By Catholic News Service
Church leaders, other advocates expect pope to address migration issue
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CNS) — Pope Francis will arrive in the U.S. in September at the close of what could be called the “summer of immigration.” Asylum-seekers landed on Greek beaches and traversed the France-to-England Channel Tunnel, while Berlin announced a plan for moving refugees into container-based housing. In the U.S., with the 2016 presidential campaign debates underway, domestic immigration controversies pop up with regularity, including there were renewed calls for a security wall at the U.S. border with Mexico, and fingers pointed at some incidents of violent crime attributed to immigrants. It’s widely expected that at some point during his first papal U.S. visit, Pope Francis will address the issues of human migration. He has spoken out against the “globalization of indifference” about the plight of migrants. During his Latin America trip in July, migration was in a long list of problems he said must be addressed jointly by governments and the wider society.
U.S. Embassy in Cuba reopens, ending 54-year diplomatic break
HAVANA (CNS) — With Havana Harbor’s bright blue waters and a trio of vintage U.S. cars parked along the Malecon framing the scene, Secretary of State John Kerry officially reopened the U.S. Embassy in Cuba Aug. 14, marking the end of more than 54 years of fractured diplomatic relations. Since the United States broke off diplomatic relations and imposed a trade embargo on Cuba, among the world’s transitions have been the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Vietnam War and restoration of full relations with that former enemy, Kerry noted. “For more than half a century, U.S.-Cuban relations have been suspended in the amber of Cold War politics,” Kerry said. “In the interim, a whole generation of Americans and Cubans have grown up and grown old. The United States has had 10 new presidents. In a united Germany, the Berlin Wall is a fading memory. Freed from Soviet shackles, Central Europe is again home to thriving democracies.” He observed that the trade embargo still stands, blocking most commercial relationships and tourism, but ending that is up to Congress, “a step we strongly favor.” Among the invited guests for the brief ceremony on the plaza outside the embassy was Havana’s Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino. In his remarks, Kerry repeated the acknowledgement of both the U.S. and Cuban leaders that the intervention of Pope Francis and Vatican diplomats had been crucial to getting the two sides to resolve the long-standing diplomatic freeze.
Women further victimized by harvesting of fetal parts, says counselor
ST. LOUIS (CNS) — Women who have an abortion are being further victimized when given the option to donate their child’s body parts for research, according to Sue Harvath, who has counseled post-abortive women in the St. Louis area for more than 30 years. Harvath said it shouldn’t matter whether Planned Parenthood is making money from the sale of fetal body parts, as alleged in a series of undercover videos, because even the act of obtaining the body parts is manipulative and flat wrong. Harvath, a professor and director of psychological services at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, is a founding member of Project Rachel, the archdiocese’s ministry to women who have had an abortion. Project Rachel is coordinated by the archdiocesan Respect Life Apostolate, and there is a companion ministry for men who have been through an abortion experience, called Project Joseph. Harvath said that women have an abortion because they’re in a state of trauma. They often find themselves overwhelmed with the responsibilities of caring for a new child or pressure from others to have the abortion. In those situations, best judgment and moral guidelines are set aside to cope with the trauma.
African cardinal: Synod will be flexible with regional family situations
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (CNS) — One of the leading voices among Africa’s bishops predicts a new flexibility in Catholic teaching at this October’s Synod of Bishops on the family, which he predicts will allow bishops in different parts of the world to adapt church teaching on the family to the region’s culture, political landscape and economic situation. “The Catholic Church is a universal institution, both human and divine,” said Cardinal Berhaneyesus Souraphiel of Addis Ababa. “It is not a European church, it is not a Canadian church or a U.S. church. It’s different. The issues families are facing in some parts of the world would be different than in other parts of the world.” While Europe and North America face problems such as how to respond pastorally to state-sanctioned same-sex unions or divorced and remarried Catholics, families in other parts of the world face issues that arise from economic globalization or rapid urbanization. “For us in Ethiopia, the big issue will be poverty,” said Cardinal Souraphiel. “If you are not sure if you can continue providing sustenance for the family, food and so on — not only rent, but food — if you don’t have this (basic economic stability) you might find the husband working somewhere else, the wife working somewhere else. The family separates. And then the children suffer.” With more and more Ethiopian women finding work abroad in Arab states as domestic workers and Ethiopian men landing jobs in mines or on large-scale industrial farms, Ethiopia’s rapidly expanding economy is making it hard to keep a family together, the cardinal said.
Goal of rosary rallies to ‘bring souls closer to Christ,’ says leader
CINCINNATI (CNS) — Together, 350-plus boys clad in different-colored football jerseys resembled a mosaic as they sat or knelt on the grass at Cincinnati’s Mount St. Mary’s Seminary with rosaries in hand. Eight teams, and an archbishop, gathered the night of July 30 for a SportsLeader Rosary Rally, a unique and growing event that brings high school football players from different teams together to pray the rosary before the Blessed Sacrament. Louisville, Ky.-based SportsLeader, an independent Catholic nonprofit dedicated to helping coaches instill virtue in players, hosted its first rosary rally in Cincinnati last year with nearly 500 players attending. The original Cincinnati rally was the only one in 2014 but its success spawned a 2015 schedule with at least 20 rallies scheduled nationwide. “We started showing the photos and explaining the story to cities across the country, saying this is what happened here and asking if they want to do something similar,” said Lou Judd, director of SportsLeader. “Since then it’s been up, up and away.”
Human foosball replaces pig wrestling at Wisconsin parish’s picnic
STEPHENSVILLE, Wis. (CNS) — The end of pig wrestling at St. Patrick Parish’s annual summer festival could have spelled the demise of a successful parish social and fundraising activity. But the response to this dire prediction was unanimous from parish leaders: when pigs fly. Rather than fold their festival tents, event organizers, with the assistance of Green Bay diocesan leaders, found a new activity to showcase at the Aug. 9 summer gathering: human foosball with a Nerf-like ball resembling a pig. Indeed, pigs did fly. The inaugural human foosball tournament featured 18 teams with six players competing inside two outdoor pens (foosball tables) created using livestock gates and metal bars. Players held onto the bars while attempting to kick the foam rubber ball into a goal. Two of the 18 teams consisted of diocesan employees. The foosball tournament replaced a controversial pig wrestling event that had been held for 44 years.
Excommunicated Chinese bishops ordain priests in separate ceremonies
HONG KONG (CNS) — Two excommunicated bishops in China have ordained priests in separate ceremonies during the past two months, reported ucanews.com. Catholic leaders expressed concern over the ordinations, saying it was yet another example of the communist government tightening its control over the church. Father Joseph Yue Fusheng of Heilongjiang, who was excommunicated by the Vatican in 2012 after he was illicitly ordained a bishop, ordained three priests in an Aug. 6 Mass at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Harbin. The ceremony was concelebrated by 31 priests and attended by about 500 Catholics. On June 29 Father Lei Shiyin, excommunicated by the Vatican in 2011 after he was illicitly ordained a bishop, ordained a new priest and presided over the vows for two nuns during a ceremony in the newly built Sacred Heart Cathedral in Leshan. Bishop Joseph Wei Jingyi of Qiqihar, the only Vatican-approved bishop in Heilongjiang province, told ucanews.com that “whoever consecrates or is being consecrated, their status is grave.”
Pope urges expansion of priests’ on-call emergency service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Year of Mercy is a perfect time to increase the number of priests who take turns being on call all night for emergency spiritual care of the sick and dying, Pope Francis wrote. The pope, as Jesuit Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio, belonged to a special service, which is supported by the Federation of Priestly Emergency Services, an organization of laypeople in Argentina and Ecuador who drive and accompany priests on their nighttime calls. In a letter July 27 to the federation’s president, Manuel Martin Sjoberg, Pope Francis wrote, “The coming extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy is a good occasion for intensifying the collaboration between pastors and laypeople in the mission of supporting with affection and tenderly assisting the sick and dying.” The pope also quoted from his document announcing the Year of Mercy, which begins Dec. 8, calling people to reach out and support those who are suffering “so they can feel the warmth of our presence, our friendship and our fraternity.” In the Gospel Jesus tells people they will be judged by how they cared for the sick, he said. “In each of these ‘little ones,’ Christ himself is present.”
Pope names Italian Jesuit to succeed bishop killed in Turkey in 2010
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — More than five years after the murder of Bishop Luigi Padovese, Pope Francis has named an Italian Jesuit to succeed him as apostolic vicar of Anatolia, Turkey. The pope’s nomination of Father Paolo Bizzeti, 67, to be a bishop and apostolic vicar of the church jurisdiction on Turkey’s eastern Mediterranean coast was announced by the Vatican Aug. 14. Bishop Padovese was stabbed and practically decapitated June 3, 2010, in Iskenderun, the city where the apostolic vicariate is based. His driver, a young man who reportedly had mental problems, was convicted of his murder in 2013. Bishop-designate Bizzeti, a native of Florence who was ordained to the priesthood in 1975, has been directing a center for the formation of lay Catholics in Padua since 2007. He is founder of an Italian association called “Friends of the Middle East.” In a statement released by the Italian Jesuits, Bishop-designate Bizzeti said he had asked his superiors to send him to Turkey in 1984, “but the time was not right.” In the 30 years since, he said, he has continued to study Ephesus, Tarsus and other Turkish cities associated with the New Testament, to visit the Christian communities there and to accompany pilgrims.