“But the interesting phenomenon is that in a number of places, the overall collection is not down because the bigger donors are giving more.”
—Matt Manion
Vatican City, Mar 11, 2022 / 10:35 am (CNA).
The Vatican made no public comment when Bishop Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta, an Argentine prelate closely associated with Pope Francis, was sentenced to four and a half years in jail for sexually abusing seminarians on March 4. A week later, it still hasn’t.
There are two possible reasons for the Vatican’s silence. First, because a canonical trial of Zanchetta is still open and the Vatican plans to comment only once it is concluded. Second, because the bishop intends to appeal against the court judgment. The Holy See has previously waited for the results of an appeal before issuing a public response.
Zanchetta was one of the first bishops appointed by Pope Francis after his election on March 13, 2013. Zanchetta was named bishop of Orán, in northwestern Argentina, on July 23 of that year, at the age of 49.
In the summer of 2017, he stepped aside as bishop, officially because of “a health problem” — or so he wrote in a letter to his flock, in which he said that he would soon undergo treatment.
The resignation was made official on Aug. 1, 2017, after Zanchetta had already left Argentina for Rome, where he lived in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican hotel where Pope Francis resides.
On Dec. 19, 2017, the bishop was appointed assessor of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), the Vatican’s “central bank.” The post was created especially for him, although there were rumors of financial mismanagement during his tenure in Orán.
Zanchetta was suspended from his Vatican post on Jan. 4, 2019, following the announcement of a preliminary investigation into accusations that he committed sexual abuse. Alessandro Gisotti, the then interim director of the Holy See press office, stressed that Zanchetta had stepped down as bishop because of “his difficulties in directing the diocesan clergy and strained relations with the priests.”
When Pope Francis granted an interview to the Mexican television station Televisa on May 28, 2019, the Zanchetta case had already received wide coverage in Argentina, with a series of investigative articles published in El Tribuno, a newspaper based in Salta, detailing abuse allegations. Pope Francis, therefore, decided to explain his decision-making publicly during the interview.
He said: “There had been an accusation and, before asking him to resign, I had him come here immediately with the person who accused him. In the end, he defended himself by saying that his cell phone had been hacked. So in the face of evidence and a good defense, the doubt remains, but in dubio pro reo [in doubt, for the accused]. And the cardinal of Buenos Aires came to be a witness to everything. And I continued to follow him in a particular way.”
“Of course,” the pope continued, “[Zanchetta] had a way of dealing, according to some, despotic, authoritarian, economic management of things that is not entirely clear, it seems, but this has not been proven.”
“There is no doubt that the clergy did not feel well treated by him. They complained until they made a complaint to the nunciature as clergy. I called the nunciature, and the nuncio said to me: ‘Look, the issue of reporting abuse is serious,’ abuse of power, we could say. They didn’t call it that, but this was it.”
“I made him come here and asked him to renounce. Nice and clear. I sent him to Spain for a psychiatric test. Some media have said: ‘The pope gave him a holiday in Spain.’ But he was there to do a psychiatric test, and the test result was OK; they recommended therapy once a month.”
“He had to go to Madrid and have a two-day therapy every month, so it was not convenient to have him return to Argentina. I kept him here because the test showed that he had diagnostic, management, and consulting skills. Some have interpreted it here in Italy as a ‘parking lot.’”
Pope Francis went on to explain that Zanchetta “was economically disordered, but he did not manage the works he did badly economically.”
“He was messy, but the vision was good,” he said. “So I started looking for a successor. Once the new bishop was installed, I decided to start the preliminary investigation of the accusations leveled against him. I have appointed the archbishop of Tucumán. The Congregation for Bishops has proposed various names to me. So I called the president of the Argentine bishops’ conference, I had him choose, and he said that the best choice for that position was the archbishop of Tucumán.”
The pope continued: “The preliminary investigation has officially arrived. I read it and saw that it was necessary to go through a trial. So I passed it to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They are in the process.”
“Why did I tell all this? To tell impatient people, who say ‘he did nothing,’ that the pope must not publish what he is doing every day, but from the very first moment of this case, I have not stood by.”
“There are very long cases, which need more time, like this one, and now I explain why. Because, for one reason or another, I did not have the necessary elements, but today a process is underway in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In other words, I didn’t stop.”
As the case proceeded toward trial, Zanchetta traveled back and forth between Rome and Argentina. In June 2020, he resumed work at APSA. But his assignment ended in June 2021, after which he returned home.
While the criminal trial in Argentina has concluded, there is no news of the canonical trial launched by the Vatican as early as 2019. Ahead of Zanchetta’s trial, Argentine prosecutors had asked for the files of the Vatican investigation. Having not received them, they decided to proceed regardless.
So will we have to wait for the end of the canonical process against Zanchetta to receive an official word from the Holy See? Maybe. But it’s also possible that the pope will decide to say a few words informally, perhaps during the in-flight press conference on his return from Malta on April 3.
The Holy See has not often commented on criminal sentences. It did not even do so in the case of Cardinal George Pell, who was unjustly condemned to prison in 2018, before Australia’s High Court unanimously overturned his conviction for five counts of alleged sexual abuse in 2020.
In such cases, the Vatican is seeking to avoid disputing judicial proceedings, while expressing its closeness to people who are presumed to be innocent.
Pell remained a member of the pope’s Council of Cardinals until his mandate expired. It was not renewed because he was over 75, the age at which a bishop customarily retires.
In one declaration, the Holy See press office stressed that it held the Australian judicial system in the highest esteem, but at the same time, it was necessary to consider that Pell maintained his innocence and the appeal trial was pending.
The Holy See also confirmed the activated measures: that the cardinal could not publicly exercise his priestly ministry and had to avoid contact with minors.
In that same declaration, it was not mentioned that Pell was no longer the prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy. Only later did the Holy See press office confirm that Pell no longer held his position in the Roman Curia.
This had the effect of underlining that Pell’s post in the Curia had reached its natural expiration date and was not taken away in response to the Australian court’s decision. This turned out to be a winning position after Pell’s exoneration.
The Vatican took a different approach with another Australian prelate: Archbishop Philip Wilson. This case is the one most similar to Zanchetta’s.
In 2018, the archbishop was convicted of concealing abuse committed by a priest named James Fletcher who had served in the same diocese as Wilson in the 1970s. Wilson was sentenced to 12 months of house arrest and presented his resignation as archbishop of Adelaide to Pope Francis, who accepted it.
A judge then overturned the sentence because there was reasonable doubt that the crime had been committed.
The judge stressed that “the Catholic Church has a lot to answer for in terms of its historical self-protective approach,” but “it is not for me to punish the Catholic Church for its institutional moral deficits, or to punish Philip Wilson for the sins of the now deceased James Fletcher by finding Philip Wilson guilty, simply on the basis that he is a Catholic priest.”
The outcome of Zanchetta’s appeal remains to be seen. But Pope Francis’ pattern of behavior related to such cases is now well established.
On the one hand, he has shown determination in addressing the scourge of abuse in the Church. On the other, he has emphasized repeatedly that the issue of abuse is also a weapon used against the Church.
Concluding a summit on abuse in Rome in 2019, he said that “the Church’s aim will thus be to hear, watch over, protect and care for abused, exploited and forgotten children, wherever they are.”
To achieve that goal, he added, “the Church must rise above the ideological disputes and journalistic practices that often exploit, for various interests, the very tragedy experienced by the little ones.”
The pope also stressed that “the time has come to find a correct equilibrium of all values in play and to provide uniform directives for the Church,” avoiding the two extremes of a justicialism, “provoked by guilt for past errors and media pressure, and a defensiveness that fails to compare the causes and effects of these grave crimes.”
Therefore, the pope recognized that there is also external pressure on cases of abuse and a need for a balance in handling accusations.
But how is this balance exercised? Zanchetta was a friend of the pope, who placed extraordinary trust in him. Nevertheless, when the trial in Argentina was about to start, the pope did not hesitate to let the bishop go. Until the last, however, Zanchetta was able to work at the Vatican, according to the principle of in dubio pro reo.
Yet the same treatment was not extended to the French Archbishop Michel Aupetit, who was not accused of abuse but rather of engaging in an improper relationship, as well as being divisive and authoritarian (accusations he denied).
Returning from his trip to Greece, Pope Francis said that he had accepted the Paris archbishop’s resignation “not on the altar of truth, but the altar of hypocrisy,” suggesting that public attacks on Aupetit’s reputation had made it difficult for him to govern the archdiocese.
For a similar reason, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki has asked to resign as archbishop of Cologne after taking a six-month sabbatical after the Vatican found that he had made the error of “miscommunication” regarding a report on abuse in the archdiocese.
These cases are thought-provoking because they suggest that two different weights and measures are being used.
Pope Francis has sought to strengthen anti-pedophilia measures further, even going so far as to abolish the pontifical secret. The new rules on the most severe crimes, published in December 2021, tried to harmonize the various actions taken by Pope Francis to counter abuse.
But the Zanchetta case is an example of how the pope can make mistakes when he trusts people. If there is no consistency in approaching these cases, then it isn’t easy to find justice.
It is also striking that ordinary justice was much faster than the canonical judgment, pointing to understaffing at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles abuse cases.
One might think that the recent reform of the Congregation’s structure, creating an autonomous disciplinary section, would serve precisely to overcome this impasse. But will the result be greater collaboration with the civil authorities, or will this total division remain?
These are not marginal issues because they touch on the essence of canon law and the sovereignty of the Holy See.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Rome Newsroom, Mar 11, 2022 / 10:10 am (CNA).
Cardinal Konrad Krajewski said on Thursday that he would leave Lviv, western Ukraine, and go east as far as possible.
The cardinal, who is in charge of the pope’s charitable efforts as papal almoner, is in Ukraine this week as an envoy of Pope Francis.
After a stop in his native Poland, Krajewski journeyed on to Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, where he paid for fuel and helped humanitarian aid be loaded onto trucks to be transported throughout the country.
The 58-year-old Krajewski told journalists on March 10 that he would leave Lviv and go “as far as possible” east, Vatican News reported, toward Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city.
On Thursday morning, the cardinal took part in an ecumenical prayer service for peace at a Lviv cathedral.
“Spiritually united with us is Pope Francis, who conveys to us the expression of his solidarity and assures us of his unceasing prayer for peace in Ukraine,” he said.
“Faith can move mountains, let alone a stupid war,” he told Zhyve.tv, a project of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
In response to a request for comment on Thursday’s talks between Ukraine and Russia in Turkey, Krajewski said: “I am not a diplomat. I came here with the logic of the Gospel, as Jesus did. He was always on the side of people who suffered.”
“That is why we are here. That’s why we pray. Because our weapon is faith. Our weapon is hope too,” he added. “The Gospel teaches us the three most sophisticated weapons in the world: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.”
The U.N. refugee agency estimates that more than 2.5 million Ukrainians have fled the country since Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24.
Pope Francis announced in his Angelus address on March 6 that he was sending Krajewski and Cardinal Michael Czerny, the interim prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, to Ukraine.
Czerny spent three days at the Ukraine-Hungary border, where he met and spoke with Ukrainian refugees. On March 11, he returned to Rome.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
LVIVI, UKRAINE — “I’ve come with the three most sophisticated Gospel weapons: prayer, fasting and alms,” Cardinal Konrad Krajewski told reporters in Western Ukraine March 10 as he prepared to head toward Kyiv and other cities under Russian bombardment.
At the behest of Pope Francis, Cardinal Krajewski, the papal almoner, arrived in Poland March 7 to offer encouragement and material help to Ukrainian refugees and the volunteers assisting them. Two days later, he crossed the border into Ukraine.
“The Holy Father wanted to bring his blessings to all people: Ukrainians, fighters, those who were forced to abandon their homeland. He wants people to feel his closeness, his blessings and receive his material support as well,” the cardinal told Catholic News Service.
After an interreligious prayer service in the morning March 10 and an evening Mass at Lviv’s Church of St. John Paul II, the cardinal prepared to travel on.
“I will go wherever the war situation allows,” he told CNS.
Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych, head of the Eastern-rite Ukrainian Catholic Church, traveled from Kyiv to meet with Cardinal Krajewski and with Archbishop Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki, head of the Latin-rite Archdiocese of Lviv.
The three joined representatives of other Christian churches and other religions at the Latin-rite cathedral to pray for peace.
Archbishop Shevchuk turned to God, praying: “Before your eyes today we present the sorrow and pain of Ukraine. Mountains of corpses, rivers of blood and seas of tears. We pray for all those who gave up their lives for the homeland, for our army, for the sons and daughters of Ukraine, who shield lives with their own bodies in the face of the enemy.
“We pray for all those innocently killed, peaceful people of Ukraine: women, children, the elderly. We pray for the victims of Mariupol who are being buried in massive common graves without Christian burial and honor,” he continued. “Receive our prayers for their eternal repose.”
Andriy Sadovy, Lviv’s mayor, said 200,000 people displaced from parts of Ukraine under bombardment have sought refuge in Lviv.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Archbishop Mokrzyki told CNS that the church helps to provide all of them with food, a place to stay, “but, above all, the warmth of our hearts, because they are very tired, bombarded internally.”
“We are doing our best so that people gain peace here, calm down, acquire strength” for what, “unfortunately,” is likely to be a further journey out of Ukraine, the archbishop said.
With the two archbishops, Cardinal Krajewski toured facilities that have been turned into shelters and visited a warehouse where food, clothing and medicine donated from abroad is sorted and dispatched to other parts of Ukraine, especially cities under heavy shelling.
Pope Francis had sent money to help pay for fuel for the trucks, he said.
The cardinal also said he had been in touch with bishops in Kyiv, Odessa and Kharkiv, who have reported that the deliveries are getting through. “I want to assure all donors that their gifts of the heart go to the people who need it most — most to eastern Ukraine,” he said.
“Ukraine is in dire need of help, especially material help, solidarity and prayer, because our faith can move mountains and therefore stop the war,” he told CNS.
The cardinal also spoke about his earlier visit to Poland where a massive, mostly volunteer-staff effort is ongoing to help the women, children and elderly fleeing the fighting.
The U.N. Refugee Agency said March 11 that more than 2.5 million people had left the country seeking safety abroad; more than 1.5 million of them went to Poland.
Cardinal Krajewski said he had met members of the Knights of Columbus, “who are donating all their time, their hands and their material goods to help Ukraine, which is in dire need.”
Thousands of refugees are being hosted by private families, he noted. “There is a Polish proverb: ‘A guest in the house is God in the house,’ and it is implemented.”
By Benedict Mayaki, SJ
A Theological Colloquium on Synodality held on 9 – 11 March in Nairobi, Kenya, sought to reflect and propose a vision of synodality based on characteristics and dimensions of the synodal process from an African perspective.
Organized by the African Synodality Initiative (ASI) in collaboration with the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA), the three-day event gathered Catholics of different backgrounds – theologians, professionals, academics from several Church and academic institutions at the headquarters of the Jesuit Conference of African and Madagascar (JCAM) – to share experiences, challenges and particularities of the Church on the continent, in tandem with other synodal activities of local Churches.
The initiative falls into the two-year process on the Synod on Synodality was launched last October by Pope Francis with the theme “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission.” With the diocesan listening stage of the process underway, the Synod on synodality encourages everyone to have their voice heard on crucial Church issues.
The sessions at the Colloquium featured presentations (in English and French) from theologians, group discussions, personal statements on the synodal process from participants, open conversations which culminated in the drafting of a statement illustrating a vision of synodality for the Church in Africa.
Among the speakers at the sessions on the first day of the Colloquium was Sr. Natalie Becquart, Under-Secretary of the Synod of Bishops, who highlighted that we are living the most ecclesial moments and events in the life of the Church since Vatican II with the universal Church carrying everyone along in this synod.
She highlighted that a key element of the Second Vatican Council is a working collaboration and dialogue between theologians and bishops, giving birth to reflections that are critical to the theology of a synodal Church.
Sr. Becquart further underlined the importance of listening and continuing on a creative path of discernment as it is important to be open to the sensus fidei, accompany local synodal processes, gather the fruits of the process and share them to the entire Church. She also underlined that young people and women are an essential driving force of synodality.
Further sessions of the Colloquium reflected on the challenges faced by the African Church, including the interface of cultural beliefs and practices with the Christian faith and the role of women and how to involve them more deeply in leadership and engagement with the Church.
The participants also reflected on the synodal experiences in different parts of the continent, highlighting the resistance to embrace change, the laity’s expression of uncertainty about the consideration that will be given to their opinions, and confusion caused by insufficient awareness creation and wrong conceptions about the synodal engagement.
Dr. Philippe Tine, a research professor from the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Senegal, gave a presentation on some elements to consider as the African Church strives to become a synodal Church. He stressed the importance of examining the lived experience of Africans as the first point of departure, in order to identify the obstacles through attentive listening. On this note, he also invited Africans to explore the links between synodality and African cultures in order to nourish the process with the riches of our culture.
Furthermore, he encouraged formation in synodality by the creation of inclusive spaces for reflection, sharing and discernment. He also stressed the need to bridge the gap between the clergy and laity by reducing structures that promote clericalism.
Proposing steps on the path toward a greater synodality, the Colloquium’s participants highlighted the entire process as a journey of reformation that should include, among others identifying the needs of the Church, building openness and systems of trust that respect confidentiality and a change of mentality at all levels of the Church in order to break down characters that foster rigidity.
They also recommended living in solidarity with all of creation in our common home, the promotion of inter-religious and ecumenical encounters, a greater appreciation for the value of the different charisms, including those of the laity and encouraging a mutual evangelization of both the laity and the clergy.
Expressing their conviction that the Church of the third millennium should embrace the path of synodality, the participants restated their commitment to serve as facilitators to promote awareness and build a culture of synodality.
By Lisa Zengarini
The Catholic Bishops of Germany have joined the World Council of Churches (WCC) and European Churches in urging Patriarch Kirill of Moscow to take a clear stand against the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The appeal was made on Thursday as they concluded their spring plenary assembly in Vierzehnheiligen. The crisis in Ukraine and its implications also for Christians was one of the main focuses of the meeting, which opened on 7 March with a special prayer for peace.
In their final statement, the German Bishops “unreservedly” condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is causing so much suffering and devastation and threatening peace in Europe and the world.
They conveyed their heartfelt solidarity with the Ukrainian people, while expressing admiration for their courage and endurance in facing their predicament.
They said that, as much as the Russian need for security on the western front may be understandable, the reasons claimed by the Russian government to justify its actions are not convincing, and they insisted on Ukraine’s right to self-determination.
The Bishops noted that not only Ukrainians, but all Europeans are “under shock”, as Moscow’s military intervention “is also an attack on Europe” and its democratic values.
“Democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law, coexistence and cooperation between states based on binding and fair rules are all been fought against by those who want to deprive Ukraine of its freedom.”
This too, they say, explains why the European states and the other Western countries stand in solidarity with Ukraine and have decided to wage heavy economic sanctions on Russia.
The statement also dwells on the controversial issue of supplying weapons to Ukraine and Germany’s recent pledge to ramp up military spending, which have stirred some debate in the country, also within Churches, in light of its history.
German Bishops say that arming Ukraine so it can defend itself from aggression may be legitimate, considering these extreme circumstances, but at the same warn on the risks of further escalating violence and suffering, reaffirming Church teachings against war and its commitment to non-violence.
“The horizon of peace must remain open even in times of war. All true religions reject war, which is a defeat of humanity. Those who recklessly trigger it commit a crime before God and man.”
Germany’s Bishops therefore point out that all attempts to give war a religious legitimacy is “totally unacceptable”, and thank the many Orthodox and Catholic priests for “addressing their faithful in a good Christian spirit”.
They say they are “particularly touched “ by the voices of many Orthodox clergy who have condemned thr conflict and have appealed for peace. At the same time they urge the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill “to speak out clearly and to distance himself from the war”.
So far, the head of Russia’s largest religious body, has only generically expressed deep empathy “with everyone affected by this tragedy”, without mentioning the word “war”, in line with President Vladimir Putin’s description of the aggression as a “military operation”.
On 6 March, on the occasion of the celebration of the Orthodox Forgiveness Sunday marking the beginning of Lent in Eastern Churches, Patriarch Kirill went further, saying that Russian intervention was somehow justified by the need to fight Western moral decadence and anti-Christian values threatening Russia. His remarks have caused dismay even in the Orthodox world.
German Bishops insist that the world needs a common witness by the Churches, especially in times of distress.
The statement further recalls the urgent need for ongoing solidarity with the Ukrainian people and with refugees fleeing war.
They remark that the the relief efforts carried out by institutions, Churches and citizens across Europe is “admirable”. However, they say more donations are urgently needed to help alleviate the hardship in Ukraine and to welcome refugees.
The German Bishops finally appeal to all Christians in Germany to continue to pray and work for peace. “Let us ask God, who holds the fate of the world in His hands, for peace in Ukraine and in all places on Earth,” the statement concludes.
By Devin Watkins
As the worldwide Church continues along the path toward the Synod of Bishops in 2023, representatives of the Church in Scandinavian countries have reached out to the Bishops of Germany to express their concern over the local synodal journey.
The Nordic Bishops sent those concerns to the President of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, in an open letter at the conclusion of their Spring Plenary Assembly.
The Synod of Bishops, focusing on the theme of synodality, is currently in the diocesan phase of a 2-year journey which will conclude with a month-long meeting of Bishops in Rome in October 2023.
The 8 Bishops from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland noted the long-running ties between their Dioceses and Germany. They expressed their gratitude for the “strong bonds” uniting them, including the many German priest, bishops, and nuns who have served in Nordic countries following the Protestant Reformation.
At the same time, the Nordic Bishops said German Bishops risk reducing the Church to a visible communion at the expense of the “sacramental mystery.”
“The orientation, method and content of the Synodal Path of the Church in Germany fill us with worry.”
Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, in Norway, told Vatican News’ Charlotta Smeds that the Nordic Bishops felt called to offer their thoughts on the direction the German Church is taking with the Synod on synodality.
“We simply wanted to express our anxiety and conviction that in order to make ourselves receptive to a newness of grace and a newness of life in the Church, what is needed is not simply deliberations and countless conversations, or majority votes, but also a rediscovery of the profound sacramental mystery of the Church,” said Bishop Varden.
In their statement, the Nordic Bishops said they are worried the Church in Germany is focusing excessively on the image of the pilgrim People of God, almost at the expense of other theological conceptions of the Church, such as the Church as “corpus mysticum, as Bride of Christ, and as mediatrix of graces.”
Bishop Varden said the synodal path cannot forget that “the Church is not only the People of God on pilgrimage—which needs to be organized sensibly and needs an organized route map—but is also the mystical body and the Bride of Christ.”
The statement recalled that the Church is also a “mystery of communion: communion of humankind with the Triune God; communion among the faithful; communion of all the particular Churches with the Successor of Peter.”
The Nordic Bishops pointed out that true reforms in the Church have always “set out from Catholic teaching founded on divine Revelation and authentic Tradition.”
Reform, they added, must always defend Catholic teaching and never “capitulate to the Zeitgeist” (‘spirit of the age’ – an 18th-century philosophical idea typically associated with Georg Hegel).
The Bishops called on the German Church to not focus only on structural change and thereby turn the Church into “a project, the object of our agency.”
Rather, the Nordic Bishops said the Church’s life must be “rooted in Christ”.
“Only if we live out of the fullness of [Christ’s] revelation shall we measure up to this vocation. We can hardly expect a new fullness of Catholic vitality to follow from impoverishment of the content of our faith.”
Bishop Varden noted that the German Church has a “rich legacy of sanctity, of intelligent reflection, of tremendous contributions to theology, and pastoral charity”.
That legacy, he added, gives the German Church all the resources needed to “effect a real renewal.”
The Scandinavian Bishops’ letter to their German brothers, concluded Bishop Varden, was “a statement of solidarity but also of some fraternal concern.”
WASHINGTON — Just a day after a U.S. House commission’s hearing on holding Russian President Vladimir Putin accountable for “war crimes and aggression against Ukraine,” his military forces carried out an airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol in the East European country.
The March 9 attack, which left three people dead, including a child, and injured 17 others brought condemnation from around the world. AP reported those injured included “women waiting to give birth, doctors and children buried in the rubble.”
“You will definitely be prosecuted for complicity in war crimes,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address directed at Putin. “And then, it will definitely happen, you will be hated by Russian citizens — everyone whom you have been deceiving constantly, daily, for many years in a row, when they feel the consequences of your lies in their wallets, in their shrinking possibilities, in the stolen future of Russian children.”
In Washington, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., as co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, presided over the March 8 hearing, the first in the House of Representatives over holding the Russian leader accountable for his invasion of Ukraine that began Feb. 24.
“We are here to recommit to assisting Ukraine during its darkest hour and to honor those who are sacrificing their lives defending their beloved country from an unprovoked, barbaric invasion by Putin and the Russian Federation,” Smith said in opening the hearing. “We are also here to hold Putin and Russian officials to account.”
He added that those gathered for the hearing joined “the free world in honoring the extraordinary courage and tenacious leadership” of Ukraine’s president.
What is happening to Ukraine is “the largest and most lethal attack in Europe since World War II, and the world has been shocked by the massive death and destruction unleashed by Putin,” Smith said.
Advertisement
Advertisement
He compares Putin’s action’s to Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, which began World War II.
“President Putin — and others responsible for this ongoing and ever-expanding mass murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity — must be held to account and prosecuted for their crimes,” the Catholic congressman added.
“The time to act for justice and accountability is now,” Smith said. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Smith has introduced a House resolution supporting the “investigation and prosecution of the crime of aggression and other international crimes committed by officials of the government of the Russian Federation against the government and people of Ukraine.”
The resolution also calls on President Joe Biden to direct the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations “to use the voice, vote and influence of the United States to immediately promote the establishment of an appropriate regional or international justice mechanism to investigate and prosecute possible international crimes” stemming from the invasion.
It also urges Biden to convene “the world’s democracies for the purposes of establishing such an international justice mechanism” as soon as possible.
Among the witnesses testifying at the hearing was David Kramer, managing director of global policy for the George W. Bush Institute and former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor.
Echoing Smith, he called the current situation in Ukraine the “gravest crisis in Europe since WWII” and emphasized the importance of swift and united actions by the international community.
“The refrain ‘never again’ emerged in the wake of the Holocaust, and Ukrainians are wondering whether that pledge applies to them,” said Kramer.
Among other witnesses were David Crane, founding chief prosecutor for the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone, and Jane Stromseth, the former deputy to the U.S. State Department’s ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice.
Crane spoke of the need for global “leadership” to “bring the world together” and called for “a tribunal that has an appropriate mandate.”
“Strongmen around the world are watching, like crocodiles, as to what we do about the international crimes committed by the Russian invasion of the Ukraine,” said Crane.
“Let’s go and put some bad guys in jail, shall we?” he said.
Stromseth said that “international law is on our side … the question now is how the international community will respond.”
She added that “failure to stand up to those who order and commit such crimes will only embolden their sense of impunity” and emphasized “a strategy of mutually reinforcing accountability — that is, accountability through multiple complementary mechanisms grounded in the fundamental principles of international law.”
Whichever mechanism proves to be most effective at holding Putin accountable, Smith said “we’ll find a way to get it done.”
“Failure to do so would be gross negligence,” said Smith.
Washington D.C., Mar 11, 2022 / 08:10 am (CNA).
Sister Dierdre Byrne, a Roman Catholic nun who is also a physician-surgeon and a retired U.S. Army colonel, is suing Washington, D.C. for denying her a religious exemption to its COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers.
Known as “Sister Dede,” Byrne was an Army doctor who did a three-month tour in Afghanistan as a reservist prior to joining the Sisters of the Little Workers of the Sacred Heart. In Washington, she serves as medical director of her convent’s free medical clinic. She also operates an abortion pill reversal ministry in the city.
She objects to the mandate on moral grounds because all three vaccines approved for use in the United States “have been tested, developed, or produced with cell lines derived from abortions,” which she says violates her Catholic beliefs, according to a statement from one of her attorneys, Christopher Ferrara, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit law firm focused on religious liberty cases.
The district began requiring health care workers to be vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19 in August. Though the policy includes exemptions for medical or religious reasons, Byrne’s application was denied.
In an interview with Raymond Arroyo that aired on EWTN’s “The World Over” March 10, Bryne said the city has suspended her medical license because she remains unvaccinated, though she maintains she has natural immunity to COVID-19 after contracting and recovering from the coronavirus.
“I can’t practice. I’ve closed my clinics for the month. I can’t see patients. I just can’t help anyone,” said Byrne, a board-certified general surgeon and family physician.
Byrne told Arroyo she decided to fight the district in court “because I feel like I’m just a little tip of an arrow of so many people who are being forced to do the same thing.” You can watch her full interview with Arroyo in the video below.
The Thomas More Society filed the lawsuit on March 9 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, the district’s. health department, and other district officials are named as defendants.
“The suit against Bowser and DC Health (the district’s health department) is based upon the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, both of which protect Sister Dierdre’s fundamental right to the free exercise of her religion,” Ferrara said in the statement.
The lawsuit notes that Bowser has twice been previously chastised by the court for burdening religion by her abuse of “emergency powers.”
“Judicial intervention is required once again,” Ferrara said. “This time to prevent a senseless bar on the practice of medicine by a religious sister who has devoted her career in the District of Columbia to healing the sick who cannot afford quality medical care.”
You can read the full complaint here.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
BARABÁS, Hungary — For Daróczi Gábor, mayor since 2010 of the sleepy Hungarian town of Barabás, making daily visits to the border with Ukraine was the last thing he thought he would have to do during his tenure.
“This is something that I have never seen before in my life,” Gábor told Catholic News Service March 11. “It is really strange.”
Barabás, a town of fewer than 900 people, had welcomed more than 2,000 refugees since the start of the Russian attack on Ukraine Feb. 24.
The first day refugees started to arrive, “there wasn’t any form of organized help. So, the town opened this place to shelter people,” he said, pointing to a small building occupied by Caritas Hungary.
“We are trying our best to help everybody, and we’re putting our maximum effort to make sure that everybody has food and shelter,” Gábor told CNS. “I am hoping for peace between Russia and Ukraine so this situation can end. But until then, we’ll do everything that we can to help the people.”
Gábor drives several times a day to the border to monitor the arrival of refugees. The soldiers guarding the entrance into Ukraine wave to him as he sits in the parking lot overlooking the border.
Fewer people were coming in March 11 than on previous days because of tighter controls on the Ukrainian side, he said.
Nevertheless, dozens of refugees who succeeded in crossing over during the night and early morning entered the refugee center to rest after the long journey.
A young Nigerian couple who asked to remain anonymous sat on one of the cots set up in the hall. They had traveled from Ukraine’s northeastern city of Sumy, one of several cities that were bombed heavily by Russian forces despite a cease-fire.
“We came yesterday. We were staying in Sumy. It was kind of traumatic but at the end of the day we got used to it,” the young man said.
His fiancé told CNS the two were studying and working in Sumy before they were forced to leave.
On a normal day, she said, “it’s a three-hour journey” from Sumy to the western city of Lviv. “But it took us 12 hours because we were trying to avoid being seen by Russian troops.”
While there were reports of discrimination against foreigners from Africa and Asia attempting to leave Ukraine, the young couple told CNS they had “never experienced any discrimination” when leaving the country.
“They were really nice to us in Ukraine,” the young man said. “For now, we’ll stay here. We’re still trying to make some moves but hopefully — ‘Inshallah’ (God willing) — everything will be fine.”
“Nothing is certain but we definitely hope for the best,” he added.
An elderly couple from Ukraine, Oleg and Valentina Malakhivska, sat outside the hall, visibly worn out from their journey from a small town on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Their daughter Iuliia, who lives in Zurich, traveled to Barabás to pick them up and take them to her home in Switzerland. Her 37-year-old brother, she said, stayed behind since men between the ages of 18 and 60 must remain to defend the country.
It took some time to convince her parents to flee since they didn’t want to leave their son behind, she said.
“A lot of families are like this: a lot of elderly people and mothers with children, who will not leave Ukraine because of their families,” Malakhivska told CNS. “And this is difficult because it’s better that the older women leave so that the men can fight and there can be less victims in this war.”
Advertisement
Advertisement
“That’s why I convinced my parents to cross the border and stay with me. That way they can be safe, they can receive medical care and my brother can have less stress and concentrate on the war because he is a telecommunication engineer and he is working 24/7,” she added.
Malakhivska told CNS she is saddened by the war in her country and points the finger squarely at Russian President Vladimir Putin who she said had been fixated for a long time on taking back Ukraine.
“The problem is that (Putin) did not want to change his idea and he stuck to the plan,” she said. “The economy of Russia is already ruined, but he didn’t want to stop and people around him couldn’t stop him.”
When asked by CNS if she thinks Western sanctions against Russia are enough to change the tide, Malakhivska said she believes sanctions are the only way Russians will “wake up” and see the reality not portrayed in Putin’s narrative that downplays the war as a “special military operation.”
In Russia, she explained, “the problem is that now, just as it was during the Soviet Union, there is a lot of propaganda.”
Malakhivska said her cousin, who lives in Russia, initially dismissed reports of Russian atrocities and said that “she was not interested in politics.”
“But once food prices doubled, she started to feel it and started to ask, ‘What is the reason? What’s going on'” in Ukraine? she said.
In the meantime, Malakhivska said she is making it her personal mission to help people in her homeland, especially those hesitant to leave other family members behind, to escape. But she also feels sympathy for people in Russia who are the unwitting victims of decisions made beyond their control.
“This war is a tragedy for two nations,” she said. “Now it’s just nonstop bombing, bombing, bombing. People are dying for nothing; civilians, military, for what? For no reason!”
Kyiv, Ukraine, Mar 11, 2022 / 07:40 am (CNA).
A Catholic leader said on Friday that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is “becoming a war primarily against the civilian, peaceful population.”
In a video message issued on March 11, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk highlighted the suffering of Ukrainian children on the 16th day of the war.
“It really seems that this war is becoming a war primarily against the civilian, peaceful population,” he said.
“Even according to official statistics, in these days there have been more deaths among civilians — women and children — than among the military. We mourn the children of Ukraine who have become innocent victims of this war.”
The U.N. human rights office reported on March 11 that it had recorded 1,546 civilian casualties in Ukraine since Feb. 24, with 564 people killed and 982 injured. It said that the actual figures were likely to be “considerably higher.”
The leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said that the “great majority” of Ukrainians believe that Ukraine will emerge victorious from the war with Russia, a nation with significantly larger military forces.
He said: “Speaking with our soldiers, for whom we worry particularly today, I constantly hear only one request: ‘Pray for us!’”
“I want to pass on this request of the Ukrainian army, in whose hands lies the fate of Ukraine, to all of you who hear me. Pray! Pray for our Ukrainian army, which today is defending peace in Ukraine, Europe, and the world.”
The 51-year-old leader of the world’s largest Eastern Catholic Church in communion with Rome expressed concern about the situation in Slavutych, a city in northern Ukraine built for evacuated personnel from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
“This area has no electricity. There is a great danger of the spread of new radioactive waves from the Chernobyl reactor,” he said. “But our priest with his wife, fully besieged, have remained there with their people.”
Ukrainian Greek Catholic men are permitted to marry before being ordained to the priesthood.
Shevchuk thanked Orthodox Christians in Western Europe for helping Ukrainian refugees and urging Russian Orthodox leaders to help end the war.
“I thank the World Council of Churches, which is doing everything to stop this war,” he added, referring to the ecumenical body founded in 1948.
“I thank the Catholics and Protestants of France who, with a particular appeal, are trying to do everything to stop the bloodshed in our land.”
Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the French bishops’ conference, and Pastor François Clavairoly, president of the Protestant Federation of France, met with a Russian Orthodox leader in Paris on March 10 to hand over letters to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.
Concluding his message, Shevchuk said: “Let us pray for Ukraine! Let us be her voice in the world! May the merciful Lord help end this madness!”
“O God, Great and Almighty, protect our Ukraine!”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
By Lydia O’Kane
More than two weeks on from the Russian invasion of Ukraine the humanitarian crisis continues to grow.
The United Nations said on Friday that more than 2.5 million people have fled Ukraine as of March 11.
That figure is an increase of 200,000 refugees since the International Organisation for Migration’s last report through to March 10.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday that at least 1.85 million people were displaced inside Ukraine.
Aid agencies working in Ukraine and in neighbouring countries have stressed the need for humanitarian corridors to give people the opportunity to flee intense bombardments.
The medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has stressed that “one-off humanitarian corridors can be helpful, but are not enough.” It adds that safe passage for those willing and able to escape should be urgently assured across war-affected areas inside Ukraine, “regardless of the existence of humanitarian corridors or ceasefires that may temporarily be put in place.”
Robert Brinkley is a former British Ambassador to Ukraine and Chairman of the Ukrainian Institute in London. Speaking to Vatican Radio, he said it was horrific to see the destruction of a country he knows so well.
“The situation is appalling and it’s heartbreaking particularly as I’ve lived in Ukraine and know many people there. It’s tragic the way in which Russia is bombarding innocent civilians in cities, and trapping them, not allowing them safe passage out or food and medical supplies in.”
Since the start of the war, European countries have been welcoming refugees fleeing Ukraine. The European Union is allowing Ukrainians a three-year residency without the need for a visa. But the UK has taken in only 1,000 refugees so far and is retaining controls on entry.
On Wednesday, London Church leaders called on the British Government to make it easier for Ukrainians fleeing war to come to the UK.
Facing criticism, Prime Minister, Boris Johnson Friday announced a new scheme that would allow Britons to welcome Ukrainian refugees into their homes.
Addressing this issue, Mr. Brinkley said the way in which the countries of central Europe are welcoming Ukrainian refugees was tremendously heartening. He noted that the British Government had already announced two new routes for Ukrainians to get visas to come into the UK. However, he said, “I think they could have acted faster and they can probably still go further.”
Around the world, millions of people are showing solidarity with the people of Ukraine, whether it be peace rallies or prayer vigils in order to bring this war to an end.
At last Sunday’s Angelus, Pope Francis called for the “armed attacks” to cease and that “negotiation – and common sense – prevail.”
“The voice of Pope Francis is one which is listened to throughout the world,” said the former ambassador.
“I’m constantly, like many other people around the world, praying for peace, praying for Ukraine to be delivered from evil. I know the Pope is praying hard as well, and I hope that he will discern a way he can use his great influence to bring peace.”
Mr. Brinkley is the current Chairman of the Ukraine Institute in London, which is a centre for Ukraine-related educational and cultural activities. It also highlights important contemporary and historical issues affecting not just Ukraine but also the wider world.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine over two weeks ago, staff at the Institute have been rushed off their feet doing what they can to help, and have also been liaising with the Ukrainian Eparch of the Holy Family Cathedral in London, Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski. The Institute’s website also provides information for those who want to support the people of Ukraine through donations.
In just a short space of time, the effects of this war have already been catastrophic. Over 2.5 million Ukrainians have fled the country, many have been killed, the country’s cultural heritage is being reduced to rubble and many children have had their education interrupted.
“This is the horror and devastation of war and this war is completely unnecessary,” said Mr. Brinkley, adding, “this is not a war of the Russian people.” He went on to say that “it flies completely in the face of Russia’s commitments under international law, under the United Nations Charter, and it must be brought to an end as soon as possible.”
By Vatican News staff reporter
“It is with great joy that I receive this literary work,” writes Pope Francis, “which at first glance looks more like a book on dialogue between religions, but in which one discovers, as one goes through it, almost an ecumenical pilgrimage: genuine, personal, and, above all, spiritual.”
The Holy Father offered his enthusiastic endorsement to the work of his friend Marcelo Figuero, a Presbyterian minister who was entrusted with bringing to life an Argentinian edition of the papal newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. The new book – entitled Reconciled Diversity: A Protestant in the Pope’s Newspaper – is collection of articles, contributions, and interviews published by Figueroa in L’Osservatore since 2016, covering various topics that have as their common thread the ecumenical journey between the various Christian confessions.
“I always read Marcelo’s articles with attention,” the Pope says in his preface, “and and I will continue to read them because they help me to look at the ecumenical path I have travelled and the one still to be travelled, with the eyes of a brother who tries to reread and interpret my pontificate from an ecumenical perspective.”
Pope Francis says he is pleased with Figueroa’s vision of ecumenism, a concept that is at the foundation of his own pontificate. The daily dimension of practical ecumenism, he says, “follows the path opened up by the Second Vatican Council on the basis of the apostolic biblical witness,” and “has been so enriched by my predecessors with their impetus given to ecumenical dialogue and commitment.”
The Pope concludes his preface by “enthusiastically” recommending Reconciled Diversity, and with the hope that “the Lord of reconciled diversity might use it to enlighten longing gazes, to broaden spiritual horizons beyond pertaining to faith, and to embrace restless hearts,” leading them to “a God who is with all and above all in the same common House!”
By Sergio Centofanti
In Russia, brave mothers are not afraid to protest because their sons were sent to invade Ukraine without even knowing it. Some are conscripts who have just come of age, young soldiers who do not want to fight someone else’s war.
There are mothers who may agree with the purported reasons for the war, because there is so much propaganda and misinformation, but if you have a son who has been deceived, used and sent to the front to kill and die instead of living and letting live, then the revolt becomes stronger than any fear. That there is now a law which foresees sentences up to 15 years in prison if someone speaks of invasion does not matter. If mothers are rebelling, a regime has to worry.
There are Russian mothers who have taken to the streets to demonstrate and who have been beaten up and arrested. For mothers, a child is everything. They want to know where their sons are, sons who have been sent to the front like cannon fodder and whose whereabouts are unknown because the authorities have no interest in telling them.
There are mothers who have hope, because their sons, captured by the Ukrainians, have been able to call, crying. They are still alive. There are other young soldiers who desert and run away. They don’t understand why they should die for this war.
On the other side is the courageous resistance of a free Ukrainian people who do not want to be enslaved by a foreign regime. For those who believe, or want to believe, the lie that the Russian army went to liberate a people in the hands of Nazis, it is enough to see how many Ukrainians from all over the world are leaving behind their belongings, their wellbeing, their wealth and comfort to return to their homeland to defend it from the invader.
It is enough to see how many elderly people, women, and unarmed Ukrainian civilians are pouring into the streets occupied by tanks sent from Moscow, shouting at the Russians to get out. These are glaring facts, hard evidence of the falsity of stories offering a contrary narrative. Here is a people, Ukraine, that wants to be free to decide its own future and will resist until the end.
This is why the Russian army is shooting at civilians and starving them, devastating everything, striking houses, hospitals, schools, churches: because Moscow knows that it can win battles, but cannot win a war against a people that wants freedom.
By Linda Bordoni
“The attack this week on a children’s and maternity hospital in Mariupol, geographically remote from any military target, stands as a terrible symbol of this war.”
“The blood of mothers and children cries out to heaven from the ground.”
With these powerful words that come in the wake of the Russian bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol on 9 March, the Bishops of the Scandinavian Bishops’ Conference express their outrage at the war of aggression.
The Bishops say, “the Russian Federation shows disdain for Ukraine’s sovereignty and causes untold suffering to millions of people.”
Signed by the President of the Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Czelaw Kozon, along with all of its members, the statement contains an appeal for conversion that regards “ourselves, our Churches, and our countries; but it also regards our whole beloved Europe.”
“Lest a fratricidal war be allowed to assume even more terrifying dimensions.”
The Bishops turn directly to the Russian President imploring him to “Stop to this unjust war!”
And they appeal to the Russian people calling on them “not to permit this iniquity to be perpetrated in your name!”
The Scandinavian Bishops also express their sadness for recent statements from “certain quarters of the Russian Church, which present this war of flagrant aggression as a combat for Christian values.
“To engage in such terms is to engage in mere rhetoric, to hold moral values hostage to a political agenda.”
The Bishops note that some of their Nordic countries share a border and historical ties with Russia and with Ukraine.
This war, they say, touches us deeply, and they give their assurances that they are praying for the homeless, the frightened, the sick, and wounded, that the dead may rest in peace, and:
“That the hearts of the mighty may be open to the prompting of the Prince of Peace, to pursue the path of peace in justice.”
Following the release of the Bishops’ statement, Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Norway, told Vatican News’ Charlotta Smeds that the Scandinavian Bishops felt it was important to express their condemnation of the war in Ukraine.
“We wanted to state very clearly our compassion for the Ukrainian people, and our condemnation, even as the Holy See has condemned this war,” Bishop Varden said.
He added that Russia’s war in Ukraine is “clearly a war of aggression, which cannot be dressed up as some sort of ‘moral combat’, as it has been in certain quarters, even in the last days.”
Bishop Varden said the Scandinavian Bishops stand with the people of Ukraine and will do whatever they can to welcome “refugees who come our way.”
By Salvatore Cernuzio
Cardinal Michael Czerny, interim Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, was back in Rome on Friday, after spending several days in Ukraine and Hungary, bringing the closeness of Pope Francis to the refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.
On Thursday, he visited the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) centre at Nyugati railway station in the Hungarian capital Budapest. He also visited the Order of Malta’s centre, where he listened to the dramatic stories of Natalia, Tamara and others.
Marina and Nadja took a taxi to the Moldovan border to escape the bombs on Kharkiv. Natalia used a restaurant table as a bed. In her haste to escape, Tamara forgot her mobile phone at home and had no contact with her children for weeks. Eighteen-year-olds Dana and Danjra traveled alone for fifteen hours by car to reach safety.
In the hall of a facility on the outskirts of Budapest, the pain of these women fleeing the war was palpable. Six Ukrainian refugees, all women, now safe thanks to the help they received from the Order of Malta’s teams, are waiting for a new destination.
On the third and last day of his mission in Hungary, Cardinal Czerny met these women on Thursday afternoon at a sports centre now converted into a reception centre. Aided by an interpreter, he stopped to listen to their stories, asked questions, and looked at the images of bunkers, makeshift shelters, babies and elderly parents on their mobile phones.
Natalia and her parents, who are originally from the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, held by Russia-backed separatists, have had no respite since 2014. Natalia, who fled Donetsk in 2015, is again amidst fear and destruction. Since 5 March, she has been travelling with another 29-year-old woman: one heading to Germany, the other to France.
When the Cardinal arrives, she is the only one who is glued to her smartphone. Listening to the stories of her compatriots, she gets up and tells Cardinal Czerny about the stages of her journey with the help of her mobile phone.
Natalia moved out of the basement of her building, with her neighbour’s daughter, just a few months old, sleeping under the water pipes, to gyms in sleeping bags, and finally to the restaurant of an abandoned hotel. The photo of the parents appears in the gallery, and Natalia bursts into tears. “They have no food, no medicine; they will die even without bombs.”
The Cardinal puts a hand on the shoulder of Marina, a 62-year-old former employee of a space shuttle firm. She fled the eastern city of Kharkiv with her daughter, who has a mental disability. They took a taxi to central Ukraine, paying only for the fuel. She now awaits a transfer to Germany.
Even though she did not witness her home crumble under mortar fire, she finds no point in returning home. “We were forced into the basement 31 times. I could no longer stand the constant sound of the siren; it drove me crazy. So I decided to leave.”
Marina does not regret her decision, even though she left behind her husband and her father. Tears of gratitude roll down at the “human warmth” received in Budapest. “I am really grateful,” she repeats to the Cardinal, who blesses her and gives her a picture with a prayer by Pope Francis.
It was the same story with Tamara, a petite woman in her 60s, her face wrinkled and her eyes tired from a 5-day journey.
She laughs saying that in her haste, she left behind her phone. But her laughter soon turns into tears. “For almost a week, I have been wandering around without being able to communicate. My children are in town. We have heard from them thanks to the volunteers; they are safe with the Baptist community in a bunker.”
The women who make up a small part of the 54 refugees currently sheltered by the Order of Malta, which also offers an ambulance service “on four wheels” to the borders, the only charity to do so. They also work, alongside Caritas, at Keleti railway station, east of Budapest.
Cardinal Czerny visited the center on the first day of his trip. After a long stop at the headquarters of the Jesuit Refugee Service on Thursday morning, he wanted to visit the station to Nyugati railway station, where refugees are huddled together in poorly coordinated services.
However, 3 to 4 thousand people get off at Nyugati. Shortly before Cardinal Czerny’s arrival there, an email from the border announces a train with 125 people coming from Zahony.
A large number of them at Nyugati are the Roma people. At the Cardinal’s first invitation to approach, they are curious to tell their story.
One of them, Miriana says that in Odessa, her family were merchants or factory workers.They were evacuated in an hour’s time or so. “We want to reach Berlin but there are no means.” In Germany, they know no one but they want to try their luck, “because there are more possibilities”.
The Cardinal’s last stop on Thursday was the parish of Szent József, in Esztergom, led by 35-year-old priest, Father András Szili, who has been ministering to Spanish-speaking people for 3 years. For weeks, he has been living in the midst of phone calls saying more people are arriving.
They are young Ecuadorian refugees evacuated from Kiev, who are accommodated in the oratory or the cathechism rooms of the parish, awaiting their journey home through the consulate. They stay for a few nights, and share a computer and two bathrooms, with only one shower, between 56 of them. They welcome Cardinal Czerny, accompanied by the Cardinal Peter Ërdo of Budapest.
“I am here because the Pope wants to express his closeness and hope for Ukraine,” Cardinal Czerny says. “The Holy Father asks you to pray to contribute to peace.”
The Cardinal is moved seeing 2 children approach, offering him biscuits. They narrate their stories followed by handshakes and a group photo. Before leaving, the Pope’s envoy reminds them: “Do not forget the charity you have received. When you return to your country you will be the one to offer it to others.”
On Friday morning, Cardinal Czerny returned to Rome.
Krisovychi, Ukraine, Mar 11, 2022 / 04:25 am (CNA).
Our Lady of Fatima shrines worldwide are being asked to unite in prayer for the conversion of Russia on Sunday.
The appeal was made by Father Andrzej Draws, rector of the Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Fatima in Krisovychi, western Ukraine, following the full-scale Russian invasion of the country on Feb. 24.
He has invited all shrines in honor of Our Lady of Fatima to unite in prayer for the conversion of Russia on March 13.
The appeal comes after Ukraine’s Latin Rite Catholic bishops asked Pope Francis to consecrate Ukraine and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
In a letter to the pope, the Ukrainian bishops said that they were writing “in these hours of immeasurable pain and terrible ordeal for our people” in response to many requests for the consecration.
“Responding to this prayer, we humbly ask Your Holiness to publicly perform the act of consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Ukraine and Russia, as requested by the Blessed Virgin in Fatima,” said the letter, published on the bishops’ website on Ash Wednesday, March 2.
During the Fatima apparitions in 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary revealed three secrets.
The second secret was a statement that World War I would end, and a prediction of another war that would start during the reign of Pius XI if people continued to offend God and Russia was not consecrated to Mary’s Immaculate Heart.
Sister Lucia, one of the three Fatima visionaries, recalled in her memoirs that Our Lady asked for “the Consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays” to prevent a second world war.
She said that Mary told her: “If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated.”
“In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”
In a letter written in 1989, Sister Lucia confirmed that Pope John Paul II satisfied Our Lady’s request for Russia’s consecration in 1984. Other authorities, including the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, also have affirmed the consecration was completed to Sister Lucia’s satisfaction.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
By Benedict Mayaki, SJ
Aside from the many evils caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been, at least, one positive effect from the viewpoint of faith: that of making us “aware of our need for the Eucharist and the emptiness that its lack creates.” In his first Lenten Sermon for this year, Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, the Preacher of the Pontifical Household, invites Christians to “rediscover the Eucharistic wonder” because every little progress in the understanding of the Eucharist “translates into progress in the spiritual life of the person and of the ecclesial community.”
He notes that speaking on the Eucharist in this time of the pandemic, and now amid the horror of the war, does not mean turning our eyes away from the dramatic reality we are experiencing, but rather helps us look at it from “a higher and less contingent point of view” as the Eucharist “offers us the true key to the interpretation of history.”
The Eucharist, the Cardinal says, “is coextensive with the history of salvation” and is present in the Old Testament as a figure, in the New Testament as an event, and in our time – the time of the Church – as a Sacrament.
In the Old Testament, examples of the Eucharist as a “figure” include the manna, the sacrifice of Melchizedek, and the sacrifice of Isaac. With the coming of Christ, and the mystery of His death and resurrection, the Eucharist became an “event,” something that occurred in history – a unique event that took place once and is unrepeatable. Then, in the time of the Church, the Eucharist is present in the sign of bread and wine, instituted by Christ.
In practice, the difference between the event and the sacrament, he points out, is in the difference between history and the liturgy. To trace the link between the sacrifice of the cross and the Mass, St. Augustine distinguishes between two verbs: “to renew” and “to celebrate.” In this light, the Mass renews the event of the cross by celebrating it (not reiterating it) and celebrates it by renewing it (not just recalling it).
Therefore, in history, there was only one Eucharist, the one carried out by Jesus with His life and death. On the other hand, according to history, thanks to the sacrament, there are “as many Eucharists as have been celebrated and will be celebrated until the end of the world.” Through the sacrament of the Eucharist, we mysteriously become contemporaries of the event as it “is present to us and we at the event.”
Focusing on the Eucharist as a sacrament, Cardinal Cantalamessa explores the development of the Mass in three parts: Liturgy of the Word, the Eucharistic liturgy (the Canon or Anaphora), and Communion, adding at the end, a reflection on Eucharistic worship outside the Mass.
He notes that in the earliest days of the Church, the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist were not celebrated in the same place and at the same time as disciples participated in the worship services in the Temple where they read from the Bible, recited psalms and prayers, then went home afterward to gather for the breaking of bread. This practice was given up following hostility from the Jewish community and the disciples no longer went to the Temple to read and listen to Scripture but instead introduced it into their own places of Christian worship, making it the Liturgy of the Word that leads into the Eucharistic Prayer.
Reading the Scripture in the Liturgy “helps us to know better the One who makes Himself present in the breaking of bread, and each time it brings to light an aspect of the mystery we are about to receive.” This is what stands out in the experience of the disciples of Emmaus when they recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread.
The words of the Bible being spoken, and its stories retold at Mass, are relived in a way that what is remembered becomes real and present “at this time,” “today”; and we are not only hearers of the Word but we are called to put ourselves in the place of the people in the story.
When proclaimed during the liturgy, Scripture acts in a way above and beyond explanation and mirrors how Sacraments act. The divinely-inspired texts have a healing power that has led to some epoch-making events in the course of the history of the Church, as a direct result of listening to the readings during Mass. For example, the Franciscan Movement began in Assisi when a newly-converted young man and his friend went to church and the Gospel of the day was Jesus saying to His disciples “Take nothing for the journey, neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one take a second tunic” (Lk 9:3).
Cardinal Cantalamessa highlights the Liturgy of the Word as the “best resource we have to make the Mass a new and engaging celebration each time we celebrate it.” In this regard, more time and prayer need to be invested in the preparation of the homily.
He notes that relying on one’s knowledge and personal preferences to prepare a homily and then praying to God to give add His Spirit to the message is a good method but “isn’t prophetic.” Conversely, to be prophetic, the first step is to ask “God for the word He wants to say,” then consultation of books, the Fathers of the Church, teachers, and poets. In this way, it is no longer “the Word of God at the service of [your] learning, but [your] learning at the service of the Word of God.”
The attention to the Word of God alone is not enough, the “power from on high” must descend on it, the Cardinal says. As the action of the Holy Spirit is not limited only to the moment of consecration alone during the Eucharist, so also the Spirit’s presence is indispensable for the Liturgy of the Word and communion.
Scripture “must be read and interpreted with the help of the same Spirit through which it was written” (Dei Verbum, 12). In the Liturgy of the Word, the action of the Holy Spirit is “exercised through the spiritual anointing present in the speaker and listener.” Anointing is given by the presence of the Spirit; and thanks to baptism and confirmation – and for some, priestly and episcopal ordination – we already have the anointing imprinted on our soul in an indelible character (2 Cor 1, 21-22).
The anointing “does not depend on us to create it, but it depends on us to remove the obstacle that prevents its radiation.” Like the woman in the Gospel (Mk 14:3) who broke the alabaster jar and the perfume filled the house, we are to break the alabaster vase: the vase is “our humanity, our self, sometimes our arid intellectualism” through faith, prayer, and humble imploration.
In this light, we should ask for the anointing before setting out on preaching or an important action in the service of the Kingdom. This anointing is not only necessary for preachers to effectively proclaim the Word of God, but also for listeners to welcome it.
Not that human training is useless; it is, however, not enough, the Cardinal says. “It is the interior teacher who truly instructs, it is Christ and His inspiration who instruct. When His inspiration and His anointing are lacking, external words only make a useless noise.”
“Sollevamento del Vescovo di Arecibo (Porto Rico) e nomina dell’Amministratore Apostolico ad nutum Sanctae Sedis,” read the Vatican Bolletino Wednesday morning.
Sollevamento? Normally it will say “Rinunce” or resignation. The English bulletins take a few days to post, so I did a quick Google translate. “To lift” came the translation. Bishop Daniel Fernández Torres of Arecibo was being relieved of command but had not resigned. This was curious.
The bishop posted a statement on his Facebook page that soon made it into an Associated Press story. Fernández pronounced himself “blessed to suffer persecution and slander.” He wrote that the Vatican had not accused him of any crime, but he was removed because the Vatican said he “had not been obedient to the Pope nor had he had sufficient communion with my brother bishops of Puerto Rico.” He denied these allegations.
The Puerto Rican bishops’ conference published a short statement later in the day, calling this “such a painful moment” and uniting themselves in prayer with both Bishop Fernández “in this difficult moment in his life and mission as a bishop” and with the “beloved and dear diocese of Arecibo.”
There had been difficulties between Fernández and his brother bishops for some time. “This did not happen overnight. Inquiries had been going on for years,” a source told NCR. “It seems though that what finally caused the Vatican to act was the fact that Bishop Fernández was issuing certificates to individuals that they had a valid religion exemption from getting the vaccine.”
Last year, Fernández refused to sign a statement about vaccines issued by the Puerto Rican bishops’ conference. He issued his own statement insisting “it is legitimate for a faithful Catholic to have doubts about the safety and efficacy of a vaccine.” So it is. It is also nutty and, as I pointed out on Monday (March 7), conscientious objection to getting vaccinated is not the issue. Demanding to be included in communal activities without taking reasonable precautions is the issue.
Advertisement
Advertisement
I should add here that I was in Puerto Rico last month and they were far more rigorous about enforcing vaccine requirements than any jurisdiction in the states. To disembark the plane, you had to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test from within the last 72 hours. To enter a restaurant, you had to show proof of vaccination. To rent a condo, you had to show proof of vaccination. In fact, Puerto Rico has higher vaccination rates than any U.S. state.
Fernández’s stance on vaccines is similar to that taken by the Vatican diplomat who oversaw his becoming a bishop, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, now the archbishop of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, but who was the apostolic delegate to Puerto Rico in 2007 when Fernández was named a bishop. Broglio, too, issued a statement, last October, acknowledging that Catholics can, in good conscience, refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine, which is true, but then insisting there should be no consequence for such a refusal, which is ridiculous.
Fernández was also involved in the 2012 effort to force San Juan Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez Nieves to resign, according to Gonzalez’s letter to the Vatican at the time. The pro-statehood governor at the time, Luis Fortuno, and the Vatican ambassador who succeeded Archbishop Broglio as apostolic delegate, Archbishop Josef Wesolowski, also joined in the effort. Among other charges, they accused Gonzalez of covering up for pedophile priests. Those charges were proven false, Gonzalez was confirmed in his office by Pope Francis and Wesolowski was removed as ambassador. The Polish prelate was subsequently convicted of sexually abusing minors in a Vatican trial and defrocked. The evidence showed he had traded life-saving medicine to male prostitutes in exchange for sex acts. Wesolowski appealed the decision but died before the appeal was heard.
It is not clear what Fernández will do now. Any hope of reclaiming his see went out the window with his impertinent statement accusing the pope of being unjust. His anti-vaccine stance and his self-pitying statement make him a likely candidate for lionization in certain conservative Catholic precincts. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up in an interview at Church Militant, or at a meeting of the Napa Institute, or for a visit with Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas. I hope the U.S. bishops who have resisted the idea of removing Strickland, for fear of making him a martyr, take note of what Rome did in Arecibo and watch how it plays out.
Fernández could become the most prominent Latino ally of disgraced former nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who released a paranoid letter this week blaming the West, and specifically NATO expansion, for the war in Ukraine. He repeated Vladimir Putin’s lies about the Ukrainian government being filled with neo-Nazis. Viganò also linked the war to public health efforts to combat the COVID virus. Viganò is unhinged, an ecclesiastical version of Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover rolled into one, hateful, paranoid, reckless, destructive.
It is so rare for the Vatican to remove a bishop against his will that I am sure there is more to this story than we yet know. But what we do know is that Bishop Fernández is not the only bishop to have allowed the mindset of the culture wars to eat away at their capacity for affective collegiality with the Bishop of Rome and with their brother bishops. There is something about Pope Francis that so unnerves a kind of Catholic zealot that they experience a kind of meltdown, not merely disagreeing with Rome, but hating the pope and sowing division in their dioceses and beyond.
In Arecibo, Rome finally pulled the plug. It will be interesting to see if Fernández gains strength as a kind of martyr, or if he disappears from the limelight. And now, the Vatican must look for an irenic pastor to shepherd the church in Arecibo and begin healing the wounds occasioned by the stormy tenure of Bishop Daniel Fernández Torres.
In early February, Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted said baptisms performed by Fr. Andres Arango during years of ministry in the diocese are invalid, and the priest resigned as pastor of a local parish. According to a 2020 instruction from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the baptisms were invalid because the priest said “We baptize” instead of “I baptize.”
In a similar case in Michigan in 2020, Fr. Matthew Hood was re-baptized, given other sacraments and swiftly ordained again to the priesthood within days because his own initial baptism was found invalid. But the Archdiocese of Detroit still hasn’t heard from hundreds of people whose rites were previously performed by Hood and are now considered invalid, despite outreach efforts and publicity.
Following are letters to the editor from NCR readers about invalid baptisms. The letters have been edited for length and clarity.
This is one of the most ridiculous, hurtful, and misinterpreted acts I have ever heard. The church is the people of God. Christ is the model for those people. The priest is no more Christ than those people of God.
To invalidate any sacrament because of the use of “we” as opposed to “I” is ludicrous. The priest or bishop who declared those baptisms invalid is a great deal too full of himself.
MARY SCHMIDT
Oak Park, Illinois
***
Has Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted lost his mind? Another embarrassing topic to make Catholics look like nutcases. What would Jesus say about baptism not being valid because the poor priest said we and not I? This is fundamentalism and pharisaical thinking which Jesus condemned.
This unfortunately is all over the news. Who reported the priest? I was always taught that it is intent and not words that matter. So now those who were baptized by Fr. Andres Arango need to be withheld from the Eucharist until they are properly baptized. This makes me so sad and angry that we are the laughingstocks again.
I read the Vatican’s 2020 statement. I wonder if Pope Francis is aware of this incident and if he approves of what was released. I rather doubt it.
SUSANNE JONES
New Smyrna Beach, Florida
***
If the folks in the Vatican are still so mired in traditionalism that they believe a baptism is invalid if the minister says “we baptize” rather than “I baptize,” what hope is there for real change? What do they think? Are the words for baptism some kind of magical formula?
Ironically, according to Catholic teaching, if the worst sexual predator or vicious murderer says the right words, the baptism is valid (ex opere operantis), but if a saint says “we” instead of “I,” while fully intending what Christ and the church intend by baptism, the sacrament does not take place. This is beyond nuts!
FRANK MANNING
Edmond, Oklahoma
***
A significantly disheartened young man attended the same regional synod meeting as I did a few days ago. Dispirited with the church, he recounted “that priest” who did all the baptisms wrong and opined that as just more evidence the post-Vatican II church is off the rails.
The invalid baptisms article made the Cincinnati news a day or two later, so I’m sure the topic has, by that mark, been over-massaged from NPR to Fox News — but not NCR?
Yet, nowhere have I seen anyone address — or ask — whether or not the Catholic Church probes the wording used in baptismal rites administered in non-Catholic churches — baptisms we accept as valid when a non-Catholic seeks to enter the church.
RITA HESSLEY
Cincinnati, Ohio
***
Regarding the supposed “invalid baptisms” in the Diocese of Phoenix — does intent mean nothing in God’s eyes? Would God really reject a baptism that did not use specific “magic words”? Is using “we” instead of “I” really that important?
When the pope uses “we” in his speech, does he mean that there are in fact several versions of himself? Do the faithful not understand that the pope means “we” as including the pope, priests and bishops and the church as a whole, as well as Jesus who is represented by the pope, priests and bishops? Does God not understand this?
If using “we” invalidates a baptism (and some subsequent sacraments), why would using English not invalidate a baptism as well, since the first baptisms were surely not conducted in English?
After the recent scandals in the church regarding the sexual abuse of children, this concern over the use of one word rather than another word which could mean virtually the same thing, seems very silly at best. Insulting at worst.
Bishops: please start getting upset over things that actually matter. We will all be better off.
FRANCIS J. CONSTANTINE
Erie, Pennsylvania
Advertisement
Advertisement
***
Regarding the recent incident in Arizona in which Fr. Andres Arango was censured for having used the word, “we” in his baptismal ceremonies instead of the approved “I” and the subsequent furor over the validity of additional sacraments received after that. If asked, Jesus might glare at the pharisaical diocesan rule enforcers and remark as he did to Peter in Mark 8:22-35, “Get thee behind me, Satan. You are thinking, not as God does, but as human beings do.” He might accuse them of putting stumbling blocks before [those] who believe in him (Matthew 18: 6-16).
On the other hand, he could stoop and write in the dust before them, (John 8: 6) allowing them the opportunity to ponder times when they themselves might have changed a word or two or left out a part of the script while presiding at a liturgy. Or he might suggest they recall a story such as the one about the apostles eating the heads of wheat on the Sabbath (Matthew 12: 1-8) or the one in which they are caught not washing their hands appropriately before eating (Mark 7:1-14).
Ultimately, what it all boils down to is the true nature of Arango’s sacred endeavor. His intention was obviously valid. Why make such a big deal out of it? Is there no one to defend him?
MARY DEAN LESHER
Grand Junction, Colorado
***
Scenario: A person goes to confession and confesses a mortal sin. The priest giving absolution is the recipient of an invalid baptism. The person receiving absolution is deceased so cannot re-confess. Did the person go to heaven, and if not, what happened to his soul?
I am so very upset by the Vatican’s judgement on invalid baptisms. Does the pope realize the chaos this is causing — and over a couple of pronouns? I would think Jesus is appalled by the sheer stupidity of this decision. What happened to the practice of applying the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law? To throw the whole world into such confusion, uncertainty and doubt is unconscionable.
I do understand the distinction between the “we” and “I” controversy, but I think God/Jesus would not want all this upheaval over it. Doesn’t the Vatican have anything of more merit to take care of? They are on this debacle with such immediacy. Why wasn’t the problem of child abuse moved on with such alacrity? Sometimes I wonder if anyone in the Vatican has any common sense at all.
BRENDA ROBINSON
St. Paul, Minnesota
We cannot publish everything. We will do our best to represent the full range of letters received. Here are the rules:
We can’t guarantee publication of all letters, but you can be assured that your submission will receive careful consideration.
Published letters may be edited for length and style.
Letters containing misinformation or misleading content without correct sourcing will not be published.
Letters to the editor are published online each Friday.
In the COVID-19 era, some pastors have found creative ways to stretch a dollar. One method is to keep churches just warm enough for the congregants, without running the heat all day during the winter.
“Financially, you don’t want to cut corners on the necessities, but you find ways to pinch a penny,” said Carmelite Fr. Nicholas Blackwell, parochial vicar at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Middletown, New York.
Blackwell told NCR that his parish, which operates a main church and two mission sites in the Hudson Valley’s rural and mountain regions, is “still kind of surviving, collection to collection” two years after the novel coronavirus pandemic swept through the world.
But highlighting the uneven economic impacts that COVID-19 has had across society, Catholic parishes elsewhere are faring relatively well. Fr. Satish Joseph, pastor of three parishes in Dayton, Ohio, said his churches never had to apply for the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program loans that helped keep other church institutions and nonprofits afloat during the pandemic’s early weeks in 2020.
“Even if they weren’t coming to church in person, a lot of our people moved to the online giving platform. Some actually made large contributions, knowing that COVID had really impacted the parish,” said Joseph, who told NCR that two of his parishes also had savings to sustain them for up to eight months.
Those pastors’ experiences align with what church financial and management experts have observed since mid-March 2020, when the pandemic prompted Catholic bishops across the country to suspend public services.
With people not attending Mass in person for months, weekly collections cratered. A shift to online giving helped make up some of the losses, but officials said the financial impact has most likely compromised the long-term sustainability of parishes that were already struggling before the pandemic.
“It’s been an uphill battle, and it will continue to be an uphill battle for a lot of these poor parishes,” said Joe Boland, vice president of mission for Catholic Extension, an organization that provides funding and resources for economically vulnerable and mission dioceses across the United States.
During these challenging economic times for the church, many Catholics across the country have increased their giving. But experts say that model is not sustainable, especially when Mass attendance is still, at their estimate, about 70% of what it was in early 2020.
“Even with things returning to a new normal there are still the deficits from 2020-21 that will likely take time to overcome,” said Mark Gray, a senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. Gray told NCR that the pandemic’s impact on the Catholic Church in the United States is a “complex picture.”
“Every diocese, parish, school and other Catholic institution is unique and there is no national clearinghouse of data that could give us a clear portrait,” Gray said.
The current snapshot of the American church’s financial standing — based on anecdotal data, various news reports and surveys — shows a mixed bag. Over the last two years, several dioceses have closed Catholic schools. And at least four dioceses — Camden, New Jersey, Norwich, Connecticut, Rockville Centre, New York, and New Orleans — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid the pandemic and clergy sex abuse survivors’ lawsuits.
“If bishops must cut costs, let’s hope they don’t touch programs that protect children and heal victims. These are essential services,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a website that tracks bishops’ handling of clergy sex abuse cases.
Doyle told NCR that preventing child abuse and paying reparations to clergy sex abuse survivors “isn’t optional.”
“Better to sell a building or two than default on these sacred obligations,” Doyle said.
Meanwhile, dioceses like Providence, Rhode Island, reported closing out the 2021 fiscal year “on very sound financial footing,” in large part due to a bullish stock market that boosted the value of combined diocesan investments.
In March 2020, the Diocese of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, implemented online giving in all its parishes. Sheila Murray, the diocesan chief financial officer, and Jennifer Miele, the diocesan spokeswoman, told NCR in an email that the diocese asked each parish to create and mail a state-of-the-parish report that would include detailed information about parish missions and ministries, financial information, capital improvement and COVID-19’s impact. The diocese offered to assist parishes that could not produce the report themselves.
“The Diocese of Greensburg, its parishes and faithful volunteers continued to serve the community during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Miele and Murray wrote. They said the offertory decreased by 5% in 2020 but increased by 2% in 2021 and is on pace to increase by 3% in 2022.
Advertisement
Advertisement
A Villanova University study in November 2020 estimated a 24% decline in the offertory for the 2021 financial year, after surveying 169 parishes in three dioceses.
Matt Manion, director of the Center for Church Management at Villanova, told NCR that his own research since then indicates that because Mass attendance across the board is still down by an estimated 30% to 40%, fewer people are financially supporting the church and its institutions.
“But the interesting phenomenon is that in a number of places, the overall collection is not down because the bigger donors are giving more,” said Manion, who attributed that trend in part to strong stock market gains during the last couple of years. However, he warned that the church cannot indefinitely rely on larger contributions from fewer people.
“Generally speaking, those who are giving more are older, and when they pass on, they’re being replaced by fewer younger givers who are giving less,” Manion said.
“But the interesting phenomenon is that in a number of places, the overall collection is not down because the bigger donors are giving more.”
—Matt Manion
Patrick Markey, the managing partner of Leadership Roundtable, a group that advises church authorities on management issues, also told NCR that many Catholics, even if they were concerned about the economy and worried about their own jobs, “stepped up” over the last couple of years.
“When they weren’t going to Mass, they were still giving,” said Markey, who from his own informal surveys of diocesan officials said that most of them report Mass attendance being anywhere from 60% to 70% of pre-pandemic levels.
Sally Vance-Trembath, a theologian at Santa Clara University, told NCR that the pandemic highlighted the failure of Catholic parishes across the country to “professionalize” their operations over the last 50 years. She suggested that parishes with full-time professional lay staff who work in collaboration with pastors were better positioned to respond to the financial and ministerial challenges posed by COVID-19.
Vance-Trembath, a former vice president of Voice of the Faithful, a reform group formed after the 2002 reporting on clergy abuse in the Boston Archdiocese, said financial transparency is still not a strength across the board in many Catholic parishes and dioceses, where the level of detail in financial reports vary by location.
“We want to know where our money goes and if it is well spent,” she said.
In Wilton, Connecticut, Fr. Reginald Norman, pastor of Our Lady of Fatima Church, told NCR that his parishioners have been “slowly” coming back to church. But unlike before the pandemic, Norman said he has no idea what Mass attendance will look like week to week.
“I don’t think any of the churches have fully recovered because people still haven’t returned in the numbers that they were before the pandemic,” said Norman, who estimated that his offertory fell by 90% in one week when the pandemic hit. He said online giving now constitutes about 40% of his weekly collection, which he said is still down about 20% to 30%.
“I don’t think any of the churches have fully recovered because people still haven’t returned in the numbers that they were before the pandemic.”
—Fr. Reginald Norman
“What saves you is that online giving,” said Norman, who added that “every once in a while, you get an occasional big check in the mail that you normally wouldn’t have gotten.” He expects at least another year of financial volatility before the parish finances stabilize.
“Until then, it’s a guessing game,” he said.
Norman’s church is still in relatively good financial shape compared to other parishes, especially those along the U.S.-Mexican border, in Native American reservations and in Alaskan villages, said Boland of Catholic Extension.
“It’s our mission to make sure that dioceses and parishes don’t have to operate on a day-to-day basis, but unfortunately, there are many that are a long ways away from self-sustainability,” said Boland, who noted that about 250 parishes across the United States have responded to Catholic Extension’s “Catholic Kinship Initiative” to provide aid to struggling parishes and dioceses.
However, even with financial assistance, experts fear that more than two years of pandemic-related financial headwinds have weakened many struggling parishes to the point that they are at increased risk of being closed or consolidated with other parishes. That trend predates COVID-19, but Manion said the pandemic most likely “accelerated” the trajectory for some parishes by several years.
“I can’t see a future where the next couple of years don’t involve some serious adjustments to the number and location of churches in the United States,” Manion said. “There will be some very hard decisions to be made in the years ahead.”
As the second anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic approaches, I recall (with the aid of Google Calendar) that my last work trip before the lockdown was in January 2020 to cover the lead-up to the Democratic presidential primary in Iowa. I interviewed Marianne Williamson the night before she dropped out of the race, and I won’t soon forget the treacherous drive home to Chicago in a blizzard.
My last pre-coronavirus flight was two months earlier, to Baltimore for the U.S. bishops’ annual fall meeting as they were debating whether abortion was a “preeminent” issue or not. So it’s been awhile since I’ve been on a plane, and it was with some trepidation that last week I finally did make my first flight since the beginning of the pandemic for a talk in Connecticut.
I’m glad I did.
The event was almost as rare as my flight: a panel discussion about women’s ordination at a Catholic institution. Of course, nearly all discussion of the topic has been halted in official Catholic circles after Pope John Paul II declared in 1994 that “the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the church’s faithful.”
Advertisement
Advertisement
But now we are in the process of a churchwide consultative process as part of the synod on synodality. Although Pope Francis has so far reaffirmed the ban on women’s ordination, he also has said that no topic is off the table as part of the synodal process.
So kudos to Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, whose Center for Catholic Studies invited the head of the Women’s Ordination Conference, Kate McElwee, and me, as executive editor of NCR, for a conversation about “Women’s Ordination and the Synodal Church.”
McElwee (who is the spouse of NCR news editor Joshua McElwee) said she is optimistic about the synodal process and hopes for “courageous conversations” to happen through it.
“It’s not often that women’s ordination advocates get invited to the table,” she said at the presentation, adding that the synod could be a model for “engaging the prophetic voices that often get left out.”
The Women’s Ordination Conference has been holding monthly listening sessions and has encouraged others to submit reports from parish or diocesan listening sessions to the conference to increase transparency around the process in which diocesan officials summarize Catholics’ input for the next level of the synod: the meeting of bishops and others in Rome in October 2023.
That materials from Women’s Ordination Conference are part of the synod’s official web page, is to McElwee, “an enormous breakthrough that we see as a signal that women’s ordination is part of the conversation.”
Moderator Chelsea King, assistant professor of Catholic Studies at Sacred Heart, asked if the synodal process might result in women having a prominent place in church leadership and decision-making.
Both McElwee and I are realistic, doubting that immediate post-synod change is likely, though we both also allow for the movement of the Holy Spirit and hope the synod could be the beginning of a longer-term way of being church.
At the very least, we both agreed the process signals the openness to talk about issues such as women’s ordination that have previously been off the table.
“I do believe in the power of this process and in the Holy Spirit,” McElwee said. “With God all things are possible.”
That evening’s event was itself evidence of such openness. It was hosted by a university founded in the midst of the Second Vatican Council, which now describes itself as the “most forward-looking Catholic university in the country.” Under the leadership of President John Petillo, Sacred Heart is also one of the fastest growing. Not unlike NCR, the university’s independence from religious orders and the diocese give it a certain freedom to discuss controversial topics (although the diocese does own the land).
The talk was also the inaugural lecture newly endowed by the late Edward and Jacqueline Musante. In introducing the talk, daughter Kathleen Musante said the topic was “close to our mother’s heart. We believe that she felt herself to have been called to the priesthood.”
It was organized by the university’s Center for Catholic Studies, headed by professor Michelle Loris, whose history with the college reaches back to its early years when she was an undergrad. She has a reputation as “a bit of a rebel” who is not afraid to ask tough questions, especially about social justice.
Loris helped arrange and escorted me to a couple classes, where I spoke with and met students who impressed me with their own openness and curiosity — especially about this publication for progressive Catholics and its new TikTok account!
In a class on “Catholics and U.S. Politics since World War II,” students were most interested in greater liberalization on issues related to women and LGBTQ folks in the church.
Will the synod — with the possibility that one woman may have a vote in a process where we finally are able to talk about an issue on which too many have been silenced for decades — be enough for these young Catholics?
I don’t know. But at least we’re moving in the right direction.
Editor’s Note: In this series, Elizabeth Varga will explore how fasting from meat impacts our relationships with self, others, the rest of creation and God. Her reflections and recipes will be posted on the Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent 2022. To receive this series via email, sign up for EarthBeat Reflections.
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:25).
Do you find yourself worrying about food?
Do you find yourself worrying about your body?
Have you ever been food insecure?
Do you feel like you know how to feed your body well?
Is cooking stressful?
Do you have access to fresh produce and a variety of food options?
Do you resort to certain food because it is easier?
What is your experience of fasting?
How do you approach fasting? (With dread? With joy? With determination?)
If needed, how can you work to change your attitude toward fasting?
Do you see food choices and fasting as ways to unite yourself with God?
Advertisement
Advertisement
These protein bowls are made up of a bed of kale, some butternut squash, cooked buckwheat (or grain of your choice), marinated tofu and a delicious miso sauce. Prep ahead of time for a 5-minute assembly.
Ingredients
Miso Mustard Dressing
Instructions
Find recipe notes, substitutions, and other nutritional information on atelizabethstable.com.
By Robin Gomes
“I am not a diplomat. I came here with the logic of the Gospel. That’s what Jesus would do. He was always on the side of the people who were suffering. The Holy Father also uses this logic of the Gospel.”
This is what the Pope’s official Almoner or almsgiver, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski told reporters on Thursday in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where he is expressing the closeness of Pope Francis for the suffering people.
The 58-year-old cardinal who heads the Office of Papal Charities, the Holy See’s department charged with exercising charity to the poor in the name of the Pope, said it was important to be present in the “tormented nation” stressing “presence is the first name of love”. Besides providing moral support and sharing our faith with the people he said, “we also carry the hope of getting out of this terrible situation”.
There is very concrete help for Ukraine that comes through diplomatic channels but also locally. Meanwhile, the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia met in Turkey on Thursday. On being asked whether it is possible to talk about negotiations while hospitals are being bombed, Cardinal Krajewski said he was not a diplomat but was there with the “logic of love” just as Jesus would have done.
He spoke about “the three most sophisticated weapons in the world: prayer, fasting and almsgiving”. “Alms means something that hurts me, that I suffer because I have to share myself with others – and this we do by now, even in Europe we pay higher bills precisely because of this conflict that exists.” Referring to the day’s Gospel, he said, “whoever knocks will finally find the door open, whoever prays will receive, but we must be constant.”
The other potent weapon is fasting by which “I invite God right into myself, I desire His presence, through fasting I want to remove from me everything that does not belong to Him to make room for Him.”
There is also the weapon of faith that “can move mountains, let alone stupid wars”. He said faith is also the strength of Ukrainians, who with love for their country and families manage to resist and save their homeland. It could also be frightening for those who are attacking Ukraine.
The 58-year-old cardinal said he was leaving Lviv and plans to go as far as possible to the east. He thanked the journalists for being there saying they are doing much for Ukraine.
With the world in turmoil following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it is worth noting just how singularly unfitted the current Western elite is for coping with the current disaster in Eastern Europe, precisely because the visceral issues at stake – nationality, patriotism, ethnic identity, borders, religion – are issues that the “globally-minded” political functionary refuses to take seriously on their own terms.
We can set aside the case made by various scholars and foreign policy experts, who have been arguing for years that the imperatives of globalism and NATO expansion has paved the way for this crisis of Russo-American relations. What is positively surreal is to find an American political class – which at home incessantly denounces love of homeland and national identity as small-minded, if not racist – now pretending to understand and empathize with the sentiments of Ukrainian citizens taking up arms to defend their territory. Since when have neoliberals or neoconservatives commended an old-fashioned devotion to one’s homeland?
A couple years ago First Things editor R.R. Reno presciently took it upon himself to explain the state of the West in Return of the Strong Gods. As Reno observes, ever since World War II Americans and Europeans have been dominated by a “postwar consensus” that insists upon fighting the last war, against Hitler and the Nazis, instead of recognizing the new threat to mankind posed by atomizing, secular liberalism, radical egalitarianism, and dehumanizing technologies.
For its partisans,
the postwar consensus is more than political. Its powerful cultural influence is evident in the emphasis on openness and weakening in highly theorized literary criticism and cultural studies in universities, often under the flag of critique and deconstruction, and in popular calls for diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusivity, all of which entail a weakening of boundaries and opening of borders.
For the benefit of readers unfamiliar with postwar intellectual history, Reno relates the ascendance of figures such as Karl Popper – author of The Open Society and Its Enemies – as well as the neo-Marxists of the Frankfort School, and libertarian Friedrich Hayek. All of these thinkers were deeply suspicious, even hostile toward transcendent aspirations, for they saw such aspirations as potentially fascist. Where religion, patriotism, tradition, and other passionate devotions were once regarded as sources of human enrichment, they are now seen first and foremost as threats to the rights of the individual.
Thus arose the ideal of “negative piety, which gives priority to critique and self-questioning over conviction.” This negative piety is directed against the Church no less than against the nation, Reno explains, for it “guards against resurgent authoritarianism by renouncing metaphysical claims. After all, someone who defines an end or purpose for man becomes a black-and-white thinker, a potential fascist.”
Yet in practice, he argues, “a too rigorously anti-utopian outlook is itself dangerously utopian,” and leads to sociopolitical dysfunction:
The nations of Europe are experiencing a profound demographic change. Since 1945, people from non-European lands have immigrated to the West in large numbers. Some have come in accord with government policies put in place decades ago to deal with labor shortages. Others are being settled as a result of emergency measures to accommodate refugees from the war-torn Middle East. Still others arrive illegally […] For more than fifty years, voters in Europe have told their leaders that they don’t like the cultural changes caused by immigration and they don’t want more immigrants. The politicians consistently promise to reduce the inflow. But they never do. In many instances, the leadership class pushes in the opposite direction, toward more immigration, while it celebrates “diversity” as redemptive.
So, well before the Russian invasion, many European countries were in the process of getting wiped off the map, or transformed beyond recognition, all in the name of diversity, and with not only the acquiescence but often the active collaboration of Western leaders. In Reno’s words, such leaders exhibit a “strange inability” to “affirm their loyalty to the people they lead.” It is hardly clear why anyone should count on a Bush, a Biden, or a Macron to prudently and responsibly provide for Ukrainian sovereignty and national identity when such leaders actively undermine that of their own nations.
Going deeper, Reno argues that the patriotic sentiment is best understood as rooted in but not limited to nature. “Human beings are by nature social animals,” he points out, and so,
My parents, grandparents, and ancestors before them are in a real sense far more necessary to me than my generic humanity, so much so that I’m far more likely to sacrifice my life for my blood relations than for someone outside the family circle, however equal he may be in the eyes of God. This is at once an obvious point about human nature — blood is thicker than water, as folk wisdom puts it — and something remarkable[…] It’s not simply a metaphor to speak of our motherlands and fatherlands. Here as well the power of the “we” transcends biology. Nations unite clans and tribes, villages and provinces. They can incorporate newcomers by “naturalizing” them, a process of civic adoption, as it were.
Here proponents of Popper’s Open Society might object that such attachments can turn into idols for fanatics. The Christian response is that anything – not only ancestors, or nation, but also “generic humanity,” as well as a heart-rending image served up by a manipulative mass-media, or an abstract principle like freedom or equality – can become an idol when made the object of disordered love. Even so, abuse does not invalidate proper use. As C.S. Lewis put it, it is the true patriot who is best equipped to resist jingoism, precisely because the true patriot actually knows what patriotism is.
Certainly there are limits to Reno’s analysis. For instance, he is clearly reluctant to admit that in America, ground zero for the “disenchantment” with homeland is the American South, which has for decades been subjected by the liberal establishment to a one-sided and simplistic demonization campaign. And while Reno is entirely correct to note that “the open society alone fails to meet our basic human need for a home,” it is still not entirely clear how a continental span populated by over 300 million people, of increasingly divergent heritages, can serve as a distinct home for anybody. It also seems to me that he goes too far out of his way to assure his readers that he is not himself a fascist. It is as if a pro-life activist were to feel obliged to say I am not a misogynist every five minutes. If one frank disclaimer isn’t enough, no number of disclaimers will be.
Yet to dwell too long upon such limitations would be not only ungracious but misleading. In the remote chance that some kind of modus vivendi is ever achieved among the parties in Ukraine – or, for that matter, in these United States – it will be because voices like Reno’s move from the margins to the center. The only way for the West to find a third way, an alternative to catastrophe or dystopia, is through an honest and open discussion of existential questions.
How such a discussion could ever happen in the public square is not clear. For some time now the liberal establishment has taken for granted its right to define who “we” are – and the establishmentarians show no signs of opening up to negotiation on the matter.
Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West
by R.R. Reno
Regnery/Gateway Editions, 2019
Hardcover, 182 pages
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Many people search “Catholic Mass near me” when traveling and searching for Mass times at the nearest Catholic Church. CatholicMasses.org allows you to search for Catholic Churches and to find Mass times near you!
This feature helps while traveling. Along with Mass times, Mass schedules and Catholic news you can also watch daily Catholic Mass streamed online.
Try our free resource to “find Roman Catholic Churches near me” today!
St Alphonsus Liguori praised the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the best way to Honor God. Join Catholics as we celebrate daily Mass from various parishes around the world, online and offline. Please visit daily to pray with us as we recite the Rosary, offer daily scripture, today’s Catholic mass readings, devotions and Catholic focused news. We bring you daily Catholic Mass from various USCCB parishes around country and around the world along with Catholic news today.