The following news briefs were recently published by Catholic News Service.
Sisters of Charity listen and rebuild after natural disasters
WEST POINT, Ky — Debbie Floyd’s home is filled with people measuring, cutting and using power tools, all of them covered with white dust from the drywall they’re installing. This February, the Ohio River left its banks and surrounded the town of about 800 people, flooding all the homes on the city’s edges, including Floyd’s trailer. “I wouldn’t wish a flood on my worst enemy,” Floyd said. “I wouldn’t wish this on nobody.” Initial forecasts predicted the water would not reach the bottom of the trailer, so when Floyd evacuated, she took only the clothes she needed and her family pictures. Instead, the water was 3 feet deep inside, destroying almost everything she owned. “I heard FEMA was coming to help, then I heard FEMA wasn’t,” Floyd said, of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Then somebody told me about Sister Luke, so I said, ‘I’m going to give them a try.'” Sister Luke Boiarski is director of the disaster recovery team for the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, which uses sisters, associates and lay volunteers to aid those in need. Floyd is a mail carrier but has found it difficult to work since the flood hit Feb. 26. There is the hassle of driving the 13 miles from Radcliff, where she’s staying with her daughter, and then there is the guilt of having volunteers doing all the work. “If they’re down here working in my home, I ought to be down here helping,” Floyd said. “I don’t want to feel like they’re doing it all.”
What’s good for workers is good for business, Pope tells financial paper
ROME — The blind pursuit of profit cannot guarantee a company’s viability, which depends on the fair treatment of workers and a vast array of other ethical and social factors, Pope Francis told Italy’s top financial newspaper. “People are the most important resource of every company, (as it) works toward building the common good, being attentive toward the poor,” he said in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore published Sept. 7. The undated interview conducted by Guido Gentili, the paper’s editor-in-chief, only touched on issues related to jobs, money, migration and Europe. The Pope underlined the “communal” aspect of businesses that put families and people first with “the distribution and taking part in the wealth that has been produced; the integration of businesses in a local area; corporate social responsibility; employee benefit plans; equal pay for men and women; proper work-life balance; respecting the environment; recognizing people are more important than machines; acknowledging a just salary; and the ability to innovate.” Everyone needs to work together to promote the common good “and a new humanism” in the world of work that respects people’s dignity “and does not look just at profit or the demands of production,” he said.
Supreme Court petition next step in effort to stop natural gas pipeline
WASHINGTON — A Pennsylvania religious congregation planned to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether their religious freedom rights are being violated by the construction and pending use of a natural gas pipeline on its land. The Adorers of the Blood of Christ are rooting their legal argument in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, saying that their “deeply held religious convictions about the sacredness of Earth” would be violated once the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline becomes operational. An attorney for the sisters in Columbia, Pennsylvania, contends that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit erred in allowing provisions of the Natural Gas Act that govern pipeline construction to supersede the intent of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, known as RFRA. “We think the 3rd Circuit turned it (RFRA) on its head to apply the Natural Gas Act to RFRA rather than RFRA control the Natural Gas Act,” attorney Dwight Yoder told Catholic News Service.
19 more Catholic institutions divest from fossil fuel industry
WASHINGTON — The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference and Caritas India are among 19 Catholic institutions that have decided to divest from the fossil fuel industry. The Global Catholic Climate Movement joined other organizations in announcing the latest group of dozens of institutions to divest Sept. 10, ahead of the Global Climate Action Summit Sept. 12-14 in San Francisco. Tomas Insua, GCCM executive director, told Catholic News Service said the expanding divestment movement comes as the world sees the impact of fossil fuel consumption on climate change and the resulting extreme weather. He cited the recent unprecedented floods in Kerala state in southwest India as a result of a warming planet and pointed to Caritas India’s decision to fully divest as “powerful testimony” to the pressing issues posed by climate change. In total, 122 Catholic entities have divested since the GCCM campaign began in 2016. Bishop Lumen Monteiro of Argatala, India, chairman of Caritas India, said in a statement released by GCCM that climate change has negatively impacted the livelihood throughout India, especially in poor and marginalized communities. “The frequency of extreme climate events has increased in the last decade, and the latest one in Kerala has taken the lives of more than 400 people and displaced more than 1 million people. It will take them a long time to overcome this tragedy,” he said.