Catholic News 2

(Vatican Radio) The Sovereign Order of Malta held a press conference in Rome on Thursday, to outline what has happened since the resignation of Grand Master Fra’ Matthew Festing on Saturday 28 January. The Order released the following statement:

In a press conference today, the government of the Sovereign Order of Malta has outlined its priorities, following the resignation of Grand Master Fra’ Matthew Festing on Saturday 28 January. The Grand Chancellor Albrecht Boeselager stated: “Together with the Lieutenant ad interim we are governing the Order according to our constitution and in a united and efficient way”.

The government emphasized the Order’s loyalty to the Holy Father. It confirmed the Order’s willingness to collaborate with the Special Delegate. On behalf of the government, Boeselager thanked Pope Francis for his guidance that helped end government crises. He observed that in all his decisions the Pontiff showed respect and regard for the Order of Malta, while at the same time acknowledging in all his actions, the sovereignty of the Order.

The government also thanked the members of the Papal Commission for the rapid delivery of their report. It regrets unfounded and baseless allegations of a conflict of interest raised against members of the commission.

As the current crisis in the Middle East and the Mediterranean is showing every day, the work of the Order has never been more relevant and needed. “We will not allow the recent distractions in the government of the Order to jeopardize our humanitarian and socio-medical work,” said Dominque de La Rochefoucauld, Grand Hospitaller.

The resignation of the Grand Master opens a new phase in the life of the Order, and with renewed vigor, the Order concentrates fully on the enormous challenges in humanitarian diplomacy and the work on the ground.

The Sovereignty and Diplomatic network play a pivotal role in the Order’s ability to serve people in need and is an asset for the Catholic Church. A top priority for the Order’s government is the reinforcement of the diplomatic network and the range of action of the Order’s current programs. The government of the Order will remain focused on the cooperation and coordination with the UNHCR, the UN mission in Libya, the Mediterranean naval mission SOPHIA and the International Organization for migration IOM. The Government is currently assessing the evolving situation in Syria and is ready for increasing its local engagement at the side of the needy people the moment it will become possible. One of the Order’s medical teams is currently involved in an important training mission on board the ship San Giorgio, part of Operation Sophia in the Mediterranean. The aim is to train Libyan coast guards and members of the Libyan navy in ‘Search and Rescue’ operations at sea. The humanitarian activity of the Order of Malta is carried out in 120 countries around the world. The work of around 100,000 people – members, volunteers and medical personnel – continues unabated.

We are alarmed and concerned by the proliferation of discriminatory positions towards immigrants, not last, based on their national origin. History has already provided us with plenty of examples showing the dramatic and monstrous consequences of policies based on origin and race. Likewise, the Government takes a strong stance against the increasing disregard for the humanitarian laws encoded in the Geneva Conventions ratified by the family of nations.

Albrecht Boeselager: “Not only are the norms being increasingly ignored by State and non-State actors, but they are being publicly challenged and disputed. As an observer to the UN and other multilateral entities, we will continue to raise our voice in the context.”

The election of the Grand Master’s successor will take place within the next three months, as provided for in the Constitution of the Order of Malta. The Lieutenant ad interim, Fra’ Ludwig Hoffmann von Rumerstein, will convene the Council Complete of State, the electing body, which is made up of an international representation of members of the Order. They will meet in the Order’s Magistral Villa in Rome.

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Savannah, Ga., Feb 2, 2017 / 06:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A priest who was murdered in 2016 had previously certified that he would not want his murderer executed. Three Catholic bishops say his voice should be heard.

The district attorney in Augusta, Georgia is seeking the death penalty for his accused killer.

“I request that the person found guilty of homicide for my killing not be subject to or put in jeopardy of the death penalty under any circumstances,” Fr. Rene Robert said in 1995 in a signed and notarized “Declaration of Life” that reflected on the possibility he could be the victim of a capital crime.

The man believed to have killed him, Steven Murray, was indicted May 25, 2016 in Georgia by a Burke County Grand Jury for killing the priest April 11, 2016.

Father Robert, a retired priest of the Diocese of St. Augustine, had been helping his accused killer for months as part of his prison ministry. Police believe Murray forced the priest into the trunk of his car, abducted him, and then murdered him in the woods of Georgia, shooting him multiple times. Murray was arrested driving the priest’s car in South Carolina. He led police to the priest’s body.

Three bishops emphasized Fr. Robert’s wishes at a Tuesday press conference held at the Richmond County Court House in Augusta, Georgia: Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Atlanta, Bishop Gregory J. Hartmayer of Savannah; and Bishop Felipe J. Estevez of Saint Augustine.

Bishop Hartmayer said they wanted to be the priest’s voice and make his declaration against the death penalty a part of the case.

“Father Robert shows us what the gospel teaches about being merciful,” Bishop Hartmayer said. “He understood the plight of the poor, the violent, the sociopath. He treated them with compassion. He understood the risks and dangers of ministering to convicts. He died as a martyr of mercy.”

Archbishop Gregory, a past president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, said the slain priest was aware of the potential for violence among those he served, “but he cared for those people nonetheless,” said

“We know that every human life comes from the hand of God and has dignity that is never lost, that can’t be compromised,” he added. “No human life loses its dignity.”

The archbishop hoped that the accused killer would face a life sentence rather than the death penalty, and will seek God’s forgiveness.

“That could take many years but we are asking that he be given time to do it,” he said.

Murray, the accused killer, has made statements suggesting he is apologetic over the crime.

“If anybody loves Father Rene, they’ll forgive me because he was a man of God, and forgiveness is forgiveness,” Murray said in an April 2016 court appearance, according to WALB News.

At a previous court appearance he had smiled and waved to other people in the room.

“I have mental problems and I lost control of myself. I apologize,” he said.

District Attorney Ashley Wright of the Augusta Judicial District intends to seek the death penalty.

Bishop Estevez cited Fr. Rober’ts declaration against the death penalty in a May 26 letter to the district attorney.

He did not receive a reply to the letter. In December, the bishop received signatures of more than 6,400 Catholics in the Diocese of St. Augustine who asked the Georgia courts to honor the priest’s wishes.

Wright has indicated that the opinions are not relevant to her decision.

“When I make a decision to seek a particular punishment it is based upon fact and law, and not based on public opinion or sentiment,” Wright told the St. Augustine Record last year.

Attending the Jan. 31 press conference were priests and deacons from the three dioceses.

“We have great respect for the legal system and we believe Murray deserves punishment for the brutal murder but the sentence of death only perpetuates the cycle of violence,” Bishop Estevez said. “It is unnecessary and denies the dignity of all persons.”

Archbishop Gregory explained why the bishops were taking their stand.

“We do it because we love our faith, we love our country, and we hope our nation will take the lead in preserving, defending and protecting every human life,” he said.

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Amsterdam, Netherlands, Feb 2, 2017 / 08:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Dutch doctor who drugged an elderly woman and had her restrained as she fought lethal injection has been cleared by a review panel for “acting in good faith.”

The woman, in her 80s, had dementia and had been living in a nursing home and exhibited “fear and anger” at times, and would be found wandering around the building, according to case documents.

She had reportedly expressed a desire for euthanasia when “the time was right” at an earlier date, but had not done so recently.

The senior doctor at the the nursing home determined that the woman’s condition meant that the time was right, and put a sleep-inducing drug into the woman’s coffee in order to administer the lethal injection without consulting the woman.

The woman woke up as the doctor was trying to give the injection, and fought the procedure. The doctor had to ask family members to hold the woman down while she completed the injection.

"I am convinced that the doctor acted in good faith, and we would like to see more clarity on how such cases are handled in the future," said Jacob Kohnstamm, chairman of the Regional Review Committee, which considered the case.

The case will be further considered by Dutch courts to determine whether doctors performing euthanasia on patients with dementia should be prosecuted if it is determined they have acted in good faith.

The Netherlands was the first country to decriminalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in 2002, and has had several controversial cases involving euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in recent years.

In 2016, critics decried a case in which a Dutch woman in her 20s was euthanized after her mental health condition was declared “insufferable” by a team of doctors and psychiatrists in the Netherlands.

She had suffered from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and other mental illnesses as a result of being a victim of sexual abuse. Multiple reports classified her condition as “incurable,” thus legally justifying the woman's death by euthanasia under Dutch law. The woman was just one of many who have been legally euthanized due to mental illness since the law began.

The country’s law also provides provisions for children ages 12-15 to request euthanasia or assisted suicide with parental permission, a safeguard that does not apply to minors age 16-18. There is also a provision for newborn infants to be euthanized if a certain set of criteria are met.

The Netherlands is also considering and expected to enact a law that would allow for elderly people to request euthanasia simply if they “have a well-considered opinion that their life is complete.”

The option would be limited to “the elderly,” though the briefing did not define an age limit. The provision is expected to go into effect by the end of 2017.

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Bob Roller

By Mark Pattison

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Only pack rats would save copies of old newspapers. Or so you would think.

But a consortium of librarians and archivists are preserving the Catholic news from the last century.

As newspapers age, their pages get more brittle and fragile. And outdated technologies such as microfilm and microfiche keep those newspapers from being readily accessible unless you live near a big downtown library or a university that still has the machines needed to read that data.

Many Catholic newspapers, unlike their secular daily brethren, were not kept, maintained and preserved with the same level of passion, save for some diocesan archives.

To correct this situation, the Catholic Research Resources Alliance has undertaken a project to digitize nearly a dozen of the United States' top Catholic newspapers of regional and national importance -- the print runs of which, for some of them, go back for more than a century.

"Creating a Catholic news archive and digital aggregation for Catholic newspapers is something that scholars are very interested in," said Jennifer Younger, executive director of the alliance, known as CRRA.

"We mark the beginning (of the project) in 2011, when we brought together a newspaper committee: 'If we're going to digitize something, what would be most useful?' Newspapers rose right to the top. Which newspapers? We had to figure out which newspapers existed, which ones were being held (by libraries), which ones weren't being held," she told Catholic News Service.

The committee came up with a list of more than 800 Catholic publications from the United States alone, and another 200-plus in Canada.

Eleven newspapers the digitization project has begun with represent some of the largest dioceses in the nation: Catholic New York of the Archdiocese of New York; the Catholic Standard and Times of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia; Catholic San Francisco; the Clarion Herald of the Archdiocese of New Orleans; the Florida Catholic of the Archdiocese of Miami; the St. Louis Review; the Pittsburgh Catholic; and the Catholic Transcript of the Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut.

A 12th newspaper recently added to the list is the Catholic Worker, which since its founding in the 1930s is still a penny a copy, as the front-page banner says.

For a national perspective, the National Catholic Reporter and 65 years' worth of newsfeeds starting in 1920 from what is now called Catholic News Service will be digitized. CNS' predecessor was NCWC, for National Catholic Welfare Council. In addition, an NCWC/CNS feature called "Catholic World in Pictures" will be digitized too.

The digitized material will be made freely available through the CRRA-developed Catholic News Archive, http://thecatholicnewsarchive.org.

Digitization is the new normal, according to Tim Meagher, an associate professor of history at The Catholic University of America, Washington, and an archivist who runs the Center for American Catholic History.

"Everything is, as much as possible, going into digital format," Meagher said. "In some ways, even if the paper exists in print, its use will be less if it is not digitized."

Some of the largest U.S. dailies, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, have been digitized, he said. "It's a tremendous asset," Meagher added. "Suddenly you're on the radar screen, easy to access, easy to get to."

Of Catholic papers, he said, "We would love to be able to digitize every one. We may not be able to digitize all of them, we may not be able to digitize all years. But to begin is an important thing."

"We have set very high standards. When we do our digitization, we never have to do it again," said Patricia Lawton, CRRA's director of digital initiatives. "We're getting the best imaging we possibly can. Microfilm or print, you want a good image. That is the basis of everything that you're going to do," allowing the user to employ more robust search capabilities. "We based all our research on the Library of Congress (standards) and even upped the standards a bit," Lawton noted.

Archivists also are working with those libraries and diocesan archives holding newspaper collections to preserve them, and to provide multiple backups for the digital information being created.

Amy Cooper Cary, head of special collections and university archives at Marquette University in Milwaukee, described the "heavy lifting" needed to digitize a newspaper.

In digitizing a century's worth of Marquette's student newspaper, Marquette opted to do the work itself rather than contract it out -- which could be cheaper but take longer to do, without the kind of quality control one may want. Marquette also chose overhead scanning to gain a better image, and has utilized students to compare the original newspaper with the digitized image to make sure there are no glitches.

A grant from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Catholic Communication Campaign has allowed CRRA to digitize the NCWC/CNS archives from 1920 to 1952, but Cary estimated the cost of digitization at more than a dollar per page. Doing roughly a century's worth of 10 weekly newspapers and one monthly comes to a lot of pages. A GoFundMe project was established in December to raise $25,000 to digitize the NCWC/CNS "Catholic World in Pictures" print run: www.gofundme.com/hb-catholic-world-in-pictures.

For CRRA's Catholic newspapers project, the top priorities are the years prior to 1923, when material is in the public domain, and the years before, during and following the Second Vatican Council, to track the difference in how the church engaged with the world -- and with itself -- that may have manifested itself in the pages of the newspaper.

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Follow Pattison on Twitter: @MeMarkPattison.

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Copyright © 2017 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The chairmen of two bishops' committees expressed disappointment Feb. 1 over President Donald Trump's decision to retain a 2014 executive order by his predecessor, Barack Obama, that bans federal discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity against federal employees and workers for federal government contractors.

Trump's action is "troubling and disappointing" said Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, and Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, chairman of the USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty.

The executive order, they said in a joint statement, is "deeply flawed." In a July 21, 2014, statement, Archbishop Lori and Archbishop Chaput's predecessor as committee chair, Bishop Richard J. Malone of Buffalo, New York, labeled the executive order "unprecedented and extreme and should be opposed."

In the 2014 statement, Archbishop Lori and Bishop Malone said the term "sexual orientation" was "undefined," and that "gender identity" was "predicated on the false idea that 'gender' is nothing more than a social construct or psychological reality that can be chosen at variance from one's biological sex."

They added, "Even contractors that disregard sexual inclination in employment face the possibility of exclusion from federal contracting if their employment policies or practices reflect religious or moral objections to extramarital sexual conduct."

The two prelates urged Obama to include a religious exemption. Fourteen other religious leaders also asked for such an exemption in a letter to Obama so that "protection for one group would not come at the expense of faith communities" who religious beliefs motivate them to serve.

Father Larry Snyder, then Catholic Charities USA president, was one of the 14 leaders who signed a letter to the president. He told Catholic News Service he was among religious leaders who then met with White House staff to discuss the executive order before it was issued. The priest said later the order upheld "already existing religious exemptions, that will allow us to maintain fidelity to our deeply held religious beliefs."

In their Feb. 1 statement, Archbishops Chaput and Lori said, "The church steadfastly opposes all unjust discrimination, and we need to continue to advance justice and fairness in the workplace," but the Obama executive order "creates problems rather than solves them," adding that it instead "creates new forms of discrimination against people of faith."

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Copyright © 2017 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

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By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- When it comes to helping the poor, the marginalized and refugees, Pope Francis urged Catholics not to mimic the "Mannequin Challenge" by just looking on, frozen and immobile.

The video version of his prayer intention for February begins with a street scene of people doing a "Mannequin Challenge," the viral internet craze in which people freeze while music plays in the background.

The prayer intention and "The Pope Video" illustrating it are distributed by the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network, formerly known as the Apostleship of Prayer.

The intention the pope chose for February is: "That all those who are afflicted, especially the poor, refugees and marginalized, may find welcome and comfort in our communities."

"We live in cities that throw up skyscrapers and shopping centers and strike big real estate deals, but they abandon a part of themselves to marginal settlements on the periphery," the pope says in the video. "The result of this situation is that great sections of the population are excluded and marginalized: without a job, without options, without a way out."

"Don't abandon them," the pope pleads.

The video image then shows the previously mannequin-like actors reaching out to help a young man who was shivering against a building.

"Pray with me," the pope says, repeating the prayer intention that people would find "welcome and comfort in our communities."

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Editors: The video in English can be found at: https://youtu.be/eM5fcuTmdlI.

The video in its original Spanish is at: https://youtu.be/hSVLdM4vYbQ.

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Copyright © 2017 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

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