Freetown, Sierra Leone, Dec 11, 2014 / 08:07 pm (CNA).- Bishops in West Africa have appealed for more help for a hospital in a region suffering many Ebola infections, as the disease’s survivors lament its destructive impact on their loved ones an... Read more
Washington D.C., Dec 11, 2014 / 05:20 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Congress got personal at a bipartisan press conference on Thursday, with parents of disabled children sharing their stories to push for a bill that would help some disabled persons save for their expenses. “There’s been a glass ceiling for disability people that's existed in a way they could look through or look out, and they saw something that they were excluded from,” said Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) who has a 20 year-old son Alex with Down Syndrome. “The closer to 60 I get – and I hope I make 70 and 80, perhaps 90 – and Alex will go from 20 to 30 to 40, we need to make sure we can take care of not just Alex, as our family responsibility, but others can also,” he said of the ABLE Act. The ABLE Act, a bill eight years in the making, would create tax-exempt accounts for persons with disabilities, enabling them to save for disability-related expenses like education, transport, and medical care while still remaining eligible for benefits like Medicare. “It means so much to me,” said Sara Wolff of Moscow, Pa., a board member of the National Down Syndrome Society who herself has Downs. “To put my life in perspective, last year my mom passed away. And it's going to be two years in February,” Wolff told EWTN News Nightly. She said she is worried of what will happen if her father passes away. “It feels really great to have this piece of legislation to help with certain things like medical assistance, or transportation, save money for the future.” The ABLE Account savings of people with disabilities would also not factor against their eligibility for benefits like Medicaid, normally available to someone with assets under a certain level. One of the biggest complaints from the bill's supporters was that persons with disabilities had to live with assets totaling less than $2,000 in order to be eligible for Medicaid. “Most folks don’t realize that people with disabilities, from the moment they're born or the moment they’re diagnosed, are put into poverty essentially, to qualify for their benefits,” said Sara Weir, the interim president of the National Down Syndrome Society. “And what we're trying to do with this legislation is basically become less dependent on the federal government, and achieve more independence for people with disabilities by allowing the families and individuals to save for the future.” The bill passed the House by an overwhelming 407-17 margin and currently has 75 co-sponsors in the Senate. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.), a major supporter of the bill, said he expected it to be passed before the Senate leaves for Christmas but would not say when the vote will be. The ABLE Act is “legislation that speaks up for people that can’t always speak for themselves,” said Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.), who has a 25-year-old son with Fragile X Syndrome. He hopes that bills like the ABLE Act will become the “prototype” for federal legislation. “What we're really doing is helping them help themselves. And it seems to me that is a prototype of how we ought to do more things in Washington.” Read more
Vatican City, Dec 11, 2014 / 10:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis will hold a consistory for the creation of new cardinals Feb. 14-15, 2015, the Holy See press officer announced Thursday, adding that the consistory will follow meetings on the reform of the Roman Curia. “I have had papal authorization to say that there will be an extraordinary consistory Feb. 14-15, and he will likely create new cardinals during that consistory,” Fr. Federico Lombardi said at a Dec. 11 press conference. Fr. Lombardi spoke during a briefing with media at the end of the Council of Cardinals that met in the Vatican Dec. 9 – 11. During the briefing, Fr. Lombardi provided the schedule of the next round of meetings: on Feb. 6-8 there will be a plenary assembly of the Commission for the Protection of Minors, presided by Cardinal Sean O’Malley; on Feb. 9-11, the seventh meeting of the Council of Cardinals will take place; on Feb. 12-13 the Pope will convoke an ordinary consistory that should be intended to share views and opinions about the ongoing process of curial reform; and finally, on Feb. 14-15 there will be an extraordinary consistory during which the Pope will likely create new cardinals. According to Universi Dominici Gregis, St. John Paul II's apostolic constitution governing conclaves, the maximum number of cardinal electors must not exceed 120, and the age limit to take part to a conclave is set at 80. When Pope Francis will hold the consistory, there will be 110 voting cardinals; in June, three cardinals will turn 80, and so there will be 107 voting cardinals; and by November, there will be 105 voting cardinals. In the course of the next year, Pope Francis will thus have the option of creating 15 voting cardinals. In his first consistory, held Feb. 22, Pope Francis created 16 voting cardinals, and three non-voting. Read more
Vatican City, Dec 11, 2014 / 07:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his daily homily Pope Francis said that God’s love is always expressed in tenderness, and cautioned that if we haven’t experienced this, then something is missing in our relationship with the Lord. “The grace of God is another matter: it is closeness, it is tenderness. This rule is always valid,” the Pope told those present in the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse for his Dec. 11 daily Mass. “If, in your relationship with the Lord, you do not feel that He loves you tenderly, you are missing something, you still have not understood what grace is, you have not yet received grace which is this closeness.” Pope Francis centered his reflections on the day’s first reading from Isaiah in which the prophet consoles Israel, saying that although they are no more than a “worm” or “maggot” in comparison with the greatness of God, the Lord will help them and make them like “a threshing sledge, sharp, new and double-edged.” God’s love and closeness to his people are so tender that they can be compared to a mother who sings a lullaby to her baby, the Roman Pontiff said, noting that God desires to caress his children with the same tenderness. When we as children of God allow ourselves to be loved, “this is the grace of God,” he observed, saying that many times people don’t accept this grace as a free gift, and instead prefer “to control the grace.” “In history and also in our lives we are tempted to transform grace into a kind of a merchandise, perhaps saying to ourselves something like, ‘I have so much grace,’ or, ‘I have a clean soul, I am graced,’” the pontiff noted. By seeking to control and obtain grace, “the beautiful truth of God's closeness slips into a kind spiritual accounting” in which we, through our own efforts, attempt to store up grace that will last for a certain amount of time, he said. The Bishop of Rome explained that grace is not a “commodity” that we can gain through selfish attitudes, like that of the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots who thought that they were such good people, but in reality feared God and ended up in isolation. God’s grace, however, is “another matter: it is closeness, it is tenderness,” the Pope noted, saying that if we haven’t experienced this closeness then we don’t truly understand who God is. He recalled the confession of a woman several years ago who was tormented by the question of whether or not a wedding she had attended on a Saturday evening counted for Sunday Mass since the readings were different. When she confessed, Pope Francis recalled that the priest answered her by saying “Madam, the Lord loves you so much. You went to Church and there you received Communion, you were with Jesus...Do not worry, the Lord is not a merchant, the Lord loves us, He is close.” The pontiff concluded by warning mass attendees not to turn their spiritual life into a “spirituality of law” in which we gain grace through a point system of good works. Rather, he told them to have the courage to open their hearts to the tenderness of God, who is capable of bringing spiritual freedom. Pope Francis encouraged participants to go home and re-read the day’s first reading from Isaiah, Chapter 41, verses 13 to 20. “Read them. This tenderness of God, this God who sings (to) each of us a lullaby, like a mother.” Read more
Washington D.C., Dec 11, 2014 / 04:36 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On International Human Rights Day, advocates drew attention to prisoners of conscience around the world who are being detained for their beliefs. “The Defending Freedoms Project is abo... Read more
Vatican City, Dec 11, 2014 / 02:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Holy See joined efforts with other Catholic organizations in order to raise awareness of the increasing trend of Internet threats, which is one among many current forms of violence against youth. “The Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace wanted to give visibility to this new and very worrying form of violence against children and youth, which comes in addition to a long list of other forms of violence and enslavement that we already know,” Cardinal Peter Turkson told journalists on Dec. 9. “Stop threats on the Internet” is the title of a campaign organized by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the Bureau International Catholique de L'Enfance, which is a France-based international Catholic network of organizations dedicated to promoting and protecting children's rights. Launched during a Dec. 9 press conference in the Vatican, the campaign also begins in the context of the 25th anniversary of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which opened for signatures in 1989. The Catholique de L'Enfance network has already organized an online petition for the campaign to end Internet threats. Carrying the title of the campaign itself, the petition already has more than 10,000 signatures. In his speech for the launch event, Cardinal Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, explained that the examples of violence against children and youth are unfortunately increasing. “Just think of the minors who are victims of trafficking, for a variety of purposes, such as the market of prostitution, pornography, the sale of drugs, the removal of organs or the recruitment off soldiers and beggars,” he said. The cardinal also drew attention to the situation of minors forced to work as servants or salves in various fields, as well as unidentified minors who travel through harsh conditions only to be deposited into identification centers where they either stay or get sent back to where they came from. Cardinal Turkson also drew attention to the plight of the many youth who “are victims of forced marriage and those who are induced to offer ‘sexual comfort’ to terrorists in the context of the phenomenon, which seems to be spreading, (and) the many children killed even before birth.” He noted how the international community has worked through various legal means throughout the years to counter these phenomena, saying that the formation of the U.N. Convention for the Rights of the Child is one of the more significant means. The Holy See, in partnership with the convention, seeks to ensure children of their fundamental rights, he said, explaining that due to their lack of “physical and mental maturity,” minors are in need of a “special protection and care, in particular an appropriate legal protection, both before and after birth.” However, despite the numerous programs implemented at the state level and that civil society, the international community has not been able to eradicate the many forms of violence and exploitation directed toward children, Cardinal Turkson observed. Because of this, he stressed the importance of education “as an essential part of the common effort of humanity to prevent and eliminate the terrible plagues mentioned, including the issue of harassment on the Internet.” The education of youth, he said, must consist of teaching them to view others as persons of equal dignity who deserve to be welcomed and embraced, rather as than enemies or competitors. “It must educate them on human rights, those of justice and peace,” the cardinal noted, saying that for its part the Holy See intends to take every opportunity provided through its multilateral relations to assure every child's right to live as well as to live in conditions compatible with “the intrinsic dignity of every human person.” He encouraged local churches as well as Catholic and Catholic-inspired organizations around the world to join in committing themselves to fight for rights of children who are subjected to situations of violence, suffering and injustice. Read more
Vatican City, Dec 11, 2014 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Saturday approved the advancement in the causes for sainthood of eight men and women, including two Palestinian nuns and an 20th century Italian wife and mother. The Holy Father... Read more
Washington D.C., Dec 10, 2014 / 07:10 pm (CNA).- The Washington D.C. city council has stripped religious schools of legal protection against certain discrimination lawsuits, voting unanimously to repeal an exemption that had been in place for decades. Under city rules, it is an “unlawful discriminatory practice” for a school to limit any use of facilities, services, or programs to someone based on “sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.” However, an amendment inserted by Congress in a federal appropriations bill 25 years ago offered an exemption for religiously-affiliated schools or schools “closely associated with the tenets of a religious organization,” allowing them to restrict funds, facilities and endorsements based on their religious convictions regarding homosexuality. This provision, dubbed the “Armstrong Amendment,” came after Georgetown University refused to recognize a pro-gay student group, explained Michael Scott of the D.C. Catholic Conference. Sen. William Armstrong authored the exemption, called the Nation's Capital Religious Liberty and Academic Freedom Act, which allowed religiously-affiliated schools in D.C. to withhold funds, facilities and approval from people and groups “that are organized for, or engaged in, promoting, encouraging, or condoning any homosexual act, lifestyle, orientation, or belief." But that exemption is now gone, thanks to a Dec. 2 vote by the city council to overturn that provision. The council voted “unanimously without comment or changes” to pass the Human Rights Amendment of 2014 which included the repeal of the code, Scott explained. Congress has 30 days to void the action by the city council. Scott offered written testimony before the city council in October. He maintained that repeal of the religious exemption would be an “unjustifiable violation of these Schools’ rights to advance their sincerely held religious beliefs regarding human sexuality.” “The Act disregards one of our nation’s first and most cherished freedoms, the right to exercise religion free from government interference,” he said. “Schools are not only obligated by their religion, but also permitted by the Constitution to freely teach and act according to their faith.” “Neither the Council, nor the Act’s proponents, have provided compelling reasons sufficient to justify such a heavy burden on the schools’ religious practice, as required by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA),” he continued. Scott said that while the overturning of the exemption affects schools, “it is an open question whether a religious seminary or an institution with educational programs, educational instruction, or an educational component would be implicated by the legislation.” Lawrence J. Morris, general counsel for The Catholic University of America, told CNA that “we do not expect to make any policy changes” as a result of the city council vote. He explained: “we believe that the new law, if it goes into effect, would have to be read with the limiting and illuminating perspective of the First Amendment, which permits us to operate our religious university in accordance with our deeply held religious beliefs.” Morris added that The Catholic University of America “would not expect to initiate a suit” on the matter, but if it is brought to court they would invoke the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. “[W]e do not consider the law to require us to do anything that contravenes our First Amendment freedoms,” he said, adding that in court “we would be defending our rights rather than bringing an action challenging the new law as such.” Read more
Vatican City, Dec 10, 2014 / 12:42 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In his message for the 2015 World Day of Peace, released on Wednesday, Pope Francis has called for a global effort of fraternity rather than indifference to combat slavery and human trafficking. “We ought to recognize that we are facing a global phenomenon which exceeds the competence of any one community or country. In order to eliminate it, we need a mobilization comparable in size to that of the phenomenon itself,” the Pope wrote in the message released Dec. 10. He added that there is a “social responsibility” borne by consumers, calling to mind that “every person out to have the awareness that 'purchasing is always a moral – and not simply an economic – act,'” quoting from Benedict XVI's 2009 encyclical Caritas in veritate. The World Day of Peace is observed annually on Jan. 1, and was initiated by Bl. Paul VI. Its celebration in 2015 will be the 48th iteration of the event. The 2015 theme is “Slaves no more, but brothers and sisters.” The Pope’s message for the World Day of Peace is delivered to governments all over the world through diplomatic channels, and usually serves as an outline for the Pope's New Year's speech to the corps of ambassadors accredited to the Holy See. In the message, Pope Francis appealed “to all men and women of good will, and all those near or far, including the highest levels of civil institutions, who witness the scourge of contemporary slavery, not to become accomplices to this evil, not to turn away from the sufferings of our brothers and sisters, our fellow human beings, who are deprived of their freedom and dignity.” Pope Francis has made of the human trafficking and combating slavery a central issue of his pontificate, and one of the cores of his diplomatic activity. “We may say that the core of Pope Francis' diplomatic activity is human dignity, and that human trafficking and slavery are wounds to human dignity, that one can see as crime against humanity,” Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, told CNA Dec. 10. Cardinal Turkson's dicastery assists in the preparation of the message, and had offered three suggestions for its theme. The message reads that “in the account of the origins of the human family, the sin of estrangement from God, from the father figure and from the brother, becomes an expression of the refusal of communion.” This “gives rise to a culture of enslavement, with all its consequences extending from generation to generation: rejection of others, their mistreatment, violations of their dignity and fundamental rights, and institutionalized inequality.” Pope Francis stressed that “from time immemorial, different societies have known the phenomenon of man's subjugation by man,” and that “there have been periods of human history in which the institution of slavery was generally accepted and regulated by law.” Today, slavery “has been formally abolished throughout the world,” but despite this, millions of people are “deprived of freedom and are forced to live in conditions akin to slavery.” The message provided a list of possible causes of slavery: poverty, underdevelopment, and exclusion, combined with lack of education and a lack of gainful employment. “Not infrequently, the victims of human trafficking and slavery are people who look for a way out of a situation of extreme poverty; taken in by false promises of employment, they often end up in the hands of criminal networks which organize human trafficking,” Pope Francis wrote. Enslavement is also favored by “corruption on the part of people willing to do anything for financial gain,” and by armed conflicts, violence, crime, and terrorism. “Many people are kidnapped in order to be sold, enlisted as combatants, or sexually exploited, while others are forced to emigrate, leaving everything behind: their country, home, property, and even members of their family,” the Pope wrote. These people are “driven to seek an alternative to these terrible conditions even at the risk of their personal dignity and their very lives; they risk being drawn into that vicious circle which makes them prey to misery, corruption and their baneful consequences.” In order to combat slavery, the Pope appealed to multiple levels of society: he asked states to issue and foster legislation “really respectful of the dignity of the person” and which acknowledges the role of woman in society; he asked intergovernmental organizations to “coordinate initiatives for combating the transnational networks of organized crime which oversee the trafficking of persons and the illegal trafficking of migrants.” Pope Francis also reminded businesses they “have a duty to ensure dignified working conditions and adequate salaries for their employees, but they must also be vigilant that forms of subjugation or human trafficking do not find their way into the distribution chain.” “Together with the social responsibility of businesses, there is also the social responsibility of consumers,” he added. “Every person ought to have the awareness that ‘purchasing is always a moral – and not simply an economic – act.'” Pope Francis also urged organizations in civil society to “awake consciences and promote whatever steps are necessary for combating and uprooting the culture of enslavement.” The Pope ended asking for a globalization of fraternity, to counter the globalization of indifference, since this latter “requires all of us to forge a new worldwide solidarity and fraternity capable of giving them new hope and helping them to advance with courage amid the problems of our time and the new horizons which they disclose and which God places in our hands.” Read more
Washington D.C., Dec 10, 2014 / 12:36 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Beatings. Sleep deprivation. Death by hypothermia. Isolation. A Senate report released Tuesday exposed a dark underbelly of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program that oversaw 119 detainees between 2001 and 2009. “The acts of torture described in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report violated the God-given human dignity inherent in all people and were unequivocally wrong,” stated Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces, head of the U.S. bishops’ international justice and peace committee. “The Catholic Church firmly believes that torture is an 'intrinsic evil' that cannot be justified under any circumstance,” he added in a statement released by the National Religious Campaign against torture. Bishop Cantu responded to a 500-page report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Dec. 9. The report documented findings and conclusions of a much larger study that began in 2009 on the CIA program started at the outset of the War on Terror in 2001. According to the report, the program saw extensive abuse of prisoners, lack of CIA oversight, and a wall of ignorance stretching all the way to the Oval Office as President George W. Bush was reportedly kept in the dark about the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” until 2006. Much of the information about the program – from the interrogation of prisoners to their conditions to the effectiveness of the program – was distorted, watered down, or kept secret from policymakers, members of the Bush administration, and the American public, according to the report. “The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others,” one of the findings stated. Among the myriad of listed abuses, treatment of prisoners included sleep deprivation, beatings, extended isolation, forced “rectal hydration,” and psychological abuse including threats of death and sexual abuse to family members of detainees. Some prisoners were kept awake for as many as 180 hours “usually standing or in stress positions.” According to the report, “at least five detainees experienced disturbing hallucinations during prolonged sleep deprivation.” At one of the detention facilities, detainees “were kept in complete darkness and constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste.” One of the prisoners died in November 2002 of “suspected hypothermia” after being “partially nude and chained to a concrete floor.” Some detainees were subjected to the practice of waterboarding, which resulted in “convulsions and vomiting” and in the case of 9/11 plot leader Khalid Shaykh Mohammed resulted in a “series of near drowning.” Mohammed was waterboarded a reported 183 times. Yet the abuses were due in part to a lack of oversight from the CIA itself, the report suggested. At one of the detention facilities, it found that “untrained CIA officers at the facility conducted frequent, unauthorized, and unsupervised interrogations of detainees using harsh physical interrogation techniques that were not – and never became – part of the CIA’s formal ‘enhanced’ interrogation program.” At multiple detention sites, CIA personnel reported having “very little” information on prisoners at the sites. Persons with “no applicable experience or training” were given “senior detention and interrogation roles.” In addition, the agency outright deceived the Bush administration and the public about the program, giving “inaccurate information” to the Department of Justice, the National Security Council chiefs, and the White House, the report charged. Even President Bush was not briefed on the “enhanced interrogation techniques” practiced until 2006. “According to CIA records, no CIA officer, up to and including CIA Directors George Tenet and Porter Goss, briefed the President on the specific CIA enhanced interrogation techniques before April 2006,” the report stated. “By that time, 38 of the 39 detainees identified as having been subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques had already been subjected to the techniques.” Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, who previously headed the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, had supported Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Angus King (I-Maine) in their efforts to declassify the study in a letter back in April. “It is time for the United States to take a clear stance against torture. Release of the full report on CIA interrogation practices will help our country strengthen its moral credibility,” Bishop Pates said at the time. U.S. President Barack Obama and members of Congress also expressed outrage and disappointment at the report’s findings. “The report documents a troubling program involving enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects in secret facilities outside the United States, and it reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests,” stated President Obama on Tuesday. “Moreover, these techniques did significant damage to America’s standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners. That is why I will continue to use my authority as President to make sure we never resort to those methods again.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was himself a victim of torture during his service in the Vietnam War, delivered a stinging rebuke of the practices on the Senate floor on Tuesday. “I have long believed some of these practices amounted to torture, as a reasonable person would define it, especially, but not only the practice of waterboarding, which is a mock execution and an exquisite form of torture,” he said. “Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights, which are protected by international conventions the U.S. not only joined, but for the most part authored.” Read more
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