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Rome, Italy, Mar 30, 2017 / 03:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Six years after the start of the Civil War, Syria's apostolic nuncio said that the country is in a “bloodbath” – a situation so desperate it leaves you with the impression of being in hell.

“I do not know how to describe these atrocities,” Cardinal Mario Zenari told CNA March 25. “I always say, whoever does not believe in hell, just go to (Syria) and it will convey the weight of hell.”

“In Damascus ten days ago we saw on the television, this display, these Kamikaze, seventy dead, forty dead, it is a bloodbath,” he said.

Cardinal Zenari has been the Vatican’s Apostolic Nuncio to Syria since 2008. A new cardinal, he was appointed by Pope Francis in the last consistory in November and came to Rome from Syria for his installation Mass at the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie alle Fornaci March 25.

March 15 marked the sixth anniversary of the start of the Syrian Civil War. What began as peaceful demonstrations protesting ongoing human rights abuses and suppression of free speech erupted into a war that has killed hundreds of thousands and forced millions from their homes.

Today an end to the violence is nowhere in sight. The majority of Syria’s population has been displaced. And new threats that have grown out of the situation – most prominently ISIS – have only added to the chaos.

Asked if Pope Francis is likely to visit Syria, Cardinal Zenari said that “he’s ready to come,” but it’s a question of security, not only for him, but also for the people there.

“If the Pope comes to Syria he would have to stay at the nunciature” for safety, he said, but this causes problems because when the Pope visits a country he “must meet the people, meet the crowds.”

With the danger of suicide bombers in Damascus right now, the responsibility is too high for him to come, Zenari said. “If he's ready, he's ready but you have to say wait a bit just for the safety of all, of the faithful... because of what we see, really, these huge bloodstains.”

It is very important, the cardinal said, to continue to raise awareness of the “enormous suffering.” He is afraid that after a few years, people will gradually forget the trauma, stop talking about it. It is necessary that we keep talking, praying, and working to influence governments to help as well, he said.

“There are so many of our brothers and sisters here, and, I would say, all-in-all, there are people of all faiths suffering…”

However, minority groups such as Christians are under the highest risk from others, he said. They understand very well the Christian view of suffering as universal and like the cross.

But though there is so much atrocity, Cardinal Zenari explained that “there are also many beautiful examples of altruism.”

Many volunteers, probably more than one thousand by now, have lost their lives bringing aid to Syria, he said, so they have these examples of generosity, people he calls, “desert flowers.”

Several times he has heard people list these atrocities before international communities, Zenari said, and every time, they see and do nothing.

“You should notice more of this suffering of the civilians, especially women and children,” he said. “It is time to notice and not just read about this but realize it means to do something.”

Alvaro de Juana contributed to this story.

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Washington D.C., Mar 30, 2017 / 03:27 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Vice President Mike Pence cast the deciding vote in the Senate Thursday to advance a measure allowing states to once more have the freedom to avoid funding Planned Parenthood clinics with federal “family planning” grants.  

The vote was “a victory for all Americans who don’t want to see their tax dollars subsidizing the abortion industry and its ghoulish trafficking in aborted baby’s organs,” Maureen Ferguson, senior policy advisor with The Catholic Association, stated on Thursday.

At issue is a rule created by the Obama administration last December which forbade states to withhold Title X “family planning” grants to Planned Parenthood clinics on account of the fact that they perform abortions. States had been instead looking to fund other health clinics.

On Thursday, the Senate was voting to advance a joint resolution of disapproval that already passed the House. It would cancel the HHS rule.

With Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) joining Democrats in opposing the repeal, the vote was evenly divided 50-50 before Pence broke the tie and voted for its advancement.

It was the “first abortion-related vote in the Senate” since 2015, according to the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List.

“We are so grateful that Vice President Mike Pence, who began the battle to defund the Planned Parenthood abortion corporation when he was a Congressman, traveled up Pennsylvania Avenue to cast the tie-breaking vote in defense of human dignity and babies lives,” Ferguson stated.

Back in December, the Department of Health and Human Services ruled that states could only withhold Title X “family planning” funds from health centers if the clinics failed to adequately provide the range of services the funding was meant for, like contraceptives, pregnancy tests, and infertility treatments.

Thus, the fact that Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider could not be the factor for states withholding Title X funds from their clinics.

According to Planned Parenthood’s most recent fiscal year report from 2014-15, the organization performed over 323,999 annual abortions. It received over $550 million in federal, state, and local funds in that year, or “government health services grants & reimbursements.”

The organization has drawn controversy for its role in the trade of fetal body parts from aborted babies, obtained by tissue harvesters and ultimately used for purposes like medical research.

The Center for Medical Progress had aired a series of undercover videos, starting in the summer of 2015, from conversations they had with Planned Parenthood officials. The videos showed doctors discussing prices for fetal tissue with actors posing as tissue harvesters.

The organization was investigated by states, but has not currently been charged for illegal sales of tissue – reimbursement at “reasonable” levels for expenses like operating costs is allowed by federal law. However, a House Select Investigative Panel released a report in January detailing some abuses within the organization.

For instance, Planned Parenthood officials had admitted that clinics had not followed the organization’s procedures on important matters like fetal tissue transfers or ensuring that abortion procedures were not illegally altered for the purpose of tissue harvesting.

Another investigative report released around the same time by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute showed that, according to federal audits, Planned Parenthood clinics had overbilled Medicaid reimbursements and other public health funds by a total of over $130 million.

In some cases in Nebraska and New York, public funds including Medicaid reimbursements had paid for abortion-related claims and services at Planned Parenthood clinics, according to audits.

States should be free to disperse Title X funds to clinics they believe provide true health care, especially in light of Planned Parenthood’s recent controversies, insisted Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List.

If the resolution is passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump, it would “undo former President Obama’s parting gift to the abortion industry,” she stated.

“Never again will the federal government thwart efforts by states that – acting on the will of the people – want to fund real women’s health care, not abortion.”

 

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Rhina Guidos

By Rhina Guidos

WASHINGTON (CNS) ? The history of women and men religious in the United States is the history of American Catholicism and their archives reflect the rich role many played in weaving the fabric of the U.S. church, said a group of historians, scholars and archivists at a March 29 gathering in Washington to discuss religious order archives.

Archives particularly show the roles women religious played in the country's education, hospitals, immigrant communities and social movements, they said, and yet there's a danger of losing some of that history -- as well as that of their male counterparts -- as religious orders consolidate, convents merge or close, and their historical materials are discarded, lost or scattered.

When it comes to the records produced by the religious ministries of women religious, they tend to tell a richer story than official diocesan history, said Mary Beth Fraser Connolly, a panelist in "For Posterity: Religious Order Archives and the Writing of American Catholic History," part of a daylong series of events at The Catholic University of America aimed at discussing the fate of religious order archives.

Connolly mentioned the example of the official history of a parish school, where the priest is credited with its construction, but archives from women religious tell the story of how the women staffed the schools "for little to no salaries" and how they subsisted on other means of income to survive.

Connolly, continuing lecturer of history at Purdue University Northwest in Indiana, also gave the example of another "convent chronicle" she came across by an Italian immigrant, Sister Justina Sagale, who wrote about social settlement houses, the lives of Italian immigrant communities in Cincinnati as well as immigration laws that she felt negatively targeted Italians. Sister Sagale also told of an Italian teacher in one of the schools "who didn't have his papers yet" and was worried about the new law.

The account "provided a more complex understanding of Catholic American history," said Connolly, who has written about communities of women religious.

Another account from a group of women religious in Chicago mentions the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. assassination in 1968, but what's interesting in the account, in terms of Catholic history, is that the women mention traveling across town at night, driven by a priest.

In a simple entry, it documents some of the changes that were taking place in the daily lives of women religious following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, Connolly said. It shows how the women were given more freedom to visit family, to have contact with others, how nieces and nephews were now more involved in their lives, how the women could watch TV, and, in general, how they were having more contact with the outside world.

"Things are starting to change and that's kind of nice and interesting," Connolly said.

Carol Coburn, professor of religious studies at Avila University in Kansas City, Missouri, said that as someone who is not Catholic, getting a glimpse at the records, as she was researching, was an "amazing experience for me."

"When we ask ourselves the question: What is the contribution of religious order records to the understanding of Catholicism? My answer is: everything," she said.

Religious order records include information about demographics, customs, financial records, all found in constitutions, annals, memoirs, photos and correspondence that members of the congregations kept, and they "add immensely to history of American Catholic life," she said.

"I would argue that to know the full history of American Catholicism, you have to know what religious orders were doing at any given historical point in time," said Coburn, who studies and writes about American Catholic sisters.

When it comes to women religious, Coburn said, the records show that women religious led Catholics and non-Catholics "in some of the most significant social movements in cultural and political transitions we've experienced in the 20th century." 

Because they were highly educated, women religious created and maintained institutions, served as faculty administrators "and CEOs of their communities and institutions, long before the vast majority of American women worked in these in these leadership roles," Coburn said. And they were participants, and in some cases, leaders in every major social movement since the 1960s, including providing treatment for HIV and AIDS patients, immigration, the anti-nuclear movement, violence against women and children, the environment, etc., Coburn said.

"This is part of all of our stories," she added. "I am not Catholic, but this part of my story because it is integrated so thoroughly within the American milieu."

While not everything in the records is important and sometimes focuses on the mundane, such as who was in charge of sweeping the back stairs and who named the convent dog, the archives have "potential to be gold mines for historians," said Connolly.

Malachy McCarthy, archivist for the Claretian Missionaries Archives in Chicago, said that if historical materials contained in religious order records are not made available, an inaccurate story will get told and gave the example of a landmark study that didn't paint an accurate picture of Latino Catholics in Los Angeles.

While the study, about Mexicans immigrating to Los Angeles from 1900 to 1945, painted a picture of Latino Catholics who didn't make many public displays of their faith, Catholic records and publications show otherwise. The Spanish-language Catholic weekly publication La Esperanza, for example, showed the vigorous and very public life of the Latino Catholic community in Los Angeles, in stark contrast to what was said in the study, McCarthy said.

"It shows you what happens when you don't have availability of sources," he said. It also shows the consequences -- incorrect information, which "becomes the canon," he said.

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Follow Guidos on Twitter: @CNS_Rhina.

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