Washington D.C., Apr 22, 2016 / 04:41 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Religious freedom leaders applauded the U.S. State Department’s recent re-designation of nine countries – and the inclusion of one more – as the worst situations for religious freedom, but urged the agency to do more. After the State Department on April 14 added Tajikistan to its “Country of Particular Concern” list, keeping the nine countries already on the list, the chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said it “welcomes the designation of these ten countries.” The countries already on the list were Burma, China, North Korea, Eritrea, Uzbekistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, and Sudan. A “country of particular concern” is a term used by the State Department to denote the countries that present the worst situations for religious freedom in the world. Either these governments “engage in” or “tolerate” “severe violations of religious freedom that are systematic, ongoing and egregious,” USCIRF explained in its 2015 annual report. Tajikistan, a Muslim-majority country in central Asia, was recommended to the list by USCIRF because its government has cracked down on minority religions in the country. The commission’s 2015 annual report explained that “numerous laws that severely restrict religious freedom have been implemented in the country since 2009.” Restrictive actions include religions having to register with the government and ask permission for church meetings, heavy penalties for unregistered religious activity, and lack of due process for those tried under the country’s anti-extremism law. Additionally, the State Department’s own International Religious Freedom report stated that “Tajikistan is the only country in the world in which the law prohibits persons under the age of 18 from participating in public religious activities.” The USCIRF recommended in addition that Vietnam, Iraq, Central African Republic, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, and Syria be designated as CPCs, though the State Department declined to include them on the list. According to the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the administration can legally pursue a number of actions, such as economic sanctions, against CPCs to hold them accountable and pressure them to honor freedom of religion. The State Department also announced it would no longer be sanctioning four of the nations currently on the CPC list: Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The decision was made “following determinations that the important national interest of the United States required exercising this waiver authority,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in an April 15 press briefing. USCIRF responded by pressing the agency to take the actions against these offending countries as it is authorized to do. “The CPC designation brings with it a unique toolbox of policy options to effectively promote religious freedom, and USCIRF encourages the Administration to use these tools,” Dr. Robert George, the commission's chairman, responded April 20. Read more

Washington D.C., Apr 22, 2016 / 01:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Students at Georgetown University said that while a speaking invitation to the head of Planned Parenthood could have been an opportunity for honest dialogue, it was instead nothing more than a ... Read more

Washington D.C., Apr 21, 2016 / 08:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A special House investigative panel is alleging that a tissue procurement company and the abortion clinics it partnered with may have illegally profited from the sale of fetal tissue from abort... Read more

Washington D.C., Apr 21, 2016 / 04:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- No matter how deeply someone may be entrenched in the culture of death, they are never beyond the loving reach of Christ, said former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson to a group ... Read more

Denver, Colo., Apr 21, 2016 / 10:22 am (CNA).- Father Raymond Thomas Gawronski, S.J., professor of dogmatics at St. Patrick's Seminary and University in Menlo Park, California, died in the closing hours of April 14 of complications from cancer, at the age of 65. He was remembered for his love of Christ, formation of seminarians, and witness to the beauty of the priesthood. “Certainly he was an excellent classroom lecturer, but it was his real interest in the (seminarians), and their spiritual development, and his desire that they have a real relationship with Christ – that was his constant theme,” said Fr. Gladstone Stevens, the rector and president of St. Patrick's Seminary. “He was such a great witness to what priests could be.” Fr. Stevens told CNA that while Fr. Gawronski had not been at the seminary for very long, “when you think about the disproportion between the time he was here and his impact, it's just incredible: he was such a presence here, in such a positive way.” Gawronski was born in Brooklyn Sept. 9, 1950, to Stanley and Blanche Gawronski, a family of Polish heritage. Growing up in New York and New Jersey, he graduated with a degree in philosophy from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. In 1971. He later earned a master’s degree in world religions from Syracuse University, where he studied under Dr. Huston Smith. In 1977 Gawronski joined the Society of Jesus. His two years of novitiate were served in Wernersville, Pa., and he also served the poor in Washington, D.C., at St. Aloysius parish. He then earned an M.A. in Asian Studies at the St. Michael's Institute of Gonzaga University, and an M.Div. from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. Fr. Gawronski was ordained a priest of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus in 1986. He went on for further studies in Rome, earning a licentiate in theology at the Pontifical Oriental Institute, and a doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University. He taught theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee. He was for some 10 years spiritual director and a theology professor at St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver, Colo., where he helped to establish the spirituality year, with its Ignatian characteristics: a month of itinerancy and a 30-day retreat following the Spiritual Exercises. Fr. Gawronski spent the last two years of his life serving as a spiritual director and professor at St. Patrick's Seminary. He is the author of Word and Silence: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Spiritual Encounter Between East and West and A Closer Walk with Christ: A Personal Ignatian Retreat. He appeared in an EWTN series and his articles appeared in such publications as Communio, New Oxford Review, and America. Fr. Stevens reflected that he appreciated Fr. Gawronski's insistence that “we have to do a better job bringing together the intellectual and spiritual life” of seminarians, which he shares. “That comes a lot from his work on von Balthasar,” he said. “This recognition that the life of the mind and the life of the spirit cannot be seen as two separate things to be cultivated: and that was certainly apparent when he put together the spiritually program, but that's how he approached everything. In his homilies, his spiritual direction, in his class, he just went back and forth between his life of prayer and his scholarship without skipping a beat, and I admire that so much.” Fr. Gawronski was preceded in death by his parents and by his sister Carol. He is survived by his brother-in-law Paul Sander, his niece Katie Sander, his nephew Peter Sander, and his cousin Donald Ferri. His funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. April 26 at Shrine of St. Anne Catholic Church in Arvada, a Denver suburb. His body will be interred following the Mass, at the Jesuit plot of Mt. Olivet Cemetery. A viewing and vigil will be held the preceding evening at Shrine of St. Anne at 5:30 p.m.   Read more