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News Briefs
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NEWS BRIEFS Aug-4-2006
By Catholic News Service
U.S.
Outdoor sculpture invites people to 'visit with Jesus' at Last Supper
INDIANAPOLIS (CNS) -- Imagine sitting next to Jesus during the Last Supper. What would you say to Christ? How would this experience affect your faith? A new interactive sculpture at St. Christopher Parish in Indianapolis invites people to sit outdoors at a table beside a life-size image of Christ and spend time in prayer or reflection. Father Michael Welch, pastor of St. Christopher, hopes people will "visit with Jesus" often at The Last Supper" sculpture. The bronze sculpture of Jesus breaking bread -- dedicated July 30 and located outside the Parish Activity Center and parish office -- will be illuminated at night so people can spend time there whenever they want -- or need -- to pray, the priest said.
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Telemedicine changes health care access at Rochester Catholic schools
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (CNS) -- Some students at two Catholic schools in the Rochester Diocese are now able to visit their doctors without ever leaving their school buildings. St. Rita School in Webster and St. Joseph School in Penfield recently joined the ranks of 17 other elementary schools and child-care centers participating in Health-e-Access, an experimental telemedicine program being studied by researchers at the Golisano Children's Hospital of the University of Rochester's Medical Center. Through this program, each participating school and child-care center received high-quality videoconferencing equipment and digital cameras specifically designed for medical use. For example, one such camera is in an otoscope, which is used to examine a patient's ears, said Tina Cabisca, nurse manager for Health-e-Access. The technology links the schools and centers to pediatricians from 11 participating pediatric practices in the Rochester area, Cabisca told the Catholic Courier, newspaper of the Rochester Diocese. The pediatricians can examine ill students from miles away with the help of the cameras, videoconferencing equipment and a school staff person trained to use that equipment, she said.
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Catholic Daughters of the Americas meets in Minnesota
MINNEAPOLIS (CNS) -- The Catholic Daughters of the Americas pledged to take actions ranging from supporting U.S. troops and their families to assisting victims of human trafficking in resolutions approved during their biennial national convention in Minneapolis July 17-21. Nearly 900 members from local and state courts (chapters) in the United States and several other countries attended the meeting. Claudia R. Bosch of Dickinson, N.D., first vice national regent and convention chairman, was elected national regent for the next two years. She succeeds M. Joan McKenna of Boston in that post. In the keynote speech Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, head of Sisters of Life, spoke about the spiritual and emotional experiences of working to prevent abortions and assist pregnant women.
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Program fosters entrepreneurship among high school students
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- This summer, a group of high school students got a the chance to make their business ideas a reality at an entrepreneurship program at Jesuit-run St. Louis University. The 2006 Summer Academy program, hosted by the Smurfit-Stone Center for Entrepreneurship at the university's business school, was called "Jumpstart Your Independence: Learn to Be Your Own Boss." Kevin Schulte, the center's director, said 20 participants signed up for the July 24-28 program, double the number of last year's enrollment. Participants are diverse -- both in their background and their hometowns, he said. One of this year's students was from Taiwan. The students form teams, and at the conclusion of the program local entrepreneurs judge their PowerPoint business plans. Each day the teams work on their individual presentations. Entrepreneurs and educators serve as consultants, mentoring the students as they learn business strategies, product development and team-building concepts. The first thing the students learn is that they must have the necessary resources to start up a business.
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WORLD
Relief work nearly impossible without cease-fire, says CRS official
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Without a cease-fire in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, establishing humanitarian corridors to get relief supplies to hundreds of thousands of displaced people is near impossible, said a Catholic Relief Services official. "Humanitarian corridors have never been put into place," said Adib Faris, security manager for the CRS office in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. "The issue is access to those areas in the south where the conflict is," he said. Faris told Catholic News Service in an Aug. 4 telephone interview that relief organizations want humanitarian corridors, but without a cease-fire "there can be no guarantees by either side that relief workers can travel safely." There are about 900,000 displaced people in Lebanon because of the fighting in the southern portion of the country "and the number is increasing every day," he said. The figure cited by Faris is almost 25 percent of the 3.8 million Lebanese population. CRS is the overseas relief and development agency of the U.S. bishops.
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War in Lebanon disrupts new school year at Catholic college
ROME (CNS) -- Rather than getting ready for a new school year, the head of the Jesuit-run College of Notre Dame in Jamhour, Lebanon, is sending students and alumni to help feed displaced people and filling out the papers parents need to enroll many of the students in schools abroad. Jesuit Father Salim Daccache, rector of Notre Dame, said 200 students and alumni are in Beirut helping students and alumni at the Jesuit-run St. Joseph University prepare and serve 1,000 hot meals each day for the displaced. In an Aug. 4 telephone interview, he said he would not be sending any students that day "because overnight some bridges were bombed so our links with Beirut have been destroyed." Notre Dame is located less than 10 miles southeast of Beirut. But the real problem is that it is less than a mile from a Lebanese army garrison, which also has attracted Israeli bombardments. No one has been injured at Notre Dame, he said, but many of the classrooms no longer have glass in the windows and dozens of doors need to be repaired or replaced.
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Mideast war brings pope's foreign policy agenda into clearer focus
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- With the war in Lebanon, the Vatican's Middle East policies under Pope Benedict XVI have come into clearer focus. To the surprise of some, they look just like the policies of Pope John Paul II. The Vatican's insistent call for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon has highlighted a basic disagreement with the United States and some other Western governments. Backing Israel, the U.S. wants a cease-fire conditioned on a wider accord ultimately aimed at disarming Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon. The pope, on the other hand, has urged all sides to lay down their weapons now, saying nothing can be gained by the current fighting. In a sense, the root difference may be over the usefulness of war -- or the lack thereof.
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Honduran bishop wins over president in fight to halt mining permits
GUATEMALA CITY (CNS) -- Honduran Bishop Luis Santos Villeda of Santa Rosa de Copan has won the support of Honduras' president to halt certain mining permits and form a commission to address popular demands. The concessions came after Bishop Santos led a nationwide protest July 25 and met with Honduran President Manuel Zelaya Rosales Aug. 1. The bishop said afterward that he was satisfied with the results of the meeting. "It seems that the president is more inclined toward our proposal," the bishop said. However, he added, it's yet to be seen whether the country's legislature will go along with certain demands. The bishop hopes that the concessions will halt open-pit mining permits for minerals, which allows digging a massive pit for mining for metals. However, Bishop Santos said mining for building materials, like cement and rock, should be able to continue.
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Lebanese Catholic expresses solidarity with Israeli soldiers
TEL AVIV, Israel (CNS) -- Sharbel Salameh, a Maronite Catholic and Lebanese refugee living in Hadera, Israel, grew up thinking Israeli soldiers were the good guys. Salameh said he remembers his father's stories about when his family was still in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1982, and Israel was trying to evict the PLO. "We brought the Israeli soldiers flowers, threw rice on them, a symbol of blessings, and sang them songs," he told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview Aug. 3. Later the family moved to Klayaa near the south Lebanese army base in Marj Uyun. The army worked to prevent Hezbollah outposts from growing near the Israeli border, but things changed in May 2000 when Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon. Pressured by Syria and Hezbollah, the Lebanese government endorsed Hezbollah's claims that Israel still occupied Lebanese land even after Israel's withdrawal. Salameh and his family of five, along with 7,000 Maronites, other Christians, Muslims and Druze, fled Lebanon, seeking political asylum in Israel. Salameh, 24, said he doesn't agree with a Beirut Center for Research and Information report that said 80 percent of Christians in Lebanon support Hezbollah, as reported July 28 by The Christian Science Monitor. "There is no way. This makes me angry," Salameh said. "None of my friends in Lebanon support the Hezbollah.
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PEOPLE
Jason Project gets students excited about discovery, science
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- "He's got your question! He's going to answer your question!" said a sixth-grade student excited that NASA researcher Jack Farmer was answering another student's question during an online discussion. "What they're inquiring about, they're learning about," said Allison Carney, the sixth-grader's teacher at Holy Cross School in Overland Park, Kan., about the question-and-answer session. Asking questions of NASA scientists and implementing real research into classroom experiments is all part of the Jason Project, a program in its 18th year that incorporates hands-on learning with curricula that meet school standards. The program, founded by Robert Ballard, an oceanographer known for finding the sunken Titanic, aims to excite middle-school students about math and science. Carney related the story about her students in an interview with Catholic News Service during a July 18-20 conference sponsored by the Jason Project in Washington. The annual gathering, called the Jason Action Summit, is for teachers who are using or want to use the program in their classrooms.
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Program trains educators from Catholic schools in leadership skills
ARLINGTON, Va. (CNS) -- Catholic school teachers and principals are proving that it's never too late to learn new leadership skills to keep their Catholic schools Catholic. That's why 47 educators from 14 states and the District of Columbia and one from France are taking part in the Catholic School Leadership Program, offered by Marymount University in Arlington. "This program demonstrates Catholicism in its true sense -- universal," said Marie DeLorimier, a program participant and teacher at Marymount School in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris. Planned in 1999, the program started in 2001 after it was developed by Marymount's education department and the Office of Catholic Schools in the Arlington Diocese. Students in the program are working toward a master's degree of education in Catholic school leadership. "Students are principals, vice principals, directors of religious education, or in other leadership roles, or are aspiring to be administrators in Catholic schools," said Sister Patricia Helene Earl, a Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who is director of the leadership program. "This program is preparing future administrators to be cognizant of the uniqueness of Catholic education -- the academic and spiritual development of students," she said in an interview with Catholic News Service.
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Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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