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(Vatican Radio) The Bishops Conference of Poland has released the text of a letter sent by Pope Francis to thank the country for the reception he received last month during World Youth Day.

In the letter, Pope Francis told the Church in Poland he was “deeply moved by your strong faith and the unwavering hope that you have kept in spite of difficulties and tragedies, and by your fervent love, which animates your human and Christian pilgrimage.”

The full text of the letter is below

Venerable Brother

Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki

Archbishop of Poznan

President of the Polish Bishops’ Conference

Having returned from the Apostolic Journey to Poland, I want to renew the expression of my lively gratitude to you, Bishops, priests, consecrated persons and lay faithful, for your warm welcome and for the zeal with which my visit was prepared. I am deeply moved by your strong faith and the unwavering hope that you have kept in spite of difficulties and tragedies, and by your fervent love, which animates your human and Christian pilgrimage.

The memory of the moving Eucharistic celebration at the Shrine of Czestochowa, for the 1050th anniversary of Poland’s Baptism, and the moment of prayer in the concentration camp at Auschwitz is especially dear to me. I find great joy in remembering the encounter with the young people who came from different nations.

I assure you of my prayers so that the Church in Poland may continue advancing on its path with perseverance and courage, showing the Lord’s merciful love to all. Please, also pray for me. I heartily bless you all.

With fraternal greetings

Vatican City, 3 August 2016.

Francis

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(Vatican Radio) New and more dangerous smuggling practices and riskier routes have led to a spike in the number of migrants dying as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe, according to a new report. The International Organization for Migration’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre said 2,901 people died or went missing crossing the Mediterranean in the first six months of 2016. This represented a 37 percent increase over the same period of last year.

78 percent of migrant deaths or disappearances worldwide occurred on the so-called Central Mediterranean route from North Africa to Italy. The head of the International Organization of Migration’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) is Frank Laczko and he spoke to Susy Hodges about the reasons behind this rising death toll. 

Listen to Frank Laczko of the GMDAC:  

Laczko said while the total numbers of migrants crossing the Mediterranean this year is roughly at the same level as 2015, it’s “shocking” that the number of fatalities has increased “quite significantly.” He noted that this spike in the number of deaths and/or disappearances comes despite the increased number of search-and-rescue operations taking place in the Mediterranean. 

As to the reasons for this rising death toll, Laczko said there are a number of potential factors, especially the “increasingly ruthless” attitude of the people smugglers who are cramming migrants into unseaworthy vessels and who show “a complete disregard for the safety of migrants.”

Saying there’s a need for more legal channels for migrants to be able to come to Europe to work, Laczko predicts this will be a key topic during the first ever global summit hosted by the U.N. that will discuss how to address large movements of refugees and migrants, taking place in September in New York.

He said this report by the International Organization of Migration (IOM) points to the need for better information campaigns to make sure would-be-migrants know and understand the risks and dangers of making the journey to Europe. With this in mind, Laczko said the IOM has launched an information campaign in Niger where he said many migrants return to their homes from Libya with “horrendous stories” about the mistreatment they received there.  

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Albuquerque, N.M., Aug 23, 2016 / 06:34 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic bishops of New Mexico are speaking up against a proposal to reintroduce capital punishment in the state, saying that respect for human life must be consistent.

“We, the Catholic Bishops of New Mexico, in one voice, once again echo the teaching of the Church that life is sacred,” the bishops of Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Gallup said in a joint statement Aug. 18.

“There is one seamless teaching on God’s gift of life that must be protected from birth to natural death,” they said. “It is always tragic and sad when a member of the community is murdered. These senseless acts must be prevented by calling for systemic change in society beginning with our youngest children. Crime can be prevented, and this is done by an investment in social capital.”

The bishops responded to New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez saying that she will push during next year’s legislative session to bring back the death penalty in the state.

Martinez had earlier backed such legislation, but ceased actively supporting it after it failed in the legislature several years ago.

She is now renewing her push to reinstate the death penalty, telling the Albuquerque Journal, “A society that fails to adequately protect and defend those who protect all of us is a society that will be undone and unsafe.”

Her announcement comes after two high-profile murders in New Mexico: the recent killing of a police officer during a traffic stop, as well as the murder of an 11-year-old Navajo girl in May.

A spokesperson for Martinez said the legislation – which has not yet been introduced – would apply at least to those who murder police officers and children.

Capital punishment was previously legal in New Mexico, but only one execution occurred since 1960. Use of the death penalty in the state was repealed by 2009 legislation and replaced with a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.

The New Mexico bishops noted that they had “applauded the State Legislature for the progress that was made when we ended the morally untenable practice of the death penalty on March 18, 2009.”

“This repeal of the death penalty was a milestone, moving New Mexico from a culture of violence to a culture of peace, justice, and love,” they said.

The bishops cited the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says, “If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.”

They also pointed to the words of Pope John Paul II, who wrote in Evangelium vitea that “Today, in fact, given the means at the State’s disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender today…are very rare, if not practically non-existent.

Pope Francis has called for an end to the death penalty, the New Mexico bishops pointed out, as did Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II.

Furthermore, they noted that more and more states are ending the death penalty. Five states have ended the use of capital punishment in the last five years, citing its expense, failure to allow for rehabilitation, and the potential for error.  

“The State created life in prison without the possibility of parole. This renders a perpetrator harmless to society,” the bishops of New Mexico stressed. “We oppose Governor Susana Martinez’ plan to reinstate the death penalty and call on the Legislature to reject the legislation.”

 

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Philadelphia, Pa., Aug 23, 2016 / 09:02 am (Aid to the Church in Need).- Martin Pistorius was a healthy 12-year-old boy living in South Africa with his family in the late 1980s when he was overcome with a mysterious illness.

The doctors weren't sure what had come over Martin, but their best guess was cryptococcal meningitis. Over time, Martin lost his ability to move by himself, his ability to make eye contact, and eventually his ability to speak.

The hospital told Martin's parents, Rodney and Joan Pistorius, that their son was in a vegetative state, and to take him home and make him comfortable.

But approximately two years into this vegetative state, Martin woke up. He was aware of everything going on around him “like a normal person,” he told NPR – he just couldn't communicate. He spent 12 years in this state, most people thinking him a vegetable, until he was able to prove that he was conscious.

Martin now owns his own business and has written a book about his experience. He lives in the United Kingdom with his wife.

Maggie Worthen found herself in a similarly bleak situation in 2006. A senior a week away from graduating from Smith College, Smith suffered a massive stroke, leaving her unconscious and unable to speak or move.

Doctors, assuming Maggie would not recover or regain consciousness, pressured Maggie's mother Nancy to remove the ventilator or withhold food and water to let her daughter die. They asked if they could harvest Maggie’s organs.

But Nancy refused, believing that Maggie was more conscious and capable of recovery than the doctors thought. Maggie soon was able to breath on her own, and was able to communicate through eye movements her last few years of life before succumbing to pneumonia in August 2015 at the age of 31.

The stories of Martin, Maggie and many others like them show a troubling misunderstanding of, or a tendency to misdiagnose, what is called the “permanent vegetative state,” or PVS, in the medical community.

Edward Furton is an ethicist and director of publications with The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The center offers a 24 hour hotline that Catholics can call with questions related to medical ethics, and Furton said they often receive calls from family members whose loved ones have been diagnosed as being in a vegetative state.

“(They) are being told that their loved ones can’t feel anything, they’re completely unaware, that we can take away food and water it won’t bother them, they won’t even notice,” Furton told CNA.

“These things I think are very dangerous views, because we should always presume that the patient has some level of consciousness.”

Typically, medical doctors will assume that a patient is unconscious if there are no outward signs of consciousness, Furton said. But in some cases, such as in the cases of Martin or Maggie, that may not necessarily be true.

Deacon Alan Rastrelli is a licensed physician with expertise in anesthesiology and palliative medicine with the Denver-based Divine Mercy Supportive Care center, where he also serves as a spiritual advisor to the staff. He said another common problem when diagnosis a patient who has suffered brain trauma is a confusion of terms and a tendency to jump to the worst assumption.

“What I've been concerned about for some time, as I've been dealing with palliative care and bioethics and hospice care as a physician, is that sometimes the jump in the ICU is to go right to, ‘Oh this is a vegetative state, they’ll never come out of it.’ Or to say they’re brain dead or are in a comatose state when they haven’t done the right studies,” he said.    

“The terminology has been so confused over the last 10-15 years, that sometimes families are not sure what kind of decisions to make when they’re faced with a neurological insult,” Dr. Rastrelli added.

The term brain-dead, for example, only came into common use when organ donation became possible. A patient has minimal brain stem function if any, and their heartbeat and breathing are able to be sustained only through machines. Over the years, it has become a clearer diagnosis, allowing for safer organ donation, Dr. Rastrelli said, although sometimes there are still misdiagnoses.

New technologies, including brain scans that can detect brain activity in persons who may be outwardly unresponsive, may help doctors better understand and diagnose the level of consciousness of their patients.

“It is making people pause a little bit more to say, well we think there’s nothing there, but wow, some areas of the brain light up when we talk about mom or dad or children, or something that they might remember,” he said.

“With these new studies, maybe we won’t have to guess whether they feel or not, or hear or not, or suffer or not, we might be able to see if there’s still some activity there, and to show the opposite too, if there really isn’t.”

Another issue with over-diagnosis of the permanent vegetative state is a tendency to underestimate a patient’s ability to recover and become aware, which can occur years after the initial incident causing unconsciousness.

Research suggests that 68 percent of severely brain-injured patients who receive rehabilitation eventually regain consciousness, and that 21 percent of those are able to eventually live on their own. Yet unconscious patients are often too quickly dismissed as vegetative, disqualifying them from insurance on further rehabilitation efforts.

“Patients like Maggie are routinely misdiagnosed and placed in what we euphemistically call ‘custodial care’ where they have no access to any treatments that might help them recover or give them a chance of engaging with others,” Dr. Joseph Fins, chief of the division of medical ethics at Weill, told Newsweek.

There are times when additional measures, such as a ventilator or a feeding tube, would be considered extraordinary means of prolonging life and would not be ethically required by the Catholic Church, but each case is complex and unique, Dr. Rastrelli said.

Typically, families are not required to keep their loved ones on ventilators if the person will never again breathe on their own. In the case of a feeding tube, a dying person’s body may reject the nutrients, putting the person at risk for infection or aspiration, but feeding tubes should typically not be withheld or removed unless there are proven adverse effects, Dr. Rastrelli added.

“That person is still a person and we need to see if we can comfortably provide them with at least nutrition and hydration, not to the extreme of breathing machines and dialysis machines, if it’s not going to help, but as a comfort measure almost to allow them to have the nutrition that their body would normally be asking for,” he said.

Dr. Rastrelli said he is also concerned about the over-diagnosis of the vegetative state in an age of increased pushes for legalized assisted suicide in that it could lead to cases of euthanasia, which differs from assisted suicide in that other people make end-of-life decisions for the dying person, including withholding food and water.

“If you would talk to people in Compassion and Choices (the company behind the publicized case of Brittany Maynard), they would say that we don’t need any more disabled, society-dependent people to use up our resources if we’re not going to get them into a more functional, independent state,” he said.

“They would say well they’re just going to be suffering and you’re just wanting to keep them alive, just because of your religious beliefs. So why not just let them die or why not just help them die? They’re going to die anyway so why not just do it now and end their suffering. It sounds very good in sound bites, but it’s very dangerous because other people are making those decisions and presumptions.”

Catholics also have a different understanding of the human person, Furton said, in that they believe people are a union of body and soul, which is different than the prevailing beliefs in the current medical community, and could contribute to the tendency to over-diagnose patients as vegetative.

“One of the main issues here is that the scientific community, which strongly influences the medical community, tends toward materialism,” Furton added. “So they see the human person as an assemblage of matter, and the matter has somehow come together to produce life and then the matter has also produced consciousness. So if there are no material indications of consciousness, they say the person can’t be conscious.”

“We have to recognize that each of us has a soul, and that soul has its own inherent awareness, and it may indeed be completely functioning despite the fact that there are no outward signs of it,” he said.

Pope John Paul II didn’t like the term “vegetative” because of its dehumanizing effect, Dr. Rastrelli noted.

The late pontiff, and now saint, was himself an example of understanding when to let the dying process take its natural course, he added. When Parkinson’s ravaged his body, and he was overwhelmed with complications from pneumonia and various ailments, Pope John Paul II chose to forgo the emergency room and intensive care. Instead, he spent the last of his days in his room, where Mass was said, and he could receive the Eucharist and the anointing of the sick.

“And there’s a chance that he could have been able to fight through that particular episode, but his body would have been another major notch lower in health, then he’d be facing the same thing not much longer from then,” Dr. Rastrelli said. Instead, “he passed away peacefully.”

Receiving the sacraments is an important part of end of life care at Divine Mercy Supportive Care center, which follows the medical ethics of the Catholic Church.

“So the Catholic perspective I think throws the most appropriate light on (end of life issues), in that on the one hand, we dignify life and we take care of people like we’re asked to do, human to human. But we also recognize that the whole reason we’re here in this world is that so we can be with God in eternity,” Dr. Rastrelli said.

“We’re not going to fight tooth and nail to try and eek out every ounce of life, because we have the trust and the faith and the hope of our eternal life. So our church brings us prayer and sacraments and care…so that we can be born into the arms of Christ and have that hope and that comfort and peace.”

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Barbara Fraser

By Barbara J. Fraser

JAMA, Ecuador (CNS) -- Ask Jose Santos about the earthquake that struck the northern coast of Ecuador in April and he paints a vivid picture.

"The ground moved like waves on the ocean," he recalls, while a pall of sulfurous-smelling haze rose over the town.

Santos' welding shop collapsed, destroying the tools on which he depended for a livelihood. At his home in the village of Bigua, a few miles away, his wife and their children fled their house as the walls cracked.

After the quake, they slept outdoors, afraid that one of the more than 150 aftershocks might bring the house down. Now, they and nearly 80 neighbors have temporary homes in 10- by 20-foot tents donated by the Catholic Church.

Four months after the April 16 earthquake -- which killed more than 670 people, injured nearly 5,000 and left as many as 80,000 homeless -- residents of northern Ecuador are slowly rebuilding. But the disaster exposed long-standing problems that will take longer to solve, especially in rural areas.

"People speak of before and after 16-A," says Alfredo de la Fuente, director of social ministry for Caritas Ecuador in the Archdiocese of Portoviejo. "It changed the lives of the vast majority of people" in the northern coastal provinces of Manabi and Esmeraldas.

In Jama and other towns in the hardest-hit area, aerial photos showed the devastation of collapsed buildings in the days after the quake. The rubble is gone now, leaving urban areas dotted with vacant lots.

"But the damage is far worse than it appears," de la Fuente says, because some of the remaining buildings will have to be demolished, while others will need extensive repairs.

"Recovery will be very slow," he says.

Some people who lost their homes moved in with relatives, while others sought refuge in shelters set up by the government.

Government teams began going house to house, assessing damage and rating buildings with a stoplight system. A green tag means the house is habitable, yellow means it needs repairs, and red tags mark houses that are condemned. The inspection takes time but is required if a family is to qualify for a reconstruction loan.

Many of the earthquake victims who are suffering most are those in rural areas, farthest from the view of cameras, church workers say.

Immediately after the earthquake, Caritas provided food, water, coffins and large tents, with support from Catholic Relief Services, the humanitarian aid and development agency of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Both agencies also began their own assessment in rural areas. Social ministry teams have visited about 1,400 families, says Joseph Kelly, CRS program director for Latin America.

"The earthquake exposed a situation that was already precarious in a lot of these communities," Kelly says. "Water systems were decrepit, and communities were already suffering from water-borne diseases. People had to buy water from a truck or boil river water."

The social ministry teams evaluate housing damage, provide hygiene kits and show people how to disinfect water and store it safely.

Standing water provides a breeding ground for mosquitoes that carry tropical diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and zika. A disaster like the earthquake raises the risk of an outbreak that would further strain emergency workers, says Oscar Robles, who heads CRS' disaster response.

The Caritas teams also offer moral support, assuring families that they are not forgotten, de la Fuente says. And they keep an eye out for stress-related psychological problems, such as domestic violence.

As an alternative to cramped, multi-family shelters -- and to enable families to remain on their property -- Caritas and CRS have built more than 850 temporary shelters, stretching tarps over sturdy bamboo frames. Most have a latrine and a small, three-sided structure with a concrete floor where the family can take bucket baths, as most houses lack running water.

CRS has invested about $4 million so far, and expects to provide earthquake recovery assistance for about 12 months, Kelly says. Besides meeting immediate needs, the agency is working with municipal water providers to repair and upgrade damaged systems.

The earthquake was as much an economic shock as a seismic jolt. The scenic coastal fishing villages of Manabi and Esmeraldas, with their placid beaches, are a popular tourist destination.

This year, however, visitors are scarce. CRS opened its disaster relief headquarters in the only hotel still operating in Jama, which was empty after the quake. The disaster also has depressed the fishing industry because many restaurants are empty or closed.

In cities such as Portoviejo and Manta, Caritas is helping women form solidarity groups with revolving funds that they can use to start small businesses.

Psychological scars may be slower to heal. In Bigua, some people still go indoors only to cook, even if their homes suffered little damage.

Alicia Nevares, 65, recalls sleepless nights as aftershocks jolted the region. She is afraid to return to her home with her husband, who has Parkinson's disease, preferring the tent just across the street.

Farther north, in Esmeraldas, where many people live on an island just off the coast, a strong aftershock triggered a new rush to the mainland. With no bridge connecting the island, the only transportation is by boat.

Government officials have proposed resettling the islanders on the mainland, but they are reluctant to move permanently.

Nevertheless, signs of recovery are evident. Townspeople have cleared the debris of collapsed shops and operate their businesses out of tents.

In a place where jobs were already scarce, "people cannot afford to wait," Robles says. "The impact of the earthquake was great, because the country didn't have much experience with a disaster like this, but people have a strong will to keep forging ahead."

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