Washington D.C., Apr 15, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- As aid agencies struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic in parts of the developing world, Catholic Relief Services said it is relying on past experience in handling mass outbreaks of disease as it m… […]
CNA Staff, Apr 15, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- Three Southern California ecclesial communities have filed a lawsuit against Governor Gavin Newsom, alleging that social distancing orders he imposed amid COVID-19 violate their first amendment right to freedo… […]
CNA Staff, Apr 15, 2020 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Chemical abortions in Texas will continue during the coronavirus pandemic after the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to overturn a lower court’s order on Tuesday.
On April 9, the… […]
CNA Staff, Apr 15, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The Justice Department (DOJ) is supporting a Mississippi church after local authorities fined attendees at a drive-in service during the coronavirus pandemic.
The DOJ filed a statement of interest… […]
Gallup, N.M., Apr 15, 2020 / 03:01 am (CNA).- Native Americans have not fared well in pandemics and epidemics.
The smallpox virus, which killed the parents and brother of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, is estimated to have wiped out 90-95% percent of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in the span of about two centuries.
The H1N1 flu epidemic of 2009 had a death rate that was four times higher for Native Americans than for any other ethnicity combined, according to the National Library of Medicine.
And now, Native Americans are being similarly hard-hit by coronavirus, and reservation conditions mean the disease spreads quickly, and already-limited resources could soon run out.
“Unfortunately, on top of everything else that people are dealing with, adding this whole (coronavirus) situation is just going to make life that much more difficult for many families on the reservation,” Jeremy Boucher, co-director of the non-profit Southwest Indian Foundation, told CNA.
Since the Navajo Nation announced a shelter in place order March 20, Boucher and the foundation have been making food deliveries to a food pantry on the reservation to ensure that those in quarantine or far away from grocery stores had access to food.
But the Navajo Nation extends into three states – New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah – with several other reservations in the area as well. And local food pantry rules limited Boucher to delivering food within McKinley County, New Mexico.
“The (Navajo) reservation itself is about the size of West Virginia, and there is maybe a total of five grocery stores on the reservation, and most of those grocery stores are close to border towns,” Boucher said.
“And so Gallup (county seat of McKinley County) is really the central town for most people living on the reservation. So people sometimes drive two, two and a half, three hours to come into town to get supplies. And right now, they’re facing a situation where, if they’re home-bound under quarantine for 14 days, it’s really difficult to have someone come into town for you and get a bunch of stuff with all of the limitations that are happening at the grocery stores,” he said.
“So if you’re not able to make it, you’ve got to send someone for you, but then there’s no guarantee that, when you come into town, you’re going to be able to find what you need, because the stores are wiped out,” he added.
To expand the relief efforts, Boucher teamed up with Patrick Mason, a member of the Osage Tribe and the Knights of Columbus board of directors, to bring food to more people.
“We knew just from living out here – I was born and raised here – the need is out there,” Mason told CNA. “Whenever something like this hits, whenever an epidemic or pandemic hit, a lot of times it’s just devastating.”
Besides direct deaths from illnesses, Mason said, ancillary suffering and deaths typically occur in such crises. Many elderly people on the reservation live in simple, traditional hogans and lack running water and electricity and the ability to get themselves supplies.
They rely on family and friends to look out for them, but they’re often the first people forgotten in a crisis, Mason noted. “Not intentionally, it’s just, people are concerned, and they forget to go check on so-and-so. A lot of times they end up suffering in a myriad of ways,” he said.
When Mason heard Boucher needed help, he worked with the Knights of Columbus as well as Life is Sacred, a Native American pro-life organization, to organize and deliver food baskets to the Acoma people, a Pueblo tribe 90 miles away that includes Sky City village, the oldest continuously inhabited place in the United States.
They also consulted Lance Tanner, one of the owners of T and R Market (a family-run grocery store that primarily serves Navajo clientele), for the food baskets.
Tanner, also a member of the Knights of Columbus, knew what staples his customers would like in a food basket, including flour, lard, potatoes, coffee, and spam, as well as toiletries and water; and treats like Crackerjacks and Kool-Aid for the kids.
Once assembled, Mason said the baskets – which were actually three large boxes – contained enough food to feed a family for about two weeks.
“I had a trailer (from the Knights of Columbus) and we called it the COVID-19 Relief Canteen,” Mason said. They made their first delivery during Holy Week.
“Our first delivery went to the Acoma people, which is one of the old Pueblo tribes. Those are Catholic tribes. They’ve been Catholic for hundreds of years,” he said.
“They have some churches there that are hundreds of years old, and they’re very faithful Catholic people. They were suffering, and they said that they had about 140 people that were in desperate need of food, so we did our first delivery there,” Mason said.
When they arrived, they were told by the local volunteers that 60 more people had called in that day looking for food.
Wearing facemasks and gloves, Mason and the Knights and local volunteers unloaded the boxes at a centralized distribution center. Mason said they worked with local organizations who were able to deliver the boxes to the families most in need.
As word spread through the region that the Knights of Columbus were organizing food baskets, “then names kept coming in” of more people in need of help, Mason said.
Mason added that he also learned that another member of Life is Sacred, Dallas Carter in Hawaii, had been organizing similar relief efforts with his local Knights of Columbus for the native and vulnerable people there, and was in need of some additional help.
“Independently from what we were doing, he was doing something similar down in Hawaii. I talked to him and I said, ‘Well hey, we need to support you too.’”
Mason said the New Mexico Knights were able to provide a grant to the Hawaii Knights to keep their efforts going for two more weeks.
“Caring for our kūpuna (elders) has always been an essential value to the people of Hawaii,” the Knights from the Diocese of Honolulu said in a statement provided to CNA.
“With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent mandatory state quarantine many of our kūpuna were required to stay home without regular access to their normal means of acquiring food and other essential items. In fact even many of the regular food pantries, which many kūpuna depend on, were completely shut down for the safety of their volunteers,” they said.
“Several Knights of Columbus in the diocese of Honolulu, with the announcement of the quarantine and its inevitable effects on the vulnerable, stepped into the breach and began their own personal initiatives to help the kūpuna and other vulnerable people in their community,” the statement added.
Like the Knights in New Mexico, the Knights in Hawaii were delivering food supplies for two weeks and other necessities to the elderly and vulnerable populations – and so far have served about 5,000 people in their efforts.
Mason said his group of Knights have enough funding to keep their own relief efforts in New Mexico going for another two weeks, but he is hoping they are able to garner more support to keep it going even longer.
“We want to get the word out there, because really, everybody’s suffering right now,” he said. “But I think sometimes…those people on the peripheries are sometimes the most forgotten and the most suffering. A little old, 80-year-old grandma living by herself an hour from the closest person, is one of the first people forgotten,” he said.
In a statement, the Knights of Columbus in Gallup said that while this has felt like a long Lent for everyone, “by standing together, the light of Easter will be upon us, and together we will sing the Non Nobis and Te Deum as the mists of darkness clear.”
Washington D.C., Apr 14, 2020 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- The U.S. bishops have echoed Pope Francis’ call for a global ceasefire to help defend vulnerable populations from the COVID-19 virus and respond to the global pandemic.
Bishop David J. Malloy of Rockford, Ill., who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, said the Pope’s plea for peace seeks to deepen “fraternal bonds of the human family” in search of “lasting peace.”
“May God use even the difficulties of this moment to bring about peace and solidarity in the world,” Malloy said in an April 8 statement.
“May God’s grace open the hearts of combatants throughout the world so that they realize their shared frail humanity and allow a cessation of hostilities to come to pass,” he added. “With such cessation, corridors of humanitarian assistance can be established and strengthened to allow relief to reach those in greatest need.”
Malloy’s comments followed Pope Francis’ appeal for a global ceasefire as countries work to protect their populations from the coronavirus pandemic.
Close to 2 million people are confirmed to have been infected with the coronavirus, with some 125,000 dead and 470,000 deemed to be recovered. In some parts of the world the numbers of people with severe symptoms have overwhelmed hospital facilities. Efforts to halt the spread of the virus through mandatory self-distancing have led to business closures and massive new unemployment.
Even wealthy nations at peace have faced difficulties securing medical tests, protective equipment and hospital space in their responses to the novel coronavirus. These difficulties are amplified in regions at war.
About 70 countries are engaged in some kind of conflict, with some conflicts dating back decades.
“Over a billion people on our planet live without access to the basic necessities of life. Over 70 million are displaced who already live amidst violent conflict and persecution,” Malloy said. “The unfolding global health pandemic and subsequent economic crisis only exacerbate their intolerable suffering.”
Pope Francis urged nations in conflict to respond to the March 23 appeal from the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who called for for an “immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world” to “focus together on the true fight of our lives,” the “battle” against the coronavirus.
“The current emergency of COVID-19 … knows no borders,” the pope said in his March 29 Angelus address.
“I invite everyone to follow up by stopping all forms of war hostility, promoting the creation of corridors for humanitarian aid, openness to diplomacy, attention to those in a situation of greater vulnerability,” the pope continued.
Francis repeated his call for a ceasefire in his Easter Sunday Urbi et Orbi address.
“This is not a time for division. May Christ our peace enlighten all who have responsibility in conflicts, that they may have the courage to support the appeal for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world,” he said. “This is not a time for continuing to manufacture and deal in arms, spending vast amounts of money that ought to be used to care for others and save lives.”
Some parties to war appear to have backed the call for a ceasefire, but such efforts could be tenuous.
Humanitarian advocates at the United Nations feared that the COVID-19 virus could be especially devastating in Yemen, which continues to suffer a five-year-long civil war between Saudi Arabia-led forces and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement, whose forces hold the national capital of Sana’a.
The Saudi- and United Arab Emirates-led coalition announced a unilateral ceasefire to begin on April 9.
Skeptical Houthi officials called it a “political and media maneuver.” Their counter-offer appeared to apply a ceasefire only to fighting between their forces and Saudi Arabia, and not to groups loyal to Yemeni leader Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the U.K. newspaper The Guardian reports.
Within a week the Saudi and Emirati-led coalition accused Houthi forces of violating the ceasefire. On the ground, few civilians think the ceasefire will be more effective than previous efforts.
Over half of Yemen’s hospitals and clinics have been destroyed or closed by the fighting. UN officials say over 90% of the population could become infected by the COVID-19 virus. Only one case has been confirmed in Yemen, but there are almost no testing facilities there.
More than 100,000 have died because of the war, including 12,000 civilians dead in direct attacks. Another 3.6 million people have been displaced. About 12 million Houthis, about 80% of whom live in Houthi territory, depend on UN food supplies each month. About 24 million Yemenis need some form of humanitarian assistance, and close to 10 million people are considered to be on the brink of famine.
In Syria, where the civil war is now nine years old, fighting has calmed since Turkey and Russia agreed to a ceasefire. Russia backs the Syrian government in Damascus, while Turkey backs some rebel groups which oppose it.
At least one million people fled their homes since December during the Syrian government’s offensive in northwest Idlib province, Syria’s last rebel-held territory, which borders Turkey. Some displaced persons have returned home to Idlib, in part due to fears of coronavirus outbreaks in refugee camps, Reuters reports.
The Southern Cameroons Defence Forces, an armed rebel group in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon, announced a two-week ceasefire to begin March 29 as “a gesture of goodwill” and to allow testing for the new coronavirus, BBC News reports.
CNA Staff, Apr 14, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- A federal judge said on Easter Sunday that the state of Alabama cannot move to limit abortion procedures through measures intended to focus medical resources on fighting coronavirus.
Granting a prelimin… […]
CNA Staff, Apr 14, 2020 / 04:06 pm (CNA).- A former Catholic nursing home in New York state is set to open as a rehabilitation center for coronavirus (COVID-19) patients who have been discharged from Catholic hospitals but are not yet ready to return h… […]
Washington D.C., Apr 14, 2020 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- Lawyers have filed suit against the city of Greensboro, North Carolina, for enforcing public health restrictions in an allegedly discriminatory manner following the arrest of several pro-life sidewalk co… […]
Washington D.C., Apr 14, 2020 / 09:31 am (CNA).- The bishops of the United States have offered their prayers in solidarity with the victims of extreme weather over the Easter weekend. At least 30 people were killed due to severe weather across the sout… […]
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