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News Briefs
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NEWS BRIEFS Jun-15-2009
By Catholic News Service
U.S.
Chicago home holds treasure trove of stolen Italian artifacts
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Hundreds of artifacts, including letters from 12th-century popes and religious artwork, have been returned to Italy after spending decades in a home near Chicago, FBI spokesman Ross Rice said in a June 8 statement. The returned items were just a portion of the more than 3,500 letters, artworks and books discovered by family and investigators in the Berwyn, Ill., home of John Sisto after his death in 2007. While trying to settle his estate, Sisto's family members called the Berwyn Police Department to investigate once they realized the historic value of the collection. The Berwyn police contacted the FBI's Chicago division, and the FBI's Art Crimes Unit spent the next two years identifying the artifacts and determining how such a huge trove made it from Italy to Illinois. Investigators believe that Sisto's father, Giuseppe "Joseph" Sisto, secretly shipped the items to his son beginning in the early 1960s so John could then resell them at his collectibles shop in Berwyn. The elder Sisto was an Italian native who probably obtained the different artifacts through a third party who looted from museums, libraries and private collections in the Bari region of Italy, Rice said.
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Disaster situations will mean new ethical models, CHA workshop told
NEW ORLEANS (CNS) -- In a pandemic or disaster situation, traditional ethical judgments might not work. And the middle of a disaster is no time to be deciding how ethical decisions will be made about the use of scarce resources. That was the message two ethicists brought to a June 8 workshop session at the Catholic Health Association's annual meeting in New Orleans. Jan C. Heller, a health care ethicist from Seattle, and Msgr. Steve Worsley, vice president for mission and ethics at St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua, N.H., said treatment decisions in a pandemic or large disaster situation will be based on criteria developed by the Task Force for Mass Critical Care following Hurricane Katrina. "In a pandemic, there will be a fundamental shift from the traditional focus on the health of individuals and physician autonomy to a utilitarian, public-health model that focuses on saving the greatest number of lives possible," Heller said. Treatment decisions will be made by a triage nurse or team rather than by individual doctors, patients and their family members, he added. "To save more patients, we may have to violate some of our long-held ethical principles," Heller said, noting for example that decisions could be made to remove some long-term, elderly patients from ventilators in order to save several other people who need short-term assistance with breathing.
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Hiring rights an issue in discussion on federal faith-based program
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A June 11 panel discussion about the government's partnership with faith-based organizations was meant to focus on President Barack Obama's plans for the future of the program, first established under the administration of former President George W. Bush. The attention of the audience listening to the panel, however, gravitated toward the question of whether religious organizations hiring for positions funded with taxpayer money retain the right to base employment decisions on a person's faith. One difference cited between the past and current administrations was their stance on hiring rights. Bush was a proponent of religious hiring rights as part of the faith-based initiative effort and argued that allowing religious organizations to hire who they wanted was essential to maintaining the religious identity of the organization. During his presidential campaign, Obama said he would not support the right of faith-based groups who receive public funding to "discriminate against the people you hire on the basis of their religion." Joshua DuBois, special assistant to the president and executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, said that the current administration would consider religious hiring questions on a case-by-case basis with the help of advisers and legal experts.
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WORLD
Franciscans urge G-8 ministers to promote sustainable economies
ASSISI, Italy (CNS) -- The Franciscan order called on finance ministers from the world's richest nations to radically transform the current economic system into a model that is more sustainable and shares the world's resources more equitably. In their efforts to spur economic growth and employment, governments should also promote methods of production that are less-polluting and pursue energy policies based on renewable energy, the religious order said a statement released to journalists June 13. Representatives of the Order of Friars Minor delivered a letter to the Group of Eight finance ministers meeting June 12-13 in Lecce, Italy. Some 152 representatives of the order were attending an international general chapter meeting May 24-June 20 in Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis. In the letter addressed to the G-8 treasury ministers, the Franciscan order said in order to overcome the economic crisis, individuals must be committed to more moderate and responsible lifestyles that show respect for the environment, engage in active nonviolence and replace competition with sharing. It asked governments to "plan for an economy that represents a change in paradigm, namely passing from a free-market model of the economy to a model of sustainability, which gives priority to social and environmental dimensions over those that are purely economic and which guarantees the fundamental needs of all with the contribution of all."
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Mexican priest, seminarians shot dead en route to retreat
MEXICO CITY (CNS) -- A Mexican priest and two seminarians were shot dead while traveling to a religious retreat, said Archbishop Felipe Aguirre Franco of Acapulco. Archbishop Aguirre condemned the apparent homicides, which he said were unprovoked and occurred June 13 as the trio passed through Ciudad Altamirano, in a region of Guerrero state that has been rife with social conflicts and, in recent years, drug-cartel violence. "This is a painful blow for Guerrero," the archbishop told reporters after celebrating Mass in Acapulco June 14. The slayings continued a trend of Catholic officials working in remote areas inadvertently being engulfed in Mexico's ongoing war on drug cartels -- a crackdown that has resulted in more than 10,000 deaths since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006. Guerrero judicial officials did not immediately release any information on the crimes that claimed the lives of Father Habacuc Hernandez Benitez and seminarians Eduardo Oregon Benitez and Silvestre Gonzalez Cambron. Media reports said the men were shot in the back with high-caliber weapons commonly used by cartel henchmen. Archbishop Aguirre said the motives for the crimes were uncertain, but that the surge in cartel violence in Guerrero has put priests at risk.
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Vatican doing great cutting fossil fuel use, says U.S. energy expert
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Vatican engineers are doing an impressive job trying to cut Vatican City's dependency on fossil fuels by tapping into renewable energy resources and finding ways to cut energy consumption, said a visiting U.S. expert on energy efficiency. Mark Hopkins, director of the United Nations Foundation's energy policy program, said that prior to his June 12 visit to Vatican City he had no idea the tiny city-state was involved in so many "significant projects" aimed at reducing its own carbon footprint. "It's impressive they're actually doing what some people only talk about and (they) are doing it in a significant way," Hopkins told Catholic News Service June 12. He said "conceivably, Vatican City could become the first state to be powered by renewable" energy and become the first carbon-neutral nation in the world, partly as a result of its plans to build a large solar farm on property it owns on the outskirts of Rome. Such a status would put "the church in a great moral position" from which to encourage other nations and individuals to do more in promoting and using clean energy, he said. The U.S. Embassy to the Vatican invited Hopkins to Rome to speak to journalists about his 35 years of experience in promoting energy efficiency as well as his current work with the United Nations Foundation, which seeks to find solutions to the world's most urgent problems.
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Pope urges world leaders to tackle hunger at UN summit
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI urged international leaders to turn their attention to the growing problem of world hunger as they deal with the global economic crisis. Looking ahead to a U.N. financial summit in New York June 24-25, the pope said the meeting should be carried out "in a spirit of wisdom and solidarity, so that the current crisis can be transformed into an opportunity." The goal should be to "promote an equitable distribution of decision-making power and of resources, with particular attention to the number of poor, which unfortunately is increasing," the pope said June 14 at the Vatican. The 82-year-old pontiff, who was preparing to release an encyclical on social and economic justice, said he wanted to remember in a special way the hundreds of millions of people who suffer from hunger. "This is an absolutely unacceptable reality, and has been difficult to control despite the efforts of the past decades," he said.
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New papal physician explains doctors' role in sainthood process
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The path to sainthood passes through a team of physicians, who pore over medical texts, patient charts and test results to make sure a healing is medically inexplicable. That does not mean the medical experts declare a miracle, because "the recognition of a miracle is not a matter for medical science," said Dr. Patrizio Polisca, president of the group of physicians who serve as consultants to the Vatican Congregation for Saints' Causes. The doctor wrote about the physicians' role in the sainthood process in the June 13-14 edition of L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. The Vatican announced June 15 that Polisca, a cardiologist, was named Pope Benedict XVI's personal physician. Writing about sainthood causes, Polisca said that while medical science and knowledge have changed enormously in the past few decades, the criteria for miraculous healings still follow those laid out 275 years ago by Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict XIV. The cardinal had insisted that the illness or defect be serious, incurable or extremely difficult to treat; that spontaneous cures were not known to occur in similar illnesses; that no medical intervention used in the case could explain the cure; that the cure was unexpected and instantaneous; and that it was complete and lasting.
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Pope, papal foundation urge more equitable economic model
ROME (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI called for a new world economic culture that gives priority to solidarity, ethics and human dignity. The crisis that has affected industrialized and developing nations alike shows that "certain economic-financial paradigms that have been dominant in recent years need to be rethought," he said June 13 to members of a papal foundation. The pope spoke to members of the "Centesimus Annus" Foundation in a special Vatican audience at the conclusion of a conference in Rome on "Values and Rules for a New Model of Development." He praised the group for seeking to promote a new economic model "that pays more attention to solidarity and is more respectful of human dignity," than the one that has led to the current crisis and increased disparity between rich and poor. "Centesimus Annus," Latin for the 100th year, refers to a 1991 encyclical by Pope John Paul II that dealt with the economy and all its ramifications for society. Pope Benedict will soon issue his own encyclical on social and economic justice, tentatively titled "Caritas in Veritate" ("Love in Truth"). He told the group that it would address "the vast theme of economy and work."
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PEOPLE
Pope chooses cardiologist as new personal physician
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI has chosen as his new personal physician a cardiologist with strong ties to the Vatican. Dr. Patrizio Polisca, a professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Rome's Tor Vergata University and president of the commission of physicians who serve as consultants to the Congregation for Saints' Causes, was named personal physician to the pope and vice director of the Vatican health service June 15. Dr. Polisca, 55, succeeds 84-year-old Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, who became personal physician to Pope John Paul II in 1978 and continued as the personal physician to Pope Benedict. The personal physician travels with the pope on all his foreign trips; for the past nine years, Dr. Polisca has joined Dr. Buzzonetti on the papal flights as his assistant. Buzzonetti, a specialist in gastroenterology and hematology, served as director of the Vatican health service from 1979 until 2005, when Pope Benedict named Dr. Giovanni Rocchi, a professor specializing in infectious diseases at Tor Vergata University, to the position.
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'If not us, who?': Catholic couple recognized for autism advocacy
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- When Nicholas Giangregorio, 8, was first diagnosed with autism before his second birthday, his family found it difficult to convince society to accept them. The town pool wouldn't let the family in because they didn't want the child's stroller -- his safety net -- near the water. An usher at their Long Island church shut the back doors on the family because of the noise he made in the vestibule. But since Bob and Suzanne Wright founded Autism Speaks in 2005, the Giangregorios have noticed a collective increase in awareness and understanding about the disease, which is a complex brain disorder affecting abilities to communicate and develop social relationships. They learned how to approach the town and are now allowed to bring Nicholas to the pool, stroller and all. And Michael Giangregorio, the boy's father, used the organization's resources to help organize an autism awareness Mass at St. Catherine of Sienna in Franklin Square, N.Y., this spring. Michael Giangregorio said he owes a debt of gratitude to the Wrights, who were honored June 9 with a Path to Peace Foundation Servitor Pacis Award. The award is often given to "unsung heroes" who serve "where the need is greater, where the wounds are festering and the pain unending," according to the foundation's Web site. The foundation was established to support the work of the Holy See Mission to the United Nations.
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