Covenant House to benefit from ‘Red Nose Day’ fundraiser
WASHINGTON (CNS) — The work that Covenant House has been doing over the past 45 years to help kids and teenagers left to their own devices on the streets is getting a boost from the third annual “Red Nose Day” fundraiser in the United States May 25. In 2015, Red Nose Day generated $23 million in donations to help end child poverty in the United States in its first year. Last year’s Red Nose Day collected more than $36 million last year, and Covenant House was awarded $1 million, according to its executive director, Sister Nancy Downing, a Sister of Notre Dame. As the concept takes greater hold in the United States, aided by a three-hour prime-time programming block on NBC that evening, expectations are even higher. “We’ll be wearing our red noses,” available for sale only at the Walgreens and Duane Reed chains’ drugstores, Sister Nancy said. “It’s a fun way to help raise funds for us. We’d really like to encourage others, friends and family, to participate as well.” Covenant House, which started in New York City, now serves young people in 30 U.S. cities as well as overseas. About 36,000 were helped last year, Sister Nancy told Catholic News Service in a May 19 telephone interview from Covenant House headquarters.
Catholic groups sue over St. Louis ordinance protecting abortion advocacy
ST. LOUIS (CNS) — St. Louis archdiocesan elementary schools, a Catholic-run shelter for homeless pregnant women, and a for-profit holding company and its owner have sued the city of St. Louis over a new ordinance they say violates their religious freedom because it grants “protected status” to abortion advocates. The Thomas More Society, a national not-for-profit law firm, filed the lawsuit on the plaintiffs’ behalf May 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Enacted in February, the city ordinance provides a protected-class status to any woman who chooses to have an abortion and those who support her in that action — while also discriminating against those who promote pro-life alternatives, the lawsuit stated. The language also creates protections for anyone who has “made a decision related to abortion,” even when the abortion is not their own. The ordinance also forces private businesses to include abortion coverage in their employee health plans even if company owners have sincere objections to abortion. At a May 22 news conference on the courthouse steps, Archbishop Robert J. Carlson of St. Louis said the archdiocese “will not comply” with the ordinance.
Mexican bishops condemn attacks on journalists
MEXICO CITY (CNS) — The Mexican bishops’ conference has expressed “support and solidarity” with journalists after a spate of attacks on reporters and editors shocked the country and reinforced Mexico’s reputation as a deadly and dangerous country to work in the media. “We call on the (civil authorities) to guarantee that everyone can carry out their profession with freedom and security, and to combat the impunity and corruption that so strikes and injures our nation,” said the bishops’ statement, signed by the conference secretary-general, Auxiliary Bishop Alfonso Miranda Guardiola of Monterrey. “Journalists fall for showing the truth and revealing the alarming relationships between criminals and the authorities, who have been corrupted by the power of an enemy that is destroying us,” read a May 21 editorial on the murdered journalists and priests in the Archdiocese of Mexico City publication, Desde la Fe. It noted that journalists “name and identify the disappeared and the victims in the web of death in which we are falling. We would like to have good news and the confidence the authorities will do their duty and punish those that attack journalists, priests and the thousands of families who have not had justice,” the archdiocesan editorial read. “But this seems impossible and reality tells us the opposite: 99 percent of the crimes committed against journalists remain in impunity.”
Ohio high school senior makes prom dreams come true with dress giveaway
CLEVELAND (CNS) — Ashley Wilson beamed at the array of sequined and beaded gowns in pink, purple, red, blue and black. But she wouldn’t wear any of them to her prom the following evening. The senior graduating from Villa Angela-St. Joseph High School in Cleveland had gathered the collection for Prom Me Please, her effort to give prom dresses to girls who couldn’t afford to buy them. “A lot of people told me this was a really dumb idea, that girls didn’t need prom dresses,” Wilson told Catholic News Service. “And I gave away 200! So it definitely is something that is needed.” Last fall, Wilson decided to celebrate her 18th birthday by collecting and distributing prom gowns. She thinks all teenagers should have a chance to experience prom, a sometimes prohibitively expensive tradition. David Csank, principal of Villa Angela-St. Joseph, permitted the teen to use the school as a collection point. “It’s really something we preach to these students all the time,” Csank said. “You look out for others. You take care of others. That’s what we believe we are called by God to do.”