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News Briefs
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NEWS BRIEFS May-18-2005
By Catholic News Service
U.S.
Religious leaders prepare for interfaith anti-hunger convocation
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- More than 40 religious leaders from the United States have signed on in support of a June 6 interfaith convocation to fight hunger. The convocation, to be held at the Episcopal Church's Washington National Cathedral, is part of a June 4-7 conference to educate participants on anti-hunger initiatives, followed by congressional lobbying on enacting measures to stop hunger domestically and throughout the world. "We are scandalized by the persistence of mass hunger," said the Rev. David Beckmann, a Lutheran minister who has been head of Bread for the World, a Christian citizens' anti-hunger lobby, since 1991. Bread for the World, one of the convocation sponsors, said in its annual hunger report that 852 million people worldwide are hungry. Of that number, 36 million in the United States are "food insecure," meaning they do not always know if they will have access to safe and nutritious food at their next meal.
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U.S. Catholics urged to observe day of prayer for Blessed Kateri
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions in Washington has declared July 14 as a day of prayer for the canonization of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, also known as "the Lily of the Mohawks." Blessed Kateri, beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980, was the first indigenous North American to be beatified. Her feast day is July 14. In announcing the day of prayer, Msgr. Paul Lenz, executive director of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, said he was concerned that the Native American woman is not as well-known among Catholics in the United States as she should be. That concern prompted the bureau's board to decide last November to ask all U.S. bishops and U.S. parishes to spread the story of Blessed Kateri's life and observe a day of prayer in 2005.
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Hospice care helps patients, families find peace when death nears
ST. PAUL, Minn. (CNS) -- "People die whether they are in hospice or not," said Deb Flaa, a registered nurse who works in education and development for HealthEast Hospice Care in St. Paul. "It isn't giving up. It's acknowledging the reality of the situation." Hospice provides physical, emotional and spiritual care for terminally ill patients and their families. It is available when a doctor has indicated that a patient's life expectancy is six months or less if the disease takes its normal course. Flaa said hospice is not a place, but a philosophy. It is getting back to the idea of family members caring for their dying loved ones, she said. "It's wonderful when you see families pulling together and being there for one another," she told The Catholic Spirit, newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis.
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'Media Activism 101' draws people concerned about state of media
ST. LOUIS (CNS) -- Media users critical of the state of media today but unsure what to do about it got a course in "Media Activism 101" from a quartet of activists who have spent up to 30 years in media activism efforts. The symposium drew a packed house May 13 as part of the National Media Reform Conference in St. Louis. The conference was attended by 2,500 people, most of whom work on media issues in their local communities. Speaker Nan Rubin, of Community Media Services in New York City, has been active in media matters so long she has changed her nom de plume from "Nan Rather" to "Nan O'Tech." She suggested the concept of media activism as a three-legged stool, each leg with its own strategy: "own our own" --"there's a lot in analog and digital media that we (in the community) have control over," said Rubin; confronting the media, including being a watchdog and a monitor, and doing research on media; and changing the rules under which media operate through regulation, legislation and technology use. "The technology is making all of this cheap," Rubin said about activists getting their message out. "It's what's transformed us as activists."
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WORLD
Pope Benedict says Pope John Paul 'is watching us from on high'
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Marking the birthday of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI told pilgrims they can be certain that Pope John Paul II "is watching us from on high and is with us." The pope spoke at a general audience May 18, before some 25,000 visitors who braved intermittent rain showers in St. Peter's Square. "I'd like to recall that today is the birthday of Pope John Paul II. He would have been 85 today. And we are sure that he is watching us from on high and is with us," the pope said before beginning his regular audience talk. "On this occasion, we want to give great thanks to the Lord for the gift of this pope, and we want to say thank you to the pope himself for all that he did and all that he suffered," Pope Benedict said, as the crowd broke into sustained applause. Hundreds of thousands of people have come to St. Peter's to visit the tomb of the late pontiff, who died April 2.
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Latin American bishops celebrate 50 years of CELAM
LIMA, Peru (CNS) -- Bishops from throughout Latin America met in mid-May to celebrate the founding of the organization that has provided them with a platform for reflection and joint action over the past five decades, amid the revolutions, dictatorships and economic and political crises that have rocked the region. The Latin American bishops' council, known by its Spanish acronym CELAM, "was a surprising new idea," born of "joint reflection by the bishops of Latin America," Guzman Carriquiry, undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, told prelates and guests in a lecture at the opening of the assembly May 17 in Lima. The assembly was to end with a Mass May 20. CELAM grew out of the first conference of the region's prelates in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1955. Although the assembly meets each year, subsequent conferences were held in Puebla, Mexico; Medellin, Colombia; and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. A fifth conference is tentatively scheduled for February 2007 in Ecuador.
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Jerusalem patriarch asks God to reconcile Israelis, Palestinians
JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Latin Patriarchate Michel Sabbah prayed for God to "reconcile the hearts" of Palestinians and Israelis in his homily on Pentecost, May 15. He noted the date marked both Israeli independence day and the day Palestinians call "Il-Nakba" -- "catastrophe" in Arabic -- which Palestinians commemorate as the day of the loss of their land. Palestinian Christians are an integral part of those two events, he said. "The fate of all human beings concerns us, whether it be their successes or their failures, their aspirations or their sufferings," said Patriarch Sabbah in the homily, released to the press May 16. "Consequently, on this Pentecost Sunday, both events are part of our prayer. "We ask God to fill us with his Spirit and to recreate and reconcile the hearts of Palestinians and Israelis, and particularly the hearts of their leaders, so that they might become instruments of peace and justice for all," he said.
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PEOPLE
Terri Schiavo's parents meet pope at end of his general audience
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The parents of the late Terri Schindler Schiavo met briefly with Pope Benedict XVI at the end of his May 18 general audience in St. Peter's Square. Bob and Mary Schindler, parents of the 41-year-old Florida woman who died after a court ordered her feeding tube to be disconnected, shook hands with the pope and presented him with a framed gift featuring two pictures of Schiavo and what appeared to be a poem. The pope exchanged a few words with the couple, and an aide took the gift. At the end of his weekly general audiences, Pope Benedict greets audience members who are seated in two special sections near his chair. The Schindlers were seated along the barricade in the front row of one of the sections.
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Murray, organ transplant pioneer, receives 2005 Laetare Medal
NOTRE DAME, Ind. (CNS) -- Dr. Joseph Murray, the Nobel laureate who performed the first successful organ transplant 51 years ago, received the University of Notre Dame's 2005 Laetare Medal during commencement ceremonies May 15. "Human lives and hopes have been wonderfully invigorated by Joseph Murray's 1954 medical triumph," said Notre Dame's president, Holy Cross Father Edward Malloy, in announcing Murray would receive the award. Murray first became interested in the biology of tissue and organ transplantation while he was a surgeon at the U.S. Army's Valley Forge General Hospital in Philadelphia in 1944-47. The hospital had a major plastic surgery center to treat casualties from World War II. On Dec. 23, 1954, at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, then called Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Murray successfully transplanted a donated kidney from a man to his identical twin brother. In 1990, Murray, along with E. Donnall Thomas, received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for work in lifesaving techniques used in organ and tissue transplants.
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Love of Bavarian food, culture sustains pope's friendship with banker
MUNICH, Germany (CNS) -- The 27-year friendship between Pope Benedict XVI and a German banker was sustained through a mutual love of Bavarian food and culture -- and multiple drives across the Alps. Munich banker Thaddaeus Joseph Kuehnel said that in 1982, when then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger left his post as archbishop of Munich and Freising to become head of the Vatican's doctrinal congregation, the cardinal seemed sad about leaving his home. "I told him that he need not be sad, I would bring Bavaria to Rome for him," Kuehnel told Catholic News Service in May. This started a series of cross-continental journeys of Bavarian food, drink and cultural items. "For over 20 years," Kuehnel said, "I have been delivering all those items he misses about Bavaria: Adelholzener fruit nectar; Bavarian sausages from his favorite restaurant, Franziskaner, where we often dined together; Advent wreaths and genuine Bavarian Christmas trees."
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Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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