Los Angeles, Calif., Feb 4, 2016 / 04:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- For months, Erwin Mena donned vestments, called himself “Padre,” and convinced Southern California Catholics that he was a priest, police say. He was good at it, too, reportedly. He attended seminary in El Salvador for a time years ago before dropping out, so he was able to convincingly officiate Masses, funerals, and even at least one wedding. He had a likeable personality and said all the right things.   On Tuesday, he was arrested by Los Angeles police for allegedly impersonating a Roman Catholic priest and on suspicion of grand theft. Mena allegedly conned parishioners into buying thousands of dollars’ worth of fake tickets to see Pope Francis in the fall, and he would sell religious CDs and books only to line his own pockets with the profit. He has been charged with 22 felonies and 8 misdemeanors, according to a criminal complaint filed by the L.A. County district attorney’s office. For 5 or 6 months beginning in January of last year, Mena, who would also go by Menacastro, showed up at St. Ignatius of Loyola parish in Highland Park, claiming to be a visiting priest covering for the pastor, who was on vacation, according to police reports. When priests assist at parishes for any significant length of time (more than one Mass), they have to file the appropriate paperwork to prove their priestly credentials. LAPD Det. Gary Guevara told CNA that Mena’s paperwork would sporadically trickle in, enough to raise suspicions but not completely sound the alarm for the parish secretary. “Some of it was coming in, he would say everything’s in San Bernardino, so it was trickling in,” Guevara said. During his time in the archdiocese, Mena would also travel around from parish to parish, selling $25 videos and fundraising for a project he said he was working on - producing CDs about Pope Francis, the Los Angeles Times reports. He also reportedly asked for anywhere from $500-$1,000 from parishioners for a package deal trip to see Pope Francis during his U.S. visit. The cost supposedly included lodging at convents and airfare, and more than two dozen people signed up. Michelle Rodriguez, who heard about the trip from a friend who would host Mena for dinner, originally thought it sounded like a great deal and gave him more than $900 in cash. But when she pressed Mena for details about the trip, he would dodge the specifics, assuring her that she just needed to be patient. Now, she is among those who have filed criminal complaints against Mena. “He used us, he stole from us, and that's it,” Rodriguez told the Los Angeles Times. When a priest approached Mena about his production project, he had an explanation – he claimed he was a Paulist priest. It’s clear he had done his homework, Guevara said, because Paulists specifically focus on evangelization through media. “Everything he said always made sense,” Guevara said, “So it was kind of like the perfect storm in that nobody wanted to pull the trigger, as far as confronting him.” He always had enough of an explanation to be plausible, and people generally liked him.   “There were people who thought he was a great priest, that they really liked him, he looked like a priest, he walked like a priest, he could talk like a priest all the way to the very end,” Guevara added. But Mena couldn’t fool what Guevara called the “professional Church ladies.” It was a feast day with particular Mass parts, and Mena just wasn’t getting it right, he said. “It was a complicated Mass that some of the real professional church ladies have memorized, and literally the jig was all up,” Guevara said. “He was screwing up and everybody was like, what’s going on here?” Within hours, phone calls were being made, and the archdiocese was officially alerted of Mena’s suspicious activities. Soon after, the archdiocese reported him to the police.   “They were collecting information and they were very transparent about it,” Guevara said. “They contacted the police department really quickly and provided us with everything we needed, so it was a really good partnership with us and them.” It seems that Mena may even be a repeat offender – Guevara said that according to Archdiocesan documents, there were issues with Mena as far back as the 1990s. His name has been on a list of unauthorized priests and deacons since 2008, when the record was started. The current investigation is only focusing on his recent alleged transgressions. It’s important to note that Mena was arrested because he was allegedly masquerading as a Roman Catholic priest, Guevara said. A defrocked or retired priest could theoretically start up their own “storefront church” with a ministry certificate from the internet, but he said Mena’s offense is specifically that he pretended to be a Roman Catholic, sacrament-distributing priest. The archdiocese has already reimbursed some of Mena’s alleged victims, and more could be reimbursed at the conclusion of the case. Because of the nature of the ongoing criminal investigation, the archdiocese could not provide much further comment, but asked that anyone with additional information come forward. “We are grateful to the Los Angeles Police Department for working to ensure that Erwin Mena was brought to justice. Our prayers go out to all the victims of his scam. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles is committed to providing pastoral care and sacramental support to the victims and others impacted by this situation,” the Archdiocese said in a statement. “If anyone in the Archdiocese has any questions regarding the validity of any priest’s credentials, or the credentials of any employee of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, please call the Archdiocese Catholic Center, at (213) 637-7000.”   Read more

Washington D.C., Feb 4, 2016 / 12:59 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In their keynote address at the National Prayer Breakfast, the couple behind the History Channel’s ‘The Bible’ miniseries called for efforts to unite people of different faiths... Read more

Los Angeles, Calif., Feb 4, 2016 / 06:22 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Efforts to combat social injustice cannot forget that the right to life is foundational, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles said at a Hispanic pro-life gathering last week. Pro-life qu... Read more

Chicago, Ill., Feb 4, 2016 / 03:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Chicago area didn’t get the piles of snow that much of the rest of the country did this week, to the disappointment of students and staff at Holy Family Academy. “We’ve carved out a little cross-country trail for when we get snow, so the kids from first grade on up go cross-country skiing for gym,” Deb Atkins, director of school development, told CNA. “So, we were cheering for snow, but it’s not happening,” she said. Just rain and cold temperatures. Normally, the students at Holy Family Academy spend a lot of time outside. Located just outside of Chicago in Iverness, Ill., the school is situated on 20 acres of land that has recently been converted into an “outdoor classroom.” With the help of the Lincoln, Neb.-based “Nature Explore”, a collaboration of the Arbor Day Foundation and Dimensions Educational Research Foundation, Holy Family Academy became the first school in the Chicago area to have a certified outdoor classroom, which is incorporated into the daily life and learning of the students. A retention area that used to flood all the time has been allowed to grow wild and return to its native prairie state. There’s a playground, athletic fields, a hill with a rope attached for climbing and rappelling, and a supply of sleds for snowy days. Almost every class incorporates the outdoor space in some way, Atkins said. “It really is hard to say where the outdoor classroom stops and the other learning starts,” she said. Right now, some students are designing a squirrel-proof bird feeder, after the squirrels outsmarted what was a supposedly squirrel-proof bird feeder from the store. There are several different types of gardens, including a rain garden – designed by third graders – with specifically selected native plants that filter out some of the pollutants that can seep into groundwater. Atkins said she’s noticed how much more comfortable the students are out in nature since they’ve been using the outdoor classroom. “It is getting back to nature, appreciating nature,” she said. “When we first started, we had the little girlies who, if they saw a spider they would scream. Now they come up to me with a grasshopper in hand and say ‘Look what we found!’” The care and appreciation the kids are learning for creation carries over into everything they do, Atkins said. For example, every year the students participate in a “Know Hunger” campaign, where they research hunger in their area and try to come up with some practical solutions. The students were especially appalled by the amount of food waste in fields, grocery stores, and even at home, Atkins said, so the school decided to donate extra lunch food to a nearby shelter for elderly people. “We’re caring for God’s creation, but we’re caring for each other at the same time,” Atkins said. This upcoming Lent, the students are also going to be participating in “Waste-free Wednesdays,” during which they will learn more about recycling and alternatives to wasting food. “It’s one of those things where if you start them early, it really becomes a habit,” Atkins said. The outdoor space has also been a great way thing for students physically – it promotes exercise and even better attention spans in the classroom, Atkins said. “I have a son who has ADHD, and the worst thing to happen to that guy is that he had to stay in for recess, because he could control himself better if he had physical activity,” she said. “So we don’t have that kind of consequence, that you need to stay in from recess, because it wasn’t working.” “It really promotes independence and exploring, and physical activity,” she said. “These kids are lifting logs and poles, running around, and we have a hill with a rope attached … it really does get the kids moving.” Much of the materials for the outdoor space have been made possible through donations, either monetary or plant-like in nature, Atkins said. Three alums of the K-8 school even came back to donate their Eagle Scout projects as part of the outdoor space. Even before the established outdoor classroom, Holy Family Academy would send its middle school students on overnight outdoor education trips, Atkins said, so the idea of outdoor education and care for creation has always been important to them. They were even more thrilled when they found out Pope Francis was on board, with the publication of his environmental encyclical, Laudato si'. “We’ve had an emphasis on this for a while,” Atkins said, “and we just love that the Pope is promoting it, because that’s what we want to do.” Read more

Washington D.C., Feb 4, 2016 / 12:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The future of religious freedom in the United States will one day be in the care of today’s college students, so one Catholic college is working to equip them for that struggle. Wyoming Catholic College is trying to form a “community of people who care about what’s going on in the world,” Dr. Kevin Roberts, the college's president, explained to CNA in an interview. They do this through “informal circles of conversation” among faculty, staff, and students on specific current-day threats to religious freedom such as the HHS contraception mandate and anti-discrimination statues, he explained. Roberts was speaking at a Jan. 21 Heritage Foundation panel on “Religious Liberty and the Future.” He addressed the topic from the vantage point of a college president who is forming students – future leaders – to deal with threats to religious freedom. “We would much rather be focused on the formation of human persons,” he admitted. “It would delight us to no end not to have to worry about religious liberty beyond it being an academic topic.” The reality, he acknowledged, is different. The college must not only must teach students about their civic heritage of religious freedom, but must “give them some advice, some practical tools for being involved in that fight.” The school is a co-plaintiff with the Diocese of Cheyenne against the HHS mandate, in a case currently suspended before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Students have been updated about this mandate case, Roberts told CNA.   Another possible threat to religious freedom he listed is the expansion of Title IX protections. Title IX “prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.” While it is a good law, Roberts noted, the definition of sex discrimination could be radically expanded. If so, it could establish new prohibitions that conflict with the Catholic identity of schools receiving federal funding. As a result, Wyoming Catholic College has cut ties with federally-funded student loans and grants. They had to “hustle” to make up the funding loss, he admitted, but maintained it was the best decision. Students are part of the decisions on student loans, he added. “The point is, that as we inform them on those things, we update them on those things, they want to become more involved in what’s going on there,” he said of the students. Faculty can talk with them about this every day over lunch. “That’s essential in Catholic higher education right now,” Roberts said, noting that there is “passivity, if not outright apathy” among many young people. “It’s really important that leaders in Catholic higher education be pointed and specific with their students about the threats we’re seeing.” Ultimately, however, these conversations must be prefaced with an intense spiritual and intellectual grounding for the students, he explained. “When we’re talking about religious liberty, that’s the fourth or fifth step in this formation,” he said. “The first step is our relationship with [God], and secondly the outward devotions, the signs, of course the sacraments,” he said. “The third would be the building of the community, and then fourth is the knowledge. And then the fifth step is this kind of explicit participation in the public square.” That step “is very empty, in our minds, it is very hollow … if the first four aren’t kept,” he added. Apathy about religious freedom is the most notable problem among students on this issue, he said, but there are others – many students don’t recognize heroes any more. “The content, the substance, of curricula in American secondary education is abysmal, from a historical perspective,” he said. “There’s a lot of pablum,” he added, and “one of the things we don’t do is get students to have a love for heroes in history, generally.” Thus, students “become very distrusting of leaders and of institutions, and then they don’t even have the knowledge to understand that plenty of generations in American history have been asked to do heroic things, and they don’t know what to do other than put their heads in the sand.” Read more