|
|
|
|
News Briefs
|
NEWS BRIEFS Apr-12-2006
By Catholic News Service
U.S.
Good Friday provides chance to reflect on death penalty, bishops say
ST. LOUIS (CNS) -- Recalling Christ's death on Good Friday provides an opportunity to reflect on Catholic teaching and the death penalty, the Missouri bishops state in a new pastoral letter opposing executions. "He was unjustly sentenced to death and executed on a cross, the cruelest form of capital punishment at the time," the bishops wrote. More violence, they added "is not a solution to society's problems." The letter summarizes church teaching and discusses the Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty started by the U.S. bishops last year. It points to Pope John Paul II's urging for people to be "unconditionally pro-life" and affirms a commitment to support victims and their families. The letter is signed by Archbishop Raymond L. Burke and Auxiliary Bishop Robert J. Hermann of St. Louis, and Bishops Robert W. Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, John R. Gaydos of Jefferson City and John J. Leibrecht of Springfield-Cape Girardeau. Retired Bishop Raymond J. Boland of Kansas City-St. Joseph also signed the letter.
- - -
Encuentro helps Hispanics get more involved in church, become leaders
FAIRFIELD, Pa. (CNS) -- Pedro Garcia, a participant at the Northeast Regional Encuentro held in Fairfield, said he looks forward to being a leader in the church and feels he is part of the change the encuentro process is bringing to the Hispanic community. "I think I'm going to change because I'm going to be a leader in my church and my community ...," said Garcia, a member of St. Francis Assisi Parish in Harrisburg. "God is showing me that I have to go into leadership. I think good things are going to happen and hopefully if everybody puts a little part of (themselves) in, we can do it." An encuentro, which means "encounter" in Spanish, is designed to get young Hispanic Catholics involved in the life and mission of the church. The regional encuentro, held March 24-26 in the Harrisburg Diocese, drew more than 350 Hispanic youths and religious leaders representing more than 36 dioceses from the northeastern region of the United States.
- - -
Iowa clinic volunteers get close-up view of U.S. health care crisis
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (CNS) -- As director of the Community Health Free Clinic in Cedar Rapids for the last 10 years, Darlene Schmidt is only too aware of the dysfunctional health care system in the United States. Each month the clinic provides approximately 2,500 services to more than 1,500 uninsured or underinsured patients who come from an 80-mile radius and whose addresses make up 120 ZIP codes. Services include help with medical, dental, pharmaceutical and social needs. In the past year, the clinic dispensed more than $1.6 million worth of free medicine. Schmidt and husband Lee, who also volunteers at the clinic, are members of St. Joseph Parish in Marion. In 1995, Darlene Schmidt began volunteering at the clinic, after working for 25 years as an office nurse for a Cedar Rapids physician. At that time the clinic had 15 volunteers. Today there are 600. Schmidt said the clinic's average patient is between 26 and 64 years of age and 95 percent of them earn less than $25,000 a year. She described the clients as "mainly working folks with no benefits."
- - -
Archbishop says more Spanish-language Catholic radio stations needed
OMAHA, Neb. (CNS) -- Archbishop Elden F. Curtiss of Omaha has encouraged his fellow U.S. bishops to develop Spanish-language Catholic radio stations as a way of reaching Hispanic Catholics. With the Hispanic population growing rapidly in the United States, many dioceses face difficulty finding enough Spanish-speaking priests, staff and volunteers, he said in a March letter to the country's bishops. Spanish-language Catholic radio is "an impressive and overlooked means" of reaching Hispanics, he said. It can help teach about religion and provide practical information about accessing social services, he added. Archbishop Curtiss invited bishops to attend a June 16 breakfast during their annual spring meeting in Los Angeles to learn more about how to start a radio station and how to find Catholic programming in Spanish. The breakfast is being sponsored by the Catholic Radio Association's episcopal advisory board. Archbishop Curtiss is the board's chairman.
- - -
Catholic Home Missions Appeal set for April 29-30 in most dioceses
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Funds collected in the Catholic Home Missions Appeal, scheduled to take place in most U.S. dioceses April 29-30, will strengthen the church's outreach in mission dioceses from Anchorage, Alaska, to San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to materials distributed by the U.S. bishops. The collection was established in 1997 as "a means by which Catholics in more prosperous parts of the country could help the missions in poorer areas," said Bishop J. Peter Sartain, chairman of the bishops' Committee on the Home Missions, in a recent letter to his fellow bishops. "The national economic slowdown and troubles in the church have eroded the financial position of mission dioceses, which had scant reserves to begin with," said Bishop Sartain, who heads the Diocese of Little Rock, Ark. Following hurricanes Katrina and Rita last summer, the Catholic Home Missions Appeal gave more than $3 million to dioceses that were affected by the storms or took in storm victims.
- - -
WORLD
Pope says Easter preparation with penance is good for the world
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The traditional practice of preparing for Easter by going to confession is good not only for individuals, but for the world, Pope Benedict XVI said. Acknowledging one's sins and being forgiven for them, he said, gives a person peace, which spreads from the heart to an individual's actions, bringing peace to the family, the community and eventually the world. Explaining the church's Holy Week and Easter rituals during his April 12 general audience, the pope said the violence that exists in the world is a sign of too many people's inability "to reconcile themselves in order to begin again with sincere forgiveness." Jesus' resurrection "gives us the certainty that despite all the darkness in the world sin will not have the last word," he said. "Strengthened by this certainty, with greater courage and enthusiasm we can commit ourselves to the birth of a more just world."
- - -
U.S. cardinal at Vatican penance service says forgiveness is possible
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Leading the Vatican's Holy Week penance service, U.S. Cardinal J. Francis Stafford said that along with a lack of recognition that sin exists modern people also tend to think that forgiveness is impossible. The April 11 service in St. Peter's Basilica was the first communal reconciliation service celebrated as part of the Vatican's Holy Week in modern times. After listening to Scripture readings, Cardinal Stafford, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican court dealing with matters of conscience, gave a homily and led an examination of conscience before people went individually to confess their sins and receive absolution. Cardinal Stafford told the crowd that many people think there are human actions, such as violence against children or mass murder, that "are so evil they cannot be forgiven." Others see the contagion of sin spreading from one victim to another in a way that makes it impossible for everyone impacted to pardon the sinner, he said. But "Holy Week by itself responds to their objections about the possibility of forgiveness," the cardinal said.
- - -
Independence of Franciscans at Assisi curbed
ASSISI, Italy (CNS) -- The Franciscan sanctuary of Assisi, long a haven of pilgrimage, prayer and social activism, has found its independence curbed under Pope Benedict XVI. Inspired by the life of St. Francis and the interfaith outreach of Pope John Paul II, the Franciscan friars of Assisi sponsored a series of interreligious prayer meetings, peace marches and conferences on social justice over the last 25 years. The guests included Buddhist monks and Muslim imams, no-global activists and death penalty opponents, and a slew of politicians. Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, a Christian, lit a candle of peace in Assisi shortly before the United States invaded his country in 2003. Seven months after his election, Pope Benedict issued a one-page document that gave the local bishop and the Italian bishops' conference control over all pastoral activities of Franciscans in Assisi. Later he named a papal delegate to keep closer ties with the friars.
- - -
To bring justice, Israelis, Palestinians must love, says patriarch
JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Israelis and Palestinians must believe in their capacity to love and bring justice to both peoples, said the Latin-rite patriarch. "We need a new beginning based on new principles and a new perspective on life in this Holy Land," said Latin-rite Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem in an Easter message issued April 11. Despite the difficulties Israelis and Palestinians are still facing in the Holy Land, it is important to proclaim that "the land where God has spoken and where he made known his love for all human beings can remain the land of the word of God, and not just the land of the word of human beings where God's word is replaced by attitudes of death and hate," said Patriarch Sabbah. He encouraged Palestinians and Israelis to free themselves from the death which has been imposed on them, and he urged those who are perpetrating all kinds of violence to stop.
- - -
PEOPLE
To one Vatican official, missionaries are world's unsung heroes
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Missionaries are the world's unsung heroes, dedicating their lives to the poor, sick and suffering in oftentimes remote or dangerous places, said the head of the Vatican office for overseeing the church's missionary activities. The face of today's missionaries, however, has changed; they are laypeople, groups of families or religious from a country nearby, said Italian Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, president of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. The numbers of lay Catholics working in mission lands "has exploded" during the past decade as laypeople fill the void left by an ever-dwindling number of people entering traditional missionary orders, he told Catholic News Service in early April. Laypeople and especially local catechists represent the church's "most promising and effective force" in evangelization, he said, because they live the same day-to-day lives as the people they reach out to and are often more familiar with local customs and the native language.
- - -
Theologian warns against some interpretations of Book of Revelation
MIAMI (CNS) -- Should you be scared of the apocalypse? Only if you read the Book of Revelation as a script for ending the world in the 21st century, according to Father Jean-Pierre Ruiz, a biblical scholar and professor of theology at St. John's University in New York. Speaking at St. Thomas University in Miami, Father Ruiz warned against the interpretations of the last book of the Bible promoted by Christian evangelicals such as Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins in their "Left Behind" series of books and movies. "They're all well-intentioned people, even if they're wrong," Father Ruiz told The Florida Catholic, Miami archdiocesan newspaper. In his talk, he quoted television journalist Bill Moyers on the belief of many evangelicals that a war with Islam in the Middle East is "an essential conflagration on the road to redemption" and that the current war in Iraq is a "warm-up" to that conflict. "This is awfully frightening stuff, terrifying both because it represents a terrible distortion of the message of the Bible, and because such misreadings over the course of history led to the spilling of much ink, and to the spilling of even more blood," Father Ruiz said.
- - -
Students at Maryland Catholic school head to world Lego competition
ELKTON, Md. (CNS) -- Most adults are familiar with Legos. Many remember using the interlocking plastic bricks to build a dump truck, perhaps, or a helicopter, or a computer-controlled marine rescue vehicle capable of creating an artificial reef and recovering archaeological artifacts. Wait. Your Legos couldn't do that last one? Well, the Robo Rockers' legos can. The Robo Rockers, made up of sixth-graders Coby Hyde and Modesto Steiner-Robles and seventh-graders Jimmy Grimes, Cliff Hegedus and Joey Hendron from Mount Aviat Academy in Childs, Md., head to Atlanta April 27-29 to face teams from 30 countries for a robotics competition judged on four elements: design, performance, research and teamwork. The theme this year is "Ocean Odyssey." Earlier this year, the team beat more than 50 teams from four states to receive the FIRST Lego League Director's Award at the University of Delaware. FIRST is For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring interest in science and engineering among youths.
END
Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250
|
|
|
|
