http://chnonline.org/ Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:51:32 +0000 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://chnonline.org/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://chnonline.org/ The Milwaukee Catholic Herald provides news, video, audio for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. http://chnonline.org/news/nation-world/12304-walkers-100-mile-trek-calls-attention-to-mandate-religious-freedom.html http://chnonline.org/news/nation-world/12304-walkers-100-mile-trek-calls-attention-to-mandate-religious-freedom.html WASHINGTON –– Some people will go to great lengths to protect their religious freedom. For one 21-year-old from Holy Family Church in Middletown, Md., that distance was 100 miles.
    
Jennifer Holcomb said she was shocked to find that many of the people she encountered while on a weeklong walk for religious freedom were uninformed about the rules of the federal government's contraceptive mandate, which was the focus of the second annual Religious Freedom Walk.
    
On June 9, a group of around 50 people ages 8 to 70, including Holcomb, departed on foot from St. Peter Catholic Church in Hancock, Md., to embark on a journey to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. They arrived in the nation's capital June 15.
    
Participants traveled 100 miles to spread awareness and protest against the mandate, issued by the federal Department of Health and Human Services as part of the health care law. It requires most employers, including religious employers, provide coverage of contraceptives, sterilization and some abortion-inducing drugs free of charge, even if the employer is morally opposed to such services.
    
"Last year we did a walk for religious freedom from Hancock to Baltimore, so I thought about it and prayed about it and said let's walk to Washington this year to call attention to an issue that, a year later, people have grown apathetic toward or still don't know about," Father Jack Lombardi, 52, told Catholic News Service in an interview June 16 on the campus of The Catholic University of America.
    
The group planned later attended an early evening Mass at the national shrine on the edge of campus.
    
When it was first issued, the HHS mandate included a narrow exemption applying only to those religious institutions that seek to inculcate their religious values and primarily employ and serve people of their own faith. On Feb. 1, the federal government issued new proposed rules that exempt organizations that are considered nonprofits under specific sections of the Internal Revenue Code. The mandate does not include a conscience clause for employers who object to providing such coverage.
    
The proposed rules for implementing the mandate are to become effective Aug. 1.
    
The walkers paused only a few times a day for meals, prayer and rest. The group spent their nights camping in tents, staying in church halls, homes and, on the final night, the Newman Catholic Student Center at George Washington University.
    
"Every day there were joys and lots of fun and fellowship," said the priest, pastor of St. Peter Church. "We had a few challenges with sickness, injuries, and also with traffic. We were never in any danger, but we had to be careful."
    
An RV followed alongside the walkers for those who needed a break, felt sick or became injured. Paul Tiller Jr., 16, walked every step of the way.
    
"I refused to let myself get on the RV," Tiller said. "I believe in my religion, I believe in my country, and I believe that the two go hand in hand. The government has no right to micromanage our lives."
    
Holcomb said the mandate is particularly concerning to her as a female member of the Catholic Church.
    
"As a 21-year-old Catholic woman, it really disheartens me to see people on the news talking about the issues of health insurance (in regards to) contraception and sterilization, because they claim it's only men who are against this," Holcomb said. "That's totally not true. There are many women who are against this as well, but if they try to stand up for it, then people say they're brainwashed by the men."
    
Melissa Koppers, 15, said that the distance of 100 miles in a week proves the group's dedication to fighting for something that they truly believe in--their religion.
    
"The best part was knowing that we might make a difference in the future," Koppers told CNS.
    
"It feels amazing not only that we walked 100 miles but that we're doing what God asks us to do. We are soldiers for Christ." ]]> Ricardo Torres Tue, 18 Jun 2013 02:11:13 +0000 http://chnonline.org/news/nation-world/12303-obama-nominates-retired-crs-president-as-us-ambassador-to-vatican.html http://chnonline.org/news/nation-world/12303-obama-nominates-retired-crs-president-as-us-ambassador-to-vatican.html WASHINGTON –– President Barack Obama June 14 nominated Ken Hackett, retired president of Catholic Relief Services, to be U.S. ambassador to the Holy See.
    
Obama's announcement about Hackett came late in the day, along with his nominees for ambassador posts in Brazil, Spain, Germany, Denmark and Ethiopia.
    
"It gives me great confidence that such dedicated and capable individuals have agreed to join this administration to serve the American people. I look forward to working with them in the months and years to come," the president said.
    
Hackett retired in December 2011 after 18 years as president of CRS, the U.S. bishops' overseas relief and development agency.
    
As U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, he succeeds Miguel Diaz, who left the post in late 2012. Diaz now is a professor of faith and culture at the University of Dayton, Ohio.
    
Hackett was appointed president of CRS in 1993. During his tenure, he established a division focusing on outreach to dioceses, parishes, Catholic organizations, and colleges and universities, and laypeople were first appointed to the CRS board of directors.
    
Catholic Relief Services now operates in more than 100 countries, with a global staff of nearly 5,000.
    
"Ken's dedication to the poorest and most vulnerable on behalf of the church, and through programs often sponsored by the U.S. government, reflects his ability to engage both sectors in serving those in need in highly complicated environments," said Carolyn Y. Woo, CRS' current president and CEO, said in a statement June 17.
    
Strengthening ties with the Catholic Church, both in the United States and at the Vatican, was one of the themes of Hackett's tenure at the helm of CRS. "Under his leadership, the agency renewed its spiritual core even as it grew into one of the largest nongovernmental aid agencies in the United States with a budget that exceeded $800 million," the agency said in a press release.
    
Diaz said Hackett "brings a wealth of experience and perspective on issues related to global health and humanitarian assistance, as well as service to the poor, an important focus for Pope Francis. I wish him much success as he builds bridges between the United States and the Holy See."
    
Born in West Roxbury, Mass., Hackett joined the Peace Corps shortly after his 1968 graduation from Boston College. Assigned to a Catholic mission in rural Ghana, he worked in an agricultural cooperative and saw "the actual impact of American food aid on the health and well-being of very poor kids in a very isolated part of a West African country," he said recently.
    
After completing his Peace Corps assignment, Hackett joined CRS, the U.S. Catholic relief and development agency, in 1972. He started his career in Sierra Leone, where he managed a nationwide leprosy program and a maternal and child health program.
    
Subsequent positions took him to various posts in Africa and Asia, as well as in CRS' Baltimore headquarters. As regional director for Africa, he managed the agency's response to the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85. He also supervised CRS operations in East Africa during the crisis in Somalia in the 1990s.
    
In February 2012, Hackett and Diaz represented the U.S. government at the consistory led by Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican ceremony. Pope Benedict XVI created 22 new cardinals from 13 countries -- including two from the United States and one from Canada.
    
In May of that year, he received the University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal during commencement ceremonies. The medal has been given annually since 1883 to a Catholic "whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the church and enriched the heritage of humanity."
    
In announcing that honor, Holy Cross Father John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame's university president, said in a statement: "Ken Hackett has responded to a Gospel imperative with his entire career. His direction of the Catholic Church's outreach to the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick and unsheltered of the world has blended administrative acumen with genuine compassion in a unique and exemplary way."
    
Hackett is a former North American president of Caritas Internationalis, the confederation of humanitarian agencies of the Catholic Church, and continues to serve on the board of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum at the Vatican and as an adviser to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
    
Hackett was on the board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the congressionally mandated independent development agency, from 2004 to 2010. He has received numerous honorary degrees.
    
After retiring from CRS, Hackett was named a consultant to the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Global Development. ]]> Ricardo Torres Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:08:23 +0000 http://chnonline.org/news/nation-world/12302-pope-says-false-ideas-of-freedom-spawn-threats-to-human-life.html http://chnonline.org/news/nation-world/12302-pope-says-false-ideas-of-freedom-spawn-threats-to-human-life.html VATICAN CITY –– Ideologies and practices that destroy human life arise from false ideas of freedom without God, Pope Francis told a crowd in St. Peter's Square, including thousands of pro-life activists from around the world.
    
"Whenever we want to assert ourselves, when we become wrapped up in our own selfishness and put ourselves in the place of God, we end up spawning death," the pope said in his homily during the Mass June 16.
    
The Mass was the culmination of a weekend dedicated to "Evangelium Vitae" (the "Gospel of Life"), a pilgrimage organized for the Year of Faith and named after the 1995 encyclical by Blessed John Paul II on the "value and inviolability of human life."
    
"All too often," Pope Francis said, "people do not choose life, they do not accept the 'Gospel of Life' but let themselves be led by ideologies and ways of thinking that block life, that do not respect life, because they are dictated by selfishness, self-interest, profit, power and pleasure, and not by love, by concern for the good of others.
    
"It is the idea that rejecting God, the message of Christ, the Gospel of Life, will somehow lead to freedom, to complete human fulfillment," he said. "As a result, the living God is replaced by fleeting human idols which offer the intoxication of a flash of freedom, but in the end bring new forms of slavery and death."
    
"Let us say 'yes' to love and not selfishness," Pope Francis concluded. "Let us say 'yes' to life and not death. Let us say 'yes' to freedom and not enslavement to the many idols of our time."
    
The pope did not mention any specific threats to life, but in an address at the end of Mass, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, alluded to abortion and euthanasia.
    
"From the very beginning in the womb of a woman, until the very last moment when a person's breath speaks of his or her presence in the world, this life is human, even if it develops into an immense array of conditions of weakness, suffering and demands for help," said the archbishop, whose office organized the weekend pilgrimage.
    
Archbishop Fisichella drew attention to the presence in the square of "witnesses to Evangelium Vitae" from some two dozen countries, activists dedicated to the defense of "children left alone, abandoned women, the chronically ill, those with the most diverse disabilities and handicaps, people who are dying, the marginalized (and) the excluded."
    
After Mass, Pope Francis followed his usual practice of individually greeting a number of disabled persons among the congregation. On a lighter note, the pope also offered a general greeting to hundreds of Harley-Davidson enthusiasts who attended the Mass in their biker vests during a Rome celebration of the motorcycle's 110th anniversary.
    
One of the pilgrims in the crowd, Mary J. McClusky, a special projects director with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat of Pro-life Activities, praised Pope Francis for reminding listeners that forgiveness is available for even the worst sins.
    
"It's what the world needs to hear, the assurance that whatever we do, God will always love us," she said. "That's what's going to break hearts open and allow that love to flow in."
    
McClusky was one of five USCCB staff members who traveled to Rome to help organize special activities for English-language pilgrims June 15, including an academic conference featuring an address by U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, head of a Vatican tribunal, and a holy hour of Eucharistic adoration led by U.S. Archbishop Joseph A. Di Noia, vice president of the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei."
    
In his address, Cardinal Burke warned against the "anti-family agenda of the pervasive mass media" and urged his largely American audience to participate in "family politics."
    
"The culture of death advances in good part because of a lack of attention and information among the public in general," he said.
    
In a panel discussion following the cardinal's talk, philosopher Francis Beckwith of Baylor University laid out some responses to arguments that deny the human being's inherent personhood. Robert Royal, president of the Faith and Reason Institute, spoke of promoting a culture of life in the face of a "dictatorship of relativism."
    
On the evening of June 15, an international group of some 2,500 pilgrims also took part in a prayer vigil, which included readings in various languages from Blessed John Paul's "Evangelium Vitae," and a candlelight procession to St. Peter's Square.

Contributing to this story was Clare Myers at the Vatican. ]]> Ricardo Torres Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:11:51 +0000 http://chnonline.org/news/nation-world/12300-vatican-diplomat-hotel-director-named-to-body-overseeing-vatican-bank.html http://chnonline.org/news/nation-world/12300-vatican-diplomat-hotel-director-named-to-body-overseeing-vatican-bank.html VATICAN CITY –– Pope Francis has approved the appointment of the new interim prelate of the Vatican bank, Msgr. Battista Mario Ricca, a Vatican diplomat who has been director of the guesthouse where the pope is living.
    
Msgr. Ricca was chosen by the commission of cardinals overseeing the Institute for the Works of Religion, the formal name of the Vatican bank. His appointment was approved by Pope Francis and made public by the Vatican June 15.
    
Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, told journalists that the appointment is "temporary and not definitive" because the pope is still in a phase "of reflection" concerning permanent appointments within the Roman Curia.
    
Msgr. Ricca, 57, was born in the northern Italian province of Brescia. Before his new appointment, he was a member of the Vatican's diplomatic service and was head of four Vatican-run guesthouses including the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the guesthouse where Pope Francis resides.
    
Fr. Lombardi said the monsignor "is certainly a person who enjoys the trust of the pope."
    
As prelate, Msgr. Ricca will act as secretary of the cardinals' commission, attend meetings of the bank's board of lay supervisors, and guarantee "spiritual assistance" for the bank's employees and their family members, a Vatican press release said.
    
Fr. Lombardi said the monsignor with act as an "intermediary" between the cardinals' commission and the bank's board of supervisors, and he will be involved with the work and running of the bank.
    
Msgr. Ricca fills a role left vacant since 2010 when the then-prelate, Archbishop Piero Pioppo, was named apostolic nuncio to Cameroon and Equatorial New Guinea.
    
The monsignor will work with the bank's commission of cardinals, which is led by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, and includes: Cardinals Attilio Nicora, former president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See; Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; Domenico Calcagno, current president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See; Telesphore Toppo of Ranchi, India; and Odilo Pedro Scherer of Sao Paulo.
    
The board of supervisors includes Carl A. Anderson, head of the U.S.-based Knights of Columbus, and three other laymen. The lay oversight board is headed by Ernst von Freyberg, the recently named president of the Institute for the Works of Religion, who was appointed by the cardinals' commission in February and approved by Pope Benedict XVI.
    
The Vatican bank has been working to revamp a marred image of secrecy and scandal with greater transparency.

Pope Benedict started implementing changes in 2010 to better monitor all of the Vatican's financial operations and make sure they reflect the latest European Union regulations and other international norms against money-laundering and the financing of terrorism. ]]> Ricardo Torres Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:55:42 +0000 http://chnonline.org/news/nation-world/12299-anti-drug-policies-need-new-comprehensive-approach-says-nuncio.html http://chnonline.org/news/nation-world/12299-anti-drug-policies-need-new-comprehensive-approach-says-nuncio.html ANTIGUA, Guatemala –– Archbishop Francis A. Chullikatt, the Vatican's permanent observer to the United Nations, discussed the Holy See's commitment to formulating a new, comprehensive approach to anti-drug policies in the Americas during a three-day session of the Organization of American States' General Assembly in Antigua.
    
Current policies surrounding drug abuse, addiction and related crimes must be transformed to hold perpetrators responsible and encourage individuals and communities to make better decisions, he said.
    
"The global illicit drug problem has become a multidimensional challenge demanding a comprehensive approach that will assist those victimized and those who victimize," he said in his address during the June 4-6 meeting.
    
Archbishop Chullikatt emphasized the relationship between drug users, their families and the community, explaining that those who abuse drugs often need ample family support to overcome their addictions. Family support also can help individuals avoid drug addiction altogether.
    
"Studies on drug abuse consistently reinforce the conclusion that children with nurturing family environments inherit the skills and values needed to avoid the scourges of illicit drugs," he said. The prevention of drug abuse and addiction requires the cooperation of not only the drug users' families, he added, but also the larger community.
    
"When illicit drug abuse destroys the social fabric of families, it inevitably leads to the destabilization of broader society."
    
The archbishop said drug addicts must turn their lives around to become positive examples for younger generations and demonstrate how to overcome obstacles and protect human dignity.
    
Addressing the international impact of the drug problem, Archbishop Chullikatt stressed the recognition of the value of every human being.
    
"This implies that, in discussing the drug trade and the broader agenda of the Organization of American States, we always place protection of human life at the center of our efforts," he said.
    
The Holy See strives to maintain and support human dignity and the natural moral order rather than "creating new categories of persons."
    
In the words of Pope Francis, Archbishop Chullikatt said: "Dialogue between us should help to build bridges connecting all people, in such a way that everyone can see in the other not an enemy, not a rival, but a brother or sister to be welcomed and embraced!"
    
These words must be put into action so that the OAS and its member-nations can become an instrument of "fraternity between nations and peoples," he said. ]]> Ricardo Torres Fri, 14 Jun 2013 23:07:54 +0000