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Remembering
Cesar Chavez
People carry a large portrait of Cesar Chavez
at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles during
an April 6 Mass celebrated in honor of the late United Farm Workers’
founder. Hundreds attended the eighth annual archdiocesan Mass for
Chavez.
CNS PHOTO/VICTOR ALEMAN/VIDA NUEVA |
Co-Cathedral dedicated
The new Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in
Houston was dedicated April 2 as the central place of worship for
the 1.3 million faithful within the borders of the Archdiocese of
Galveston-Houston. A co-cathedral is a cathedral church which shares
the honor of being a bishop’s seat, or cathedra, with another
church, in this case the Basilica in Galveston.
CNS PHOTO/ERIK NORIEGA/TEXAS
CATHOLIC HERALD
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New S.F. auxiliary bishop
Father William J. Justice, vicar for clergy
for the San Francisco Archdiocese, stands outside St. Mary’s
Cathedral after being appointed auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese,
April 10. Bishop-designate Justice, 65, was ordained in 1968 and has
served as a pastor, director of the permanent diaconate office, and
secretary in the pastoral ministry office, 1981-1982. San Francisco
Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco will ordain Bishop-designate
Justice to the episcopate at a May 28 Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral.
CNS PHOTO/DAN MORRIS-YOUNG/CATHOLIC
SAN FRANCISCO |
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Another
slain priest in Iraq
Mourners carry the coffin of Orthodox Father
Yousef Adel Abudi during his funeral at the Syrian Orthodox Church
of St. Peter and Paul in Baghdad, Iraq, April 6. Father Abudi, 40,
was killed by gunmen who fired on the car in which he was traveling.
Last month the Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul died after being kidnapped
and last June a priest and three deacons were murdered.
CNS PHOTO/MOHAMMED AMEEN/REUTERS |
Call for help in Haitian food
crisis
BALTIMORE (CNS) — Violent demonstrations in Haiti have prompted
officials from aid agencies to call on the Haitian government and the
international community to funnel more resources into the country so people
can get food and gasoline. “At the core of the demonstrations is
a sense of desperation among the people,” said Bill Canny, country
representative for Catholic Relief Services in Haiti, speaking from the
Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, April 11.
Food is available in Haiti — the poorest country in the Americas
— but most people simply can’t afford to buy it, Canny said.
CRS, the U.S. bishops’ international relief and development agency,
reopened its operations April 11 after several days of looting and rioting
over skyrocketing food prices forced it to shut down.
Pastor condemns murder of Oaxacan journalists
MEXICO CITY (CNS) — A Church official in Mexico’s poor southern
state of Oaxaca condemned the fatal shootings of two Triqui Indian community
radio announcers, saying it was a crime of repression against independent
media operators. Father Leoncio Hernandez of the Santiago Apoala parish
said the slayings appeared to be a deliberate attempt to silence those
who spoke out against injustice. “It is a slaying of two people
who are spreading the truth in their communities,” Father Hernandez
told Catholic News Service.
Father Hernandez, an outspoken supporter of human rights in Oaxaca, said
the attack could be the work of gunmen working for the state government,
and he urged a federal investigation into the incident. Radio announcers
Teresa Bautista, 24, and Felicitas Martinez, 20, were ambushed and killed
as they traveled in a truck to the Oaxacan state capital for a forum on
human rights, state police said.
Archbishop seeks help for crisis in Zimbabwe
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) — Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg
has urged African leaders to act swiftly to defuse the crisis in Zimbabwe,
a country facing the threat of political violence after disputed elections
March 29.
“I urge (South African) President (Thabo) Mbeki, the leaders of
the Southern African Development Community and African Union leaders to
use all of their influence and skill to intervene for the release of the
Zimbabwean election results,” said the archbishop, president of
the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, in an April 10
statement.
U.S. urged to share Iraqi refugee burden
WASHINGTON (CNS) — The ambassadors of Syria and Jordan called on
the United States to share the burden of the unprecedented Iraqi refugee
crisis. “The situation is terrible and the burden” on Syria’s
resources and population is horrendous, said Imad Moustapha, Syrian ambassador
to the U.S. The “United States is categorically refusing to help”
solve the refugee crisis, “the largest exodus in the Middle East,”
he said.
Moustapha was a participant on one of several panels at an April 4 forum,
“The Iraqi Refugee Crisis: Law, Policy and Practice,” in Washington,
sponsored by Villanova University School of Law in Pennsylvania. Prince
Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein, Jordan’s ambassador to the U.S.,
said the “volume of people in such a short space of time (in Jordan)
is staggering to the mind.”
Ireland may tell priests to check immigration
DUBLIN, Ireland (CNS) — Father Kevin Doran, a Dublin archdiocesan
priest, said the Irish government is attempting to turn priests into immigration
police by requiring them to check the residence status of foreign nationals
before they are married.
Measures included in the Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill, currently
being debated in the Irish parliament, would require all wedding officiators
to check residence permits and refuse to perform marriages without a permit.
Officiators could be sentenced to five years in prison and liable to a
fine of more than $790,000 if they fail to check the status. “This
would effectively turn priests into immigration police and would not under
any circumstances be acceptable to me,” he said.
Hong Kong Diocese cancels pilgrimage
HONG KONG (CNS) — The Diocese of Hong Kong has canceled a plan to
send organized pilgrimages to China’s most prominent Marian shrine
May 24, a special prayer day for Chinese Catholics, after Shanghai government
authorities said it would be inconvenient.
Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun of Hong Kong said the diocese had planned
the pilgrimages and a local novena in response to the call Pope Benedict
XVI made last June in his letter to Catholics in China. Over the past
months, however, Chinese authorities have conveyed concerns to the Vatican
about the Hong Kong pilgrimage. To ease their worries, the cardinal said
he decided not to go on the pilgrimage and to have it organized on a smaller
scale.
Posthumous Medal of Honor to Catholic SEAL
WASHINGTON (CNS) — A tearful U.S. President George W. Bush presented
the parents of Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor with a posthumous
Medal of Honor for saving the lives of two Navy SEAL teammates by sacrificing
his own in Ramadi, Iraq. Monsoor was 25 when a hand grenade tossed by
Iraqi insurgents hit his chest and landed on the ground in front of him.
Monsoor immediately threw himself on the grenade, smothering its blow.
He died less than 30 minutes later.
At the April 8 ceremony at the White House, Bush said this highest military
medal was “awarded for an act of such courage that no one could
rightly be expected to undertake it.”
Camden Diocese to reduce parishes by half
CAMDEN, N.J. (CNS) — Bishop Joseph A. Galante of Camden has announced
a reconfiguration plan that will reduce the number of parishes in the
diocese from the current 124 to 66 over the next two years. Citing the
need to bring new vitality to parish life, Bishop Galante said parishes
in the six southern counties of New Jersey would be reconfigured into
38 merged parishes; three parish clusters, involving a total of six parishes;
and 22 stand-alone parishes.
He said the reconfiguration came in response to population changes, a
decline in religious practice, fewer priests available for ministry, and
the need to advance key pastoral priorities identified by Catholics at
more than 140 “Speak Up” sessions held in 2005 and 2006.
Mexican bishops deny drug lords’ donations
MEXICO CITY (CNS) — Several Mexican bishops denied that the Catholic
Church accepts donations from drug lords after the president of the Mexican
bishops’ conference said drug traffickers have been “very
generous” to the Church. Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico
City said the Church condemns drug trafficking as a social evil and that
it never accepts drug money.
Auxiliary Bishop Marcelino Hernandez Rodriguez of Mexico City emphasized
during his homily April 6 that money laundering carried out by making
donations to the Church is completely unacceptable.
Bishops call for end to farmworker ‘exploitation’
TUCSON, Ariz. (CNS) — Expressing “deep concern for the men
and women” who labor in the fields of southwestern Arizona and northern
Mexico, the bishops of Tucson and Mexicali, Mexico, have issued a joint
statement calling for legislation to end “exploitation of the undocumented
farmworker.”
Tucson Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas and Mexicali Bishop Jose Isidro Guerrero
Macias urged passage of the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and
Security Act, a bipartisan bill in the U.S. Congress known as AgJOBS,
which they said would be “a very positive step toward reversing
discrimination.”
German Church used slave labor during WWII
MAINZ, Germany (CNS) — A German cardinal said a report detailing
how the Church used slave laborers during World War II was an “important
building block” for reconciliation. “The Church’s memory
was blind for too long to the fate and sorrows of men, women, youngsters
and children who were brought from all over Europe as slave laborers to
Germany,” said Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz, former president
of the German bishops’ conference.
“This documentation, scientifically examining a forgotten chapter
of contemporary Church history, cannot and should not be understood as
a final reckoning. It is rather an important building block on the way
to a future of reconciliation for the Christians of Germany and Europe,”
said the cardinal.
After eight years of research by a special commission, the 703-page report
called “The Catholic Church and Forced Labor 1939-1945” was
presented in Mainz April 8. Karl-Joseph Hummel and Christoph Koesters
headed the commission of historians that prepared the report.
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