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Mexican nuns in need of help after Covid hits community

January 30, 2021 CNA Daily News 1

Mexico City, Mexico, Jan 30, 2021 / 06:01 am (CNA).- The Dominican Nuns of the St. Catherine of Siena Monastery in Mexico City sent an urgent request for “fervent prayers” to local and international Catholics after 10 of their 24 religious fell ill with Covid-19 early this week.

The superior of the community sent a letter to supporters and Catholic news organizations explaining that most of the infected religious have mild symptoms, but the required isolation is preventing them from producing the sweets, bread, and cakes whose sales constitute the financial pillar of the community.

“Two of our sisters have been in very bad condition and have been transported to a hospital, while our older sister, 87 year-old Sister Teresa Coronado, died of COVID late last week.
Most of us continue to be in stable condition, with minor flu symptoms, but social distancing is preventing us from fulfilling our regular duties. Please keep us in your prayers so that God’s will may always be done.”

In Mexico, there have been 1.8 million cases of Covid-19, and more than 153,000 deaths. Of the dead, 166 have been clerics and 11 religious.


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Mexico archdiocese denies claim it has abandoned ill former archbishop

January 22, 2021 CNA Daily News 1

Mexico City, Mexico, Jan 22, 2021 / 04:06 pm (CNA).- Carlos Cardinal Aguiar Retes of Mexico denied this week that his archdiocese has incurred “material and spiritual abandonment” of his predecessor, who is gravely ill with Covid-19, by not providing for his care in a private hospital.

Norberto Cardinal Rivera Carrera, 78, who was Archbishop of Mexico from 1995 to 2017, was admitted to a public hospital earlier this month.

Public hospitals in Mexico are widely considered to provide subpar medical services, relative to private institutions.

“In cases where hospitalization of priests and bishops is required, it is provided through hospitals in the state sector,” Cardinal Aguiar Retes has said.

“The decision that bishops and priests receive medical attention for COVID in these hospitals is because of the economic situation experienced by the Church throughout the country and in communion and solidarity with what thousands of Mexicans have lived during this pandemic and those we accompany through our daily prayer.”

The Archdiocese of Mexico said Jan. 20 that “the Vicariate of the Clergy of the Archdiocese is in charge of accompanying priests and bishops during their illness, maintaining contact, supporting, and monitoring their state of health.”

Fr. Hugo Valdemar, who for 15 years was communications director to Cardinal Rivera, accused Cardinal Aguiar Retes Jan. 19 of abandoning “both spiritually and materially” his predecessor, by denying him the financial resources for his medical care in a private hospital in Mexico City.

According to Fr. Valdemar, “caring for the health of Cardinal Rivera is not charity, is their obligation, and if they claim that there are no resources, that cannot be an excuse to abandon him. Don Norberto always took personal care of his auxiliary bishops and his priests.”

The Code of Canon Law states that “the conference of bishops must take care that suitable and decent support is provided for a retired bishop, with attention given to the primary obligation which binds the diocese he has served.”

The Archdiocese of Mexico said that if Cardinal Rivera wants to be taken care of in the private sector, “he can do so with his own resources or the support of the people close to him.”

The archdiocese reported Jan. 16 that Cardinal Rivera had been hospitalized after testing positive for Covid. Since then, the reports regarding his health have been increasingly pessimistic.

The communications director of the archdiocese, Javier Rodríguez, told ACI Prensa that Cardinal Aguiar Retes has assigned a priest to be permanently “aware of the needs” of Cardinal Rivera.

Interviewed by ACI Prensa Jan. 21, Fr. Valdemar reiterated his accusation and demanded that the archdiocese “say with reliable data how they have supported and cared spiritually for Cardinal Rivera, because if there is a priest assigned to take care of him, he was nowhere to be found last Monday, when Don Norberto was in danger of death, and a priest had to  be rushed from the archdiocese, because there was no one around.”

“I read the statement with great surprise because, as far as I know, no priest has been appointed by Archbishop Carlos Aguiar for this purpose. In any case, why didn’t they released the name of the supposed priest and thus be able to deny the abandonment that I have denounced? If they don’t give the name, it’s for a very simple reason, because it’s a lie,” he said.

Fr. Valdemar also said that if Cardinal Rivera tried a private hospital “it was because of the seriousness of his condition and trusting in the validity of his (Church-assigned) medical insurance, only to find out that the insurance had expired in August last year and he was never informed about it”.

Fr. Valdemar said that the insurance “expired because the archdiocese did not make the second payment. This is criminal negligence.”

“It seems to me that it is time for the Holy Father, or the Holy See, to intervene and put a limit to so much infamy against an archbishop prostrate in serious condition that he cannot defend himself and who faithfully served the Archdiocese of Mexico for 22 years and that, unlike the current Archbishop Aguiar Retes, has never left any priest in distress, who, by the way, were always treated in good quality hospitals.”

“If, God forbid, Archbishop Aguiar fell ill, would they admit him to a hospital like the Mexican Institute of Social Security? Are they serious?,” he pointed out.

According to the government of Mexico, more than 1.8 million cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in the country, with more than 163,000 deaths.


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Catholic leaders in Brazil ask for more oxygen tanks due to decreasing supplies

January 19, 2021 CNA Daily News 0

CNA Staff, Jan 19, 2021 / 11:01 pm (CNA).- As the second wave of coronavirus has severely impacted people in the Amazon, Brazilian bishops have asked for donations of oxygen supplies to help patients in crowded hospitals.

“We, bishops of Amazonas and Roraima, make an appeal: For the love of God, send us oxygen,” said Archbishop Leonardo Steiner of Manaus according to a recent video, Independent Catholic News reported.

Archbishop Steiner released the video Jan. 16 emphasizing difficulties faced by residents of Amazonas – a state in northwestern Brazil. He said that during the first wave of the virus, victims faced a lack of information and hospital beds. Now, he said, the patients are dying from a lack of oxygen tanks.

He encouraged listeners to put themselves in the services of others and follow pandemic restrictions instead of focusing on political divisions and promoting arguments.

“I make another appeal in [the] name of our bishops, that we put ourselves at the service of others, that we continue to use a mask, follow social distancing and carry on caring for each other’s health,” he said.

“We are in a difficult moment of the pandemic, which seems almost without an end. Let us all make our contribution and engage with solidarity in caring for the life of one another.”

According to Agence France-Presse, COVID-19 has killed over 210,000 people in the country. In Amazonas, the virus has caused an average of 149 deaths per 100,000 residents. Of Brazil’s 27 states, the Amazonas is the second-worst region to be affected by the coronavirus.

Governor Wilson Limas tweeted last Thursday that the state began to airlift 235 patients to five other Brazilian states because of a lack of oxygen supplies. Over 60 premature infants in Manaus were also airlifted to hospitals in Sao Paulo, about 2,500 miles away from Manaus, on Jan. 15.

Health officials have expressed concern that the coronavirus in the region has mutated into more contagious strains.

As oxygen supplies continue to diminish, those with Covid-19 and their families have forgone hospitals and relatives have waited hours to purchase oxygen supplies for themselves. While in line for a new oxygen market, local resident Fernando Marcelino told AFP that supplies are limited.

“Everyone here has a family member being treated at home. They prefer that to leaving them to die in the hospitals,” said Marcelino.

“The oxygen is arriving, but we don’t know how long that will last for,” he added.


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New book aims to help Catholics find Christ in the coronavirus pandemic

January 17, 2021 CNA Daily News 0

Victoria, Canada, Jan 17, 2021 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- When Father Harrison Ayre looks back on 2020 and the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the phrase that immediately comes to his mind is ‘dazed and confused.’ 

“I look back and I think to myself, ‘Oh, I could have put [that] more pastorally here and there,’” Fr. Ayre said. “But I’m also quite forgiving of myself in that regard because I think we were just all dazed and confused and no one knew what to do, because virtually everyone has no experience with a worldwide pandemic to base this off of.”

Fr. Ayre is a priest of the Diocese of Victoria in Canada, and co-host of the podcast ‘Clerically Speaking.’ His diocese initially suspended public Masses in March of 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Despite the early days of lockdown being a challenging and scary time in so many ways, Father Harrison remembers something else that happened during that time.  

“For me personally, it was actually a time of great spiritual renewal,” he said. “My prayer life was never as good as it was in those three months of kind of initial lockdowns and closures. It was a really a time of intimacy with the Lord, and praying – really interceding for the Church.”

A big part of that spiritual renewal involved the Bible. 

“The Bible is not just a historical document that tells us about the past, but rather it’s something living. God is speaking to the Church today through the events of scripture. Scripture is always pumping, alive.” 

The situation of global lockdown caused Fr. Ayre to read certain Bible passages with fresh eyes. For example, the story of Israel’s exile to Babylon, in the Old Testament. 

“They lost the temple, they lost the kingship, they lost their land…Everything that made them, the Jewish people, the chosen people of God, was removed from them,” he said.

“And in that process of that absence from everything, they actually came to a deeper appreciation of who God was and it purified them…It helped them see that God is not just the God of our land. This is the God of the universe. This is the true King. And they came back with a renewed energy and a renewed life into their vocation to be the light to the world.”

Fr. Ayre said the Church is a new Israel, and we can look at the events of Israel to help us try to understand what is happening in the Church today. 

“This is not new in the history of God’s working with his people. He does this with Israel,” he said. “This has happened in history before too in the Church, with other plagues and churches closed down. This is not a unique moment. This is how God often acts to bring us to an even deeper vigor.”

“There’s a deep hope here for renewal, for the Church, if we can open our hearts to listen.”

Fr. Ayre’s experience of spiritual renewal is something he hopes to share with the world through a new book – “Finding Christ in the Crisis: What the Pandemic Can Teach Us.” He co-wrote the book with Michael Heinlein, his editor at the Our Sunday Visitor publication Simply Catholic.

Fr. Ayre said the book was inspired by conversations he and Michael had during the initial lockdowns.

“We were just noticing … reactionism to a lot of things that were happening, instead of quiet receptivity,” Fr. Ayre said. “Sometimes there were perhaps some unhealthy attitudes manifesting itself. That’s not always a bad thing, per se. It’s not a judgment, it’s just a revelation.” 

As the two talked more and more about it, they decided to create a series of articles that could publish on the Simply Catholic website. But Fr. Ayre said it didn’t seem like it was enough. 

“As we kind of talked about more and more, we said, ‘no, this needs to be like a resource that you can hand out to people.’ We just want this to be a tool to help build hope and to build up the three theological virtues of faith, hope and love.”

“Finding Christ in the Crisis” was published in the fall of 2020. The book was written in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, but Fr. Ayre hopes it can serve as a resource for Catholics navigating other crises in the life of the Church. 

“The Church is not immune to crises,” he said. “And so we just hope and pray that this is asking that big question, ‘where is Christ in this?’”

Fr. Ayre emphasized that we can be realistic about the difficulties of this time, while still maintaining the virtue of Christian hope. 

“I think there is a balance there… But when we do feel down or alone or discouraged – that those feelings won’t go away, per se, but the Christian faith says that this is where the cross is at work,” he said. “Often that’s the place where Christ actually might be showing his closeness to us.”

“But the cross is still a cross. When we say that the cross is really the source of hope as a Christian, it doesn’t remove the pain of the cross. It just inserts God’s presence into that pain.”

“When we’re feeling discouraged alone, angry…It only becomes a problem when we don’t do that rooted in Christian hope, which is not wishful thinking. But rather to say, I recognize the presence of Christ here. When I’m discouraged, Christ is suffering that with me because he has taken on our humanity to suffer this with me. When I’m feeling alone, the Lord is alone with me, so that I’m actually really not alone.”

“Finding Christ in the Crisis” is available on Amazon and Our Sunday Visitor. 

This interview originally aired on Catholic News Agency’s podcast, CNA Newsroom. It has been adapted for print. Listen to the interview below, beginning at 3:30. 

 

CNA Newsroom · Ep. 89: Taking Back the Year


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British Columbia hospice to be evicted over euthanasia opposition 

January 15, 2021 CNA Daily News 2

CNA Staff, Jan 15, 2021 / 04:47 pm (CNA).- A hospice in Delta, British Columbia is laying off all staff next month as they will be evicted from their building due to their opposition to euthanasia.

The Delta Hospice is a 10-bed hospice. It is operated by the Delta Hospice Society, an organization which was founded in 1991. The hospice is located a one-minute drive away from a hospital which provides euthanasia.

Last year, the Delta Hospice Society was informed that they would be losing $1.5 million in funding from the Fraser Health Authority, a public health care authority in British Columbia, as well as its permission to operate as a hospice, in February 2021. This was due to their refusal to offer “assisted dying,” the Canadian legal term for euthanasia.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide were legalized federally in Canada in June 2016. Religious hospitals are not forced to provide euthanasia, but no such conscience rights exist for secular institutions like the Delta Hospice Society.

Angelina Ireland, president of the Delta Hospice, told CNA on Thursday that she thinks her organization has “clearly been targeted to make an example of how you will not defy a government directive.”

“If the government tells you to do something, you’d better do it,” she told CNA. “And then if you don’t do it, then they’ll basically just shut you down and destroy the society that you’ve built for the last 30 years.”

“We were only 10 beds. We are hardly high profile. We hardly matter,” said Ireland. “We have always been committed to palliative care.”

The Delta Hospice Society lost a court case when they attempted to block the membership of euthanasia activists in the organization. They are appealing and hoping the Canadian Supreme Court will take up their case.

The hospice’s case regarded its efforts to hold a meeting and vote on proposed changes to its constitution and bylaws that would define its Christian identity and exclude the provision of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled in June that the hospice had acted wrongly in its attempts to define its Christian identity and to exclude euthanasia, because it had not been indiscriminately approving new applications for membership during 2020.

The hospice’s actions were challenged by three of its members, Sharon Farrish, Christopher Pettypiece, and James Levin, who are in favor of euthanasia.

And while Delta Hospice is about to lose its physical building, Ireland said that her group’s work in promoting a peaceful natural death will continue.

“We’ve been in society for 30 years and for the last 10 of those, we had a facility,” she told CNA. “So what we will do is we will go back to our roots, and we will continue to do what we did for 20 years. We went directly to the community, directly to people’s homes.”

“Without the building, we don’t stop being a society and we don’t stop advocating and doing the kind of work we’ve always done,” said Ireland.
Ironically, Ireland mused it may be “safer” to do exclusively home visits.

“If people are entering facilities that offer euthanasia, and they can’t get away from it, it may be a safer place, a safe space for them to have support and help in their own home,” she said.

“So we will continue to do that. That has been the purpose of our society from the beginning,” said Ireland, “And we will just soldier on and go back to our roots.”
 


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