lawsuits for the sex abuse claims. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January. At the time, there were lawsuits seeking about $115 million in legal claims pending against the archdiocese.
 
In 2016, the territorial legislature lifted the statute of limitations for sexual abuse of minors. Since then, nearly two dozen clergy in Guam have been named as defendants in over 200 sex abuse cases, Pacific Daily News reports.
 
Byrnes has implemented new child protection policies in the archdiocese, including a safe environment program that he said will help begin a culture change in the archdiocese.

 

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US bishops, CRS urge administration to grant Venezuelans protected status

April 5, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., Apr 5, 2019 / 05:01 pm (CNA).- Catholic leaders issued a letter Thursday to United States government officials asking for a temporary legal status for thousands Venezuelan nationals who would otherwise risk returning to a hazardous crisis.   

The April 4 letter asks of the Secretaries of Homeland Security and State that Venezuela be designated for temporary protected status for 18 months.

TPS allows people who are unable to return safely to their home countries because of armed conflict, other violence, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions to remain in the United States while the situation in their home country resolves. It protects them from deportation and grants them permission to work.

The letter was signed by Bishop Joe Vásquez of Austin, chairman to the USCCB Committee on Migration, and by Sean Callahan, president of Catholic Relief Services.

“Given the unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, its nationals cannot safely be returned home at this time,” the letter read.

According to the letter, an estimated 150,000 Venezuelans would qualify for TPS.

Since Nicolas Maduro became president of Venezuela in 2013, the country has been marred by violence and social upheaval. Under the socialist government, the country has seen severe shortages and hyperinflation, and an estimated 3 million have emigrated.

“Our nation has the legal ability, as well as the moral responsibility, to provide Venezuelans in the U.S. with temporary protection,” wrote Callahan and Bishop Vasquez.

“As you well know, while stability in Venezuela hasbeen tenuous since 2015, it is continuing to deteriorate at an alarming rate,” they added. To evidence this claim, they noted that the State Department issued a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Venezuela last month, shortly after it withdrew its diplomatic personnel from the country.

In issuing the travel advisory, the State Department “explained that in addition to violent political demonstrations and shortages in basic necessities (food, water electricity, and medical care), the country suffers from high rates of violent crime, such as homicide,armed robbery, and kidnapping.”

Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo himself suggested that the Organization of American States should be concerned with the crisis in Venezuela (along with those in Cuba and Nicaragua), rather than with lobbying for abortion.

The Catholic leaders noted that “distressing conditions discussed above show that such a designation would be appropriate and could be made either on the grounds that: (1) Venezuela is suffering from ‘ongoing armed conflict within the state’ and, consequently, return of nationals to the country would ‘pose a serious threat to their personal safety,’ or (2) that it isfacing ‘extraordinary and temporary conditions’ that prevent nationals ‘from returning to the state in safety,’” making note of the conditions required for TPS under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Callahan and Vasquez said that “providing a TPS designation for Venezuela is also a moral, compassionate and needed response.”

TPS would ensure that Venezuelans resident in the US “are not returned to dangerous and life-threatening situations7and give them an opportunity to live with dignity, work lawfully, andprovide for their families’ well-being until they can safely return home,” they added.

The Trump administration has for the most part been hesitant to extend existing TPS designations.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security extended TPS for El Salvador, Haiti, Sudan, and Nicaragua to January 2020 only as the result of a federal court order. The administration had perviously determined this status was no longer merited, and it was set to lapse.

Another lawsuit is seeking to extend TPS for Honduras and Nepal.

[…]