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News Briefs
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NEWS BRIEFS Aug-19-2008
By Catholic News Service
U.S.
Maryknoll priest receives canonical warning over role in ceremony
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois has received a canonical warning from his order's leadership council because of his involvement in a reported ordination ceremony sponsored by Roman Catholic Womenpriests. The warning came during a four-hour meeting Aug. 18 between Father Bourgeois and Maryknoll Superior General Father John Sivalon and the two other members of the order's General Council in Maryknoll, N.Y. The meeting was called to discuss Father Bourgeois' role in what Roman Catholic Womenpriests considers the ordination of Janice Sevre-Duszynska to the priesthood nine days earlier in Lexington, Ky. A canonical warning informs a person of a violation of church law. Any future violation of canon law could lead to additional penalties such as the opening of dismissal procedures or excommunication. "I have no intentions of participating in a similar ceremony in the future," Father Bourgeois told Catholic News Service Aug. 19. "The next step now is to move ahead." He expressed relief in receiving the warning and being allowed to continue his priesthood. In addition to the warning, both parties said in a statement that an investigation to learn "the true facts" of the 69-year-old priest's role in the Aug. 9 event has been concluded and that a report will be sent to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Both sides agreed to become more involved in "collective discernment over issues of justice, including the role of women in the church."
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Understanding other cultures seen as key to meaningful celebrations
LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- Building relationships among parish ethnic groups is critical to meaningful multicultural celebrations, said presenters at the National Association of Pastoral Musicians western regional convention Aug. 5-8 in Los Angeles. "The whole experience of getting to know people and feeling comfortable and feeling welcome is key," said Pedro Rubalcava, liturgical music composer and director of Hispanic ministries for OCP, a nonprofit publisher of liturgical music and worship resources based in Portland, Ore. He presented the Aug. 6 keynote address with Franciscan Brother Rufino Zaragoza, a liturgical music consultant and composer. Rubalcava said he often asks people if they allow themselves to enter into a relationship with those who have different backgrounds and languages. "How do we enter into not only relationship, but how do we recognize that as Christians we share the same baptism and Eucharist? This is important for us," declared Rubalcava.
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WORLD
Indonesian monastery founded by U.S. Crosiers destroyed by fire
ROME (CNS) -- The Crosier monastery in Agats, Indonesia, a monastery founded by U.S. Crosier Fathers and Brothers, was destroyed by a fire caused by an electrical malfunction. The 10 Crosiers home at the time were eating breakfast in the opposite side of the building when children on their way to school noticed the fire and alerted the men; no one was injured, according to a press release from the Crosier generalate in Rome. The Aug. 13 fire "reportedly started from an electrical malfunction in one of the bedrooms and spread rapidly into the ceiling," through the rafters and into the rest of the house, the press release said. "Thanks to the quick thinking of neighbors and diocesan workers who knocked out the connecting boardwalk," it said, "the chapel, library and formation offices were all saved."
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Church tests bamboo buildings as it helps rebuild Peruvian quake area
PISCO, Peru (CNS) -- At first glance, life seems normal again in the center of this small, dusty town on Peru's southern coast, where restaurants, banks and shops are back in business on the main plaza. On side streets, however, some families still live in straw-mat shacks and tents that have provided shelter since a magnitude 8 earthquake struck Aug. 15, 2007, killing about 500 people and leaving thousands homeless. Perhaps the starkest reminder is the huge vacant lot on one side of the plaza where San Clemente Church once stood. About 300 worshippers were killed when the roof collapsed during Mass. A block away, however, hope is rising from the rubble. A soaring bamboo frame is taking shape as a church building that will provide worship space until San Clemente Church is rebuilt; the building will serve as a parish center afterward. Besides replacing the tent where parishioners have met for the past year, the bamboo structure being built by the Peruvian bishops' Social Action Commission will showcase an architectural style appropriate for the unstable soil in this earthquake-prone area.
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Cubans offer homes as prayer houses to nurture faith, service
PEDRO BETANCOURT, Cuba (CNS) -- As a summer afternoon rainstorm brewed, nearly two dozen Cubans gathered on a friend's covered porch to celebrate Mass. Wooden chairs were lined up, row by row, to accommodate neighbors. A visiting priest turned a small table into an altar. Another man strummed the opening song on his guitar while a couple of horses rested on the nearby grass, languishing in the muggy heat. Liturgies at home have become a phenomenon in Cuba as the church slowly rebuilds communities of faith. They are a way of bringing Jesus into the barrio instead of expecting that people make their way to a church they might not have attended in decades -- or ever. These missionary houses of prayer are known as "casas de mision," and Santa Catalina Parish in Pedro Betancourt has about 15 satellite mission homes and a chapel.
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Aid agencies to continue work in Afghanistan regardless of threats
TORONTO (CNS) -- As the Taliban issued an explicit threat against Canadian aid workers and the killings of nongovernmental staff reached record levels in Afghanistan, a Canadian Catholic aid agency said it remains committed to its work there. "The projects are mainly projects developed by the Afghan people themselves. We do support the Afghan groups. It doesn't change the way we will be intervening in Afghanistan," said Danielle Gobeil, assistant director for international programs for the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace. The agency works with women's groups straddling the Afghan-Pakistani border in the zone of conflict. Four development agency workers -- two Canadians, one Afghan and one with dual U.S. and Trinidadian citizenship -- were killed just south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 13. The attack brought Western aid agency deaths in Afghanistan in 2008 to 19, a new record. The four were gunned down in their white SUV clearly marked with the emblems of the International Rescue Committee, which has provided humanitarian relief to Afghanistan for more than 20 years.
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Mexican prelates defend editorial calling for women to dress modestly
MEXICO CITY (CNS) -- An editorial in an online publication from the Archdiocese of Mexico City urging women to don more conservative attire has generated headlines across the country as Catholic leaders defended their call for modesty as a method of promoting dignity and reducing incidents of sexual harassment and assault. In an Aug. 14 statement issued by the archdiocese clarifying the editorial, church leaders said women should "make sure that their dress is not a pretext for being intimidated, victimized by violence and sexually assaulted in a city where gender-based violence is a part of everyday life." The statement added: "The church is conscious that the human body is naturally beautiful, it is a work of God and for our eyes, it is the most perfect of works." Local media responded to the editorial and statement with a steady stream of cheeky headlines, suggesting the church was out to ban miniskirts.
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Syrians who lived in Golan Heights still hope to return home
DAMASCUS, Syria (CNS) -- In a small house near the gates to the Christian quarter of Damascus' Old City is the office of the Christian Society of El Quneitra, a strategic plateau captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. "The Christian residents of El Quneitra come here to get their birth certificates, their wedding certificates and do other business. They can get these things done with the governorate of Damascus, but they like to come here because they know us," said the head of the society, 76-year-old George Faris, a Catholic whose former home is now part of Israel and whose former church is now abandoned in what has become a ghost town. The clean-cut, formally dressed man gets to work at his Damascus office every morning to serve the people of El Quneitra, a former political jurisdiction of Syria. Although the office is often empty, he never misses a day of work, even to visit the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, as the plateau is now known. After more than 40 years away from his home, Faris still holds out hope that one day he'll be able to return. The disputed land has been the site of attacks and battles. In 1981, Israel annexed the territory, and some 20,000 Jewish settlers live there. The United Nations considers it occupied territory.
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PEOPLE
Pope approves beatification of St. Therese's parents in Lisieux
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI has approved the beatification of Louis and Marie Zelie Guerin Martin, the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux. The couple will be beatified Oct. 19, World Mission Sunday, during a Mass in the Basilica of St. Therese in Lisieux, France, the Vatican announced Aug. 19. St. Therese and St. Francis Xavier are the patron saints of the missions. The Vatican did not say who would preside at the Martins' beatification Mass. With beatification, the diocese where the candidate lived or the religious order to which the person belonged is authorized to hold public commemorations on the person's feast day. With the declaration of sainthood, public liturgical celebrations are allowed around the world.
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Peruvian family gets jump-start with church help, but faces long road
PISCO, Peru (CNS) -- When the earth began rolling underfoot last year, Angel Gabriel Mosayhuate Mendoza scooped his 7-year-old son, Angel Gabriel, into his arms and headed for the door of his home. As the dwelling began collapsing around him, Mosayhuate just had time to throw the boy clear of danger before he found himself pinned to the ground, his liver and other internal organs crushed by the weight of a wall. He still remembers the pain, the darkness, the dust and the desperation of his wife, Marina Elizabeth Pazos Espinoza, who twisted her injured leg free of the rubble and dug with her hands, trying to free him. Other relatives arrived, but it took more than two hours for them to raise the wall just enough to slide him out. The magnitude 8 earthquake struck Peru's southern coast Aug. 15, 2007, destroying thousands of houses in Pisco and the surrounding area. A year and five surgeries later, Mosayhuate is recovering slowly, but for the family the disaster has meant starting again from scratch with the help of a lifeline provided by the Catholic Church.
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Pope names Swiss police chief new commander of Swiss Guard
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Although it has been 14 years since he's held a halberd, the new commander of the Swiss Guard says he is ready to take command of the 110-man corps. Pope Benedict XVI named Daniel Anrig, a 36-year-old Swiss police chief and former member of the Swiss Guard, to be the new commander, the Vatican announced Aug. 19. In a telephone interview from his office as commander of the police force in the Swiss canton of Glarus, Anrig said that although terrorism and new technology will make the job different from when he served at the Vatican in 1992-94, "the whole world has not changed. People are people. And my experience as a police officer has given me an opportunity to remain up to date in the field. I hope to be able to adapt some of the things I've learned here," he told Catholic News Service. "Besides," he said, "the security of the Holy Father and of those who work in the Vatican is the task of a squad; we will be working together." Anrig will take office Dec. 1, succeeding Col. Elmar Mader, who has led the corps since November 2002.
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Mission doctor eager to return to Zimbabwe
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Dr. Richard Stoughton, a U.S. physician, and his wife, Loretta, have been based in Zimbabwe for the past six years, but for much of the spring and summer this year they have lived an itinerant lifestyle in the States, because of political instability and violence that surrounded the elections in the southern African nation. But with hopes for a negotiated power-sharing agreement between President Robert Mugabe, in power for 28 years, and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, Stoughton was eager to get back and practice medicine. The couple planned to head back to Zimbabwe Aug. 21. Now 71, Stoughton said he's making his commitment to stay in Zimbabwe one year at a time. But he had grown a bit weary crisscrossing the U.S. and staying at the homes of the couple's children and friends. "It's our home," he said of Zimbabwe, where he serves at St. Theresa Hospital in Charandura. "We miss being in our home, doing our stuff. ... I miss the people. I miss the work." The Stoughtons' first mission work was in 1970-75, when Zimbabwe was still known as Rhodesia.
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Retired Ukrainian auxiliary bishop of Philadelphia dies at age 84
PHILADELPHIA (CNS) -- Retired Auxiliary Bishop Walter Paska of the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Philadelphia died Aug. 16 after a five-month illness. He was 84. A funeral Divine Liturgy was scheduled to be concelebrated Aug. 21 at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Philadelphia by bishops and clergy of the Eastern and Latin churches. The body of the bishop was to be interred at Our Lady of Sorrows Cemetery in Langhorne, Pa. In an Aug. 18 statement Archbishop Stefan Soroka thanked the clergy and the faithful for their "prayers for the soul of our beloved Bishop Walter Paska. May he be granted that eternal peace and happiness which is promised to all those who love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ." The archbishop asked all of his priests to celebrate a Divine Liturgy for Bishop Paska at their "earliest convenience" and again on Sept. 25, the 40th day after his death.
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Copyright (c) 2008 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
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