The Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore will mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with a vespers service at the Baltimore Basilica.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien will preside over the evening prayer service at 6 p.m. Sunday at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to mark the anniversary and to honor the sacrifices and service of area police, fire and emergency personnel and other first responders.

A vespers service consists of hymns, psalms and canticles, a scripture reading, a series of prayers and the benediction. Unlike a Mass, it does not include communion.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien has been chosen to head a Catholic order of knights based in Rome, the Vatican announced Monday, an appointment likely to move O'Brien closer to becoming a cardinal, but also will make him the first of Baltimore's archbishops not to finish his career here.

Pope Benedict XVI named O'Brien to lead the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, a 1,000-year-old group charged with supporting the Christian community and sacred sites of the Holy Land.

O'Brien, the spiritual leader of the Baltimore area's half-million Catholics, will continue administering the archdiocese until his successor is named until his own successor is named, the Baltimore archdiocese said in a news release early Monday.

The archdiocese has scheduled a news conference for 10 a.m.

Read more on O'Brien's new assignment at baltimore sun.com.

The press release follows, after the jump.

Continue reading "O'Brien to lead order of knights in Rome" »

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Pope Benedict XVI is set to name Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien to a Rome-based order of knights charged with protecting the Christian community and sacred sites of the Holy Land, a prominent Catholic blogger is reporting.

Blogger Rocco Palmo writes that O’Brien, 72, could be named pro-grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem as early as Monday.

The Baltimore Sun has been unable to confirm the report independently. Messages left for the archdiocese have not been returned.

By tradition, Palmo writes on his Whispers in the Loggia blog, the “pro-” designation indicates that the individual is next in line to be named a cardinal, at which point the prefix disappears.

O’Brien arrived in Baltimore in 2007, succeeding Cardinal William Keeler as archbishop of Baltimore and spiritual leader of the area’s 500,000 Catholics.

He presided over the restructuring of the archdiocesan school system last year, closing 13 of 64 schools, consolidating those that remained and introducing new programs in the hope of attracting more families.

More recently, he urged Gov. Martin O’Malley last month against supporting same-sex marriage, which he described in a letter as “a goal that so deeply conflicts with your faith.”

O’Brien joined Benedict in 2008 to concelebrate a Mass at Nationals Park in Washington during the pope’s visit to the United States.

Continue reading "Report: Archbishop to leave Baltimore for Rome" »

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The Archdiocese of Baltimore has closed St. Patrick Catholic Church indefinitely after engineers deemed the historic Fells Point church unsafe following Tuesday’s earthquake.

Founded in 1792, the parish is the oldest in Baltimore. The current church building was completed in 1898.

The archdiocese said Wednesday that the church’s badly damaged steeple will be “selectively deconstructed and stabilized,” a process it expects to take several weeks.

When the work is complete, the archdiocese said, the church will be reopened for use.

In the meantime, the archdiocese is encouraging parishioners to attend Mass at nearby Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Highlandtown, and offering shuttles for those who need transportation.

St. Patrick celebrates two Masses each week. Shuttles will leave the St. Patrick parking lot at 7:15 p.m. Wednesdays and 8:15 a.m. Sundays.

Archbishop Edwin O’Brien reviewed the damage with the Rev. Father Robert Wojtek, the Sacred Heart pastor who administers St. Patrick. Engineers determined that the parish hall, where the archdiocese had hoped to celebrate Mass temporarily, is structurally unsafe.

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The Archdiocese of Baltimore closed Historic St. Patrick Catholic Church in Fells Point indefinitely Tuesday after its steeple and bell tower were badly damaged in the 5.8-magnitude earthquake that shook Maryland Tuesday afternoon.

Archbishop Edwin O’Brien is scheduled to survey the damage to the113-year-old church on Wednesday morning. The archdiocese said it expects to determine then whether the parish hall can be used for Mass until the church is reopened.

If the hall is also deemed unsafe, the archdiocese said, parishioners will be encouraged to attend Mass at nearby Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Highlandtown.

O’Brien offered prayers for the parishioners of St. Patrick.

The church was founded in 1792; the current church was completed in 1898. The Rev. Robert Wojtek, Pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus, oversees its operation.

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In the days before Gov. Martin O’Malley came out in support of same-sex marriage, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien privately urged him against “promoting a goal that so deeply conflicts with your faith.”

“Preserving the central role of the natural family unit has always been — and should continue to be — the reason why our government recognizes marriage as existing between one man and one woman,” the archbishop wrote to the governor in a letter dated July 20.

Two days later, O’Malley said he would introduce legislation next year to allow gay couples to marry.

“As a free and diverse people of many faiths, we choose to be governed under the law by certain fundamental principles or beliefs, among them ‘equal protection of the law’ for every individual and the ‘free exercise’ of religion without government intervention,” O’Malley said. “Other states have found a way to protect both these rights. So should Maryland.”

A same-sex marriage bill cleared the state Senate this year, but it was pulled from the House floor after vote-counters determined they were a few delegates shy of a majority. With O’Malley’s active support, backers are hopeful of success next year.

O’Malley, who is Catholic, opposed same-sex marriage when he first ran for governor in 2006. He said at the time that he had been “raised to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

His announcement last month came weeks after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that made New York the sixth state to allow gay couples to marry — and enjoyed a boost in his national profile.

“I am well aware that the recent events in New York have intensified pressure on you to lend your active support to legislation to redefine marriage,” O’Brien wrote, in a letter released Monday by the governor’s office.

Continue reading "O'Brien urged O'Malley against backing gay marriage" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

The Vatican told bishops around the world Monday that it is important to cooperate with police in reporting priests who rape and molest children and said they should develop guidelines for preventing sex abuse by next year.

But the suggestions in the letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are vague and nonbinding, and they contain no enforcement mechanisms to ensure bishops actually draft the guidelines or follow them.

That is a significant omission given that the latest scandal in the United States involves allegations Philadelphia's archbishop left accused priests in ministry despite purportedly tough U.S. guidelines, and evidence that Irish bishops were stonewalling an independent board overseeing compliance with the guidelines of the church in Ireland.

The document marks the latest effort by the Vatican to show it's serious about rooting out priestly pedophiles and preventing abuse following the eruption on a global scale of the abuse scandal last year with thousands of victims coming forward.

But it failed to impress advocates for victims who have long blamed the power of bishops bent on protecting the church and its priests for fueling the scandal. Without fear of punishment themselves, bishops frequently moved pedophile priests from parish to parish rather than reporting them to police or punishing them under church law.

"There's nothing that will make a child safer today or tomorrow or next month or next year," said Barbara Dorris, outreach director for the main U.S. victims group Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests.

Critically, the letter reinforces bishops' exclusive authority in dealing with abuse cases. It says independent lay review boards that have been created in some countries to oversee the church's child protection policies and ensure compliance "cannot substitute" for bishops' judgment and power.

Recently, such lay review committees in the U.S. and Ireland have reported that some bishops "failed miserably" in following their own guidelines and had thwarted the boards' work by withholding information and by enacting legal hurdles that made ensuring compliance impossible.

"Our central concern is that bishops and religious leaders retain enormous discretionary powers to decide if an allegation is credible," said Maeve Lewis, executive director of the Irish victims group One in Four.

Continue reading "Vatican suggests bishops report abuse to police" »

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The Associated Press reports:

An Australian bishop who was fired by Pope Benedict XVI after suggesting the church consider ordaining women and married men says the Vatican is becoming increasingly authoritarian.

The Vatican said Monday that Bishop William Morris of the Toowoomba diocese, west of Brisbane, had been "removed from pastoral care."

Morris says he was removed because of a letter he wrote to his parish in 2006 that suggested the church consider ordaining women and married men to help solve priest shortages. Currently, only celibate men can be ordained in the Roman Catholic church.

On Tuesday, Morris told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the Vatican has become increasingly authoritarian and dismissive of local bishops.

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The Associated Press reports:

Peruvian President Alan Garcia says Pope John Paul II should get credit for the death of Osama bin Laden.

The late pope was beatified on Sunday and Garcia says: "His first miracle was to remove from the world the incarnation of evil, the demonic incarnation of crime and hatred, giving us the news that the person who blew up towers and buildings is no longer."

Garcia made the comment Monday as he inaugurated a hydroelectric power station.

Garcia also says bin Laden's death also vindicates President George W. Bush's decision "to punish Bin Laden and patiently continue this work that has born fruit."

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Associated Press correspondent Victor L. Simpson reports:

A visit to Rome's main synagogue. Diplomatic relations with Israel. A handwritten plea asking forgiveness for Christian persecution left at Judaism's holiest site in Jerusalem.

With his landmark actions, Pope John Paul II strove throughout his 27-year papacy to overcome the tortured two-millennia history of Catholic-Jewish relations.

In a sign of appreciation for those efforts, some in the crowd at his beatification Sunday in St. Peters's Square will be Jews, including an Israeli Cabinet minister who lost most of his family in the Holocaust but was hidden by a Belgium family who raised him as a Christian.

"We have a high respect, a unique respect for John Paul," Yossi Peled, a retired Israeli general, said Friday. "He is not just another pope for us."

The preparations for the beatification — the last formal step before possible sainthood — got under way in an official capacity Friday morning when John Paul's tomb was opened and his sealed casket removed for public viewing starting Sunday in St. Peter's Basilica.

The simple white marble tombstone that had marked John Paul's resting place in the grottoes underneath the basilica will be sent to a new church dedicated to him in Krakow, the Vatican said.

Eighty-seven official delegations have confirmed their presence at the ceremony, including 16 heads of state, six heads of government and members of five royal houses, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said.

Peled, a minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, said the participation of an Israeli Cabinet member at what is a religious event — the U.S. delegation is limited to its ambassador to the Holy See and two former envoys — is a sign of the importance given to John Paul's accomplishments.

Continue reading "On eve of beatification, Jews praise John Paul II" »

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The Archdiocese of Baltimore is hosting several events this weekend to celebrate the beatification on Sunday of Pope John Paul II.

The pontiff came to the archdiocese in October 1995, visiting the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the Our Daily Bread soup kitchen and St. Mary’s Seminary & University.

The pope also visited the Baltimore Basilica in 1976, as Cardinal Karol Wojtyla. The archdiocese has commemorated his visits with the Pope John Paul II Prayer Garden at Charles and Franklin streets, dedicated in October 2008.

His beatification Sunday in Rome will move him a step away from sainthood. The Baltimore archdiocese will celebrate the event with a succession of events Sunday and Monday. They include:

Sunday, May 1
10:45 a.m. Mass at the Baltimore Basilica

11:45 a.m. Eucharistic Procession from the Basilica to the Pope John Paul II Prayer Garden
Praying of the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Prayer Garden

4:30 p.m. Mass for young adults, Basilica

5:30 p.m. Eucharistic Procession following from Basilica to Pope John Paul II Prayer Garden
Praying of the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Prayer Garden

Monday, May 2
Students in all Catholic schools will recite special beatification prayer, and learn about life of Pope John Paul II and making of saints.

Continue reading "Baltimore archdiocese to celebrate JPII beatification" »

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The Associated Press reports:

A Roman Catholic priest in Connecticut has been sentenced to three years in prison after pleading no contest to stealing more than $1 million in church money and spending it on male escorts and a lavish lifestyle.

The Rev. Kevin Gray, former pastor at Sacred Heart/Sagrado Corazon Parish in Waterbury, was also sentenced Wednesday to three years of probation.

The Republican-American reports that a plea of no contest was entered on Gray's behalf, which means he didn't admit guilt, but a conviction for first-degree larceny was entered on his record.

Prosecutors say the 65-year-old Gray won't have to pay back the money because the Diocese of Hartford did not ask for restitution.

Gray's attorney called many of the charges against his client overblown.

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Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien has issued a statement on former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer, who died Monday at age 89:

"The prayers of the more than half-million Catholics of the Archdiocese of Baltimore are with the former Governor's family and with their fellow citizens of Baltimore and Maryland at the loss of one of the greatest civic leaders we have known. As mayor and governor, William Donald Schaefer was a partner and friend to my predecessors, championing the needs of others throughout his many years of service. As we celebrate this Holy Week, we encourage prayers for the repose of the soul of our late Governor, and give thanks to God for his selfless service."

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Sun colleague Tricia Bishop reports:

Advocates for victims of clergy abuse called Thursday for an investigation into its allegations that the Catholic Church purposely funneled problem priests into the chaplain corps of the U.S. military.

Meeting with reporters outside the Downtown headquarters of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests called for congressional hearings to determine “how frequently and why Catholic officials dumped predator priests on military bases.”

And they distributed documents that they said showed that Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien ignored sexual misconduct by chaplains when he headed the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services.

O’Brien’s spokesman called the allegations absurd, groundless and unsupported.

“Archbishop O'Brien is deeply committed to protecting youth in the care of the Church,” spokesman Sean Caine said in a lengthy statement e-mailed to The Baltimore Sun in response to the group’s allegations.

“The Archbishop’s history of providing outreach to victims (he met with victims of clergy sexual abuse beginning with his first day as Archbishop of Baltimore), his removal of priests credibly accused of abuse — even if not charged criminally, and his diligence in enforcing and strengthening the policies that protect children in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, should be the measure of his approach to the scourge of sexual abuse,” Caine wrote.

The Archdiocese for Military Services, which is based in Washington, did not return a message seeking comment Thursday.

The victims’ group, known as SNAP, released a list online Thursday of roughly 100 priests who worked as chaplains in the military or in Veterans Affairs hospitals during the past 50 years and were accused of sexual misconduct either before, during or after their service.

Continue reading "SNAP says problem priests sent to military" »

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The Vatican has accepted the resignation of Bishop John H. Ricard, who served 13 years in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore and chaired Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services for five.

Ricard, 71, suffered a stroke in December 2009 and has undergone several surgeries since. He submitted his resignation to the Vatican last month.

Bishops ordinarily serve until they turn 75, but are asked to resign if they are unable to function effectively.

Ricard was a popular auxiliary bishop in Baltimore from 1984 until 1997, when he was tapped by Pope John Paul II to head the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee in Florida. The Baton Rouge, La., native was ordained a Josephite father in 1968.

Catholic Relief Services President Ken Hackett said the organization will be praying for his health and happiness.”

“Bishop Ricard was a visionary leader for CRS at a time when the agency was going through expansion and many changes,” Hackett said in a statement. “I was privileged to visit CRS programs on many occasions with Bishop Ricard and witness firsthand his understanding and compassion for people in some of the poorest places in our world.”

Continue reading "Vatican accepts resignation of former Balto. bishop" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI rejects the idea of Jesus as a political revolutionary and insists that violent revolution must never be carried out in God's name in a new book being released Thursday amid great fanfare at the start of Lent.

"Jesus of Nazareth - Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection," is the second installment of Benedict's planned trilogy on Jesus. Part I, which covered Jesus' early ministry, shot to the top of the best-seller lists in Italy when it was published in 2007.

Already, 1.2 million copies of Part II have been printed in seven languages, and reprints of 100,000 more are planned for the Italian editions and 50,000 in German.

In the book, Benedict exonerates the Jews as a people for Christ's death. He also insists that Jesus never advocated violent revolution, as some liberation theologians have suggested, saying violence was not His way no matter how valid the motivation.

Benedict has spoken out frequently to denounce religiously motivated violence against Christians in the Middle East, Pakistan and elsewhere. "The cruel consequences of religiously motivated violence are only too evident to us all," he noted in the book.

"Violence does not build up the kingdom of God, the kingdom of humanity. On the contrary, it is a favorite instrument of the Antichrist, however idealistic its religious motivation may be," Benedict wrote. "It serves, not humanity, but inhumanity."

Continue reading "Pope's new book: Never violence in God's name" »

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Associated Press correspondent Joann Loviglio reports:

The Philadelphia archdiocese suspended 21 Roman Catholic priests Tuesday who were named as child molestation suspects in a scathing grand jury report released last month. The priests have been removed from ministry while their cases are reviewed, Cardinal Justin Rigali said. The names of the priests were not being released, a spokesman for the archdiocese said.

"These have been difficult weeks since the release of the grand jury report," Rigali said in a statement. "Difficult most of all for victims of sexual abuse but also for all Catholics and for everyone in our community."

The two-year grand jury investigation into priest abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia resulted in charges against two priests, a former priest and a Catholic school teacher who are accused of raping young boys. And in an unprecedented move in the U.S., a former high-ranking church official was accused of transferring problem priests to new parishes without warning anyone of prior sex-abuse complaints.

Since 2002, when the national abuse crisis erupted in the Archdiocese of Boston, American dioceses have barred hundreds of accused clergy from public church work or removed the men permanently from the priesthood. The actions of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia stand out because they come more than eight years after the U.S. bishops reformed their national child protection policies and pledged swift action to keep potential abusers away from young people.

The grand jury named 37 priests who remained in active ministry despite credible allegations of sexual abuse. After the release of the report, the second such investigation in the city in six years, Rigali vowed to take its calls for further reforms seriously.

In addition to the 21 priests placed on leave Tuesday, three others named by the grand jury were suspended a week after the report's release in February. There were five other priests who would have been suspended: one who was already on leave, two who are "incapacitated and have not been in active ministry," and two who no longer are priests in the archdiocese but are now members of another religious order that was not identified.

"The archdiocese has notified the superiors of their religious orders and the bishops of the dioceses where they are residing," the cardinal said.

Continue reading "21 Pa. priests named in abuse report are suspended" »

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Associated Press correspondents Gillian Flaccus and John Mone report:

VENTURA, Calif. – Carl Sutphin was a problem priest who left ministry in the Roman Catholic church just before being charged nearly a decade ago with 14 counts of molestation for sexually abusing six children.

He was never convicted of the charges, and he now lives in a doublewide mobile home in a quiet neighborhood within two miles of a youth sports complex, a library, two day care centers and at least two elementary schools. Sutphin admits he molested children as a priest, but his name doesn't show up in a sex offender database because the charges were dismissed because too much time had elapsed.

"I don't remember the numbers. I won't say I deny it. I do not deny it, no," Sutphin, who has been accused of abuse by 18 people, told The Associated Press. "The church could have acted quicker, I think, and sometimes reports were not made right away. In my case, some of the cases didn't come forward until 15 or 20 years later. ... So the church didn't do anything about it, they couldn't do anything about it."

Sutphin is one of dozens of former and current priests and religious brothers accused of childhood sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles who now live unmonitored by civil authorities in communities across the state and nation. For many, the statute of limitations had expired by the time the abuse was reported, making it impossible for prosecutors to land convictions and subject the priests to sex offender databases and monitoring.

Plaintiffs' attorneys have worked with private investigators since October to compile a list of the priests' addresses, the most comprehensive accounting of the whereabouts of the 233 clergy accused of abuse in civil lawsuits in the Los Angeles archdiocese. They hope to use it Thursday to persuade a judge to recommend the release of all church files for every priest or religious brother ever accused of sexual abuse in the sweeping litigation.

Those confidential files are at the center of a heated dispute between the church and plaintiffs' lawyers since the nation's largest archdiocese reached a record-breaking $660 million settlement nearly four years ago. Plaintiffs want the files — which could include internal correspondence, previous complaints and therapy records — released, saying it's a matter of public safety. The church is pushing for a more limited release of information.

The list of addresses, obtained by The Associated Press, contains nearly 50 former priests who live unmonitored in California, and another 15 in cities and towns from Maryland to Texas to Montana. More than 80 more cannot be located despite an exhaustive search by plaintiffs' attorneys. Four are believed to have fled to Mexico or South America. About 80 are dead.

Continue reading "AP: Abusive priests live unmonitored" »

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Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien is urging Catholics to contact the lawmakers following a committee vote in Annapolis Friday to send same-sex marriage legislation to the full House of Delegates.

O'Brien's statement:

"The Judiciary Committee's disputed decision to advance legislation that would redefine marriage in Maryland is both regrettable and irresponsible. Instead of strengthening and protecting marriage, our State has moved one step closer to dismantling it altogether, a move that would threaten the stability of society and families for current and future generations.

"It is only the relationship of a man to a woman, a father to a mother that can bring a child into the world, and it is this relationship that government, people of faith and all of society should be encouraging. Every child has the right to be loved and nurtured by his true father and mother, not only for his benefit but the benefit of our wider human family. How can this possibly be lost on people of good will today?

"I encourage every Catholic in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and all who value marriage and family, to immediately contact their elected officials in the House of Delegates to ensure that the voices of reason, faith and love of family are not lost in the ensuing debate."

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI has made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ, tackling one of the most controversial issues in Christianity in a new book.

In "Jesus of Nazareth-Part II" excerpts released Wednesday, Benedict explains biblically and theologically why there is no basis in Scripture for the argument that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus' death.

Interpretations to the contrary have been used for centuries to justify the persecution of Jews.

While the Catholic Church has for five decades taught that Jews weren't collectively responsible, Jewish scholars said Wednesday the argument laid out by the German-born pontiff, who has had his share of mishaps with Jews, was a landmark statement from a pope that would help fight anti-Semitism today.

"Holocaust survivors know only too well how the centuries-long charge of 'Christ killer' against the Jews created a poisonous climate of hate that was the foundation of anti-Semitic persecution whose ultimate expression was realized in the Holocaust," said Elan Steinberg of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.

The pope's book, he said, not only confirms church teaching refuting the deicide charge "but seals it for a new generation of Catholics."

Continue reading "Pope: Jews as whole not responsible for Jesus' death" »

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Associated Press correspondent Michael Gormley reports:

A consultant for the Vatican's high court says he believes New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo shouldn't receive the Catholic sacrament of Holy Communion because he is not married to his live-in girlfriend, Food Network star Sandra Lee.

Edward Peters, who's also a conservative Catholic blogger and seminary professor in Detroit, called the living arrangement "public concubinage" and said that Cuomo taking Communion would be sacrilegious.

But Catholic bishops don't agree. Bishops and priests have allowed the Catholic Democrat to receive Communion for years, including at Christmas last year and at a Mass last month marking his inauguration. The practice appears to conform to church law.

"My religion is a private matter, and that is not something I discuss in the political arena," Cuomo said Wednesday.

The bishop in Albany agreed, saying to pass judgment on others, even those in public life, is inappropriate.

"There are norms of the church governing the sacraments which Catholics are expected to observe," said Albany Diocese Bishop Howard J. Hubbard. "However, it is unfair and imprudent to make a pastoral judgment about a particular situation without knowing all the facts. As a matter of pastoral practice, we should not comment publicly on anything which should be addressed privately, regardless if the person is a public figure or a private citizen."

Continue reading "Vatican consultant: No communion for Cuomo" »

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Associated Press correspondent Kirsten Grieshaber reports:

In a rare move that needed the pope's approval, a Lutheran convert was ordained Tuesday as a Catholic priest in Germany and is being allowed to remain married to his wife — who has already become a nun.

Harm Klueting, 61, was ordained by Archbishop Joachim Cardinal Meisner in a private ceremony at the city's seminary, the Cologne archdiocese said.

Pope Benedict XVI gave Klueting a special permission to remain married to his wife Edeltraut Klueting, who became a Catholic Carmelite nun in 2004.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's chief spokesman, said the exception is rare but there have been similar cases.

"It doesn't happen every day," he said.

Klueting and his wife were Lutherans when they married in 1977 and both served as Lutheran clerics before converting to Catholicism several years ago. They have two grown children.

The Cologne archdiocese said in a statement that the couple would not have to take the traditional vow of celibacy as long as they remain married — a highly unusual move since celibacy is normally a key requirement for Catholic priests.

Klueting and his family could not be reached for comment, and it was not clear whether they still lived together as a couple.

Lombardi said he didn't have any specific information about the Kluetings, including what the pope said about the case.

Continue reading "Pope approves ordination of married father of two" »

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The Associated Press reports:

The Vatican has named a tiny shrine in a small northeast Wisconsin town as a holy site.

The Catholic Church has recognized the chapel in Champion, near Green Bay, as the location of an official sighting of the Virgin Mary. Milwaukee radio station WTMJ-AM says it is the only site in the country with that distinction.

Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay says the Virgin Mary appeared there three times to Belgium immigrant Adele Brise in 1859. Devotees have since visited the site to pray for miracles.

Ricken started investigating the events and three theological experts soon picked up the work. After two years of poring over letters and documents, experts decided her claims were true. The Vatican validated those results in December.

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Associated Press writer Victor L. Simpson reports:

Pope Benedict XVI has long championed organ transplants, but don't expect an organ donation from him. The Vatican says his body belongs to the whole church.

While the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has possessed an organ donor card since the 1970s when he lived in Germany, it was rendered void when he became pope in 2005, his secretary said.

Monsignor Georg Gaenswein addressed the issue in a letter to a German doctor who has been using the fact that Benedict possessed a donor card to recruit other donors. Vatican Radio reported on the letter in a German language broadcast this week.

Gaenswein sought to put the matter to rest, saying any references to the now invalid document are mistaken.

Polish Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, head of the Vatican's health office, told La Repubblica newspaper that it was understandable that a pope's body remains intact because it belongs to the entire church.

"It is also understandable in view of possible future veneration," he said, referring to future sainthood. "This doesn't take anything away from the validity and the beauty of the gift of organ donation."

Continue reading "Vatican: Pope Benedict no longer an organ donor" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Pope Benedict XVI says public officials today would do well to model themselves on Joan of Arc, the French saint who was tried for heresy and burned at the stake for her convictions.

Benedict highlighted the life of the 15th century mystic in his Wednesday audience, which over the past several months he has used to highlight important women in the church's history.

Joan of Arc led the French to several victories over the English during the Hundred Years War. She was tried for heresy and witchcraft and burned at the stake in 1431. Her conviction was later annulled and she was canonized in 1920.

Benedict says: "Hers is a beautiful example of holiness for lay people working in public life, particularly during the most difficult situations."

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI told priests over the weekend to do a better job counseling would-be spouses to ensure their marriages last and said no one has an absolute right to a wedding.

Benedict made the comments Saturday in his annual speech to the Roman Rota, the Vatican tribunal that decides marriage annulments. An annulment is the process by which the church effectively declares that a marriage never took place.

Benedict acknowledged that the problems that would allow for a marriage to be annulled cannot always be identified beforehand. But he said better pre-marriage counseling, which the Catholic Church requires of the faithful, could help avoid a "vicious circle" of invalid marriages.

He said the right to a church wedding requires that the bride and groom intend to celebrate and live the marriage truthfully and authentically.

"No one can make a claim to the right to a nuptial ceremony," he said.

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Categories: Catholicism, Faith Practices, International, People, Sexuality
        

Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI has signed off on the miracle needed to beatify Pope John Paul II and set May 1 as the date to honor one of the most beloved popes of all times as a model of saintliness for the church.

Benedict said in a decree Friday that a French nun's recovery from Parkinson's disease was miraculous, the last step needed for beatification. A second miracle is needed for the Polish-born John Paul to be made a saint.

The May 1 ceremony, which Benedict himself will celebrate, is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Rome — a major morale boost for a church reeling from a wave of violence against Christians and fallout from the clerical sex abuse scandal.

"This is a huge and important cause of joy," Warsaw Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz told reporters at his residence in the Polish capital.

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul's longtime secretary and friend, expressed "huge thanks" to Benedict for the decree. "We are happy today," he said.

Benedict put John Paul on the fast track to possible sainthood just weeks after he died in 2005, responding to the chants of "Santo Subito!" or "Sainthood immediately!" that erupted during his funeral.

Benedict waived the typical five-year waiting period before the process could begin, but he insisted that the investigation into John Paul's life be thorough so as to not leave any doubts about his virtues.

John Paul's beatification will nevertheless be the fastest on record, coming just over six years after his death and beating out Mother Teresa's then-record beatification in 2003 by a few days.

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Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien has entered into a friendly wager with the Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh over Saturday’s Ravens-Steelers game.

If the Ravens win, Bishop David A. Zubik of Pittsburgh will make a donation to Our Daily Bread, the Catholic Charities program that serves more than 250,000 hot meals in Baltimore each year.

If the Steelers win, O’Brien will make a donation to the Catholic charity of Zubik’s choice.

“I am looking forward to delivering Bishop Zupik’s check to Our Daily Bread after the Ravens beat the Steelers,” Archbishop O’Brien taunted Thursday. “I have great faith that Coach Harbaugh, a product of Catholic schools, will have his team well-prepared for the game and the Ravens will move one step closer to the Super Bowl!”

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Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien will celebrate Mass at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, the first anniversary of the earthquake that leveled Haiti.

O'Brien is inviting Catholics and others in the Archdiocese to "stand in prayerful solidarity" with the people of Haiti.

The archdiocese, which has a long-established Haiti Outreach Project, raised more than $730,000 last year for earthquake relief efforts.

Through a sister relationship with the Catholic Diocese of Gonaives, the archdiocese sponsors three schools, including the Cardinal William H. Keeler Trade School, and feeds 15,000 children each day. Eighteen parishes in the archdiocese have partnerships with parishes in Haiti, funding feeding programs and improving teacher salaries in schools.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has called on Catholics to participate in a novena — nine days of prayer — for the people of Haiti beginning on Wednesday. More information is availablet at the conference website.

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In spite of the slow economic recovery, and a national downturn in charitable giving, the Archdiocese of Baltimore raised a record amount for ministries and programs in 2010, the archdiocese said Tuesday.

More than 40,000 people donated more than $8.7 million to the Archbishop's Annual Appeal, up more than 67 percent since 2006.

“Ironically, the Appeal has seen its greatest growth since the downturn in the economy -- a clear indication not only of the efforts of the Archbishop and pastors and pastoral life directors who promoted the appeal as a way of helping people in need, but also the extraordinary generosity of Catholics and others in the Archdiocese of Baltimore,” said Patrick Madden, the archdiocesan director of development.

According to the archdiocese, 46 percent of the money raised in 2010 was returned to parishes to fund church operations and programs, 23 percent went to Catholic Charities, and 31 percent is funding ministries and outreach programs such as AIDS ministry, prison ministry and the Interfaith Housing Alliance in Western Maryland.

“The reach of the Appeal is enormous," Madden said. "In fact, many of the programs the Appeal supports could not continue to operate without funding from the Archbishop’s Annual Appeal."

Continue reading "Archbishop's appeal nets record haul" »

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Associated Press correspondent Maggie Michael reports:

CAIRO – In the weeks before the New Year's Day suicide bombing of an Egyptian church, al-Qaida-linked websites carried a how-to manual on "destroying the cross," complete with videos on how to build a bomb and the locations of churches to target — including the one that was attacked.

They may have found a receptive audience in Alexandria, where increasingly radicalized Islamic hard-liners have been holding weekly anti-Christian demonstrations, filled with venomous slogans against the minority community.

The blast, which struck Saturday as worshippers were leaving midnight Mass at the Mediterranean city's Saints Church, killed 21 people.

President Hosni Mubarak has accused foreign groups of being behind the attack, which has sparked a wave of angry protests by Christians in Egypt.

But on the ground, investigators are searching in a different direction — scrutinizing homegrown hard-liners, known as Salafis, and the possibility they were inspired by al-Qaida.

Continue reading "Anti-Christian drumbeat grew before Egypt attack" »

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The Associated Press reports:

The Legionaries of Christ is ordering images of its disgraced founder removed from its buildings worldwide as part of Vatican-mandated reforms.

The conservative order says photographs showing the late Rev. Marciel Maciel alone or with the pope must be removed from its installations.

Maciel founded the influential Legion in Mexico in 1941. He was dogged for years by allegations that he abused seminarians. But it was only after his 2008 death that the order admitted the allegations were true and that Maciel had fathered three children.

The Legion also announced on its website Monday that it was prohibiting the celebration of Maciel's birthday. It also banned the sale of Maciel's writings inside Legion centers.

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The Associated Press reports:

The Roman Catholic Church this week designated a Wisconsin spot where an apparition of the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared three times to a Belgian-born nun in 1859 as the only of its kind in the United States.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help at Champion, just east of Green Bay near Lake Michigan, has long been a popular destination for the faithful. But it was only in the last two years that the Diocese of Green Bay undertook the official process to earn the distinction that now puts it in company with renowned holy apparition sites including Lourdes, France; Guadalupe, Mexico; and Fatima, Portugal.

Green Bay Bishop David Ricken approved the sightings as legitimate apparitions after a two-year study by a commission he appointed. Ricken announced the distinction at a special Mass for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception at the shrine, where he read from a decree that stated the apparitions witnessed by Sister Adele Brise in 1859 "do exhibit the substance of supernatural character, and I do hereby approve these apparitions as worthy of belief (although not obligatory) by the Christian faithful."

Brise was 28 at the time of the visions, and had emigrated to Wisconsin from Belgium with her family about four years earlier. Brise would recount that a lady dressed in dazzling white appeared to her and claimed to be the "Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners," according to information provided by the Green Bay diocese. The apparition asked Brise to do the same, and to gather children and teach them what they should know for salvation.

Continue reading "Church recognizes site of reported Mary apparition" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

The Vatican on Thursday released documentation showing Pope Benedict XVI sought as early as 1988 to find quicker ways to permanently remove priests who raped and molested children but was rebuffed.

A 1988 letter from then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger could serve as the Vatican's best defense to date that the future pope wanted to quickly remove pedophile priests but found himself stymied by church law.

In the letter, republished in Thursday's Vatican newspaper, Ratzinger complained that church law made it exceedingly difficult to remove abusers if they didn't request to be laicized voluntarily. He asked to get around the problem by finding "a quicker and simpler procedure" than a cumbersome church trial to punish those priests who "during their ministry were found guilty of grave and scandalous behavior."

He was turned down on the grounds that the priests' ability to defend themselves would be compromised.

The documentation was included in an article in L'Osservatore Romano explaining an upcoming revision of church law, which was last updated in 1983.

The article, penned by the No. 2 in the Vatican's legal office, highlighted some of the problems and loopholes of the 1983 Code of Canon Law's penal section that presumably will be addressed in the revision.

The Vatican has long sought to portray Benedict as having done more than anyone else at the Vatican to crack down on pedophile priests. But it has usually cited as his starting point a 2001 decision to have all abuse cases sent to his then-office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Continue reading "Benedict sought to remove abusive priests sooner" »

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Associated Press correspondent Will Weisset reports:

A Roman Catholic priest has been arrested on charges that he solicited a hit man to kill a teenager who had accused him of sexual abuse. Authorities said John Fiala first offered the job to a neighbor, who blew the whistle and helped police arrange a sting. They said Fiala got as far as negotiating a $5,000 price for the slaying before investigators moved in.

The 52-year-old clergyman was arrested Nov. 18 at his suburban Dallas home and jailed on $700,000 bond. In April, he was named in a lawsuit filed by the boy's family, who accused Fiala of molesting the youth, including twice forcing him to have sex at gunpoint.

The abuse allegedly took place in 2007 and 2008, when Fiala was a priest at the Sacred Heart of Mary Parish in the West Texas community of Rocksprings, a rural enclave known for sheep and goat herding.

The family's lawsuit also named the Archdiocese of San Antonio and Archbishop Jose Gomez, alleging that church leadership should have known Fiala was abusive.

The suit was filed just a month before Gomez was introduced as the new incoming leader of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. He is currently serving as an assistant to Cardinal Roger Mahony, who will retire next year. Gomez then automatically becomes archbishop.

When he learned of the murder-for-hire investigation, the boy "was terrified and rightly so," said San Antonio attorney Tom Rhodes, who represents the family. As far back as 2008, Fiala threatened the teen, and repeatedly brandished a pistol, Rhodes said.

Fiala "began saying, 'If you tell anyone, I'll hurt you. I'll hurt your family, your girlfriend,'" Rhodes said. "It was more than once he threatened him with a gun."

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI says in a new book that condoms can be justified for male prostitutes seeking to stop the spread of HIV, a stunning comment for a church criticized for its opposition to condoms and for a pontiff who has blamed them for making the AIDS crisis worse.

The pope made the comments in a book-length interview with a German journalist, "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times," which is being released Tuesday. The Vatican newspaper ran excerpts on Saturday.

Church teaching has long opposed condoms because they are a form of artificial contraception, although it has never released an explicit policy about condoms and HIV. The Vatican has been harshly criticized for its opposition.

Benedict said that condoms are not a moral solution. But he said in some cases, such as for male prostitutes, they could be justified "in the intention of reducing the risk of infection."

Benedict called it "a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way of living sexuality."

He used as an example male prostitutes, for whom contraception is not an issue, as opposed to married couples where one spouse is infected. The Vatican has come under pressure from even some church officials in Africa to condone condom use for monogamous married couples to protect the uninfected spouse from getting infected.

Benedict drew the wrath of the United Nations, European governments and AIDS activisits when he told reporters en route to Africa in 2009 that the AIDS problem on the continent couldn't be resolved by distributing condoms.

"On the contrary, it increases the problem," he said then.

Journalist Peter Seewald, who interviewed Benedict over the course of six days this summer, raised the Africa condom comments and asked Benedict if it wasn't "madness" for the Vatican to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms.

"There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility," Benedict said.

But he stressed that it wasn't the way to deal with the evil of HIV, and elsewhere in the book reaffirmed church teaching on contraception and abortion, saying: "How many children are killed who might one day have been geniuses, who could have given humanity something new, who could have given us a new Mozart or some new technical discovery?"

He reiterated the church's position that abstinence and marital fidelity is the only sure way to prevent HIV.

Continue reading "Pope: Condoms may be justified in some cases" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Editorials in a Catholic prep school's student newspaper about same-sex marriage and gay teenagers are sparking debate about free speech in Minnesota.

Student-written opinion pieces in the newspaper at Benilde-St. Margaret in St. Louis Park, Minn., defended gay teenagers and criticized a DVD by Minnesota's Catholic bishops that denounced same-sex marriage.

The editorials and the nearly 100 comments they generated were deleted from the newspaper's website over the weekend. The principal says they created confusion about church teaching and an intensity that made an unsafe environment for students.

Some comments praised a gay student's courage for writing about his experience. Others said the editorials shouldn't have been published at a Catholic school.

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The Associated Press reports.

Pope Benedict XVI has told Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the discrimination and violence Catholics suffer in the Mideast and said he hopes relations between the local churches and authorities can improve.

The Vatican released the text of a letter Benedict wrote Ahmadinejad after receiving a letter from the Iranian leader last month. Ahmadinejad had thanked the pontiff for opposing a Florida pastor's threat to burn the Quran on the Sept. 11 anniversary.

In his letter, dated Nov. 3 but released only Thursday, Benedict noted that a recent meeting of Mideast bishops had decried the discrimination many Catholics face in the region. He said he hoped a bilateral commission would help address the legal status of the Catholic Church in Iran.

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The Associated Press reports:

Parishioners have posted bail for a Roman Catholic priest charged with felony sex crimes against a 12-year-old California boy.

The Rev. Alejandro Jose Castillo was arrested Oct. 25 at his home in Ontario, Calif., and was charged with seven counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under age 14 and one count of forcible lewd and lascivious acts with a child under age 14.

Hundreds of people affiliated with the parishioners group Coalition to Exonerate Fr. Alex raised the $24,000 in bail money. Coalition director Ted Campos says they believe in his innocence.

As a condition for release, Castillo can have no contact with minors.

He was removed as pastor of Ontario's Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in June.

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Associated Press correspondent Jill Lawless reports:

Five Church of England bishops announced Monday they are converting to Catholicism following an invitation to disaffected Anglicans from Pope Benedict XVI — the highest-profile defectors among conservatives opposed to gay bishops and female clergy.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales said Bishop of Ebbsfleet Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Richborough Keith Newton, Bishop of Fulham John Broadhurst — as well as retired bishops Edwin Barnes and David Silk — have decided "to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church."

Burnham and Newton are "flying bishops," who minister to Church of England parishes where congregations have voted not to allow a woman priest to preside at services.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans, said he had accepted the resignations of Burnham and Newton, "with regret."

"We wish them well in this next stage of their service to the Church," he said.

Broadhurst, leader of the traditionalist group Forward in Faith, announced his intention to leave the Church of England last month, accusing the Anglican church of being "fascist in its behavior" and marginalizing those opposed to the ordination of women.

Continue reading "Five Anglican bishops to join Catholic Church" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI strongly defended traditional families and the rights of the unborn Sunday, directly attacking Spanish laws that allow gay marriage, fast-track divorce and easier abortions as he dedicated Barcelona's iconic church, the Sagrada Familia.

It was the second time in as many days that Benedict had criticized the policies of Spain's Socialist government and called for Europe as a whole to rediscover Christian teachings and apply them to everyday life.

As he headed to the church named for the sacred family, about 200 gays and lesbians staged a 'kiss-in' to protest his visit and church policies on homosexuals, condom use and a host of other issues. Church teaching holds that gays should be treated with dignity and respect but that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered."

Benedict has focused much of his pontificate on trying to fight secular trends in the West such as the legal recognition of same-sex unions. Benedict has visited Spain twice so far and has a third trip planned next year, an indication he sees this once staunchly Roman Catholic country as a battleground for the future of the faithful in Europe.

During his homily Sunday, Benedict noted that the Sagrada Familia church, a soaring, Art Nouveau marvel begun over a century ago, was initially conceived of as a temple to the family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

As he inaugurated the church's main altar, he railed against same-sex marriage and divorce, saying families are built on the "indissoluble love of a man and a woman" who should be provided with financial and social benefits from governments. The pontiff also consecrated the building for use as a church in a colorful ceremony seldom seen performed by a pope.

Continue reading "Gay protesters stage 'kiss-in' as pope drives by" »

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Associated Press correspondent Mark Stevenson reports:

A chapel where Roman Catholic priests celebrate Mass every Sunday bears a plaque thanking the donor who built it — the leader of one of Mexico's most violent drug cartels.

The revelation has the church distancing itself from the property in central Mexico, while admitting it knows of other donations from drug traffickers.

"We know that the narcos ... look for a way to redeem themselves in religious terms, by doing some good work. Obviously, sins cannot be washed away by a donation or a collection," said the Rev. Hugo Valdemar, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico, the country's largest.

"We have examples of five or six cases of projects, generally in rural communities, where they don't just build churches, they build roads and bridges and clinics," he said.

On a wall of the brightly painted chapel in the village of Tezontle, a plaque says it was donated by the leader of the violent Zetas cartel.

"Donated by Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, Lord, hear my prayer," reads the bronze-colored marker, which says the chapel was built in honor of Pope John Paul II.

Continue reading "Mass held in Mexico chapel built by drug lord" »

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Associated Press correspondent Robert Wielaard reports

The spokesman for Andre Leonard, Belgium's ultraconservative archbishop, quit Tuesday, saying he can no longer speak for a "loose canon," who has shocked Catholics by sympathizing with priests accused of pedophilia and condemning homosexuals.

The resignation of spokesman Juergen Mettepenningen reflected turmoil in Belgium's Catholic Church that began with a June 24 police raid on church offices, part of an investigation into hundreds of cases of sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests.

Aggravating matters — at a time when the church needed public support — Leonard has aired conservative views, calling AIDS "immanent justice" for homosexuals and saying that prosecuting retired priests for child abuse cases would be "vengeful."

Mettepenningen said Leonard is out of touch with Belgium's Catholic base.

"At times, he behaved like a loose cannon who thinks everybody else is wrong," Mettepenningen said at a news conference. "I was his GPS for three months. But it is the driver who has his hands on the wheel and sets the course."

In recent weeks, mainstream Catholic organizations have publicly spoken out against Leonard's conservative views.

On Tuesday, socialist legislator Jean-Marie de Meester filed a complaint against him with Belgium's anti-racism center for his "homophobic" viewpoints.

Continue reading "Spokesman for 'loose canon' archbishop quits" »

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Associated Press correspondents Barbara Surk and Hamid Ahmed report:

Iraq's dwindling Christian community was grieving and afraid on Monday after militants seized a Baghdad church during evening Mass, held the congregation hostage and triggered a raid by Iraqi security forces. The bloodbath left at least 52 people killed and 67 wounded — nearly everyone inside.

The attack, claimed by an al-Qaida-linked organization, was believed to be the dealiest ever recorded against Iraq's Christians, whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as the community has fled to other countries.

Outside Our Lady of Deliverance church, Raed Hadi leaned against the car carrying his cousin's coffin, waiting for the police to let him bury him on church grounds.

"It was a massacre in there and now they are cleaning it up," he said Monday morning. "We Christians don't have enough protection ... What shall I do now? Leave and ask for asylum?"

"Now they make a show," said Jamal Jaju, who watched as Iraqi forces set up a chain link fence around the church and pushed back observers. "What can I say? I lost at least 20 friends in there."

Pope Benedict XVI denounced the assault as "ferocious" and called for renewed international efforts to broker peace in the region. Catholics made up 2.89 percent of Iraq's population in 1980; by 2008 they were merely 0.89 percent.

Continue reading "Iraqi Christians mourn after church siege kills 52" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Pope Benedict XVI says all countries have the right to regulate immigration flows and protect their borders, and immigrants must respect the laws and national identity of their host nations.

The pontiff said in a message that every person has a right to migrate in search of better living conditions.

The Vatican on Tuesday issued the pope's message for the church's World Day for Migrants and Refugees, which is celebrated Jan. 16.

Benedict said that, as the word's societies become more multiethnic and intercultural, people should seek dialogue and respect each other's differences. States must respect the dignity of all migrants and share their resources, while immigrants "have the duty to integrate into the host country."

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Pope Benedict XVI is elevating Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington to cardinal, the Vatican announced Wednesday.

Wuerl, 69, was one of 24 men named by Benedict to the College of Cardinals at the conclusion of his weekly general audience. Following the ceremony, known as a consistory, next month at the Vatican to elevate the new cardinals, Wuerl will serve as an advisor to the pope and be eligible to vote in papal elections until his 80th birthday.

The Archdiocese of Washington includes the capital and five Maryland counties: Montgomery, Prince George’s, Calvert, Charles and St. Mary’s.

“This truly is an honor for the Archdiocese of Washington, the Church in the nation’s capital, and for all of the clergy, religious and parishioners of this local Church who every day live out their faith in commitment and deep love for Christ,” Wuehrl said in a statement. “I am humbled by our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI’s trust in me as shepherd of this flock and pledge to him my renewed fidelity, affection and loyalty."

Wuerl is the fifth Archbishop of Washington elevated to cardinal since the archdiocese was created out of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The others were Patrick A. O’Boyle, William W. Baum, James A. Hickey and Theodore E. McCarrick.

Continue reading "Washington Archbishop Wuerl to become Cardinal" »

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The Associated Press reports:

The Vatican on Monday released a letter from the pope to seminarians again expressing "profound shame and regret" for the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the global Roman Catholic church.

He said that "thank God, all of us know exemplary priests" who have chosen a life of celibacy.

Some have questioned whether celibacy is in part to blame, but the Vatican insists celibacy isn't responsible.

Recently two bishops from the scandal-hit Belgian church openly questioned the celibacy requirement.

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A Church of England assistant bishop and a parish church have announced that they intend to become Roman Catholics within a new structure set up by Pope Benedict XVI.

John Broadhurst, the bishop of Fulham in London, and St. Peter's Church in Folkestone, southeastern England, both oppose moves in the Church of England to allow women to serve as bishops.

Broadhurst, the first serving Church of England bishop to say he will accept the pope's invitation, is leader of Forward in Faith, a group representing traditionalists within the Church of England. He announced his decision on Friday at the group's national assembly.

St. Peter's Church, which is affiliated with Forward in Faith, announced its decision on Saturday.

Benedict has created a structure called an ordinariate, in which Church of England defectors could continue to use some of their traditional liturgy and be served by their married priests.

"I intend to resign as bishop of Fulham before the end of the year," Broadhurst told the Forward in Faith meeting.

"I am not retiring, I am resigning," he added. "Secondly, I expect that I will enter the ordinariate when it is established."

The parochial church council of St. Peter's said it had resolved to join the ordinariate and "is anxious that this should be made as easy as possible."

Continue reading "Anglican bishop plans Catholic conversion" »

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Associated Press writer Ben Evans reports:

Suddenly, Christine O'Donnell doesn't want to talk about values and religion. The Republican Senate nominee from Delaware, who said four years ago that she heard the "audible voice of God" encouraging her to run for office, is shying away from publicly stating the evangelical views that built her career as a television pundit and conservative activist.

Trailing badly in the polls, O'Donnell has bobbed and weaved recently on previously bold and provocative positions that risk alienating the all-important centrist voting bloc in politically moderate Delaware.

"What I believe is irrelevant," she said under the bright lights of a nationally televised debate Wednesday when asked if she still believes evolution is a myth and schools should be teaching creationism as science.

The tea party favorite is walking a delicate line, trying to avoid a third straight losing Senate campaign by maintaining the enthusiasm of her evangelical base while not scaring off the centrists who could see such views as extreme.

On gays in the military, she said Wednesday that the decision should be left to the Pentagon — declining to state her personal view but making clear that "I don't think that Congress should be forcing a social agenda onto our military."

Similarly, she characterized her opposition to embryonic stem cell research as more of a scientific objection than a religious one, arguing that adult stem cells are more valuable for research, a view not held by the many scientists who say embryonic stem cells are the most versatile and promising. She also gave an indirect answer about her opposition to abortion even in the case of rape or incest, calling it a "scare tactic" and saying rape and incest account for less than 1 percent of abortions.

O'Donnell hasn't always been so quiet.

Continue reading "O'Donnell dodges religion in Senate race" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI formally created a new Vatican office Tuesday to revive Christianity in Europe, his latest attempt to counter secular trends in traditionally Christian countries.

In a decree, Benedict said the new office would promote church doctrine, use the media to get the church's message out and mobilize missionary-type activities.

But even on its first day of existence, the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization ran into an all-too-typical Vatican snag: The four-page decree instituting the office was issued in only Latin and Italian.

Asked how the pope expected to bring the church's message to the world in such relatively unknown languages, the head of the new office, Monsignor Rino Fisichella said he hadn't been in charge until Tuesday and wasn't responsible for how the decree was issued.

He stressed that he planned to have language sections in his department to deal with the faithful in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German and Slavic languages.

Continue reading "Pope outlines new effort to revive Christianity" »

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The president of Catholic Relief Services is stepping down at the beginning of 2012, the Baltimore-based humanitarian agency announced Wednesday.

Ken Hackett, 63, has headed CRS since 1993, leading the agency through Hurricane Mitch in Central America, multiple famines in Africa, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and the Haiti earthquake earlier this year.

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, the chairman of the CRS board of directors, said a board committee would conduct a nationwide search for a successor to Hackett with a goal of installing the next president by January 2012.

Hackett has agreed to continue serving as president for six months beyond the expiration of his current five-year term in June 2011, and to continue on as a consultant until July 2012 to assist in the transition.

“Over two years ago, Ken Hackett, our esteemed president, challenged the Board to become robustly intentional in our strategy for future leadership transition, including his own office as CEO,” Dolan wrote in a note to CRS staff.

“Ken’s challenge to the board was characteristic of his nearly four decades of devotion to CRS—he only wants to be a servant to Jesus Christ, His Church, His poor,” Dolan wrote. “We took him seriously. The good news is that we can do this patiently and carefully, because we are able to approach any leadership changes from a position of strength, success and stability.”

Continue reading "Catholic Relief Services president stepping down" »

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Roman Catholic leaders in Iowa are urging voters to back a constitutional convention, saying the rare gathering would be the quickest way to overturn the court ruling that legalized gay marriage in the state, the Associated Press reports.

The Iowa Catholic Conference, which represents the state's four Roman Catholic dioceses, issued the statement Monday in favor of a yes vote on a Nov. 2 ballot question that would require a constitutional convention.

Gay marriage has been legal in Iowa since 2009, when the state Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision that found a same-sex marriage ban approved by lawmakers violated the Iowa Constitution. Since then, about 1,800 same-sex weddings have been held in Iowa, most by couples who live in other states.

Tom Chapman, executive director of the Catholic Conference, said the group was part of a larger effort to encourage Iowa's roughly 500,000 Catholics to vote their conscience on a number of issues.

Continue reading "Catholics strategizing to reverse gay marriage" »

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Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press reports:

The Vatican declared Pope Benedict XVI's four-day visit to Britain a "great success" Sunday, saying the pontiff was able to reach out to a nation wary of his message and angry at his church's sex abuse scandal.

On his final day, Benedict praised British heroics against the Nazis to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and moved an Englishman a step closer to possible sainthood.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the important thing wasn't so much the turnout — crowds were much smaller than when Pope John Paul II visited in 1982 — but that Benedict's warning about the dangers of an increasingly secularized society had been received "with profound interest" from Britons as a whole.

Indeed, the British media coverage was remarkable in the seriousness with which newspapers and television took Benedict's message, and TV stations ran virtually all of the pope's speeches, Masses and other events live.

"Everyone is agreed about the great success, not so much from the point of view of the numbers, but ... by the fact that the message of the pope was received with respect and joy by the faithful," Lombardi told reporters.

Prime Minister David Cameron, in his farewell speech before Benedict's departure ceremony, said the pope had "challenged the whole country to sit up and think, and that can only be a good thing."

Continue reading "Vatican: Pope's UK visit a 'great success'" »

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Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday he was ashamed of the "unspeakable" sexual abuse of children by priests, telling the British faithful during Mass in Westminster Cathedral that he was deeply sorry and hoped the church's humiliation would help victims heal, the Associated Press reports.

Benedict also said he hoped the church would be able to use its contrition to purify itself of the "sins" of its ministers and renew its commitment to educating the young.

Benedict addressed the abuse scandal head-on during his homily, which was broadcast live on British television, a day after six people were arrested in an alleged terrorist plot against him. They remained in custody Saturday.

The sex abuse scandal has clouded Benedict's four-day state visit to this deeply secular nation with a centuries-old history of anti-Catholic sentiment. Polls have indicated widespread dissatisfaction in Britain with the way Benedict has handled the crisis, with Catholics nearly as critical of him as the rest of the population.

Anger over the abuse scandal runs high in Britain in part because of the enormous scale of the abuse in neighboring Ireland, where government reports have detailed systematic abuse of children at church-run schools and cover-up on the part of church authorities.

The pontiff issued his comments in the seat of English Catholicism amid indications he would meet with British abuse victims, and as abuse survivors and others opposed to his visit prepared a march Saturday afternoon in London's Hyde Park to demand more accountability.

"I express my deep sorrow to the innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes, along with my hope that the power of Christ's grace, his sacrifice of reconciliation, will bring deep healing and peace to their lives," Benedict said.

Continue reading "Pope says he's ashamed of abuse by priests" »

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British police arrested five London street cleaners over an alleged threat to Pope Benedict XVI on Friday, the second day of a papal trip to Britain that has brought both a warm welcome from Catholics and renewed anger over the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Associated Press reports.

The Vatican said the pope was calm despite the pre-dawn arrests and planned no changes to his schedule.

Acting on a tip, police detained the men, aged 26 to 50, under the Terrorism Act at a cleaning depot in central London after receiving information about a possible threat. The men are being questioned at a London police station and have not been charged. Police said an initial search of that business and other related properties has not uncovered any hazardous items.

The pope's visit has divided opinion in officially Protestant, highly secular Britain. The trip has been overshadowed by disgust over the Catholic Church's clerical abuse scandal and opposition from secularists and those opposed to the church's stances against homosexuality and using condoms to fight AIDS.

The detained suspects worked for a contractor on behalf of Westminster Council, the authority responsible for much of central London. The pope will still address British politicians, businessmen and cultural leaders in Westminster Hall, part of the Houses of Parliament, later Friday.

Continue reading "British police arrest five in alleged plot against pope" »

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Pope Benedict XVI began a controversial visit to Britain on Thursday by acknowledging that the Catholic Church had not acted decisively or quickly enough against priests who molested children, the Associated Press reports. He said the church's top priority now was to help abuse victims heal.

The pope's comments to reporters traveling with him from Rome marked his most thorough admission to date of church failures to stop pedophile priests, but they again failed to satisfy victims' groups. The issue has reignited with recent revelations of hundreds of victims in Belgium, including at least 13 of whom committed suicide.

Benedict's four-day state visit has been overshadowed by disgust over the abuse scandal and indifference in highly secular Britain, where Catholics are a minority at 10 percent and endured centuries of bloody persecution until the early 1800s.

The pope's first meeting was with Queen Elizabeth II, both head of state and head of the Church of England, at The Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Benedict was warmly welcomed by the queen, who wore a blue-gray knee-length coat and matching hat and gloves, as tartan-wearing bagpipers marched and thousands of people watched under blustery, cloud-streaked blue skies. The pontiff himself donned a green tartan scarf as he rode through Edinburgh in the Popemobile.

Later, he enjoyed a very Scottish treat: a lunch of haggis — sheep heart, liver and lungs simmered in sheep stomach — at the home of Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien.

The queen told Benedict that his visit reminded all Britons of their common Christian heritage and said she hoped relations between the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church would be deepened as a result.

Continue reading "Pope acknowledges church failings in abuse response" »

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Britain's advertising watchdog has banned an Italian ice cream ad featuring a pregnant nun, saying it causes offense to Catholics, the Associated Press reports.

The magazine ad for ice cream maker Antonio Federici showed the nun eating a tub of ice cream, with text that read: "Immaculately conceived ... Ice cream is our religion."

The Advertising Standards Authority said Wednesday it has received 10 complaints from magazine readers who said the ad was offensive to Christians. The agency said imagery used to illustrate immaculate conception was likely to be seen as mocking the beliefs of Roman Catholics.

The Italian company said the idea of conception represented the development of their ice cream and the ad aimed to gently satirize religion.

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Pope Benedict XVI will break his own rule this weekend when he beatifies Cardinal John Henry Newman, the renowned 19th Century Anglican convert who greatly influenced the Roman Catholic Church, the Associated Press reports.

Newman remains a complicated figure within the Anglican church he abandoned, and the pope's glorification of him during a state visit to Britain could unleash new tensions between churches already divided over issues like the ordination of women and gay bishops, AP correspondent Nicole Winfield writes.

Benedict will move Newman a step closer to possible sainthood when he presides over his beatification on Sunday, the main reason for his four-day trip. It's the first time Benedict will celebrate a beatification; under his own rules popes don't beatify, only canonize.

For the German-born, by-the-book professor, such an exception to his own rule is significant. It's a calculated gesture that underscores Benedict's view that Newman is a crucial model for all Christians at a time when Christianity is on the wane in an increasingly secularized Europe.

"His personality and teachings could be a source of inspiration for ecumenism in our times from which all of us can draw," Benedict said on the eve of his trip. "It is my hope and prayer that more and more people will benefit from his gentle wisdom and be inspired by his example of integrity and holiness of life."

For many Anglicans, the sight of the pope traveling to Britain with the express aim of beatifying a figure who turned his back on their church will be a bitter one.

And Benedict has a history of causing offense while on foreign trips — notably outraging Muslims in a speech in Germany by appearing to suggest the prophet Muhammad spread a message of violence, or suggesting while traveling to Africa that condoms hindered the fight against AIDS.

Continue reading "Pope risks controversy in beatifying convert" »

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A Muslim stonemason who spent nearly four decades helping to restore a Roman Catholic cathedral in France has been immortalized as a winged gargoyle peering out from its facade — with the inscription "God is great" written in French and Arabic.

It was conceived as a symbol of inter-religious friendship that reflects the city of Lyon's links to its large Muslim population, the Associated Press reports. But a widely publicized outcry from a small extreme-right group has forced the Archdiocese of Lyon into damage control.

"This has nothing to do with religion. It's a sculptor who wants to pay homage to a construction site chief," said the Rev. Michel Cacaud, rector of the cathedral. "That's all."

In France, where Islam is the country's second religion, the government has worked to integrate Muslims into French culture, while at the same time confronting cases of Islamophobia, from the desecration of Muslim graves to attacks on mosques.

Ahmed Benzizine, who was born in Algeria, a former French colony, sees the gargoyle in his image as "a message of peace and tolerance."

"When I started to work in churches ... exactly 37 years ago, it was considered a sin that a Muslim enter a place of worship other than a mosque," he said.

He has worked off and on since 1973 at St. Jean Cathedral, which dominates the old city of Lyon and has been honored as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Benzizine is tickled to see his likeness on the facade of the cathedral, which dates to the 12th to 14th centuries and combines both Gothic and Roman architecture.

"It looks like me except for the ears," the 59-year-old told The Associated Press. "They're pointed like the devil. But the sculptor told me that angels have pointed ears, too."

Continue reading "Catholic church honors Muslim worker" »

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A Roman Catholic diocese in Pennsylvania has begun the process to defrock a priest whose dalliances with a teenager were videotaped by her parents, the Associated Press reports. She later gave birth to a daughter.

But Berks County District Attorney John T. Adams says his office won't press charges against the Rev. Luis A. Bonilla Margarito because the relationship started when the girl was 18.

A spokesman says the Diocese of Allentown began putting paperwork together over the weekend for the process known as removal from the clerical state — popularly known as defrocking. The diocesan spokesman, Matt Kerr, says the final decision is up to the Vatican.

Last week, the girl's parents filed a lawsuit saying Bonilla carried on a sexual relationship with the girl while he was the chaplain of Reading Central Catholic High School and she was a senior there.

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Britons planning to attend open-air services by Pope Benedict XVI next month have been told it's OK to bring a picnic — but leave the wine at home, the Associated Press reports.

Organizers of the pontiff's visit released a detailed list Monday of what is allowed and barred from two large-scale gatherings.

Sunscreen, banners, flags, cushions and folding chairs are all permitted, and people are encouraged to bring a "pilgrim picnic."

But barbecues, candles, musical instruments, pets and alcohol are banned because they "could pose a threat to yourself or others."

Some 80,000 people are expected to attend a Sept. 18 prayer meeting in London's Hyde Park, and 65,000 a Mass in Birmingham's Cofton Park the next day.

The four-day trip is the first papal visit to Britain since 1982.

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It's a plain wooden cross almost austere in its simplicity.

But as Associated Press writer Vanessa Gera reports from Warsaw, it is stirring passions in heavily Roman Catholic Poland that expose bitter divisions which make it seem like two separate nations sharing the same land and language.

The pale wood cross about four meters (13 feet) high was erected in front of the presidential palace by Boy and Girl Scouts days after the April plane crash in Russia that killed President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 94 others.

It quickly became a spot for mourners to light candles, place flowers and pray.

Now, with a new president installed and the country returning to normal, the question of whether the cross should stay or go has set off wider disputes that underscore the deep divisions between traditional and modern Poles, conservatives and liberals, and even rich and poor.

"The cross is a catalyst that has mobilized people who are fed up with the clericalization of Polish public life," said Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs, a Warsaw think tank.

On one side are deeply nationalistic and religious supporters of the late president who want the cross to stay until a fitting memorial is built to the victims, among whom were top military brass and church leaders. Some of them cling to a conspiracy theory suggesting that Kaczynski's domestic political rivals and Russians conspired to kill him.

On the other is an increasingly self-confident secular society that dismisses the conspiracy theory as lunacy and believes the religious symbol does not belong in front of such an important public building. This group argues that despite the country's Catholic influence, the constitution guarantees a separation of church and state, and that the cross should move to a church.

Continue reading "Battle over cross reveals cultural divide in Poland" »

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Mexico City's leftist mayor said Tuesday he will take legal action if a Roman Catholic cardinal doesn't apologize for suggesting he bribed the Supreme Court to uphold a city law allowing adoptions by same-sex couples, the Associated Press reports.

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard says that if Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez does not apologize by midnight, he is going to file a slander complaint.

The church opposes the Mexico City law, but the Supreme Court has ruled it constitutional.

Over the weekend, the cardinal suggested the justices may have been paid to uphold the law, using a slang word for corruption that refers to giving feed to livestock.

The court has denied and condemned the accusation.

In a statement, the Mexican Council of Bishops expressed its "solidarity and regards" for Sandoval Iniguez.

Continue reading "Mayor threatens suit if cardinal doesn't apologize" »

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An attorney suing the Vatican on behalf of a clergy abuse victim in Oregon says the withdrawal of a similar lawsuit in Kentucky won't jeopardize other cases taking aim at Rome, the Associated Press reports.

The 6-year-old Kentucky suit that named the Holy See as a defendant virtually ended this week when the plaintiff's attorney filed a motion to dismiss his own case.

Jeff Anderson, the attorney in the lawsuit filed in Portland, noted the difficulty in taking on the head of the Roman Catholic Church. He says "it's not for the faint of heart (or) the weak of pocketbook."

And a legal expert says that the Oregon case has a tough road ahead in proving that American priests should be considered employees of the Vatican.

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A name like Maria or Jose isn't a solid clue anymore that the person who answers to it will worship in a Catholic church on Sunday, the Associated Press reports.

An Associated Press-Univision poll finds that younger Latinos, as well as those who speak more English than Spanish, are much less likely to identify as Catholics than older, Hispanics who mostly speak Spanish.

The poll of 1,500 Latino adults also found significant divisions on social issues such as same-sex unions and abortion, along lines of age, language and whether one is Catholic or Protestant.

It's been more than a year since Melissa Solis went to Mass. An executive assistant at a New York financial firm, she was raised by a pious Catholic mother but calls herself "nonpracticing."

"There is peace in the house of God for me, but there is also inner peace," said Solis, 35. "I do believe there is a God, and that has helped me through tough times. But you can practice your religion in your home, and it doesn't necessarily have to be in a building labeled the house of God."

Overall, 62 percent of Hispanics identify as Catholic, but that includes only 55 percent of young adults 18 to 29, compared with 80 percent of elders 65 and over.

Continue reading "Poll: Young Latinos less likely to be Catholic" »

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Three men who sued the Vatican over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in Kentucky have asked a court to dismiss their case, the Associated Press reports.

Plaintiff's attorney William McMurry told the AP that the case is ending because of an earlier ruling that the Vatican is a foreign nation and can't be held liable for policies the suit contended shielded abusive priests. He said most U.S. victims have reached settlements with a diocese and can't go after the Vatican now.

McMurry said a months-long search for victims who haven't settled and could pursue the lawsuit failed to find any willing to come forward.

The dismissal motion was filed Monday in federal court in Louisville.

Vatican lawyer Jeffrey Lena says the case showed "absolutely no evidence of Holy See involvement in the abuses."

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Cardinal Norberto Rivera sharply criticized Mexico's Supreme Court on Sunday for upholding a law allowing homosexuals to marry in the capital, calling the ruling "aberrant" and "immoral," the Associated Press reports.

The Roman Catholic archbishop said it was wrong to go against Christian doctrine that recognizes only marriages between a man and a woman.

"The church cannot fail to call evil evil," Rivera said in a statement.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court on an 8-2 vote upheld the constitutionality of gay marriages in Mexico City under a law passed by the state legislature. The federal government had sought to nullify the law.

The Federal District is the only part of Mexico that allows gay marriages. The city government said last week that since 320 same-sex couples had married since March, 173 of them male and 147 female.

Rivera said homosexuals have suffered abuses from the broader society, but argued that allowing same-sex marriages is not the way to try to atone for such injustices.

Continue reading "Cardinal calls gay marriage 'inherently immoral'" »

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In Arizona, the shooting death of a rancher blew the lid off simmering anger over border security and helped solidify support for a tough new immigration law. Now a similar eruption threatens in Virginia, the Associated Press reports, following the death of a Catholic nun in a car accident involving a man in the country illegally and accused of drunken driving.

The Benedictine Sisters of Virginia tried to discourage using the death of Sister Denise Mosier as a "forum of the illegal immigration agenda" and pleaded for a focus on "Christ's command to forgive."

"The sisters' mission is peace and love," said Corey Stewart, chairman of Prince William County's Board of Supervisors. "My mission is law enforcement and the protection of public safety."

Prince William County, about 25 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., stepped up its immigration enforcement in 2007 amid explosive growth of its Hispanic and immigrant populations. Under Stewart's leadership, the county implemented a local policy requiring police to determine the immigration status of all people arrested on suspicion of violating state or local laws.

Stewart rushed back into the immigration debate after the Aug. 1 accident, firing off a statement that President Barack Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and members of Congress "all have blood on their hands."

"What I'm hoping is that this situation, which because it involves a nun has drawn the nation's attention, can serve as a catalyst for change and force the administration to come clean about its catch-and-release policies," Stewart said. He also says that the tragedy illustrates the need for Virginia to toughen its drunken driving laws.

Continue reading "Va. nun's death rallies anti-immigration forces" »

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Groups representing victims of clergy sex abuse in the U.S. are urging Pope Benedict XVI to remove Cardinal Bernard Law as head of a Rome basilica, issuing their appeal shortly before the former Boston archbishop leads an annual high-profile ceremony in the church, the Associated Press reports.

Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, named Law as archpriest of St. Mary Major Basilica after his 2002 resignation as Boston archbishop. Law quit to quell an outcry over handling of sex abuse cases in his diocese, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. church official to fall in the scandal that rocked the American church.

The traditional ceremony Thursday includes the release of white petals from the basilica's ceiling to recall a legendary August snowfall in Rome in 352.

Kristine Ward of the National Survivors Advocates Coalition called the ceremony a "bread and circuses" approach in the church at a time of crisis over sex abuse.

Since the crisis in the United States, the clergy abuse scandal has spread across Europe, with new accusations this year hitting the church in Germany, Italy, Belgium and elsewhere.

Victims groups have been lobbying for years to get Law removed, accusing the Vatican of giving a major culprit in the crisis a soft landing. The 78-year-old prelate also sits on a number of Vatican congregations and councils.

Law did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Continue reading "Groups call for Cardinal Law's removal" »

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Categories: Abuse, Catholicism, International, People
        

Protesters shouting "Defend the cross!" scuffled with police Tuesday but managed to prevent Polish officials from moving a cross erected outside the presidential palace in memory of the late President Lech Kaczynski, the Associated Press reports.

About 20 demonstrators stood in front of the wooden cross, pleading with priests who were supposed to move it to the nearby St. Anne's Church. They were supported by a cheering crowd of hundreds gathered behind a police barrier across the street.

Security officials dragged away a few of the chanting, praying protesters — including a woman who tried to tie herself to the cross. But officials decided not to immediately press ahead with the plan, which is opposed by some Kaczynski supporters.

"The cross will not be moved to the church today," said Jacek Michalowski, a presidential palace official. "The level of aggression is too high ... the cross should not be used for political games."

It wasn't immediately clear whether officials would make another attempt to move it.

Amid deep national mourning, scouts groups put up the cross five days after the April 10 plane crash in Russia that killed Kaczynski, his wife Maria, and 94 others, including top military leaders.

Some members of the main opposition party — which is led by the late president's twin brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski — have said the cross should remain put until a permanent monument is built at the site, a call backed by their conservative Roman Catholic supporters.

But President-elect Bronislaw Komorowski and Warsaw city officials want the cross moved to the church and worked out an agreement with church leaders to do so.

Continue reading "Protesters prevent cross from being moved" »

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Darcy Bisset is a member of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

I spent the better part of last fall reading through Anne Rice's Christ the Lord books with a group of friends (reluctantly at first -- when our discussion group voted, my pick lost). I found myself captured by the beauty of Rice's writing and impressed by the theological and historical care she took with her subject matter.

And so when I heard the news last week that Rice had announced she was leaving Christianity and was no longer Christian, I felt a twist of emotions. I was sad, because I thought the Christ the Lord books were brilliant and I wanted more from that voice.

I was sympathetic, because I've been in that boat, where some one or some group, purportedly speaking for Christianity, is saying something you think is SO WRONG and you want to wear a big button proclaiming "I am not with them!"

I was also incredulous because, well, did she not know about the Roman Catholic Church's stance on homosexuality and birth control when she joined up?

It kind of reminds me of when people get divorced after a few years of marriage, citing as "irreconcilable differences" a bunch of personality quirks about which they were fully informed when they decided to get married.

I decided that if Anne Rice can make silly over-reaching statements, then so can I. Therefore, on behalf of Christianity and Christians, I refuse to accept her resignation.

Continue reading "Guest Post: Memo to Anne: Resignation declined" »

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Pilgrims will have to pay as much as 25 pounds ($39) to attend one of the two public events in England to be led by Pope Benedict XVI during his visit in September, the Associated Press reports.

The charges — believed to be a first for a papal event — are for a prayer vigil in London's Hyde Park on Sept. 18 and the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman in Birmingham on Sept. 19.

Benedict's four-day visit to England and Scotland has been controversial almost from the start, with thousands of Britons signing a petition earlier this year against the pope's presence in the wake of outrage over sex crimes against children committed by Catholic priests.

Critics have also complained about the cost. Chris Patten, the official coordinating the event, has said the taxpayers' tab for the visit to Britain could be as much as 12 million pounds, not counting extra policing costs.

The previous government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown invited the pope — a decision the austerity-minded new coalition government has not sought to change, despite some public unease.

Continue reading "In apparent first, faithful must pay to see pope" »

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Novelist Anne Rice remains committed to Christ. But she is quitting Christianity.

The “Interview With The Vampire” author, who in recent years has spoken publicly about her faith and written a series of novels tracing the life of Jesus, wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday that she was finished with organized Christianity.

For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outside. My conscience will allow nothing else.

She followed that post a few minutes later with more details:

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

On Thursday, Rice posted a series of passages from the New Testament:

Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.

Continue reading "Anne Rice quits Christianity -- but not Christ" »

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday ordered authorities to expel gypsy illegal immigrants and dismantle their camps, amid accusations that his government is acting racist in its treatment of the group known as Roma, the Associated Press reports.

Sarkozy called a government meeting Wednesday after Roma clashed with police this month after the shooting death of a gypsy youth fleeing officers in the Loire Valley.

Sarkozy said those responsible for the clashes would be "severely punished" and ordered the government to expel all illegal Roma immigrants, almost all of whom have come from eastern Europe.

He pushed for a change in France's immigration law to make such expulsion easier "for reasons of public order." He said illegal gypsy camps "will be systematically evacuated," calling them sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and prostitution.

French Roma representatives were not invited to Wednesday's presidential meeting, which included the interior, justice and immigration ministers and top police officials.

Community leaders contend the very principle of the meeting — which singled out an ethnic group in a country that is officially blind to ethnic origins — is racist and warn of grave consequences if their side isn't heard. France's government does not count how many of its citizens are of a certain ethnicity; everyone is simply considered French.

"Today ... I am afraid we're preparing to open a blighted page in the history of France, which could sadly lead to acts of reprisal in the days ahead," said lawyer Henri Braun said at a Wednesday news conference by French Roma leaders. "There is a huge problem of racism in France towards this population, there is enormous discrimination."

Continue reading "France expels illegal Roma immigrants" »

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An Owings Mills contractor who has offered the Archdiocese of Baltimore $700,000 to help pay transportation costs for children displaced by the closing of 12 Catholic elementary schools has taken to the airwaves, encouraging families to take advantage of his offer.

Area radio listeners are growing familiar with the voice of Danny Schuster, Baltimore Sun colleague Mary Gail Hare reports: Schuster, who owns a concrete company, took to the airwiaves earlier this year to protest the school closings.

He has taken a different tack this time, hoping to boost enrollment by helping students get to schools, including Holy Angels, an elementary the archdiocese is opening this fall on the campus of Seton Keough High School. There had been some concern that there would not be enough transferring students to fill the school.

"The archbishop and I have worked out a transportation plan," Schuster tells Hare. "Our goal is to get as many of these kids to take advantage of the offer and to continue their Catholic education."

Read more about Danny Schuster's help for Catholic School students at baltimoresun.com.

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The Catholic Church in Italy, still reeling from the clerical sex abuse scandal, lashed out Friday at gay priests who are leading a double life, urging them to come out of the closet and leave the priesthood, the Associated Press reports.

The Diocese of Rome issued the strongly worded statement after the conservative Panorama newsweekly said in a cover story and accompanying video that it had interviewed three gay priests in Rome and accompanied them to gay clubs and bars and to sexual encounters with strangers, including one in a church building.

One of the priests, a Frenchman identified only as Paul, celebrated Mass in the morning before driving the two escorts he had hired to attend a party the night before to the airport, Panorama said.

In a statement Friday, the Rome diocese denounced those priests who were leading a "double life," said they shouldn't have been ordained and promised that the church would rigorously pursue anyone who is behaving in a way that wasn't dignified for a priest.

It insisted that the vast majority of Rome's 1,300 priests were truthful to their vocations and were "models of morality for all."

Those who aren't faithful to their vows "know that no one is forcing them to remain priests, taking advantage of only the benefits," the diocese said. "Coherency would demand that they come forward. We don't wish any ill-will against them, but we cannot accept that because of their behavior the honor of all the others is sullied."

Continue reading "Vatican urges gay clergy out of closet, priesthood" »

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Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien presided over the closing session of the diocesan inquiry into the cause for sainthood of the Rev. Patrick Peyton on Tuesday during Mass at the Baltimore Basilica.

The Irish-born Holy Cross priest is credited with coining the phrase “the family that prays together, stays together.” He was a fixture on American radio and television in the 1940s and ’50s, a platform from which he promoted the prayer movement called the Family Rosary Crusade.

The Vatican asked the Archdiocese of Baltimore to investigate the cause for sainthood in 2008. Copies of the documents the archdiocese has generated are to be sent to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome, which will decide whether the matter merits further investigation.

The process of canonization in the Catholic Church involves three major steps: declaration of a candidate’s heroic virtues, beatification and canonization. During the process, the church considers evidence of miracles attributable to the intercession of the candidate. In general, two miracles need to be accepted by the church for a sainthood cause to advance.

According to the archdiocese, Peyton arrived in the United States in 1928 when he was 19. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1941 and founded Family Rosary in Albany, N.Y., the following year.

Continue reading "Archdiocese concludes Peyton sainthood probe" »

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President Hugo Chavez says Venezuela will rethink its relations with the Vatican as tensions rise between his government and Catholic Church representatives who accuse the socialist leader of becoming increasingly authoritarian, the Associated Press reports.

During a televised speech, Chavez instructed his foreign minister to "examine" relations with the Vatican. Without elaborating, he questioned the validity of an agreement giving the Catholic Church privileges that are not extended to other religious organizations in Venezuela.

Chavez also challenged the authority of Pope Benedict XVI, saying the pope "isn't God's emissary on Earth."

There was no immediately reaction from the papal nuncio in Caracas.

Chavez and Venezuela's Catholic Church are clashing like never before.

In recent weeks, Chavez has said that Christ would whip church leaders for suggesting that he's steering Venezuela toward a Cuban-style Marxist dictatorship. He also accused Cardinal Jorge Urosa of misleading the Vatican with warnings that Venezuela is drifting toward dictatorship.

Continue reading "Venezuela rethinking ties to Vatican" »

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The Vatican issued a revised set of in-house rules Thursday to respond to clerical sex abuse, targeting priests who molest the mentally disabled as well as children and priests who use child pornography, but making few substantive changes to existing practice, the Associated Press reports.

The new rules make no mention of the need for bishops to report clerical sex abuse to police, provide no canonical sanctions for bishops who cover up for abusers and do not include any "one-strike and you're out" policy for pedophile priests as demanded by some victims.

As a result, they failed to satisfy victims' advocates, who said the revised rules amounted to little more than "administrative housekeeping" of existing practice when what was needed were bold new rules threatening bishops who fail to report molester priests.

The rules cover the canonical penalties and procedures used for the most grave crimes in the church, both sacramental and moral, and double the statute of limitations applied to them. One new element included lists the attempted ordination of women as a "grave crime" subject to the same set of procedures and punishments meted out for sex abuse.

That drew immediate criticism from women's ordination groups, who said making a moral equivalent between women priests and child rapists was offensive.

The Vatican's sex crimes prosecutor acknowledged it was "only a document," and didn't solve the problem of clerical abuse. He defended the lack of any mention of the need to report abuse to police, saying all Christians were required to obey civil laws that would already demand sex crimes be reported.

"If civil law requires you report, you must obey civil law," Monsignor Charles Scicluna told reporters. But "it's not for canonical legislation to get itself involved with civil law."

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The pope's delegate for the scandal-plagued Legionaries of Christ has told its members they must examine their consciences and reform following allegations that their founder sexually abused seminarians and fathered children, the Associated Press reports.

Archbishop Velasio De Paolis met with the order's top leaders for the first time Saturday and celebrated Mass with them at their Roman headquarters, explaining his job to them and assuring them of the pope's support, the order said Wednesday.

Pope Benedict XVI announced May 1 that he was naming a delegate to take charge of and overhaul the Legionaries after a Vatican investigation determined that their founder, the Rev. Marciel Maciel, had led a secret double life devoid of any scruples or religious sentiment.

The pope said the order must be purified of the abuses that allowed Maciel's misdeeds to go unchecked, including the authority structure that demanded obedience of its members, forbade questioning of superiors and made the order's growth a priority at all costs.

The Legionaries, which Maciel started in Mexico in 1941, had long been favored at the Vatican for their success bringing in new priests and money. The order was discredited by its long refusal to admit that Maciel had sexually abused seminarians, although it now admits such accusations were true and that he had fathered at least three children.

Benedict last week tapped De Paolis, a 75-year-old Italian canon law expert who heads the Holy See's financial office, to take over the order and reform it.

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Police battled Irish nationalists for control of a Belfast road Monday as a day dominated by peaceful Protestant parades across Northern Ireland turned violent when night fell, the Associated Press reports.

Riot police in helmets and body armor dragged kicking, flailing protesters from the pavement of Crumlin Road even as other protesters packed into side streets pelted police with rocks, bricks and Molotov cocktails.

Many of the approximately 100 road-blocking protesters wore white T-shirts bearing the message "PEACEFUL PROTEST," while the rioters nearby wore balaclava masks, hoods or scarves to conceal their faces. Police deployed a massive mobile water cannon to blast the rioters while a helicopter overhead monitored the mob. Police also fired several snub-nosed plastic bullets to wallop or knock down rioters.

An Associated Press reporter saw one teenage rioter holding a brick get knocked off his feet as he prepared to throw it. Blood streamed from his face as he scrambled from the pavement. Other rioters stood further back and threw empty beer bottles blindly over rooftops into police lines.

The violence — beside a traditional Irish Republican Army power base called Ardoyne — underscores how socially divided Northern Ireland remains despite nearly two decades of peacemaking that has delivered paramilitary cease-fires and a fragile Catholic-Protestant government.

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President Hugo Chavez and leaders of the Venezuelan Catholic Church are tangling like never before, angering parishioners who feel the president and his clerical detractors aren't following Jesus Christ's creed of brotherly love, the Associated Press reports.

Over the past week, Chavez has said that Christ would whip church leaders for lying. Cardinal Jorge Urosa, speaking from Rome, countered he was right to warn the Vatican that Chavez is curbing freedoms.

Some parishioners are concerned over the tensions between Chavez and conservative priests, who are speaking out against what they see as the socialist leader's increasing authoritarianism. Venezuela is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. Polls consistently show the church, which wields significant influence, is among the nation's most respected institutions.

"I don't like the insults that Chavez hurled against the cardinal, but I don't like seeing the Church getting involved in politics either," said Amanda Ortiz, 47, after attending Sunday Mass at a church in downtown Caracas. "Both sides are losing respect for each other."

During one recent speech, Chavez accused Urosa of misleading the Vatican with warnings that Venezuela is drifting toward dictatorship. During another public address, he urged the Vatican to replace Urosa, while heaping praise on a government-friendly priest he thinks should be appointed cardinal.

"May God forgive him, because he knows that he's lying. The cardinal who accuses me of running roughshod over the constitution knows that he's lying," Chavez said. "If Christ were to physically appear, what would he do with them? I have no doubt that he'd whip them."

In a newspaper column published on Sunday, the president denied he's steering Venezuela toward a dictatorship.

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Pope Benedict XVI will soon issue a document outlining the church's procedures for handling clerical sex abuse cases that will gather the norms now in use and make them permanent and legally binding, a Vatican official and canon lawyer said Tuesday.

The "instruction" from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has been in the works for some time, the Associated Press reports. But its impending publication has taken on new relevance amid the abuse scandal that has roiled the Vatican for months, with hundreds of new cases coming to light of priests who raped and sodomized children, bishops who covered up for them and Vatican officials who turned a blind eye.

The norms concern the canonical procedures for dealing with abusive priests, with penalties as severe as being dismissed from the clerical state. Separately, the Vatican issued informal guidelines earlier this year saying bishops should follow civil reporting laws in terms of reporting abuse to police.

It's unclear whether the new set of norms will include any reference to civil reporting requirements. Since such requirements vary from country to country, it would be difficult to make reference to them in a document that is canonically binding on the church around the globe, noted the Rev. Davide Cito, a canon lawyer and consultant at the Congregation.

The norms now in place have been modified and updated from a 2001 Vatican document and set of procedures issued by Pope John Paul II outlining how the church should handle the abuse of minors by priests.

The 2001 documents require bishops to report credible accusations of abusive priests to the Congregation, which then decides how to proceed, including through a full canonical trial. In 2003 — a year after the U.S. abuse scandal exploded — the norms were amended to speed up administrative penalties against abusive clerics where the evidence them is overwhelming, among other things.

But those 2003 modifications were ad hoc and temporary in nature and had to be reconfirmed, for example, by Benedict after John Paul died in 2005. By gathering them together and including them now in an official, binding document, they become permanent church law.

As a result, the new instruction is expected to contain little that goes beyond what is currently the practice of the Congregation, Cito said. The instruction, for example, is expected to formally extend the 10-year statute of limitations for abuse cases that was imposed for the first time in the 2001 procedures. But those limits have been waived on a case-by-case basis already since 2002 since the 10-year limit was deemed too short.

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The Roman Catholic Church is petitioning Chile's government for prisoner pardons that would include people responsible for crimes against humanity, angering rights activists and some conservatives, the Associated Press reports.

The church is asking for the pardons as part of the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Chile's independence on Sept. 18. The church proposes pardons for those older than 70, any with a terminal decease and women who are mothers.

The controversy centers on the inclusion of some convicted of committing crimes during the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. According to official statistics, 3,065 opponents of Pinochet's regime were killed and 1,200 more disappeared.

"There shouldn't be any pardons under any circumstances for those guilty of crimes against humanity," Mireya Garcia, vice president of the Group of Families of Detainees and Missing People, told The Associated Press on Monday.

Last week, Garcia's group asked President Sebastian Pinera not to pardon anyone accused of committing such crimes during Pinochet's dictatorship.

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Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that "for all our weaknesses" priests have an important role in the world, the Associated Press reports.

Benedict did not directly mention the clergy abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic church for months. But during a daylong visit to a central Italian town, he received a round of applause and words of support by local youths greeting him "in this time of harsh attacks and media provocation."

Minutes later, Benedict told the youths that "for all our weaknesses, still priests are a precious presence in life."

The trip to Sulmona was dedicated to honoring Celestine V, the 13th-century hermit who resigned the papacy saying that he was not up to the task.

Benedict said his simple and humble lifestyle can serve as an example for modern men and women. The pontiff praised his predecessor for his detachment from material things such as money and clothes.

"We, too, who live in an epoch of greater comfort and possibilities, are called upon to appreciate a sober lifestyle," the pope said.

Celestine V resigned just months after becoming pope in 1294 at age 85. He was later put under guard for fear he would become the rallying point for a schism. Celestine died in 1296 and was declared a saint in 1313.

Continue reading "Benedict praises pope who quit" »

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Carrying U.S. and Hungarian flags, parishioners ended a 16-hour sit-in at a Cleveland Catholic church that is closing after police told them Thursday they would be trespassing if they did not leave, the Associated Press reports.

The protesters staged a vigil at midnight Wednesday at the 106-year-old St. Emeric Church near downtown Cleveland, then remained through about 4 p.m.

The historic Hungarian church is the last of 50 parishes to be closed by the local diocese. Bishop Richard Lennon has agreed to meet with protesters, police and protesters said. No date had been set.

The protest ended after police had entered the church several times and spoken with parishioners by cell phone. Police Commander Keith Sulzer said six protesters were inside the church. No one was arrested.

The protesters had locked themselves inside and declared that they were well-stocked with food and ready to stay "for a long time" in order to save their church.

John Yuhasz, a parish member and protest leader, emerged from the church and said it was important to challenge the closings.

"Somewhere along the way, someone had to take a stand in opposition for justice for all the parishioners, for all those broken souls who were thrown out of those parishes to have a chance at reconciliation," he said.

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The pope has named a Swiss bishop with experience dealing with Orthodox and Lutheran churches to head the Vatican office responsible for relations with other Christians and Jews, the Associated Press reports.

Archbishop Kurt Koch replaces Cardinal Walter Kasper as head of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity. Kasper, 77, is retiring.

Koch, 60, has been Basel's bishop for nearly 15 years, and has served as a member of the pontifical council since 2002. In a statement Thursday, he said a "credible and sincere" ecumenical dialogue had long been close to his heart.

Kasper had headed the office since 2001, and was often put in the position of defusing Vatican standoffs with Jews such as when the pope lifted the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop.

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Several members of the last of 50 Cleveland-area Roman Catholic parishes shuttered in a downsizing locked themselves inside Thursday, declaring they were well-stocked with food and ready to stay "for a long time" in order to save their church, the Associated Press reports.

Meanwhile, police and officials of St. Emeric Church near downtown Cleveland gathered in front of the historic Hungarian church, where the parishioners had staged a midnight vigil — and never left.

Parishioner Marta Fordos said that when she left the vigil at 8 a.m. for personal reasons there were at least seven people still inside. The pastor gave parishioners the key to the church on Wednesday with the understanding that they could stay until midnight, and they locked the door from the inside, Fordos said.

The group has plenty of food, one of the protesters, John Juhasz, told The Associated Press by phone.

"We're going to hang out here for a long time," Juhasz said. The goal, he said, was to force Bishop Richard Lennon into a dialogue toward saving the 106-year-old church.

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The pope on Thursday told a German bishop who resigned amid accusations of physical abuse, sexual harassment and alcoholism that he must take time for silent prayer, treatment and reconciliation if he wants to return to pastoral work, the Associated Press reports.

Pope Benedict XVI laid out the terms for Bishop Walter Mixa's rehabilitation during a private audience with the 69-year-old prelate, during which Mixa again apologized for his mistakes, the Vatican said.

Benedict, for his part, "expressed the hope that his (Mixa's) request for forgiveness finds open ears and hearts" among the German faithful, the Vatican said.

Mixa's case marked an unusually public controversy that came to light at the height of the abuse scandal that rocked the church in Germany and elsewhere in the first half of the year.

Mixa, who served as bishop of the Augsburg diocese from 2005 to 2010, offered his resignation on April 22 after accusations surfaced that he had hit children decades ago as a priest and amid allegations of financial misconduct.

The pope accepted Mixa's resignation on May 8, but last month the bishop said members of the Augsburg diocese and two German bishops had forced him to resign against his will, and that he had written to the pope seeking to rescind the resignation. Fresh allegations later surfaced in the German media, including that Mixa was an alcoholic and had made sexual advances toward two priests.

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A European ruling banning crucifixes in Italian schools should be overturned, nine European governments said in an appeal Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that crucifixes in Italian public schools violate religious and education freedoms last November. The case, part of a larger debate over the role of religious symbols in public places, has sharpened divisions between secular and religious advocacy groups.

Italian courts have previously ruled that the display of crucifixes is part of Italian national identity and not an attempt at conversion, an argument expanded by New York University legal scholar Joseph Weiler on behalf of the governments of Italy, Armenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, San Marino, Romania and Russia, who are appealing the ruling.

The decisions of the court — an arm of the Council of Europe, the continent's premier human rights watchdog — are binding on the council's 47 member states and therefore have an impact far beyond Italy.

"The democratic cohesion of society is dependent on the ability to uphold national symbols around which all society can coalesce," Weiler said. "It would be a strange (if Italy) had to abandon national symbols, and strip from its cultural identikit, any symbol which also had a religious significance."

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A reliquary containing the blood of Blessed Mother Teresa, along with her crucifix, rosary and sandals, will be put on display at Baltimore area churches this week, the Archdiocese of Baltimore announced.

On Friday, Bishop Denis Madden will celebrate a Mass at 12:10 p.m. at the Baltimore Basilica, which was visited by the candidate for sainthood in May 1996, a year before her death.

The relics are coming to Baltimore as part of a tour of North America organized by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in honor of the 100th anniversary of her birth. The missionaries operate Gift of Hope, a hospice center for AIDS patients in the former convent of St. Wenceslaus Church in East Baltimore.

The relics will be received at Gift of Hope at 4 p.m. Wednesday and may be venerated by visitors until 8:30 p.m. Mass will be celebrated at 8 a.m. Thursday at St. Wenceslaus, followed by a holy hour and veneration of relics until noon.

Thursday evening, the relics are to be transported to Our Lady of Pompei in Highlandtown where a Mass will be celebrated in Spanish at 5:30 p.m., followed by a holy hour, rosary and veneration until 8:30 p.m.

Mass will be celebrated at 8 a.m. at St. Leo in Little Italy on Friday, followed by a holy hour, rosary and veneration until 11 a.m.

Mother Teresa first visited Baltimore in 1992 to celebrate the opening of the AIDS hospice, according to the archdiocese.

“Any man, woman or child feeling unloved with nowhere to go is welcome to come here," she said. "I have no gold or silver to give you but I’m giving you my sisters.”

Mother Teresa died in 1997 at the age of 87. She was beatified -- a step toward sainthood -- in 2003 by Pope John Paul II.

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Pope Benedict XVI is creating a new Vatican office to fight secularization and "re-evangelize" the West — a tacit acknowledgment that his attempts to reinvigorate Christianity in Europe haven't succeeded and need a new boost, the Associated Press reports.

Benedict announced the new office during a vespers' service Monday, confirming reports in the Italian media of a handful of new Vatican appointments expected to be announced before the pope goes on summer holiday and the Vatican bureaucracy slows down.

Benedict said parts of the world are still missionary territory, where the Catholic Church is still relatively unknown. But in other parts of the world like Europe, Christianity has existed for centuries yet "the process of secularization has produced a serious crisis of the sense of the Christian faith and role of the Church."

The new pontifical council, he said, would "promote a renewed evangelization" in countries where the Church has long existed "but which are living a progressive secularization of society and a sort of 'eclipse of the sense of God.'"

The pontiff's announcement came as he marked the feasts of Saints Peter and Paul, a major feast day in Europe that is traditionally celebrated with representatives of the Orthodox church. While ties with some Orthodox remain strained, both churches have found a common ground in their fight against secularization.

Benedict didn't say who would head the new office, but Italian media have said he would tap Monsignor Rino Fisichella, who as head of the Pontifical Academy for Life is the Vatican's top bioethics official.

Fisichella created a minor uproar last year when he defended Brazilian doctors who aborted the twin fetuses of a 9-year-old child who was raped by her stepfather. His call for mercy sparked heated criticism from some hardline conservative members of the Pontifical Academy who questioned his suitability to lead the institution.

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Belgium insisted Monday in a dispute with the Vatican over credibility that Belgian law enforcement authorities — not the potentially biased Catholic Church — will investigate sexual abuse cases involving clergy, the Associated Press reports.

A panel created by Belgian bishops 12 years ago to look into abuse cases disbanded on Monday, saying last week's seizure of its 500 case files rendered its existence pointless. Its chief, Peter Adriaenssens, accused authorities of betraying the trust of hundreds of victims and using his group to tap into information and testimony from abuse victims.

"We were bait," said Adriaenssens, a child psychiatrist. He urged Belgian authorities to clarify to abuse victims — many of whom talked after being promised anonymity — "what is going to happen" to the allegations they made to his church-appointed commission.

Belgium's government doesn't appear to be concerned about having pushed the panel to the sidelines, despite an outburst from the Vatican that Thursday's police raid was an unprecedented intrusion into church affairs.

"I respect Peter Adriaenssens, but his commission was created by the Church," Glenn Audenaert, head of Belgium's judiciary police, said after last week's police raids. "That commission cannot start a prosecution. Only the justice department can."

In Belgium, it has been doing that with unusual force.

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The Vatican issued an unprecedented public rebuke Monday of a leading cardinal who had questioned the church's policy of celibacy and openly criticized the retired Vatican No. 2 for his handling of clerical sex abuse cases, the Associated Press reports.

In a statement, the Vatican said only the pope can make such accusations against a cardinal, not another so-called prince of the church.

In April, Vienna's archbishop, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, accused the former Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, of blocking a probe into a sex abuse scandal that rocked Austria's church 15 years ago.

Schoenborn also accused Sodano of causing "massive harm" to victims when he dismissed claims of clerical abuse as "petty gossip" on Easter Sunday.

Schoenborn has been a leading figure in the abuse crisis, forcefully denouncing abuse, presiding over service of reparations for victims and openly calling for an honest examination of issues like celibacy.

Schoenborn's comments about Sodano were remarkable in that they were directed at Pope John Paul II's No. 2, who has already come under fire for his alleged stonewalling of a Vatican investigation into the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who was found to have abused seminarians and fathered at least three children.

Sodano still wields enormous influence in Vatican circles as the dean of the College of Cardinals.

Such a public and formal reprimand of a cardinal is extremely rare — particularly for one like Schoenborn, who has long been close to Benedict, his onetime professor, and is seen as a possible papal contender himself.

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The pope on Sunday called the raids carried out by Belgian police investigating priestly sex abuse "surprising and deplorable" and voiced his support for the Belgian bishops who were held during the searches, the Associated Press reports.

In a message of solidarity to the head of the Belgian bishops' conference, Pope Benedict XVI said justice must take its course but also asserted the right of the Catholic Church to investigate abuse alongside civil law enforcement authorities.

It was first time the pope himself had commented on the June 24 raids, and his message to Monsignor Andre Joseph Leonard capped a daily ratcheting up of the Vatican's criticism. On Saturday, the No. 2 Vatican official said the raids were unprecedented even under communism.

In the raids, police searched the home and former office of former Archbishop Godfried Danneels, taking documents and his personal computer. The raid came as the country's nine bishops were starting their monthly meeting; the men were held for nine hours and — along with diocese staff — had to surrender their cell phones.

Police and prosecutors have not said if Danneels is suspected of abuse himself or simply had records pertaining to allegations against another person.

Separately, police seized the records of an independent panel investigating sexual abuse by priests, some 500 cases in all. The head of the panel called the raid a huge violation of the privacy of people — mostly men now in their 60s and 70s — who have lived with the shame of abuse.

Benedict said he wanted to write to Belgium's bishops "at this sad moment" to express his solidarity "for the surprising and deplorable way in which the searches were conducted." He noted that the monthly meeting of the bishops was to discuss precisely clerical abuse.

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The Vatican said Friday it was astonished and outraged that Belgian police investigating priestly sex abuse had conducted raids that also targeted the graves of two archbishops, the Associated Press reports.

The Vatican summoned the Belgian ambassador to the Holy See to convey its anger over the raids, which also included the home and offices of the retired archbishop of Belgium. The ambassador was called in for a meeting with the Vatican's foreign minister.

In a statement, the Vatican said any sinful and criminal abuse of minors from members of the church must be condemned and repeated that there is a need for justice and amends.

But it added, "The Secretariat of State also expresses astonishment at the way in which the search took place." It expressed "outrage over the violation of the tombs."

On Thursday, police raided the home and former office of former Archbishop Godfried Danneels, taking documents and Danneels' personal computer. Police and prosecutors did not say if Danneels was suspected of abuse himself or simply had records pertaining to allegations against another person. He was not questioned.

Investigators also opened the graves of archbishops in the St. Rombouts Cathedral in Mechlin, north of Brussels, looking for possibly incriminating documents, said Jean-Marc Meilleur, spokesman for the Brussels public prosecutor.

Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, Belgium's current archbishop, condemned the search of the cathedral, saying that is stuff for "crime novels and 'The Da Vinci Code.'"

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Police raided the home and former office of the recently retired archbishop of Belgium on Thursday, carrying off documents and a personal computer as part of an investigation into the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests, the Associated Press reports.

Police and prosecutors would not say if former Archbishop Godfried Danneels was suspected of abuse himself or simply had records pertaining to allegations against another person.

Separately, police seized the records of an independent panel investigating sexual abuse by priests, some 500 cases in all. The head of the panel called the raid a huge violation of the privacy of people — mostly men now in their 60s and 70s — who have lived with the shame of abuse.

The raids followed recent statements to police "that are related to the sexual abuse of children within the church," said Jean-Marc Meilleur, a spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor's office. He would not offer specifics on the case.

Police took documents, but did not question Danneels at his home in the city of Mechlin, north of Brussels, said Hans Geybels, the spokesman for the former archbishop.

"They did take away his computer," he said.

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A former German bishop accused of physical abuse, alcoholism and sexual harassment apologized for his misconduct on Wednesday and agreed to stand by his decision to resign, the Associated Press reports.

Germany's Augsburg diocese said in a statement that it has reached a written agreement with the Rev. Water Mixa that his decision to step down as its Roman Catholic bishop is final.

In a separate letter by Mixa, which was published on the diocese's website Wednesday, he also apologized for his shortcomings without specifying them in detail.

Mixa, 69, who served the Augsburg diocese from 2005 to 2010, offered his resignation on April 22 after accusations surfaced that he had hit children decades ago as a priest and allegations of financial misconduct in the congregation.

Pope Benedict XVI accepted Mixa's resignation on May 8, but earlier this month the bishop said members of the Augsburg diocese and two German bishops had forced him to resign against his will. But earlier this week fresh allegations surfaced, including that Mixa had made sexual advances at two priests.

In neighboring Austria, the country's Catholic cardinal also took steps designed to put the church sex scandal behind it. Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn unveiled measures designed to prevent clerical abuse and help victims.

"The wall of silence has to be broken," he told reporters in Mariazell, a famous Austrian shrine to the Virgin Mary. "This is ... cannot be allowed to repeat itself."

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A Mexican man says that leaders of an influential Roman Catholic religious order knew their founder was a child molester and did nothing to stop him, the Associated Press reports.

Jose Raul Gonzalez is seeking unspecified damages from the Legionaires of Christ in a lawsuit filed Monday in Connecticut. The international group has its U.S. headquarters in the state.

Gonzalez says the Reverend Marcial Maciel (mahr-cee-AHL' mah-cee-EL') was his father, and started sexually abusing him when he was a little boy. The 30-year-old Gonzalez says the abuse continued for years. Maciel died in 2008.

Legion officials have acknowledged Maciel fathered at least one child, a girl, and abused seminarians, but insist they only recently learned of his double life. A recent Vatican investigation concluded Maciel lived a "life devoid of scruples."

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For every hurricane, earthquake or flood, there is help: food, bottled water, crews of volunteers nailing shingles to brand new roofs.

What even grateful recipients of that aid might not realize, the Associated Press reports, is that much of it comes from an unlikely hodgepodge of religious groups who put aside their doctrinal differences and coordinate their efforts as soon as the wind starts blowing.

Southern Baptists cook meals from Texas to Massachusetts. Seventh-day Adventists dispense aid from makeshift warehouses that can be running within eight hours. Mennonites haul away debris, Buddhists provide financial aid and chaplains with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team counsel the traumatized and grieving.

This "juice and cookies fellowship," as one organizer calls it, is mostly invisible to the public, but it provides interfaith infrastructure for disaster response around the country that state and federal officials could scarcely live without.

"Think of us as the United Nations of disaster relief," said Diana Rothe-Smith, executive director of National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, the main umbrella group for coordinating emergency response from private agencies.

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When Jake and Elwood Blues, the protagonists in John Landis' cult classic "The Blues Brothers," claimed they were on a mission from God, the Catholic Church apparently took them at their word, the Associated Press reports.

On the 30th anniversary of the film's release, "L'Osservatore Romano," the Vatican's official newspaper, called the film a "Catholic classic" and said it should be recommended viewing for Catholics everywhere.

The film is based on a skit from "Saturday Night Live." In the story, Jake and Elwood -- played by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, respectively -- embark on an unlikely road trip featuring concerts, car chases, clashes with the police and neo-Nazi groups, and attempts at revenge from a spurned lover, all, ostensibly, to raise money for the church-run orphanage where they grew up.

But aside from a brief appearance from Kathleen Freeman as a wrist-slapping nun referred to as "The Penguin" and the brothers' periodic claim that they were on a mission from God, spirituality does not play a significant role in the film.

In addition to Belushi and Aykroyd, the film featured an all-star cast including musicians James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, John Lee Hooker, and Chaka Khan, in addition to noted actors John Candy, Carrie Fisher, Charles Napier, and Henry Gibson, and cameo roles for Frank Oz, Steven Spielberg, Landis, Mr. T, and Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman).

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A man who claims he is the son of Legionaries of Christ founder Marcial Maciel plans to sue the group, saying the Roman Catholic clergyman molested him for years, the Associated Press reports.

Jose Raul Gonzalez of Mexico plans to file the claim of fraud and negligence Monday in Connecticut against the worldwide Legionaries of Christ, said his attorney, Jeff Anderson. The order has its U.S. headquarters in the state.

Gonzalez' mother, Blanca Lara Gutierrez, has said the late Rev. Marcial Maciel led a double life, had two children with her, adopted another, then sexually abused two of the three.

Lara Gutierrez said she was 19 when she met the priest, then 56, who passed himself off as "Jose Rivas," an employee of an international oil company, a private investigator and a CIA agent. She said she didn't discover his real identity until 1997, through a magazine article.

After decades of vehemently denying abuse allegations against Maciel, Legion officials have recently acknowledged the priest fathered at least one child, a girl who now lives in Spain, and sexually abused seminarians. Leaders of the religious order have met several times with Gutierrez but have not publicly affirmed her claim. Maciel died in 2008 at age 87.

Gonzalez has acknowledged previously asking the Legion for $26 million to keep quiet, saying Maciel had promised him and his brothers a trust fund. Anderson said in an interview Friday that Gonzalez had only asked for "what, in effect, had been promised to them."

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A former German bishop said Wednesday his peers in the Roman Catholic church pressured him into resigning over abuse allegations and that he is considering appealing his case to the Vatican court, the Associated Press reports.

The Rev. Walter Mixa's claims — published in an interview by the daily Die Welt — prompted immediate rebuttals from both his former diocese in Augsburg and the archdiocese in nearby Munich, which said in a statement "everything was done according to the rules."

Mixa, the most prominent cleric within the German catholic hierarchy to lose his post over the country's spiraling abuse scandal, offered his resignation on April 22 over allegations that he hit children decades ago as a priest. He had initially denied the reports, only to add later that he may have slapped kids.

After he offered to resign, public prosecutors launched an investigation into an allegation of sexual abuse against Mixa, but ended up dropping the case.

In the interview, the former bishop said his resignation letter to Pope Benedict XVI was drafted by other clerics.

"The pressure under which I signed the prewritten resignation was similar to purgatory," Mixa was quoted as saying.

"Three days later, I repealed it in a letter to the pope," he said. "During those days I was desperate not knowing what to do."

Nonetheless, the pontiff accepted the resignation on May 8.

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Pope Benedict XVI begged forgiveness Friday from abuse victims for the sins of priests and promised to "do everything possible" to ensure that Roman Catholic clerics don't rape or molest children ever again, the Associated Press reports.

AP correspondent Nicole Winfield writes that Benedict's pledge was similar to comments he has made in the past. But it was uttered in the highly symbolic setting of a Mass in St. Peter's Square, concelebrated by 15,000 white-robed priests, all marking the end of the Vatican's Year of the Priest — a year marred by revelations of hundreds of new cases of clerical abuse, cover-ups in several nations and Vatican inaction to root out pedophiles.

In his homily, Benedict lamented that during what should have been a year of joy for the priesthood the "sins of priests came to light — particularly the abuse of the little ones."

"We too insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved, while promising to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again," he said.

He said in admitting men into the priesthood and in forming them as clergymen "we will do everything we can to weigh the authenticity of their vocation and make every effort to accompany priests along their journey, so that the Lord will protect them and watch over them in troubled situations and amid life's dangers."

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Pope Benedict XVI strongly defended celibacy for priests as a sign of faith in an increasingly secular world during a rally Thursday that drew some 15,000 priests from around the world to Rome, the Associated Press reports.

Benedict didn't directly mention the clerical abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church for months, but he referred to what he called "secondary scandals" that showed "our own insufficiencies and sins."

Benedict's comments came during an evening vigil service in St. Peter's Square to mark the end of the Vatican's year of the priest — a year that has been marred by revelations of hundreds of new cases of clerical abuse, cover-up and Vatican inaction to stop it.

There had been speculation that Benedict might again refer to the scandal, following his recent comments en route to Portugal during which he acknowledged that it was born of the "sin within the church" and not from outside elements. Previously, Vatican officials, Vatican publications and cardinals had blamed the scandal on the media, the Masons and anti-Catholic lobbies, among others.

But Benedict didn't directly address it Thursday night. He is due to celebrate a final Mass on Friday before the rally comes to a close.

On Thursday, he responded to preselected questions from five priests and none asked for his thoughts about the scandal. One asked him to speak instead about what he called the "beauty of celibacy," which he said was so often criticized in the secular world.

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Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich — a recent convert to Catholicism — is in Poland promoting a documentary he co-produced on Pope John Paul II's role in defeating communism, the Associated Press reports.

Gingrich, a Republican, is preaching to the converted: the Polish-born pope is revered, and Poles credit him with inspiring the struggle that eventually helped bring down the Soviet-backed communists in eastern Europe.

Gingrich said Wednesday that his film, "Nine Days that Changed the World," is still needed to remind young Poles, secular historians and people worldwide of John Paul's anti-totalitarian convictions. The film, which will be screened at American universities this fall, is also being translated into Chinese and Spanish in hopes it will inspire people in Cuba and elsewhere, Gingrich said.

"We believe the pope's message of freedom through faith and his principle that no government can get between you and God is a principle that is relevant in every country, for every person around the world," Gingrich said at a news conference in Warsaw attended by the film's director and the other producers, among them his wife, Callista Gingrich.

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The Vatican secretary of state said Wednesday that while the sex abuse scandal has been painful and damaging to the church, it has also shown the need for a spiritual renewal, the Associated Press reports.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, made the comments to priests who gathered at the Vatican to mark the end of the church's Year of the Priest — a year that has been marred by hundreds of revelations of priestly abuse and Vatican inaction to stamp it out.

Bertone said the revelations had harmed the credibility of the church. But he said they had also provided a "providential realization" of the need for a "new season of spiritual renewal and rebirth."

Pope Benedict XVI is expected to address the priests Thursday night during a vigil service, and again Friday during a Mass.

There is some speculation that Benedict may again refer to the scandal, following his recent comments en route to Portugal during which he acknowledged that it was born of the "sin within the church" and not from outside elements. Previously Vatican officials, Vatican publications and cardinals had blamed the scandal on the media, the Masons and anti-Catholic lobbies, among others.

Continue reading "Vatican No. 2: Sex scandal shows need for renewal" »

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Afghans have burned an effigy of Pope Benedict XVI out of anger over claims charities preached Christianity in the Muslim country, the Associated Press reports.

U.S.-based Church World Service and Norwegian Church Aid deny spreading Christianity. The government suspended them last week while investigating allegations in an Afghan television report.

More than 1,000 people marched Tuesday in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, demanding organizations that proselytized in Afghanistan be banned.

The crowd roared approval as protesters doused the effigy of the pope in kerosene and lit it.

They shouted: "Death to America! Long Live Islam!"

Aid workers say the allegations increase the threat to staff already at risk for insurgent attack.

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Groups that have long demanded that women be ordained Roman Catholic priests took advantage of the Vatican's crisis over clerical sex abuse to press their cause Tuesday, demanding the Vatican open discussions on letting women join the priesthood, the Associated Press reports.

Representatives of a half-dozen Catholic reform groups marched on St. Peter's Square on the eve of a three-day rally marking the end of the church's yearlong celebration of the priest. Vatican officials have said the during the rally Pope Benedict XVI may apologize for the decades of rapes and molestation that children suffered at the hands of priests.

The umbrella group Women's Ordination Conference said the Vatican shouldn't be celebrating the priesthood while "turning a blind eye when men in its ranks destroy the lives of children and families."

"While the hierarchy spends their time covering up scandals and throwing major celebrations for themselves, Catholic women are working for justice and making a positive difference in the world," said Erin Saiz Hanna, the Women's Ordination Conference executive director.

She spoke at a news conference before a dozen members of the reform groups marched to the Vatican in a bid to hand out flyers to tourists, priests and other passers-by. Police stopped them when they reached the square and asked them to leave, which they did.

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Greek Cypriot leaders made a blistering attack on Turkey for its occupation of northern Cyprus as Pope Benedict XVI began a pilgrimage to the divided island Friday bringing a message of peace to the region, the Associated Press reports.

Addressing Benedict, the head of Cyprus' Orthodox Church, Archbishop Chrysostomos II said that "Turkey has barbarously invaded and conquered by force of arms 37 percent of our homeland."

Chrysostomos said that Turkey "continues to carry out its obscure plans which include the annexation of the land now under military occupation, and then a conquest of the whole of Cyprus."

His comments came as Benedict began a sensitive three-day day visit to Cyprus, an island divided between ethnic Turks and Greeks and viewed by the Vatican as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East.

Chrysostomos also said the Turks "ruthlessly sacked" Christian artworks, saying they were seeking to make Greek and Christian culture disappear from the north. He urged the pope's help to ensure protection of the sacred Christian monuments and in the struggle against the Turks.

The pope did not respond to the archbishop's remarks. Instead, in his comments from an archaeological site where St. Paul is said to have preached in the 1st century and to have been whipped by Roman soldiers, Benedict spoke of the cooperation between Catholics and Orthodox Christians.

Earlier, the pope also declined to blame Turkey for the killing of Catholic bishop in Turkey on the eve of the trip to Cyprus.

Continue reading "Pope walks fine line in divided Cyprus" »

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A coalition of religious and conservative leaders is trying to stop a proposed Comedy Central cartoon that puts Jesus Christ in a modern-day context — before it even gets started, the Associated Press reports.

The newly formed Citizens Against Religious Bigotry said Thursday that it believes the "JC" series would be offensive. They accuse Comedy Central of a double standard in mocking Christian figures and beliefs while recently refusing to let "South Park" depict the Prophet Muhammad for fear of offending Muslims.

"You don't have to be a Christian to be offended by this," said Brent Bozell, head of the watchdog Media Research Center.

Comedy Central said last month that "JC" is one of two dozen series it has in development. The concept is to depict Christ as a "regular guy" who moves to New York to "escape his father's enormous shadow."

Network spokesman Tony Fox noted that "JC" is nothing more than an idea now, without even a completed script. In television, only a minority of projects in development ever make it on the air.

Fox said the groups should save their energy for when a decision is made about whether the series will ever be completed.

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Sister Mary David Olheiser and Sister Helenette Baltes professed their vows together in 1936 as two of the 21 new sisters to join the Sisters of the Order of St. Benedict that year. At the time, their central Minnesota Roman Catholic monastery was overflowing with youth and energy.

Sixty-two years later, the Associated Press reports, the classmates and old friends are together again. St. Benedict is taking St. Bede back into its fold. The smaller group is facing demographic realities by closing its Wisconsin monastery and moving 29 remaining sisters back to Minnesota.

"It's just a blessing," said Helenette, 94, of her reunion with the 92-year-old Mary David.

It also reflects the massive changes in the lives of nuns in their lifetimes, as once-flourishing orders merge or close. A 2009 Georgetown University study for the National Religious Vocation Conference found the median age in Catholic women's orders to be in the mid 70s, and that 34 percent of religious women's orders surveyed had no new candidates for the sisterhood. About half of those orders with new candidates had at most one or two in the pipeline.

When 83 nuns including Sister Helenette departed for Eau Claire in 1948, they left about 1,200 Benedictine nuns at the monastery in St. Joseph. Today there are about 250, a number that drops by about a hundred every 10 years. But it's enough to make it the biggest Benedictine women's order in the United States. The median age at St. Benedict is 77, the youngest nun there 39 years old.

"In the larger church, vocations to religious communities tend to rise and fall, and right now in most of the world there is a decline in young people entering religious life," said St. Benedict Prioress Nancy Bauer, 57. "I would say there's numerous factors. It's just how it is."

Continue reading "AP feature: Sisterhood ends where it began" »

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A Roman Catholic bishop was stabbed to death in southern Turkey on Thursday, a day before he was scheduled to leave for Cyprus to meet with the pope, the Associated Press reports.

Luigi Padovese, the pope's apostolic vicar in Anatolia, was attacked outside his home in the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun. Dogan news agency video footage of the scene showed the bishop lying dead in front of a building.

Mehmet Celalettin Lekesiz, the governor for the province of Hatay, said police immediately caught the suspected killer.

He said the man, identified only as Murat A., was Padovese's driver for the last four and a half years and was mentally unstable.

"The initial investigation shows that the incident is not politically motivated," Lekesiz said. "We have learned that the suspect had psychological problems and was receiving treatment."

Padovese, who is the equivalent of the bishop for the Anatolia region, was scheduled to leave for Cyprus on Friday to meet with the pope, who is visiting the island, and fellow bishops from around the region for preparations before the church's synod of bishops on the Middle East. The Synod is scheduled for October.

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Categories: Catholicism, International, People
        

Although this year's homicide totals continue to be on a slower pace a year ago, Earl El-Amin said he and his faith-based brethren have grown tired of the violence, Baltimore Sun colleague Brent Jones reports.

"We're called to be keepers of peace," said El-Amin, of the Muslim's Community Central of Baltimore and a member of Baltimore's Interfaith Coalition. "That is essentially our mission. When you study history, all the great sages that came, they came to establish peace in environments that were out of sync."

El-Amin and about 50 other religious leaders, along with representatives from the city state's attorney office, announced an anti-violence initiative Thursday that will use money collected from religious services to fund activities for children.

Organizers of the program, called "Fifth Sunday: Violence to Virtue," are asking the more than 1,200 churches, mosques and synagogues in Baltimore to take up an offering every fifth weekend and donate the money to a local nonprofit, which in turn would disburse the funds to individuals or organizations that work with kids.

It is the first major program under the newly organized Baltimore Interfaith Coalition, which formed last spring after several religious leaders met with police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, who called upon the faith-based community to help curb violence.

"We've challenged ourselves to break down barriers among ourselves and work for the greater good of the people in Baltimore," said BIC co-chairman Bishop Douglas I. Miles, pastor of Koinonia Baptist Church in Northeast Baltimore. "This is a means of funding small operations that may not have [nonprofit] status but are doing great things in our community — like people who work with marching bands, people who do mentoring on the weekends — something so they have means of getting funding to help advance their work."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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Italy's bishops' conference provided the first ever statistics of clerical sex abuse in the country Tuesday, saying there had been about 100 cases over the past 10 years that warranted church trials or other canonical procedures, the Associated Press reports.

Monsignor Mariano Crociata, the No. 2 official in the Italian bishops' conference, gave the estimate during a press conference on the sidelines of the bishops' general assembly, the ANSA and Apcom news agencies reported.

He declined to say how many of the cases resulted in condemnation or defrocking of the priest, or how many were reported to police. While saying the church officials cooperated with police, he insisted that Italian law doesn't require bishops to report suspected abuse.

Some lawyers for victims say bishops are required to report abuse since they are public officials. Vatican norms say bishops should follow civil laws in reporting abuse.

Crociata's comments came a day after the head of the bishops' conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, opened the bishops' annual meeting by asking families to trust the Catholic Church despite the scandal, insisting that it had never intended to underestimate the problem.

The meeting came as more cases are coming to light in the Vatican's backyard: On Tuesday, the ANSA news agency reported that a 73-year-old priest well known in Milan's gay community had been arrested on charges he had sex with a 13-year-old boy, who is now 16. A day earlier, a priest in Savona went on trial for alleged sexual violence against a 12-year-old girl, ANSA said.

And last week, a Rome bishop testified in the case of another accused priest, the Rev. Ruggero Conti, that he knew about rumors of abuse two years before Conti was arrested yet didn't alert police or the Vatican or proceed with any canonical trial against him.

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The Roman Catholic Church's culture of discretion and focus on "sin and forgiveness rather than crime and punishment" were among ingrained factors that ultimately led to the child sex abuse scandal and cover-up surrounding the church today, a pre-eminent Australian bishop said Monday.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge, whose archdiocese is based in the national capital of Canberra, took the unusual step of writing an open letter attempting to explain the culture that led the church to turn a blind eye to priests accused of molesting children, the Associated Press reports.

Factors include a determination to protect the church's reputation, a culture of discretion, "institutionalized immaturity" of priests fostered by seminary training, and an outlook of "sin and forgiveness rather than crime and punishment," Coleridge wrote.

Clerical celibacy was not itself a factor but it "has its perils," he wrote. "The discipline of celibacy may also have been attractive to men in whom there were paedophile tendencies which may not have been explicitly recognised by the men themselves when they entered the seminary."

Coleridge said as a young priest in the 1970s, he regarded pedophilia cases as "tragic and isolated." Coleridge's view shifted when he was called to serve at the Vatican as chaplain to Pope John Paul II during a five-year period that ended in 2002. While there, Coleridge came to regard child abuse in the church as "cultural."

"There is no one factor that makes abuse of the young by Catholic clergy in some sense cultural," Coleridge wrote. "It seems to me a rather complex combination of factors which I do not claim to understand fully."

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Cuba's Roman Catholic cardinal called for the liberation of some of the island's 200 political prisoners on Thursday after a rare sit-down with President Raul Castro, and said he thought his encounter with the Cuban leader was a "magnificent start" to serious dialogue, the Associated Press reports.

"The church is interested in an alleviation of the situation (of the political prisoners) — the liberation of some of them, for example," Cardinal Jaime Ortega said, a day after he and another church leader, Archbishop Dionisio Garcia, held a four-hour discussion with Raul Castro at the Palace of the Revolution, the seat of Cuba's government.

The church has called previously for freedom for the island's prisoners of conscience, but doing so right after such a high profile meeting was unusual.

Ortega said in a news conference that he had also brought up the government's decision to bar the dissident Ladies in White from holding weekly marches. The group — comprised of the wives and mothers of jailed political prisoners — were stopped from protesting for three straight weekends in April and pro-government counter-protesters were brought in to shout abuse at them.

The standoff ended after Ortega's mediation, when the government agreed to allow the quiet protests to resume in return for assurances the women would not expand their activities.

The cardinal made clear that no deal on any prisoner releases or easing of measures against the opposition had been struck.

"We are not talking about any commitments. We are talking about conversations with the government, conversations that had a magnificent start yesterday (Wednesday) and that ought to continue in the near future," Ortega said.

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Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley on Wednesday defended a priest who denied admission to a parish school to a gay couple's child, calling it a pastoral decision and saying the priest had his "full confidence and support," the Associated Press reports.

O'Malley's comments on his blog were his first public remarks about the decision earlier this month by St. Paul Elementary School in Hingham to rescind the boy's acceptance because his parents are lesbians.

A parent of the boy said the Rev. James Rafferty, the parish priest at St. Paul's, said her relationship was "in discord" with church teachings, which sees marriage as only between a man and a woman. She said the principal told her teachers wouldn't be prepared to handle the boy's questions when he realized the church's view of family conflicted with what he saw at home. The parent spoke to The Associated Press but asked not to be named to protect the welfare of the child.

The decision prompted calls for O'Malley to intervene. The Catholic Schools Foundation, which O'Malley chairs, said the decision was at odds with Gospel teaching, and it wouldn't fund schools that made similar decisions.

The archdiocese's head of education later called the parent, apologized and offered to help the 8-year-old enroll in another Catholic school.

O'Malley said Rafferty had come under "undue criticism" for the decision.

"He made a decision about the admission of the child to St. Paul School based on his pastoral concern for the child," O'Malley wrote. "I can attest personally that Father Rafferty would never exclude a child to sanction the child's parents."

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A Dutch sex shop says it will give away 2,000 "pope condoms" this weekend in a dig at the Roman Catholic Church, Reuters reports.

De Condoomfabriek, which translates as The Condom Factory, said it wanted to make a point about sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and the Vatican's opposition to contraceptives, according to the British news agency.

The condom wrapper includes a image of a papal figure with the words "I SAID NO! We say YES!" Reuters reports.

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The Vatican on Monday will make its most detailed argument yet for why it is not liable for bishops who allowed priests to molest children in the U.S., in a motion that could affect other efforts to sue the Holy See in American courts, The Associated Press has learned.

In a motion to dismiss a lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds, the Holy See is expected to argue that a key Vatican document calling for secrecy in church trials for sex abuse cases was not, as victims' lawyers say, proof of a Vatican-orchestrated cover up. The Vatican's U.S. attorney, Jeffrey Lena, said Sunday there was no evidence the document was even known to the archdiocese in question — much less used.

In addition, the Holy See is expected to assert that bishops aren't Vatican employees because they aren't paid by Rome, don't act on Rome's behalf and aren't controlled day-to-day by the pope — factors courts use to determine whether employers are liable for the actions of their workers, Lena told the AP.

He said he would suggest to the court that it should avoid using the religious nature of the relationship between bishops and the pope altogether as a basis for civil liability, because it entangles the court in an analysis of complicated religious doctrine that dates back to the apostles.

The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for the failure of bishops to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.

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A nun and administrator at a Catholic hospital in Phoenix has been reassigned and rebuked by the local bishop for agreeing that a severely ill woman needed an abortion to survive, the Associated Press reports.

Sister Margaret McBride was on an ethics committee that included doctors that consulted with a young woman who was 11 weeks pregnant late last year, The Arizona Republic newspaper reported on its website Saturday. The woman was suffering from a life-threatening condition that likely would have caused her death if she hadn't had the abortion at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center.

Hospital officials defended McBride's actions but confirmed that she has been reassigned from her job as vice president of mission integration at the hospital. They said in a statement that saving the mother required that the fetus be aborted.

"In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother's life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy," hospital vice president Susan Pfister said in an e-mail to the newspaper. She said the facility owned by Catholic Healthcare West adheres to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services but that the directives do not answer all questions.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix Diocese, indicated in a statement that the Roman Catholic involved was "automatically excommunicated" because of the action. The Catholic Church allows the termination of a pregnancy only as a secondary effect of other treatments, such as radiation of a cancerous uterus.

"I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese," Olmsted said in a statement sent to The Arizona Republic. "I am further concerned by the hospital's statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother's underlying medical condition.

"An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means."

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The head of education for the Boston Archdiocese offered Thursday to help find a different Catholic school for a boy denied acceptance at a Hingham Catholic school because his parents are gay, the Associated Press reports.

In a statement, superintendent Mary Grassa O'Neill said she spoke with a parent of the 8-year-old boy and "offered to help enroll her child in another Catholic school in the archdiocese."

"We believe that every parent who wishes to send their child to a Catholic school should have the opportunity to pursue that dream," O'Neill said.

The parent, who has remained anonymous to protect her child from publicity, called the archdiocese's response "compassionate" and said O'Neill apologized. But the woman said she was uncertain she would enroll her son in another Catholic school because she needed to learn more about their educational programs.

She added: "I will be a little bit more guarded in my questioning so I'll be able to have a real clear picture where they stand."

The boy was to enter third grade at St. Paul Elementary School in the fall. But the woman said the parish priest, the Rev. James Rafferty, began asking questions about her relationship during a meeting last week.

Continue reading "Church to help find school for lesbians' son" »

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In his most thorough admission of the church's guilt in the clerical sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict XVI said Tuesday the greatest persecution of the institution "is born from the sins within the church," and not from a campaign by outsiders, the Associated Press reports.

The pontiff said the Catholic church has always been tormented by problems of its own making — a tendency that is being witnessed today "in a truly terrifying way."

"The church needs to profoundly relearn penitence, accept purification, learn forgiveness but also justice," he said.

"Forgiveness cannot substitute justice," he said.

Benedict was responding to journalists' questions, submitted in advance, aboard the papal plane as he flew to Portugal for a four-day visit.

In a shift from the Vatican's initial claim that the church was the victim of a campaign by the media and abortion rights and pro-gay marriage groups, Benedict said: "The greatest persecution of the church doesn't come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sins within the church."

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Tough U.S. norms about dealing with clerical sex abuse that have been hailed as a model by the Vatican aren't appropriate for Belgium, even as it deals with dozens of new reports of priests molesting children, a leading archbishop told reporters on Friday.

Brussels Archbishop Andre-Mutien Leonard said the context in which the U.S. norms were created — amid a major scandal in 2002 — required a much tougher response than what Belgium or Europe requires, the Associated Press reports. But he said the Belgian church nevertheless was taking a firm stance against pedophile priests, albeit a more measured one than in the U.S.

"In Belgium, we are truly determined to be firm, transparent and rigorous on this question, but perhaps the European context, the Belgian context is not the same as the American context," he said. "In Belgium, we always like to speak in a language that can be very firm but one might say 'velvety' — a bit soft. But firm."

Leonard spoke to reporters Friday after a week of previously scheduled meetings with Vatican officials that followed the April announcement that the country's longest-serving bishop, Roger Vangheluwe, had resigned after admitting he sexually abused a boy.

The revelation has shaken the Belgian church, sparking what Leonard has said was a "crisis in confidence" in an institution that has already seen a sharp decline in the number of priests in recent years.

The pope addresses the Belgian clergymen Saturday.

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Pope Benedict XVI all but gave an outright endorsement of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin on Sunday, calling the cloth that some believe is Christ's burial shroud an icon "written with the blood" of a crucified man, the Associated Press reports.

During a visit to the Shroud in the northern Italian city of Turin, Benedict didn't raise the scientific questions that surround the linen and whether it might be a medieval forgery. Instead, he delivered a powerful meditation on the faith that holds that the Shroud is indeed Christ's burial cloth.

"This is a burial cloth that wrapped the remains of a crucified man in full correspondence with what the Gospels tell us of Jesus," Benedict said. He said the relic — one of the most important in Christianity — should be seen as a photographic document of the "darkest mystery of faith" — that of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.

The 14-foot-long, 3.5-foot-wide (4.3-meter-long, 1 meter-wide) cloth has gone on public display for the first time since the 2000 Millennium celebrations and a subsequent 2002 restoration. Kept in a bulletproof, climate-controlled case in Turin's cathedral, it has drawn nearly 2 million reservations from pilgrims and tourists eager to spend three to five minutes viewing it.

The Shroud bears the figure of a crucified man, complete with blood seeping from his hands and feet, and believers say Christ's image was recorded on the linen's fibers at the time of his resurrection.

Benedict focused in his meditation on the message that the blood stains conveyed, saying the Shroud was "an icon written in blood; the blood of a man who was whipped, crowned with thorns, crucified and injured on his right side.

"The image on the Shroud is that of a dead man, but the blood speaks of his life. Each trace of blood speaks of love and life," Benedict said.

Continue reading "Pope all but endorses Shroud of Turin" »

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The Vatican denounced the "immoral" double life led by the late founder of the Legionaries of Christ on Saturday and said a papal envoy and special commission would be named to overhaul the conservative order following revelations its founder sexually abused seminarians and fathered at least one child, the Associated Press reports.

In a statement, the Vatican excoriated the Rev. Marciel Maciel for creating a "system of power" built on silence and obedience that enabled him to lead a double life "devoid of any scruples and authentic sense of religion" and allowed him to abuse young boys for decades unchecked.

"By pushing away and casting doubt upon all those who questioned his behavior, and the false belief that he wasn't doing harm to the good of the Legion, he created around him a defense mechanism that made him unassailable for a long period, making it difficult to know his true life," the Vatican said.

The Vatican assured the Legion's current members that it would help them "purify" what good remains in the order and would not be left alone as they undergo the "profound revision" necessary to carry on.

The Vatican issued the statement after Pope Benedict XVI met with five bishops who investigated the Legion for the past eight months, met with over 1,000 members around the world to determine its future after its founder, around whom the Legion had built a cult of personality, was so thoroughly discredited.

The pope's response is being closely watched because the Vatican is facing mounting pressure to aggressively confront abuse and provide pastoral care to victims. The Maciel case has long been seen as emblematic of Vatican inaction on abuse complaints, since Maciel's victims had tried in the 1990s to bring a canonical trial against him but were shut down by his supporters at the Vatican.

In the end, it was only in 2006 — a year into Pope Benedict XVI's papacy — that the Vatican ordered Maciel to lead a "reserved life of penance and prayer," making him a priest in name only. He died in 2008 at age 87.

Continue reading "Pope names envoy, Vatican to reform order" »

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The No. 2 official in the conservative Legionaries of Christ order has broken his silence on revelations that the group's founder had fathered children and abused seminarians, giving an interview on the eve of a Vatican meeting to discuss the order's fate, the Associated Press reports.

The Rev. Luis Garza Medina told Rome's La Repubblica newspaper Thursday that he did not know before 2006 that founder Rev. Marcial Maciel had fathered a child. He also said cases of sexual abuse by priests should be referred to civil law enforcement.

On Friday, five Vatican experts are to discuss their investigation into the order with the Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Bertone ordered the probe in 2009 after the Legionaries acknowledged that Maciel had fathered a daughter who is now in her 20s and lives in Spain.

The case against Maciel is being closely watched as the Vatican struggles to show that it is serious about rooting out clerical sex abuse and being more transparent. The Maciel case has long been seen as emblematic of Vatican inaction on abuse complaints, since sex abuse victims had tried in the 1990s to bring a canonical trial against Maciel but were shut down by his supporters at the Vatican.

Only in March of this year did the Legionaries acknowledge that Maciel had also sexually abused seminarians and that two men are claiming to be his sons. One of those men has asked the Legionaries for $26 million and says Maciel had promised him and his two brothers a trust fund when he died as financial compensation for the alleged sexual abuse they endured at Maciel's hands. The third son was adopted.

Continue reading "Legionaries break silence on founder's sex abuse" »

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The Roman Catholic bishop of Providence has withdrawn two hospitals sponsored by his diocese from membership in a Catholic hospital group that supports health care reform, the Associated Press reports.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed reform legislation because of fears it would allow for public funding of abortion, but the Catholic Health Association disagreed and supported it. Sister Carol Keehan, head of the group that represents about 600 hospitals, met with President Barack Obama at the White House days before the bill passed. The bill was signed into law March 23.

The diocese on Wednesday released a letter written March 29 by Bishop Thomas Tobin to Keehan in which he complained that even an association with the group was embarrassing.

"Your enthusiastic support of the legislation, in contradiction of the bishops of the United States, provided an excuse for members of Congress, misled the public and caused a serious scandal for many members of the church," Tobin wrote.

The two hospitals removed from the group are run by St. Joseph Health Services of Rhode Island, which Tobin noted in his letter doesn't pay membership fees because it is considered "distressed."

Keehan said in an interview Wednesday that she replied to Tobin that the group would honor his request. She noted that very few Catholic hospitals are sponsored by dioceses, and that while she had great regard for St. Joseph, it is a small hospital group.

Continue reading "Bishop bans hospitals from pro-health reform group" »

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The pope's hand-picked replacement to oversee abuse cases at the Vatican did nothing to restrict a California priest after learning in 1995 that the priest had molested a 13-year-old boy a decade earlier, the Associated Press reports.

Cardinal William Levada, then archbishop of San Francisco, said in a 2005 deposition obtained by The Associated Press that he did nothing and didn't contact police because he trusted the Rev. Milton Walsh would not re-offend and his predecessor handled the case adequately.

There were no known allegations of later abuse by the priest and a Vatican attorney says Levada acted appropriately under standards of the time.

When Levada learned of the abuse, Walsh had been pastor for six years at St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco, a parish of about 1,000 people. He remained there for two more years and was removed from active ministry in 2002, when U.S. bishops passed a "zero tolerance" policy on sex abuse and police started investigating.

Levada is now the highest-ranking American at the Vatican and head of the office that defrocks pedophile priests. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger held the post before he became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

The Vatican's lawyer, Jeffrey Lena, says Levada handled the case properly by the era's norms, which have evolved significantly in recent years. The Holy See told bishops this month they should report abuse to police rather than keep cases quiet as had been the practice for decades.

"One thing the law teaches: it is fundamentally unfair to apply standards of conduct retroactively," Lena said. "And yet, even if one were to do so, it must be acknowledged there was no re-offense by the priest. So in this case, the old approach did work."

Continue reading "AP: Vatican official left abusive priest in job" »

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Pope Benedict XVI may issue a mea culpa for clerical sex abuse at a June meeting of the world's priests at the Vatican, the Associated Press reports.

The June 9-11 summit, initially called to mark the end of the Vatican's year of the priest, had already morphed into a pep rally for the pope as he came under fire amid a new wave of reports on sex abuse by clerics.

Now, according to the top Vatican official dealing with abuse, it's possible that Benedict may issue some form of an apology at the meeting.

Cardinal William Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told U.S. public broadcaster PBS on Tuesday that he "wouldn't be surprised" if the pontiff issues a mea culpa at the meeting.

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The Vatican will finance new research, led by the University of Maryland's School of Medicine, into the potential use of adult stem cells in the treatment of intestinal and possibly other diseases, Baltimore Sun colleague Kelly Brewington reports.

The Italian-American partnership, known as the International Intestinal Stem Cell Consortium, brings together researchers from the Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Maryland; The University of Salerno, Bambino Gesu — an Italian children's hospital; and the Istituto Superiore di Sanita — the Italian equivalent of the National Institutes of Health.

The project is at a preliminary phase and it will be years before any clinical treatment might be available, Vatican officials said.

Cardinal Renato Martino said he expected the Vatican to help finance the project through Bambino Gesu, but the exact amount must still be worked out in future meetings with the University of Maryland. An initial announcement by the university said the Vatican had already agreed to donate $2.7 million to the research.

Read more at baltimoresun.com.

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Students, clergy and other Baltimore-area Catholics flocked to the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen this morning, as the Archdiocese of Baltimore began a two-day event to remember the life of Archbishop William D. Borders, Baltimore Sun colleague Joe Burris reports.

With two priests and two Knights of Columbus members standing by, visitors filed quietly past the open casket, some pausing with recollections of the man who was spiritual leader of the region's half-million Catholics from 1974 until 1989.

"He understood the role of Bishop, that the Bishop relates as a shepherd of the people," said Sister Rosalie Murphy, SND, who knew Archbishop Borders for 41 years.

"He was a philosopher, basically, and he was able to deal with questions that never daunted him. That was key to his makeup in a way. He was able to bring people together and hear different points of view."

Before leading a short service, Bishop Denis J. Madden recalled the archbishop's sense of humor. "I remember we would prepare our homilies and give him a copy of them. And one day I gave him a copy of my homily and he said, 'Denis, you're presuming I want to read this.' "

Read more at baltimoresun.com.

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A Roman Catholic group is seeking another bishop to celebrate a special Mass at the nation's largest Catholic church after advocates for abuse victims objected to a retired Vatican cardinal, the Associated Press reports.

Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos had been scheduled to celebrate the Latin Mass on Saturday at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. It is in honor of the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI's inauguration.

The Paulus Institute agreed Wednesday to find a replacement after the victims' group objected to Castrillon Hoyos. The now-retired cardinal wrote a letter in 2001 congratulating a French bishop for shielding a priest who was convicted of raping minors. At the time, Castrillon Hoyos headed the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy, which is in charge of priests throughout the world.

The Paulus Institute says it stands with sexual abuse victims but it is not taking a position on the cardinal's conduct.

Castrillon Hoyos, 80, told an audience at a Catholic university in Murcia, Spain, last week that Pope John Paul II saw the letter and authorized him to send it to bishops worldwide.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said it faxed letters Tuesday to Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl and to the pope's representative in Washington, asking them to intervene to stop Castrillon Hoyos from celebrating the Mass.

"This cardinal's letter may be the single most hurtful thing we've seen written in the last decade," said David Clohessy, executive director of the survivors' group, known as SNAP.

Continue reading "Group replaces contoversial cardinal for D.C. Mass" »

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Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation Thursday of an Irish bishop who admitted he didn't challenge the Dublin church's policy of covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests, the Associated Press reports.

Bishop James Moriarty of Kildare is the third Irish bishop to resign in the past four months as a result of the Irish abuse scandal, and two more have offered to go. He said he was stepping down because he realized that "renewal must begin with accepting responsibility for the past."

Moriarty, 73, offered to resign in December after admitting he didn't challenge the Dublin Archdiocese's past practice of concealing child-abuse complaints from police. He served as an auxiliary Dublin bishop from 1991 to 2002.

"The truth is that the long struggle of survivors to be heard and respected by church authorities has revealed a culture within the Church that many would simply describe as unchristian," Moriarty said in a statement. "This has been profoundly dispiriting for all who care about the church."

Two auxiliary Dublin bishops, Eamonn Walsh and Ray Field, have offered to resign as well.

All three bishops were identified in an Irish government-ordered investigation published last year into decades of cover-ups of child-abusing clergy in the Dublin Archdiocese. The report found that all bishops until 1996 colluded to protect scores of pedophile priests from criminal prosecution.

Continue reading "Irish bishop says he didn't report abuse, resigns" »

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The head of the nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese has condemned a proposed Arizona crackdown on illegal immigrants, saying it encourages people to turn on each other in Nazi- and Soviet-style repression, the Associated Press reports.

The measure wrongly assumes that Arizonans "will now shift their total attention to guessing which Latino-looking or foreign-looking person may or may not have proper documents," Cardinal Roger Mahony said in his blog Sunday — a day before Arizona's Legislature sent the immigration enforcement measure to the Republican governor.

Gov. Jan Brewer has not indicated whether she will sign the bill, which creates a new state misdemeanor of willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document. It would also require officers to determine people's immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally.

Arizona has an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants. Proponents of the bill say it was prompted by concerns over the cost of providing services to illegal immigrants and by the slaying of an Arizona rancher near the Mexican border this month. Authorities believe he was fatally shot by an illegal immigrant possibly connected to a drug smuggling cartel.

Republican Arizona Sen. Russell Pearce, who sponsored the bill, has said it will take handcuffs off police and put them on violent criminals.

But Mahony, whose archdiocese has a huge Hispanic immigrant population, said the Arizona Legislature was passing "the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law."

Continue reading "Cardinal links immigration bill to Nazis, Soviets" »

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Pope Benedict XVI promised Wednesday that the Catholic Church would take action to confront the clerical sex abuse scandal, making his first public comments on the crisis days after meeting with victims, the Associated Press reports.

During his weekly public audience in St. Peter's Square, Benedict recounted his tearful weekend encounter in Malta with eight men who say they were abused as children by priests in a church-run orphanage.

"I shared with them their suffering, and emotionally prayed with them, assuring them of church action," Benedict said.

At the time of the private meeting Sunday, the Vatican issued a statement saying Benedict had told the men that the church would do everything in its power to bring justice to abusive priests and would implement "effective measures" to protect children.

Wednesday, the public heard the words from the pope himself.

Neither Benedict nor the Vatican has elaborated on what action or measures are being considered. Various national bishops conferences have over the years implemented norms for handling cases of priests who sexually abuse children, none more stringent than the zero-tolerance policy adopted by the United States.

Continue reading "Benedict promises action on clerical sex abuse" »

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The body of Archbishop William Donald Borders will lie in state at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen on Thursday and Friday before a Mass of Christian Burial Friday at the cathedral.

Complete funeral details for the 13th archbishop of Baltimore, who died Monday at 96, as released by the Archdiocese of Baltimore:

All funeral ceremonies will take place at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, 5200 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21210.

Thursday, April 22, 2010
10 a.m. Reception of the Body (Bishop Denis Madden will receive the body)
10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Public Visitation (The body of Archbishop Borders will lie in state)
7:30 p.m. Office for the Dead (Evening prayer for the dead)

Friday, April 23, 2010
9 a.m. to Noon Public Visitation
1 p.m. Mass of Christian Burial
Private Entombment in the Cathedral Crypt immediately following the Mass of Christian Burial

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The Archdiocese of Baltimore's first new elementary school in more than 60 years will be called Holy Angels Catholic School, the archdiocese announced Tuesday.

“We are delighted to have this much anticipated name for our new school," said Father Charles Hall Catholic Elementary School Principal Kathleen Filipelli, who will head Holy Angels in the fall. "Bravo to the Catholic school parents, students, and teachers who allowed the angels to guide them. Holy Angels Catholic School will be a positive and happy learning community."

The school is set to open for 2010-11 on the grounds of Seton Keough High School as part of the school reorganization announced last month by Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien. It is expected to attract students from Ascension School, St. Bernardine Catholic School, Father Charles Hall Catholic Elementary School, St. Rose of Lima School and St. William of York School, all of which the archdiocese plans to close at the end of the current school year.

If funding and enrollment permit, O'Brien said, the archdiocese eventually will build a new facility for the school.

The name Holy Angels finished first among five options in an online survey last week with 42 percent of the vote. Students were also allowed to write in choices.

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Archbishop William Donald Borders, the 13th archbishop of Baltimore, died at 10:03 a.m. Monday at Stella Maris in Timonium. He was 96.

The Baltimore Sun has produced an obituary.

An official biography is available at the Archdiocese of Baltimore website.

Following is the statement of Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien:

Archbishop Borders was a man of deep faith, great humility and great love for God, the Church and this Archdiocese. As a result, he was universally loved by the people of this local Church, by his brother bishops and priests, and by all who were blessed to call him Archbishop, Father, teacher, brother and friend.

By any measure William Donald Borders served an extraordinary life. From the very date of his birth on October 9, 1913 in the middle of a flood so fierce it lifted his family home off its foundation and the doctor had to be transported to the home by boat, to his chaplaincy service during World War II in North Africa and Italy, which earned him the Bronze Star for Valor, the Archbishop’s quite strength would guide him throughout his life of service.

That strength would be called on throughout his tenure as the first-ever Bishop of Orlando and eventually the 13th Archbishop of the oldest Catholic diocese in the Nation, as he was forced to tackle a number of pressing issues, including the desegregation of public schools, housing for the poor, and the role of the laity in the Church.

Ever the teacher, the Archbishop would guide the faithful on these and other issues with his prolific writings, many of which remain relevant today and serve as guides for Church leaders throughout the United States.

The Church and people of God of this Archdiocese benefitted immeasurably from his visionary leadership, indefatigable spirit and generous love. On a personal note, I counted him among my most worthy advisors since my arrival in Baltimore and will miss his fraternal love and supportive and joyful presence. May he be welcomed into God’s kingdom where he will suffer no more and where he will know God’s peace for all eternity.

And the statement of Cardinal William H. Keeler:

Archbishop William Donald Borders was a good and gentle person whom I got to know very well over Saturday evening dinners following my installation as Archbishop of Baltimore. We would discuss all of the matters that were before us and I would share my viewpoint on activities in the Archdiocese. I was particularly grateful for his insights regarding the priests and people of the Archdiocese. When I told him recently that I had left the Archdiocese after the installation of my successor, he told me that he had done the same thing as a courtesy to me. I recalled that he made a long trip to the Midwest, probably to his relatives in Indiana, at the time that I had become the Archbishop here. These simple gestures indicate the kind of person Archbishop Borders was.

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With tears in his eyes, Pope Benedict XVI made his most personal gesture yet to respond to the clerical sex abuse scandal Sunday, telling victims the church will do everything possible to protect children and bring abusive priests to justice, the Associated Press reports.

The emotional moment carried no new admissions from the Vatican, which has strongly rejected accusations that efforts to cover up for abusive priests were directed by the church hierarchy for decades. But the pontiff told the men that the church would "implement effective measures" to protect children, the Vatican said, without offering details.

Benedict met for more than a half-hour with eight Maltese men who say they were abused by four priests when they were boys living at a Catholic orphanage. During the meeting in the chapel at the Vatican's embassy here, Benedict expressed his "shame and sorrow" at the pain the men and their families suffered, the Vatican said.

"Everybody was crying," one of the men, Joseph Magro, 38, told Associated Press Television News after the meeting. "I told him my name was Joseph, and he had tears in his eyes."

The visit — which came on the second day of Benedict's two-day trip to this largely Roman Catholic island — marked the first time Benedict had met with abuse victims since the worldwide clerical abuse scandal engulfed the Vatican earlier this year.

"He prayed with them and assured them that the Church is doing, and will continue to do, all in its power to investigate allegations, to bring to justice those responsible for abuse and to implement effective measures designed to safeguard young people in the future," the Vatican statement said.

Continue reading "Tearful pope meets with abuse victims" »

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A German court convicted ultraconservative British Bishop Richard Williamson on Friday of denying the Holocaust in a television interview, the Associated Press reports.

A court in the Bavarian city of Regensburg found Williamson guilty of incitement for saying in a 2008 interview with Swedish television that he did not believe Jews were killed in gas chambers during World War II.

The court ordered Williamson to pay a fine of euro10,000 ($13,544).

The Roman Catholic bishop was barred by his order from attending Friday's proceedings or making statements to the media.

His lawyer, Matthias Lossmann, told The Associated Press after the court ruling that Williamson has yet to decide whether he would appeal.

Denying the Holocaust is a criminal offense in Germany.

Continue reading "SSPX bishop convicted of denying Holocaust" »

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The dissident Swiss theologian Hans Küng is urging bishops to disobey the pope and push for reforms in the Roman Catholic Church, the Associated Press reports.

The 82-year-old former colleague and friend of Pope Benedict XVI says the church is in its deepest crisis since the Protestant Reformation after recent revelations of sexual abuse by clergy and the ensuing erosion of trust.

Küng, a veteran of the Second Vatican Council, says in an editorial in daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung that bishops should call for a new synod to discuss reforms.

He says it is legitimate for bishops to pressure Roman authorities if the pope blocks their efforts. The bishops should not be "actors without voice or rights."

The editorial also appeared in the New York Times and La Repubblica.

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Pope Benedict XVI spoke Thursday about "attacks" on the church and the need for Catholics to repent for sins and recognize their mistakes, in an apparent reference to the clerical abuse scandal, the Associated Press reports.

Benedict made the comments during a homily at a Mass inside the Vatican for members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.

Victims of clerical abuse have long demanded that Benedict take more personal responsibility for clerical abuse, charging that the Vatican mandated a culture of cover-up and secrecy that allowed priests to rape and molest children for decades unchecked.

Those demands have intensified in recent weeks as the Vatican and Benedict himself have been accused of negligence in handling some cases in Europe and the United States.

"I must say, we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word 'repent', which seemed too tough. But now under attack from the world, which has been telling us about our sins ... we realize that it's necessary to repent, in other words, recognize what is wrong in our lives," Benedict said.

"Open ourselves to forgiveness ... and let ourselves be transformed. The pain of repentance, which is a purification and transformation, is a grace because it is renewal and the work of divine mercy," he said.

It was Benedict's fullest allusion to the scandal since he sent a letter to the Irish faithful March 20 concerning what Irish-government inquiries have concluded was decades of abuse and church-mandated cover-up in the country.

Continue reading "Pope speaks of 'attacks,' need for repentence" »

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Telephone hot lines in Europe offering help to people claiming abuse by Roman Catholic priests are being deluged with calls as the crisis spreads — with one center reporting complaints jumping from about 10 cases a year to more than a thousand in the past few weeks, the Associated Press reports.

Experts say the record influx of calls reflects an increasing realization among victims that they are not alone and that they will not be scorned for breaking their silence about horrors that in many cases go back decades.

"Until now, many people were afraid they wouldn't be respected," said Max Friedrich, a prominent Austrian psychiatrist. "There's also a certain comfort knowing you're not the only one to have experienced such abuse."

In the Netherlands, the Help and Law line was set up in 1995 and generally dealt with roughly 10 reports of abuse per year. Since March it has received some 1,300 new reports, said Pieter Kohnen, spokesman for the Dutch Bishops' Conference, which runs the line.

As with similar help lines, not every complaint turns into an actual case — meaning the caller is assigned a legal adviser to guide him or her through the process.

Still, Help and Law is now dealing with nearly 50 cases, compared with 10 to 14 for most years, and the number is likely to rise further as the center plows through a backlog of complaints, according to spokesman Ben Spekman.

"We have started more cases in the last month than in the previous three years combined," Spekman said. "It is a significant increase."

Continue reading "European abuse lines field a torrent of calls" »

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This further response from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests to news the Vatican is directing bishops to report sex abuse to civil authorities just hit our inbox:

"It's sad when the Vatican has to make it clear to bishops that they must follow secular laws.

"It's fairly obvious that if you are saying you will now cooperate with the police then you are admitting that you have not been.

"What the Pope needs to do is to clearly order all bishops to turn over all records on clergy sex crimes right now to authorities across the world. And he should immediately disclose records on the thousands of cases that he personally handled as head of CDF from 2001-2005."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)
        

The Vatican has finally made peace with the Beatles, saying their drug use, "dissolute" lives and even the claim that the band was bigger than Jesus are all in the past — while their music lives on, the Associated Press reports.

Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano paid tribute to the Fab Four in its weekend editions, with two articles and a front-page cartoon reproducing the crosswalk immortalized on the cover of the band's album "Abbey Road."

The tribute marked the 40th anniversary of the band's breakup.

"It's true, they took drugs; swept up by their success, they lived dissolute and uninhibited lives," said the paper. "They even said they were more famous than Jesus," it said, recalling John Lennon's 1966 comment that outraged many Catholics and others.

"But, listening to their songs, all of this seems distant and meaningless," L'Osservatore said. "Their beautiful melodies, which changed forever pop music and still give us emotions, live on like precious jewels."

It is not the first time the Vatican has praised the legendary band from Liverpool.

Two years ago, Vatican media hailed the Beatles' musical legacy on the 40th anniversary of the "White Album." And last month the Vatican paper included "Revolver" in its semiserious list of top-10 albums.

Now, L'Osservatore says that the Beatles' songs have stood the test of time, and that the band remains "the longest-lasting, most consistent and representative phenomenon in the history of pop music."

Giovanni Maria Vian, the editor in chief of L'Osservatore Romano, said Monday that he loves the Beatles.

He said that at the time of Lennon's sensational statement, Osservatore "commented that in reality it wasn't that scandalous, because the fascination with Jesus was so great that it attracted these new heroes of the time."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

The Vatican responded Monday to allegations that it had concealed years of clerical sex abuse by making it clear for the first time that bishops and other high-ranking clerics should report such crimes to police if required by law, the Associated Press reports.

Victims have charged that the Catholic Church created what amounted to a conspiracy to cover up abuse by keeping allegations that priests raped and molested children secret and not reporting them to civil authorities.

The Vatican has insisted that it has long been the Catholic Church's policy for bishops, like all Christians, to obey civil laws. In a new guide for lay readers posted on its Web site, the Vatican explicitly spells out such a policy.

"Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed," the Vatican guidelines said.

That phrase was not included in a draft of the guidelines obtained Friday by The Associated Press. The rest of the guidelines follow previously known and public procedures for handling canonical investigations and trials of suspected abuse.

The Vatican offered no explanation for the addition.

Victims were not impressed.

"Let's keep this in perspective: it's one sentence and it's virtually nothing unless and until we see tangible signs that bishops are responding," said Joelle Casteix, western regional director for SNAP, the Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests, the main victims' group in the U.S. "One sentence can't immediately reverse centuries of self-serving secrecy."

She said if the Vatican truly wanted to change course "it would be far more effective to fire or demote bishops who have clearly endangered kids and enabled abuse and hid crimes, than to add one sentence to a policy that is rarely followed with consistency."

Continue reading "Vatican tells bishops to report sex abuse" »

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The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature, the Associated Press reports.

The correspondence, obtained by the AP, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office.

The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle.

The Vatican refused to comment on the contents of the letter Friday, but a spokesman confirmed it bore Ratzinger's signature.

"The press office doesn't believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations," the Rev. Federico Lombardi said. "It is not strange that there are single documents which have Cardinal Ratzinger's signature."

The diocese recommended removing Kiesle from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office which shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests.

The case then languished for four years at the Vatican before Ratzinger finally wrote to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. It was two more years before Kiesle was removed.

In the November 1985 letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle are of "grave significance" but added that such actions required very careful review and more time. He also urged the bishop to provide Kiesle with "as much paternal care as possible" while awaiting the decision, according to a translation for AP by Professor Thomas Habinek, chairman of the University of Southern California Classics Department.

But the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the universal church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age." Kiesle was 38 at the time.

Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory.

As his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him.

In his earliest letter to Ratzinger, Cummins warned that returning Kiesle to ministry would cause more of a scandal than stripping him of his priestly powers.

"It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry," Cummins wrote in 1982.

Continue reading "AP Exclusive: Future pope stalled pedophile case" »

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The Vatican changed its tone and sought to reach out to victims of the sex abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church, saying Friday that Pope Benedict XVI is willing to meet with them and take part in the church's healing process, the Associated Press reports.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, softened its recent attacks on the media, which the church has accused of mounting a hate campaign against the pope.

Lombardi defended Benedict as a pastor worthy of respect and support in the face of the "unfounded" allegations. But he also focused on the victim's needs.

In comments to Vatican Radio, Lombardi said many victims are looking not for financial compensation but for moral help, countering insinuations by some in the church that the accusations were part of attempts to win large settlements.

"For many people the road to profound healing is only just beginning, and for others it has yet to start," said Lombardi. "In the context of this concern for victims, the pope has written of his readiness to hold new meetings with them, thus sharing in the journey of the entire ecclesial community."

Benedict has already met with abuse victims during trips to the United States and Australia in 2008 and with Canadians at the Vatican the following year.

In a letter to the Irish in which he apologized for decades of unchecked child abuse by priests, nuns and other clerics, the pontiff said he was sorry for the suffering of the victims. He told the victims, "I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured."

But the pope himself has come under fire for the handling of cases that date to his tenure as archbishop of Munich and as a Vatican cardinal in charge of the office dealing with abuse cases. And the Vatican's offer of new meetings was dismissed by one group of abuse victims as a meaningless symbol.

Continue reading "Benedict willing to meet more abuse victims" »

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Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien has apologized for the comments of the Vatican priest who likened criticism of Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church in the sexual abuse scandal with anti-Semitism and "collective violence" against Jews.

O'Brien, spiritual leader of the area's half million Catholics, called the remarks of the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa during the Good Friday Mass at St. Peter's Basilica "reprehensible and unfortunate," and apologized to "our friends in the Jewish community, to victims of clergy sexual abuse, and to anyone offended by Father Cantalamessa's personal views."

O'Brien's statement, in full:

Father Cantalamessa’s words on Good Friday, somehow linking the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal with anti-Semitism, were unfortunate and reprehensible. They pose harm to Catholic-Jewish relations in Baltimore and around the world and I personally denounce them. Rightly upset and embarrassed as we are by the scandal we are enduring as Catholics, as frustrated as we are by the sometimes unfair coverage in certain elements of the press, nothing justifies this insensitive, harmful and regrettable comparison. On behalf of the Catholic Church in Baltimore, I offer apologies to our friends in the Jewish community, to victims of clergy sexual abuse, and to anyone offended by Father Cantalamessa’s personal views.

Cantalamessa, personal preacher to Benedict, said he was inspired by a letter from an unidentified Jewish friend who was upset by the "attacks" against Benedict.

Cantalamessa said Jews "know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms."

Quoting from the letter, Cantalamessa said his Jewish friend was following "with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful of the whole world."

"The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," he said, quoting from the letter.

Note: O'Brien issued the statement on Saturday; we were alerted to it by a story in The Baltimore Jewish Times.

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A Northern Virginia pharmacy that received the blessing of the Catholic Church because of its pledge not to sell contraceptives has closed, the Associated Press reports.

When it opened in October 2008, Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy was one of at least seven pharmacies nationwide refusing to sell contraceptives.

Robert Laird, executive director of DMC, says the store closed March 4 because it wasn't working financially. Laird says the pharmacy was losing tens of thousands of dollars a month.

The business was located next to a Catholic bookstore with two Catholic parishes nearby. But Laird says it had trouble attracting regular customers.

He says closing the pharmacy "was like a funeral."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (26)
        

The sex abuse crisis engulfing the Catholic Church will mean more vigorous background checks when it comes to appointing cardinals, and future popes, the Associated Press predicts in an analytical story by Vatican correspondent Victor L. Sampson.

Among the requirements, Sampson writes: no taint of scandal and the ability to speak comfortably to the world and the media.

While leading Catholic conservatives have vigorously defended Benedict XVI from accusations that he was complicit in covering up sex abusers, they have also pointed to management failures.

As a model for the future pope, the church will need to consider someone "able to talk to the world and the media, not be destroyed by it," said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

Even as the clerical sex abuse crisis has swept across Europe in recent months — touching even Benedict — the Vatican has responded with the disarray and media ineptitude that's been symptomatic of the German-born pope's five-year papacy.

The church was rocked by scandal again Wednesday, when Norwegian officials revealed that a 58-year-old Catholic bishop who resigned last year did so after admitting he molested a child two decades earlier.

As churchmen have closed ranks to defend Benedict, even some of his biggest supporters have pointed to the need for change.

Leading Catholic conservatives such as George Weigel in the United States and Vittorio Messori in Italy have vigorously defended Benedict from accusations he was involved in covering up sex abusers while serving as archbishop of Munich and later as a Vatican official. But they have both underlined management shortcomings in the papacy, with the Italian noting a "certain naivete."

Continue reading "AP: Future cardinals, popes to face more scrutiny" »

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Nearly 2,700 people have called the church's sexual abuse hot line in Germany in its first three days of operating, the Associated Press reports.

A team of psychologists and other experts had conversations with 394 people so far, ranging from several minutes up to an hour, Trier Diocese spokesman Stephan Kronenburg told the AP.

"Most callers report cases of sexual abuse," he said.

The hot line — which began operating March 30 — received around 13,300 calls total in its first three days. Kronenburg said this worked out to about 2,670 people, as many called several times.

In addition, around 100 people used an online form to contact the service.

Most of the callers are people who say they were victims of sexual abuse or their relatives, with some callers also reporting cases of physical abuse, he said.

"The boundaries between both are often loose," Kronenburg added.

Continue reading "Callers swamp church abuse hotline" »

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The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, claiming accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic "hate" campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, the Associated Press reports.

Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining "the motive for these attacks" on the pope and the Vatican newspaper chipped in with spirited comments from another top cardinal.

"The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different" agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, said on the radio.

Herranz didn't identify the lobbies but "defense of life" is Vatican shorthand for anti-abortion efforts.

Also arguing that Benedict's promotion of conservative family models had provoked the so-called attacks was the Vatican's dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano.

"By now, it's a cultural contrast," Sodano told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. "The pope embodies moral truths that aren't accepted, and so, the shortcomings and errors of priests are used as weapons against the church."

Also rallying to Benedict's side was Italian Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, who heads the Vatican City State's governing apparatus.

The pope "has done all that he could have" against sex abuse by clergy of minors, Lajolo said on Vatican radio, decrying what he described as a campaign of "hatred against the Catholic church."

Continue reading "Vatican: Church target of 'hate' campaign" »

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Pope Benedict XVI has named Mexican-born Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio to succeed Cardinal Roger Mahony as archbishop of Los Angeles in what the Associated Press calls "the Holy See's most significant acknowledgment to date of the growing importance of Latinos in the American church."

AP correspondent Nicole Winfield writes that the appointment is also evidence that Benedict wants a strong defender of orthodoxy leading the largest diocese in the United States: Gomez, 58, is an archbishop of Opus Dei, the conservative movement favored by the Vatican.

Gomez was named coadjutor for Los Angeles, which means he will take over the archdiocese when Mahony retires next Feb. 27, his 75th birthday. More from the AP:

The appointment of Gomez, who now leads the Archdiocese of San Antonio, puts him in line to become the highest-ranking Latino in the American Catholic hierarchy and the first Latino cardinal in the U.S.

Hispanics comprise 70 percent of the 5 million Catholics in the Los Angeles archdiocese, and more than one-third of the 65 million Catholics in the United States. In a separate nod to Latino Catholics, Benedict in 2007 named the first cardinal for heavily Latino Texas, Archbishop Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston.

"This just recognizes the reality on the ground that the center of gravity of U.S. Catholicism is moving to the South and West and is becoming increasingly Hispanic," said David Gibson, a Catholic author who writes about religion for PoliticsDaily.com.

Mahony, who was dogged by the clergy sex abuse scandal, developed a reputation during his quarter-century tenure in Los Angeles as a liberal-leaning leader and was often the target of Catholic conservatives. Under church rules, bishops submit their resignations at age 75, but the pope often asks prelates to stay in their posts for several years more.

Read the Associated Press story.

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The holiest day on the Christian calendar is not the appropriate time to discuss allegations that the Vatican covered up child sexual abuse by priests, Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien said Sunday.

O'Brien did not address the abuse scandal during Easter Mass at the Basilica of the Assumption, the oldest cathedral in the United States, and he touched on it only briefly during comments to reporters before the service, the Associated Press reports.

"Christ himself said, 'In the world, you'll have trials. But do not fear; I have overcome the world.' And that's where our focus is," O'Brien said. "Damage has been done. We're trying to repair that damage. We're trying to help those who've been hurt. But we go on; we're still a church. We still bring a positive message to our people and the world."

Pope Benedict XVI also did not acknowledge accusations that he perpetuated a climate of cover-up for pedophile priests, a scandal that threatens to overshadow his papacy and has led to calls for his resignation. At St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, a senior cardinal defended the pontiff from what he called "petty gossip" and hailed his leadership and courage.

In Baltimore, several congregants said their faith in the church's leadership had not been shaken by the allegations. But Rosemarie McManus said she was dismayed by what she called a worldwide crisis.

"It's disgusting. It's embarrassing. It makes me totally sad," said the 83-year-old music teacher, who said she had to hide her Catholic faith from the Nazis as a girl in her native Germany.

Continue reading "O'Brien: Damage is done; we're trying to repair it" »

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It was the Catholic calendar's holiest moment -- the Mass celebrating the resurrection of Christ. But with Pope Benedict XVI accused of failing to protect children from abusive priests, the Associated Press reports, Easter Sunday also was a high-profile opportunity to play defense.

"Holy Father, on your side are the people of God," Cardinal Angelo Sodano told the pontiff, whom victims of clergy sexual abuse accuse of helping to shape and perpetuate a climate of cover-up. Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, dismissed those claims as "petty gossip."

The ringing tribute at the start of a Mass attended by tens of thousands in St. Peter's Square marked an unusual departure from the Vatican's Easter rituals, infusing the tradition-steeped religious ceremony with an air of a papal pep rally.

Dressed in gold robes and shielded from a cool drizzle by a canopy, Benedict looked weary during much of the Mass, the highlight of a heavy Holy Week schedule. But as he listened intently to Sodano's paean, a smile broke across the pope's face, and when the cardinal finished speaking, Benedict rose from his chair in front of the altar to embrace him.

The pontiff hasn't responded to accusations that he did too little to protect children from pedophile priests, even as sex abuse scandals threaten to overshadow his papacy.

Sodano's praise for Benedict as well as the church's 400,000 priests worldwide cranked up a vigorous campaign by the Holy See to counter what it calls a "vile" smear operation orchestrated by anti-Vatican media aimed at weakening the papacy and its moral authority.

Sodano said the faithful came to "rally close around you, successor to (St.) Peter, bishop of Rome, the unfailing rock of the holy church" amid the joy of Easter.

"We are deeply grateful to you for the strength of spirit and apostolic courage with which you announce the Gospel," said Sodano, who sought to assure Benedict that the scandals were not costing him credibility among his flock.

"Holy Father, on your side are the people of God, who do not allow themselves to be influenced by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials which sometimes buffet the community of believers," Sodano said.

Continue reading "On Easter, a 'papal pep rally'" »

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The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has lost all credibility because of its mishandling of abuse by priests, the leader of the Anglican church said in remarks released Saturday, the Associated Press reports. A leading Catholic archbishop said he was "stunned" by the comments.

The remarks released Saturday marked the first time Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has spoken publicly on the crisis engulfing the Catholic Church. The comments come ahead of a planned visit to England and Scotland by Pope Benedict XVI later this year.

"I was speaking to an Irish friend recently who was saying that it's quite difficult in some parts of Ireland to go down the street wearing a clerical collar now," Williams told the BBC. "And an institution so deeply bound into the life of a society, suddenly becoming, suddenly losing all credibility — that's not just a problem for the church, it is a problem for everybody in Ireland, I think."

At the Vatican, the pope celebrated Easter Vigil on Saturday evening but didn't directly refer to the scandal in his homily.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano on Saturday denounced what it called the "vile defamation campaign" against the pope and cited messages of solidarity that had arrived from bishops from around the world.

Benedict, who on Sunday celebrates Easter and delivers his "Urbi et Orbi" speech, hasn't made any explicit reference to the scandal since he released a letter to the Irish faithful concerning the abuse crisis in that country on March 20.

The interview with Williams, recorded March 26, is to be aired Monday on the BBC's "Start the Week" program as part of a general discussion of religion to mark Easter. But its publication ahead of the interview caught Catholic leaders off guard.

Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said he had "rarely felt personally so discouraged" as when he heard Williams' opinions.

"I have been more than forthright in addressing the failures of the Catholic Church in Ireland. I still shudder when I think of the harm that was caused to abused children. I recognize that their church failed them," a statement, posted on the archdiocese's Web site, said. "Those working for renewal in the Catholic Church in Ireland did not need this comment on this Easter weekend and do not deserve it."

Continue reading "Anglican leader: Irish church has lost all credibility" »

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At a solemn Good Friday service, Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher likened the tide of allegations that the pontiff has covered up sex abuse cases to the "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," the Associated Press reports.

But within hours, facing a storm of criticism at the comparison, the Vatican felt it necessary to distance the pope from the preacher's remarks, the AP reports.

Both Jewish and victims' groups responded that it was inappropriate to compare the discomfort being experienced by the church leadership in the sex abuse scandal to the violence that culminated in the Holocaust. The Vatican has been on the defensive in recent days, saying the church has been singled out and collectively stereotyped for the problem of pedophilia, which it says is a society-wide issue.

Invoking any comparison with anti-Semitism was particularly sensitive on Good Friday, itself a delicate day in a decades-long effort by Jews and Catholics to overcome a legacy of mistrust. There was a long-held Catholic belief that Jews were collectively responsible for executing Christ, and a landmark achievement of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s was a declaration stating the Jews should not be blamed for the crucifixion.

As the pope listened in a hushed St. Peter's Basilica, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa likened accusations against the pontiff and the Catholic church in sex abuse scandals in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere to "collective violence" suffered by the Jews.

Benedict, 82, looked weary as he sat near the central altar at the early evening prayer service.

Continue reading "Pope's preacher likens accusations to anti-Semitism" »

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Cardinals across Europe used their Holy Thursday sermons to defend Pope Benedict XVI from accusations he played a role in covering up sex abuse scandals, and an increasingly angry Vatican sought to deflect any criticism in the Western media, the Associated Press reports.

The relationship between the church and the media has become increasingly bitter as the scandal buffeting the 1 billion-member church has touched the pontiff himself. On Wednesday, the church singled out The New York Times for criticism in an unusually harsh attack.

Western news organizations, including The Associated Press, have reported extensively on the burgeoning scandal, and new details have emerged on an almost daily basis.

On Holy Thursday, Benedict first celebrated a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica dedicated to the union between the pope and the world's priests. In the late afternoon, he washed the feet of 12 priests in a ceremony symbolizing humility and commemorating Christ's Last Supper with his 12 apostles on the evening before his Good Friday crucifixion.

Although there were expectations by some that the pope would address the crisis, Benedict made no reference to the scandal at either ceremony.

Venice's Cardinal Angelo Scola expressed solidarity with Benedict in his Holy Thursday homily in the lagoon city, describing him as a victim of "deceitful accusations." He praised the pope as seeking to remove all "dirt" from the priesthood.

Warsaw Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz said the church should take notice of individual tragedies and treat sex abuse cases very seriously, but at the same time, he criticized the media for "targeting the whole church, targeting the pope, and to that we must say `no' in the name of truth and in the name of justice."

And Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, speaking of Benedict's long years as head of a Vatican office that investigates abuse, said the future pope "had a very clear line of not covering up but clearing up."

Continue reading "Cardinals defend pope in abuse scandals" »

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Lawyers in a Florida clergy sex abuse case say the Vatican office then headed by Pope Benedict XVI failed to remove an alleged pedophile from the priesthood for years, even when the priest himself asked to be defrocked, the Associated Press reports.

Attorney Jessica Arbour, who represents an alleged victim of the Rev. Ernesto Garcia-Rubio in a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Miami, also said Wednesday that the Vatican instructed church officials in Florida to shelter the priest after he was forced to leave Cuba, the AP reports.

The lawsuit was filed last year, but the lawyers released more details of the Garcia-Rubio case amid questions about the Roman Catholic church's response to European sexual abuse allegations, and about the role of Benedict as an archbishop in his native Germany and then as head of a Vatican office

The Archdiocese of Miami criticized the lawyers for attacking the archdiocese and Vatican during Holy Week.

"As always, the Catholic Church's concerns are for the victims and a prevailing sense of justice," archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta said in a statement. "In addition, over these past eight years, it has been forthcoming and taken steps to keep our children safe through training and background screenings."

After arriving in Miami in 1968, Garcia-Rubio served as a church advocate for recent immigrants from Latin America, Arbour said, giving him access to child refugees from Cuba, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The priest would take the children in, and then require them to have sexual contact with him, she said. If the child refused, Arbour said, Garcia-Rubio would threaten to deport them. Arbour says her client was 15 when he came to the U.S. by himself from Nicaragua.

"He was given access to a very vulnerable population that had a constant stream of potential victims," she said.

Garcia-Rubio left Florida to work in Honduras in the 1980s. He first petitioned the Vatican in 1994 to remove him from the priesthood, or laicize him, Arbour said, after having gotten married the year before.

The request would have fallen under the jurisdiction of Benedict, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Arbour said.

"Six years later, he still hadn't been laicized," Arbour said. "It was because they had lost the paperwork in Rome."

Continue reading "Lawyer of alleged victim: Vatican protected abuser" »

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The head of a Roman Catholic order that specialized in the treatment of pedophile priests visited with then-Pope Paul VI nearly 50 years ago and followed up with a letter recommending the removal of pedophile priests from ministry, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

In the Aug. 27, 1963, letter, the head of the New Mexico-based Servants of the Holy Paraclete tells the pope he recommends removing pedophile priests from active ministry and strongly urges defrocking repeat offenders, the AP reports.

The letter shows that the Vatican knew, or should have known, about clergy abuse in the U.S. decades ago, said Anthony DeMarco, a plaintiff attorney in Los Angeles who provided the letter. The accusation comes as plaintiffs in Kentucky are attempting to sue the Vatican for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about priests who molested children.

Yet the problem was very well-known to Rome well before the 1960s. The 1917 code of canon law criminalized sexual abuse of minors. Five years later, the Vatican penned a document outlining detailed procedures for handling such cases. In 1962, that document was updated and has been used in many of the lawsuits by victims against U.S. diocese and the Vatican itself.

The letter, written by the Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald, appears to have been drafted at the request of the pope and summarizes Fitzgerald's thoughts on problem priests after his Vatican visit.

The letter echoes other Fitzgerald writings about wayward priests.

Several news organizations, including the AP, reported last year that Fitzgerald was intent on buying an island where priests attracted to men and boys could be segregated, and even made a $5,000 down payment on a Caribbean island for that purpose.

"It is for this class of rattlesnake I have always wished an island retreat, but even an island is too good for these vipers," he wrote an acquaintance in 1957.

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Archbishop William D. Borders, who led the Archdiocese of Baltimore from 1974 to 1989, has entered hospice care, a spokesman said Wednesday.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien has asked area Catholics to pray for Borders, 96, who moved recently from the Mercy Ridge retirement community to the Stella Maris hospice in Timonium. He has been suffering from colon cancer.

Borders came to Baltimore after six years as founding bishop of the Diocese of Orlando -- a move, the Catholic Review notes, from the nation's youngest diocese to its oldest.

Succeeding Cardinal Lawrence J. Sheehan, he oversaw the division of the archdiocese into vicariates, reorganized Archdiocesan Central Services, and clarified and strengthened the role of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council and the Priests’ Council.

Nationally, he chaired the education committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and served on the Committee on Human Values and the administrative committee. He also chaired the Ad Hoc Committee for the Bicentennial of the U.S. Hierarchy.

Borders, who remained in the area after his retirement, had stayed active in ministry until recently.

His official biography from the Archdiocese of Baltimore follows, after the jump.

Continue reading "O'Brien asks for prayers for Archbishop Borders" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Five years ago, Terri Schiavo was pronounced dead more than 15 years after a heart attack put her into a persistent vegetative state. The battles leading up to that conclusion originated in a struggle between her husband Michael Schiavo and her parents Robert and Mary Schindler over who would determine proper care for her; they eventually managed to involve all three branches of the federal government, and hastened the political demise of Sen. (and Dr.) Bill Frist's once-promising Presidential candidacy.

As I watched the story unfold like a slow-motion car wreck, I was struck by the difficulty of the ethical issues involved. Does a feeding tube constitute "extraordinary measures" used to sustain life? Some liken it to the technological intervention of a ventilator, while others consider it basic nutrition and hydration which no-one could humanely deny. Did the widely disseminated videos of Schiavo reflect genuine intelligent response to people known to her or simply an involuntary reaction to external stimuli? Was Schiavo a living human being, or simply a metabolizing organism? Did she begin to rest in peace five years ago, or twenty?

The profound ethical questions raised in this case will continue to be debated, as well they should. But as long as they are unresolved the more pressing question for most of us is how a situation like Schiavo's is to be handled. Schiavo's autopsy revealed that she had indeed suffered massive and irreversible brain damage, but decisions about her care had to be made without this evidence. Absent a clear advance medical directive, does her husband make decisions for her? Do her parents have the right to trump her husband? Do the courts have the right to trump both? Congress?

Every day difficult medical decisions are made without certain knowledge about what will happen, or what would happen if a different path were taken. And every day these decisions are made among differences of opinion as what the “right” — or at least best — choice is. At the end of the day someone must make the call, and we as a society must have ways of ensuring that the appropriate person is making these decisions when the patient is unable to and has not authorized someone else to.

Among the most important things we learn from Scripture about the nature of marriage is that every wedding involves two funerals. “A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Jesus commented on this verse, “So they are no longer two, but one” (Matthew 19:6). When I officiate at weddings I always point out that from that day forward the people being married are entering into a change in the very essence of their being: no longer will either be himself or herself apart from the other. (I then sign the marriage license, and hope to snag a few crab balls on the way out. They then spend the rest of their lives working that out.)

What surprised me the most about the controversy over the Schiavo case was that the same people who ordinarily defend traditional understandings of marriage — people who in the course of pastoral ministry and teaching emphasize to couples (and their parents) the importance of “leaving and cleaving,” who encourage couples to work out their problems rather than running to their parents, who really do believe that the two become one — were the ones who wanted Terri Schiavo’s parents, rather than her husband, to make decisions about her medical care. No doubt if the roles had been reversed, they’d have been taking loud and strong stands on the right of a husband to make decisions for his disabled spouse, and decrying efforts by the government and her parents to remove the feeding tube.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Terry Schiavo, five years on" »

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Categories: Catholicism, Church and State, Ethics, Guest Posts, Jason Poling, Law and Courts, People, Politics, Science
        

The Vatican is launching a legal defense that it hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him answer attorneys' questions under oath, the Associated Press reports.

Court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren't employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the "smoking gun" that provides proof of a cover-up.

The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.

The case was filed in 2004 in Kentucky by three men who claim they were abused by priests and claim negligence by the Vatican. Their attorney, William McMurry, is seeking class-action status for the case, saying there are thousands of victims across the country.

"This case is the only case that has been ever been filed against the Vatican which has as its sole objective to hold the Vatican accountable for all the priest sex abuse ever committed in this country," he said in a phone interview. "There is no other defendant. There's no bishop, no priest."

The Vatican is seeking to dismiss the suit before Benedict XVI can be questioned or documents subpoenaed.

Read the Associated Press story.

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An Austrian priest avoids mention of Pope Benedict XVI in his Masses. A Philadelphia woman stops going to confession, saying she now sees priests as more flawed than herself. British protesters call for the pontiff to resign.

As the faithful fill churches this Holy Week, the Associated Press reports, many Roman Catholics around the world are finding their relationship to the church painfully tested by new revelations of clerical abuse and suggestions Benedict himself may have helped cover up cases in Germany and the U.S.

There are fears that for those whose commitment is already wavering, the scandal could be the final blow, and a growing chorus is clamoring for the church to embrace full transparency, take a hard line against pedophiles, and reconsider the rule of priestly celibacy.

"There's too many victims, and too much lying from the church about what really happened," said Martin Sherlock, a Catholic newspaper vendor in Dublin, Ireland.

Experts say the church is facing a crisis of historic proportions.

"This is the type of problem that arises really once in a century, I think, and it might even be more significant," said Paul Collins, an Australian church historian and former priest.

Collins, 69, said the abuse controversy was not mentioned by the priest in his own church near Canberra on Palm Sunday, but that the congregation discussed it afterward outside.

"People are outraged really, they're furious with the complete failure of the church's leadership and their view would be that we are led by incompetent people," Collins said.

That view was echoed by many Catholics interviewed around the world by The Associated Press in recent days, although the pope also had defenders.

One of them was John Ryan, a retired glue factory worker, who said he was impressed by the letter Benedict wrote to the Irish faithful last week in which he chastised Irish bishops.

"I was talking to my parish priest last weekend, and we were reading the pope's letter, and he told me: This pope is the most intelligent pope we've had in the last thousand years," said Ryan, 66, after a Mass in Dublin. "I couldn't disagree with that. I don't really think we could do better than with Benedict. I know they're supposed to be infallible, but I'd say most Catholics today would accept that nobody's perfect — not even the pope."

In staunchly Catholic Poland, the homeland of the late Pope John Paul II and a place where churches are packed even on work days, the top church authority called the pope the target of an "unprecedented media attack."

Continue reading "Abuse scandal testing faithful anew" »

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In his first public comments since his release from prison, the man who shot Pope John Paul II says Pope Benedict XVI should resign over the Catholic Church's handling of clerical sex abuse cases, the Associated Press reports.

Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who was released in January nearly 29 years after wounding Pope John Paul II in Rome, has declared himself a messenger from God.

Agca told journalists in Istanbul on Monday that "I want the pope to resign not arrested," as he waved a Turkish newspaper reporting calls for the arrest of the pope. The press conference marked his first public comments since his release.

There are questions about Agca's mental health, the AP reports. Motives for the shooting of Pope John Paul remain a mystery.

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The Legionaries of Christ, a conservative religious order that enjoyed the favor of Pope John Paul II, has apologized to victims of sexual abuse by its founder, the Associated Press reports.

French bishops said in a letter to Pope Benedict XVI that they were ashamed of priests who committed "abominable acts" by sexually abusing children.

The Vatican has been on the defensive in recent days as criticism over the handling of some of the abuse probes in the United States and in Benedict's German homeland have threatened to engulf the papacy.

Benedict, in his previous role as a Vatican-based Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, directed the Holy See office that deals with sex allegations. Earlier, as Munich archbishop he was the top authority in the diocese in his German homeland.

The letter to Benedict from French bishops, and a Web site statement by the Legionaries of Christ, were the latest expressions of shame and regret from local churches or religious orders.

Both contained expressions of solidarity toward Benedict for his handling of abuse cases.

Abuse victims from the United States to Europe have been demanding that Benedict take responsibility for what he did or didn't do, both in his tenure in Germany and as the director of a Vatican policy that centralized the cases in Rome under a cloak of confidentiality.

French bishops said in their letter to Benedict that they are ashamed of priests who molested and raped children. The bishops said these "abominable acts" had "disfigured the church, wounded Christian communities and cast suspicion on all the members of the clergy."

But they also expressed solidarity with Benedict, saying the sexual abuse scandals were "being used in a campaign to attack you personally."

Continue reading "Legionaries apologize for abuse by Maciel" »

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In another sign of the rapidly changing relationship between the Catholic Church and the Irish, a judge in Limerick has ruled that the city’s pubs may open on Good Friday.

District Court Judge Tom O’Donnell ruled that the city’s 110 pubs may open next Friday, the day on which Christians remember the crucifixion of Jesus, because the city is set to host a major Irish rugby match expected to draw tens of thousands of visitors, the Associated Press reports.

The ruling comes amid a growing crisis over abuse in the Irish church. Earlier this week, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of a bishop accused of endangering children by failing to follow the church's own rules on reporting suspected pedophile priests to police.

AP correspondent Shawn Pogatchnik describes the import of the ruling:

Such a judgment would have been unthinkable in the Ireland of old, where the Catholic Church enjoyed unquestioned authority from the public and deference from the government. Commentators were quick to suggest that Thursday's judgment represented a watershed in the shifting relations between church and state in this rapidly secularizing land.

"This could be the beginning of the end of Good Friday, because now legislation will have to be changed," said a jubilant David Hickey, one of the Limerick pub owners who successfully sued the state for the right to do business like any other Friday. "The option should be given to let publicans open if they want to and close if they want to. Today was a huge decision in that direction."

Continue reading "In a first, Irish pubs may open on Good Friday" »

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The Vatican on Thursday strongly defended its decision not to defrock an American priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin and denounced what it called a campaign to smear Pope Benedict XVI and his aides, the Associated Press reports.

The Vatican spoke in reaction to a report that appeared Thursday on the front page of The New York Times.

Church and Vatican documents showed that in the mid-1990s, two Wisconsin bishops urged the Vatican office led by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now the pope — to let them hold a church trial against the Rev. Lawrence Murphy. The bishops admitted the trial was coming years after the alleged abuse, but argued that the deaf community in Milwaukee was demanding justice from the church.

Despite the extensive and grave allegations against Murphy, Ratzinger's deputy at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ruled that the alleged molestation had occurred too long ago and that Murphy — then ailing and elderly — should instead repent and be restricted from celebrating Mass outside of his diocese.

The official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone — now the Vatican's secretary of state — ordered the church trial halted after Murphy wrote Ratzinger a letter saying he was ill, infirm, and "simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood."

The New York Times story added fuel to a swirling scandal about the way the Vatican in general, and Benedict in particular, have handled reports of priests raping children over the years.

On Thursday, a group of clerical abuse victims staged a press conference outside St. Peter's Square in Rome to denounce Benedict's handling of the case and gave reporters church and Vatican documents on the case, the Associated Press reports.

Afterward, Italian police detained four American abuse victims for 2 1/2 hours because they didn't have a permit for the news conference and suggested they get a lawyer in case a judge decided to press charges, the victims said.

"We've spent more time in the police station than Father Murphy did in his life," Peter Isely, the Milwaukee-based director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said after his release.

Continue reading "Vatican halted trial of accused abuser of hundreds" »

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Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation Wednesday of Bishop John Magee, a former papal aide who stands accused of endangering children by failing to follow the Irish church's own rules on reporting suspected pedophile priests to police, the Associated Press reports.

AP correspondent Shawn Pogatchnik writes that Magee apologized to victims of any pedophile priests who were kept in parish posts since he took charge of the southwest Irish diocese of Cloyne in 1987.

"To those whom I have failed in any way, or through any omission of mine have made suffer, I beg forgiveness and pardon," the 73-year-old Magee said in a statement.

The Vatican is on the defensive over ever-unfolding accusations that its leaders protected child abusers for decades in many countries, nowhere more so than Ireland, a predominantly Catholic country that once exported priests worldwide.

In Germany, where more than 300 former students in Catholic schools and choirs have come forward since January with abuse claims, the government announced Wednesday it will form an expert 40-member committee to investigate the allegations. It will be tasked with recommending legal reforms that could allow victims to pursue lawsuits and criminal complaints against church officials beyond Germany's current statute of limitations.

Irish society is still debating the merits of Saturday's unprecedented letter from Benedict apologizing for decades of unchecked child abuse by priests, nuns and other clerics. The letter criticized Irish bishops, promised a Vatican inspection of unspecified dioceses and religious orders in Ireland — but accepted no Vatican responsibility for promoting a culture of cover-up.

Benedict also has yet to accept resignation offers from three other Irish bishops who were linked to cover-ups of child-abuse cases in the Dublin Archdiocese, the subject of a government-ordered investigation that published its findings four months ago.

Magee, however, had been expected to resign ever since an Irish church-commissioned investigation into the mishandling of child-abuse reports in Cloyne ruled two years ago that Magee and his senior diocesan aides failed to tell police quickly about two 1990s cases.

Continue reading "Pope accepts bishop's resignation over coverup" »

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While the Roman Catholic church in Europe reels from a widening sex abuse crisis, the scandal that has plagued the U.S. church for nearly a decade is tapering off, the Associated Press reports.

The number of abuse victims, allegations and offending clergy in the U.S. dropped in 2009 to their lowest numbers since data started being collected in 2004, according to the latest annual report by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The price paid by the church has fallen, too, AP writer Eric Gorski reports. Dioceses and their insurers paid $104 million in settlements, attorneys' fees and other abuse-related costs in 2009, down from $376 million in 2008.

All told, the scandal's price tag for settlements and other costs has risen to more than $2.7 billion, according to estimates.

The numbers of cases were expected to decline, but the financial impact remains severe, Villanova University economics professor Charles Zech tells the AP.

"The U.S. Catholic Church cannot afford that right now, not the way the economy has been going, the hit taken on diocesan investments, and to some extent parishioner contributions," Zech said. "The church ... can't afford to be going on like this very much longer."

Continue reading "Report: U.S. Catholic clergy abuse claims drop" »

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The Archdiocese of Baltimore will open an English-Spanish immersion program next fall at the Archbishop Borders School in Highlandtown, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien announced Monday.

“Beginning this program in kindergarten and first grade will allow our students a longer sequence of instruction and gives them the best path for emerging from 8th grade fluent in both languages,” Cathy Marshall, Principal of Archbishop Borders School, said in a statement. “Younger children have the ability to develop language skills because they have better mental flexibly and improved listening and memory and listening skills.”

The announcement follows news this month that the archdiocese will close 13 of its 64 schools at the end of the academic year, part of a school consolidation that officials say is necessary to keep the system viable in the face of falling enrollments and rising costs.

At Archbishop Borders, English and Spanish are to be taught in kindergarten and first grade before expanding in future years to the entire school. The goal of the program is to produce graduates who are fluent in both languages.

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Pope Benedict XVI rebuked Irish bishops Saturday for "grave errors of judgment" in handling clerical sex abuse cases and ordered an investigation into the Irish church. But he laid no blame for the problem on the Vatican's policies of keeping such cases secret, the Associated Press reports.

In a letter to the Irish faithful read across Europe amid a growing, multination abuse scandal, the pope apologized to victims but doled out no specific punishments to bishops blamed by Irish government-ordered investigations for having covered up abuse of thousands of Irish children from the 1930s to the 1990s, AP correspondents Nicole Winfield and Victor L. Simpson write from Vatican City.

Ireland's main group of clerical-abuse victims, One in Four, said it was deeply disappointed by the letter because it failed to place responsibility with the Vatican for what it called a "deliberate policy of the Catholic Church at the highest levels to protect sex offenders, thereby endangering children."

"If the church cannot acknowledge this fundamental truth, it is still in denial," the group said.

The letter directly addressed only Ireland, but the Vatican said it could be read as applying to other countries. Hundreds of new allegations of abuse have recently come to light across Europe, including in the pope's native Germany, where he served as archbishop in a diocese where several victims have recently come forward. One priest suspected of molesting boys while the future pope was in charge was transferred to a job where he abused more children.

Continue reading "Pope slams Irish church, no blame for Vatican" »

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Pope Benedict XVI addresses Ireland on Saturday in a letter apologizing for the sex abuse scandal here — a message being watched closely by Catholics from Boston to Berlin to see if it also acknowledges decades of Vatican-approved cover-ups, the Associated Press reports.

AP correspondent Shawn Pogatchnik writes that the church is only beginning to come to terms with decades of child abuse in its parishes and schools. The scandals first emerged in Canada and Australia in the 1980s, followed by Ireland in the 1990s, the United States this decade and, in recent months, Benedict's German homeland.

Victims' rights activists say that to begin mending the church's battered image, Benedict's message — his first pastoral letter on child abuse in the church — must break his silence on the role of the Catholic hierarchy in shielding pedophile clergy from prosecution.

That includes abuses committed decades ago under the pope's watch, when he was Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of Munich, as well as the pontiff's role in hushing up the scandals.

As leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger was responsible for a 2001 Vatican edict that instructed bishops to report all cases of child abuse to Vatican authorities under strict secrecy; it made no mention of reporting crimes to police.

"Is it not time for Pope Benedict XVI himself to acknowledge his share of responsibility?" said the Rev. Hans Kung, a Swiss priest and dissident Catholic theologian.

"Honesty demands that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own mea culpa," Kung said.

Benedict, who served as archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, has yet to speak about the hundreds of abuse cases emerging since January in Germany.

Continue reading "Benedict to address Irish abuse scandal" »

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The German archdiocese led by the future Pope Benedict XVI ignored repeated warnings in the early 1980s by a psychiatrist treating a priest accused of sexually abusing boys that he should not be allowed to work with children, The New York Times reports.

“I said, ‘For God’s sake, he desperately has to be kept away from working with children,’ ” the psychiatrist, Dr. Werner Huth, told The Times on Thursday. “I was very unhappy about the entire story.”

From the front page story by Nicholas Kulish and Katrin Bennhold:

Dr. Huth said he was concerned enough that he set three conditions for treating the priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann: that he stay away from young people and alcohol and be supervised by another priest at all times.

Dr. Huth said he issued the explicit warnings — both written and oral — before the future pope, then Joseph Ratzinger, archbishop of Munich and Freising, left Germany for a position in the Vatican in 1982.

In 1980, after abuse complaints from parents in Essen that the priest did not deny, Archbishop Ratzinger approved a decision to move the priest to Munich for therapy.

Despite the psychiatrist’s warnings, Father Hullermann was allowed to return to parish work almost immediately after his therapy began, interacting with children as well as adults. Less than five years later, he was accused of molesting other boys, and in 1986 he was convicted of sexual abuse in Bavaria.

Huth tells The Times that he did not communicate directly with Ratzinger, and does not know whether the future pope knew of his warnings. Benedict’s deputy at the time has taken the blame for allowing Hullermann to return to work.

Read the story at nytimes.com.

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The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has announced its opposition to the healthcare legislation to be considered by the House – a move that puts it odds not only with the Democratic majority, but with a group representing the nation’s Catholic hospitals.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the president of the conference, said Monday that bishops could not support the bill approved by the Senate in December because it omits the long-accepted ban on using federal dollars for abortion known as the Hyde Amendment.

“The American people and the Catholic bishops have been promised that, in any final bill, no federal funds would be used for abortion and that the legal status quo would be respected,” George said in a statement.

“However, the bishops were left disappointed and puzzled to learn that the basis for any vote on health care will be the Senate bill passed on Christmas Eve. Notwithstanding the denials and explanations of its supporters, and unlike the bill approved by the House of Representatives in November, the Senate bill deliberately excludes the language of the Hyde amendment. It expands federal funding and the role of the federal government in the provision of abortion procedures. In so doing, it forces all of us to become involved in an act that profoundly violates the conscience of many, the deliberate destruction of unwanted members of the human family still waiting to be born.

“What do the bishops find so deeply disturbing about the Senate bill? The points at issue can be summarized briefly. The status quo in federal abortion policy, as reflected in the Hyde Amendment, excludes abortion from all health insurance plans receiving federal subsidies. In the Senate bill, there is the provision that only one of the proposed multi-state plans will not cover elective abortions – all other plans (including other multi-state plans) can do so, and receive federal tax credits. This means that individuals or families in complex medical circumstances will likely be forced to choose and contribute to an insurance plan that funds abortions in order to meet their particular health needs.”

George’s statement comes days after the Catholic Health Association announced its support for the bill.

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Baltimore Sun staff writer Arthur Hirsch contributes a report:

With the meter running on decisions about choosing another Catholic school, more than 100 Cardinals Gibbons School parents and students streamed through a suite of rooms upstairs in the Fine Arts Building Monday evening to check out their options.

Representatives of 10 high schools from as far away as Annapolis and as close as a couple miles away had set up tables at the southwest Baltimore campus to dispense information and answer questions. With Gibbons scheduled to close in June as part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore's plan to reshape its school system, there were lots of questions, many concerning money in one way or another. Would their child's Gibbons scholarship continue? Would the archdiocese cover the difference between the Gibbons tuition and the new school?

"You'd think they have funds to offset this difference in the tuition," said Shawn Blum, of Halethorpe. His son, Riley, was on a full scholarship in his junior year at Gibbons and is now thinking about transferring to Mt. St. Joseph, the next nearest Catholic school, but at more than $11,000 in tuition, $1,000 more that at Gibbons. That could work, Blum said, but it might depend on the scholarship. In in the end it could mean Riley completes a senior year at Landsdowne High School, a nearby public school.

"A lot of students are really upset," Blum said. "Their parents had paid to go to Catholic school, then they have to finish it up at a public school."

More than 2,100 students in 13 schools are being displaced, and the archdiocese has promised each one a seat in a Catholic school, either among the 52 remaining archdiocesan schools or independent institutions. Applications are due on March 29, with admissions offices scheduled to mail out their decision letters on April 13.

"The Catholic schools stood up tonight and said 'We're here for you,' " said Mark D. Pacione, the archdiocesan associate director for Catholic schools planning.

Parents had come to gather information this time, not vent their anger as they had a week before as a standing-room crowd of some 1,000 packed the school auditorium to face archdiocesan officials. But it was clear that the wounds were still fresh, and there was still talk of ulterior motives in closing the boys' school, and of giving Gibbons another chance independent of the archdiocese.

Continue reading "After school closings, shopping for new options" »

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The Vatican on Sunday denied that its celibacy requirement for priests was the root cause of the clerical sex abuse scandal convulsing the church in Europe and again defended the pope's handling of the crisis, the Associated Press reports.

Suggestions that the celibacy rule was in part responsible for the "deviant behavior" of sexually abusive priests have swirled in Europe, with opinion pieces in German newspapers blaming it for fueling abuse and even Italian commentators questioning the rule.

Much of the furor was spurred by comments from one of the pope's closest advisers, AP correspondent Nicole Winfield writes. Vienna archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn called this week for an honest examination of issues like celibacy and priestly education to root out the origins of sex abuse.

"Part of it is the question of celibacy, as well as the subject of character development. And part of it is a large portion of honesty, in the church but also in society," he wrote in the online edition of his diocesan newsletter.

His office quickly stressed that Schoenborn wasn't calling into question priestly celibacy, which Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed as recently as Friday as an "expression of the gift of oneself to God and others."

But Schoenborn has in the past shown himself receptive to arguments that a celibate priesthood is increasingly problematic for the church, primarily because it limits the number of men who seek ordination.

Last June, Schoenborn personally presented the Vatican with a lay initiative signed by prominent Austrian Catholics calling for the celibacy rule to be abolished and for married men to be allowed to become priests.

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A group representing Catholic hospitals Saturday rallied behind President Barack Obama's health care bill ahead of a House vote in which anti-abortion lawmakers could play a decisive role, the Associated Press reports.

The chief executive of the Catholic Health Association, Carol Keehan, wrote on the group's Web site that although the legislation isn't perfect, it represents a "major first step" toward covering all Americans and would make "great improvements" for millions of people, the AP reports. The more than 600 Catholic hospitals across the country do not provide abortions as a matter of conscience.

The association's support widens a split among abortion foes on whether the bill goes far enough to prevent taxpayer funding for the procedure. House Democratic leaders are trying to turn that debate to their advantage as they press for a vote on Obama's bill as early as this coming week. Winning over even a handful of anti-abortion Democrats could help Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., find a clear path to the 216 votes she needs for passage.

Major anti-abortion groups, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Right to Life Committee, are adamantly opposed to the legislation, preferring stricter restrictions passed last November by the House.

Keehan said in an interview that she believes the approach now in the bill would work just as well to keep federal dollars from being used to pay for abortion.

"On the moral issue of abortion, there is no disagreement," Keehan said. "On the technical issue of whether this bill prevents federal funding of abortions, we differ with Right to Life."

Continue reading "Catholic hospitals back Obama's health overhaul" »

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Germany's sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese disclosed that while he was archbishop a suspected pedophile priest was transferred to a job where he later abused children, the Associated Press reports.

The pontiff is also under increasing fire for a 2001 Vatican document he later penned instructing bishops to keep such cases secret, AP correspondent Nicole Winfield writes.

The revelations have put the spotlight on Benedict's handling of abuse claims both when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977-1982 and then the prefect of the Vatican office that deals with such crimes — a position he held until his 2005 election as pope.

And they may lead to further questions about what the pontiff knew about the scope of abuse in his native Germany, when he knew it and what he did about it during his tenure in Munich and quarter-century term at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Benedict got a firsthand readout of the scandal Friday from the head of the German Bishop's Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, who reported that the pontiff had expressed "great dismay and deep shock" over the scandal, but encouraged bishops to continue searching for the truth.

Hours later, the Munich archdiocese admitted that it had allowed a priest suspected of having abused a child to return to pastoral work in the 1980s, while Benedict was archbishop. It stressed that the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger didn't know about the transfer and that it had been decided by a lower-ranking official.

Continue reading "Pope under fire for priest transfer, 2001 letter" »

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Pope Benedict XVI met Friday with Germany's top bishop amid the spiraling abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church in his homeland, the Associated Press reports.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch has apologized to German victims and promised to cooperate with prosecutors, the AP reports. But he and the Vatican have also insisted that sexual abuse of children isn't a problem specific to the Catholic Church.

Zollitsch met with the pope Friday morning in a previously scheduled audience at the Vatican. He planned a press conference later in the day.

At least 170 former students from Catholic schools in Germany have come forward recently with claims of physical and sexual abuse, including at an all-boys choir once led by the pope's brother.

Benedict hasn't commented on the German scandal himself. But he decried the sexual abuse of children as a "heinous crime" after he summoned Irish bishops to Rome last month to discuss the even more widespread scandal in the Irish church.

In addition to the cases in Germany and Ireland, three retired priests at a Catholic school in Austria were relieved of their clerical duties this week after allegations of physical and sexual abuse emerged. Two other priests in Austria have resigned amid similar allegations. And in the Netherlands, Catholic bishops announced an independent inquiry into more than 200 allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests at church schools and apologized to victims.

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The Vatican’s chief exorcist says the Devil is lurking in the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church, the Telegraph of London reports.

The Rev. Gabriele Amorth told La Repubblica newspaper in Rome that church sex abuse scandals in the United States, Ireland, Germany and other countries and the Christmas Eve assault on Pope Benedict XVI by a mentally unstable woman were proof that the Anti-Christ was waging a war against the Holy See, Telegraph correspondent Nick Squires writes:

"The Devil resides in the Vatican and you can see the consequences," said Father Amorth, 85, who has been the Holy See's chief exorcist for 25 years.

"He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, or even appear to be sympathetic. At times he makes fun of me. But I'm a man who is happy in his work."

While there was "resistance and mistrust" towards the concept of exorcism among some Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI has no such doubts, Father Amorth said. "His Holiness believes wholeheartedly in the practice of exorcism. He has encouraged and praised our work," he added.

The evil influence of Satan was evident in the highest ranks of the Catholic hierarchy, with "cardinals who do not believe in Jesus and bishops who are linked to the demon," Father Amorth said.

Amorth also says that the 1973 horror classic The Exorcist gave a "substantially exact" impression of what it was like to be possessed by the Devil, Squires writes:

People possessed by evil sometimes had to be physically restrained by half a dozen people while they were exorcised. They would scream, utter blasphemies and spit out sharp objects, he said.

"From their mouths, anything can come out – pieces of iron as long as a finger, but also rose petals," said Father Amorth, who claims to have performed 70,000 exorcisms. "When the possessed dribble and slobber, and need cleaning up, I do that too. Seeing people vomit doesn't bother me. The exorcist has one principal duty – to free human beings from the fear of the Devil."

Read the story at telegraph.co.uk.

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The decision by a Rome high school to install condom vending m