Month: February 2023

NEW YORK (OSV News) – Catholic humanitarian agencies are launching emergency relief campaigns following Feb. 6’s devastating earthquakes in Syria and Turkey. On Feb. 9, the death toll approached nearly 20,000 between the two countries.

The number of dead and injured was expected to climb further as rescue teams continued to search through the rubble of toppled buildings.

The Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), an agency of the Holy See, is looking to aid over 2,000 families in Syria’s Aleppo and Hama regions – already long ravaged by conflict – by providing bedding, food, medicines, infant formula, diapers and clothing. Donations can be made online at https://cnewa.org/work/emergency-syria; by phone at 800-442-6392; or by mail to CNEWA headquarters, 1011 First Avenue, New York, NY 10022.

Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the U.S. Catholic Church’s overseas relief and development agency, also is accepting donations through its website, crs.org. CRS is partnering with Caritas Turkey, Caritas Syria and Caritas Anatolia — members of Caritas Internationalis, a global confederation of Catholic relief organizations — to shelter displaced victims while ensuring access to food, clean water and hygiene supplies.

CNEWA president Msgr. Peter I. Vaccari said in a Feb. 7 news release his agency’s effort was “a preliminary response” to the disaster, which saw two powerful quakes strike southern Turkey and northern Syria mere hours apart.

The first quake, a 7.8 magnitude tremor, occurred just after 4 a.m. during a winter storm, followed by a 6.7 magnitude aftershock. The second quake, registering 7.5, hit nine hours later some 60 miles away. Numerous aftershocks have followed the quakes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Thousands of buildings have collapsed, with rescue efforts hampered by inclement weather and damaged roads. Rescuers, joined by international teams, are racing against time to extricate survivors from the rubble.

“Survivors are still processing the shock of the earthquake, searching through the rubble and assisting in rescue efforts,” said CNEWA Beirut regional director Michel Constantin, whose team manages emergency programs throughout the region. “There is a general state of panic, exacerbated by the harsh weather, complicating rescue efforts and the capacity to collect and assess data and plan accordingly.”

Even prior to the quake, 4.1 million in Syria depended on humanitarian aid due to a long-running civil war that since 2011 has ravaged the nation.

“The situation is tragic. … We have opened our convent doors to hundreds of families who have lost their houses, and their number is increasing by the hour,” said Blue Marist Brother Georges Sabe, whose order — which CNEWA’s campaign will aid — is sheltering up to 1,000 families in Aleppo, coordinating with the Franciscan Friars and the Salesian Fathers.

Brother Sabe said, “The elderly, children and women … are now in urgent need of food, clothes, medications and most of all, comfort and warmth in this harsh winter.”

CNEWA’s campaign also will bolster outreach by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which currently aids more than 850 families in the Aleppo region through local churches’ extensive network of parishes and schools. Through CNEWA, the society will receive mattresses, pillows, blankets, food, water and medicines, as well as milk, infant formula and diapers.

In the Syrian city of Hama, about 153 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake, CNEWA will assist three emergency shelters for more than 150 families who have lost their homes due to the quakes.

“We lived and survived the long years of war but never experienced this kind of fear,” said Bishop Abdo Abrash of the Melkite Catholic Eparchy of Homs, Hama and Yabroud, which is running the shelters. “It is true misery … there is a lack of first aid equipment to tend to the survivors.”

Constantin said amid the “chaotic” situation on the ground, “this is a critical moment to help heal those who have survived, those who ‘saw death,’ as one of our partners told me.”

Along with financial support, prayer remains an essential response to the tragedy, said Msgr. Vaccari.

“Even though we at CNEWA are accustomed to tragedies and emergencies, we are not immune to their toll,” he said. “We ask for your prayers of support and consolation for the victims of this horror, your prayers for those who have lost their lives and those who mourn them.”

(OSV News) – Theresa Flores plans to attend her 11th Super Bowl this year, but not necessarily because she is a football fan. 

Instead, the 57-year-old author, speaker and social worker will be in Glendale, Arizona, with volunteers from the SOAP (Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution) Project, which Flores founded to prevent human trafficking.

“A lot of kids are being trafficked during sporting events,” said Flores, who along with her team holds outreaches during large entertainment gatherings nationwide, training participants to recognize the signs of trafficking while distributing materials – including millions of bars of soap – labeled with the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline number: 888-373-7888.

Experts differ over the Super Bowl’s impact on human trafficking, but overall data shows that the problem has risen sharply across the globe. 

Some 50 million individuals worldwide were ensnared in modern slavery during 2021, according to the United Nations International Labor Organization Sept. 2022 report. Forced labor (including sex and labor trafficking) and forced marriage are the two most common types.

During 2020, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Polaris, which operates the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline, received more than 10,500 reports involving over 16,650 individuals victims — numbers that represented “likely only a fraction of the actual problem,” according to the organization’s website.

Traffickers prey on people made vulnerable by poverty, homelessness, addiction, prior sexual abuse and natural disasters, according to Human Trafficking Search, a global research database funded by the O.L. Pathy Family Foundation.

But even individuals from loving and secure families can be vulnerable to traffickers — and statistics do not capture their anguish –– something Flores, a survivor herself, knows all too well. 

Growing up, Flores was “a Catholic teenager in a very devout Catholic family in the Midwest,” to whom “nothing bad had ever happened,” she told OSV News.

But all that changed in high school, when Flores came under the influence of a teenage boy who groomed her over a six-month period for sex trafficking.

“He made me think he liked me,” said Flores. “He gave me a ride home from school one day. But he didn’t take me home. He took me to his house, drugged and raped me.”

Too ashamed to tell her parents about the attack, Flores then spent close to two years “being sold to men” in a network of sex clients, blackmailed into submission, and exploited after school and late in the evening. 

“I was actually kidnapped one night, sold to the highest bidder and left for dead in a motel in Detroit,” said Flores. “The police ended up bringing me home.”

She and her family soon relocated, and Flores, now 57, rebuilt her life, becoming a nationally recognized author, speaker, licensed social worker, and advocate for survivors and trafficking prevention. She founded both the SOAP Project and the similarly focused nonprofit Traffickfree, and also serves as the program director for U.S. Catholic Sisters Against Human Trafficking.

Sister Ann Victory, a Sister of the Humility of Mary and USCSAHT board member, said human trafficking comes down to “issues of power, control and money.”

Traffickers can make thousands of dollars per victim, with the United Nations’ International Labor Organization estimating the total annual profits of forced labor, including sex trafficking, to be $150 billion.

In recent years, victim advocates have sought to hold the hotel industry accountable for turning a blind eye to the problem.

“A hotel is making money every time a trafficker rents a room,” said Kristina Aiad Toss of the Columbus, Ohio-based Babin Law firm, which has filed civil suits against hotels for failure to counter known trafficking on their premises. “Hotels are really on the front lines of this problem. That’s really a piece of the puzzle I think has been missing.”

Over the past five years, “we’ve slowly started to see hotels take the issue more seriously,” Toss told OSV News.

However, advocates stress the problem of trafficking requires a broad, collaborative approach at government, industry and community levels.

“This work is way too complex to do by yourself,” said Sister Ann. “These kinds of partnerships and connections continue to be key across the nation, and across the world.”

Awareness and a willingness to act can save lives, she said.

Individuals who “seem unable to speak,” while lacking their own money, identification and even knowledge of their exact address, may be victims of trafficking, said Sister Ann.

As a trained nurse, Sister Ann said she also remains alert for “evidence of physical and psychological abuse” in potential victims.

Rather than intervening directly, she said, bystanders who suspect trafficking should contact law enforcement or the National Human Trafficking Hotline, which can be reached by phone at 888-373-7888, by text at 233733 (“Befree”) or by live chat.

Having the courage to speak up, even if the fears of trafficking prove unfounded, can prevent years of suffering, said Flores, recalling her time as a victim.

“I wish my neighbor, who saw me as a 15-year-old running through his backyard late at night barefoot and in pajamas, had called someone,” she said. “I wish somebody would have done this for me.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis expressed his “spiritual closeness” and “solidarity” with those affected by a pair of powerful earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria Feb. 6.

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake as measured by the U.S. Geological Survey hit southern Turkey before dawn Feb. 6 wreaking havoc in large areas of neighboring Syria. It was followed by what the geological survey said was a separate 7.5 magnitude earthquake, less than 12 hours later some 60 miles away.

By mid-afternoon local time, the Associated Press was reporting that more than 2,300 people were killed while hundreds remained trapped under the rubble of toppled buildings.

The Catholic charity Aid to the Church in need said a Catholic priest was among the dead in Syria. Father Imad Daher died in the collapse of the residence of retired Melkite Archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart of Aleppo, who was injured and hospitalized, the charity said.

Pope Francis was “deeply saddened” to learn of the “huge loss of life” caused by the disaster and offered his “heartfelt condolences” to those mourning losses, wrote Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, in telegrams to the Vatican’s ambassadors in Turkey and Syria.

The pope also prayed that emergency personnel would “be sustained in their care of the injured and in the ongoing relief efforts by the divine gifts of fortitude and perseverance.”

According to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the earthquake is the largest disaster to hit the country since 1939, when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 32,000 people and injured over 100,000. It is unclear how high the number of dead and wounded from the Feb. 6 earthquakes will reach, he added.

The Turkish president said that more than 45 countries have offered to support Turkey in relief efforts in addition to NATO and the European Union.

The Middle East Council of Churches, representing Orthodox, Evangelical and Catholic churches, issued a statement calling on the international community to provide emergency aid to the region and to lift sanctions on Syria “so sanctions may not turn into a crime against humanity.”

Just a few hours after the quake, the Knights of Malta announced that Malteser International, their relief agency, was sending an emergency response team.

“Our local partners have an urgent need of support, especially in areas of northern Syria where hundreds of thousands of people live in simple refuges and now, with the earthquakes, are even more defenseless,” said Oliver Hochedez, head of the Malteser International emergency response department. “In the hospitals run by our partner organizations the number of injured arriving increases hour by hour. We must provide help rapidly.”

Chaldean Catholic Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo told Vatican News Feb. 6 that he had never seen such destruction in war-torn Syria. “There was a strong fear and now the people are in the street, in the cold and under the rain,” he said. “There is damage everywhere, even in the cathedral. The libraries are destroyed, the houses crumbled. It’s an apocalyptic situation.”

Caritas Internationalis, the umbrella organization of national Catholic charities, immediately began a fundraising campaign for relief efforts in Turkey and Syria. The charity has been active in Turkey since 1991 and in Syria since 2011, primarily providing aid for refugees.

LAFLIN — JMJ Radio, the only Catholic radio station serving northeastern Pennsylvania and the Diocese of Scranton, has begun 2023 facing new challenges and opportunities to reach more faithful, as it moves up the FM dial from 98.9 to 104.5.

The recent development coincides with JMJ’s 15^th anniversary of broadcasting the “Good News,” which it will celebrate on March 19 — the Feast of Saint Joseph.

According to station owners Ed Niewinski, who also serves as president, and his wife, Carol Ann, JMJ had been broadcasting on both 750 AM and 98.9 FM, covering the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre listening areas via a leased translator. However, the translator’s owner recently notified the Niewinskis the lease would not be renewed.

“We were totally shocked and disappointed by this news,” Ed said. “Without a translator our coverage area would be extremely limited. We also would not want to be tied into a lease again if possible.”

As far as Ed and Carol Ann are concerned, the whole ordeal was a blessing in disguise. “With God’s help,” they indicated, a purchase agreement was entered into with a new translator that will now allow JMJ Catholic Radio to broadcast on a much more powerful station — 104.5 FM — beginning on Feb. 2.

The new station has the capability to reach more than 320,000 listeners spanning the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre market, the Southern Tier of New York state, and well into the Scranton Diocese, including the Poconos and Hazleton areas.

“All of this comes with a huge price tag,” Ed and Carol Ann noted, “but our board of directors gave its unanimous approval to purchase this translator to ensure the long-term future of JMJ Catholic Radio.”

Through the gracious support and hospitality of the Oblates of Saint Joseph religious congregation, led by their local rector, Saint Joseph Oblate Father Paul McDonnell, the station’s studio is comfortably housed at the OSJ Seminary building on Route 315 in Laflin.

As a member of the JMJ board, Father McDonnell is joined by fellow Oblate priest and seminary resident, Father Joseph Sibilano, and Father Brian Van Fossen, pastor of the Diocesan parish communities of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Hunlock Creek, and Saint Faustina Kowalska, Nanticoke.

From their seminary home, which they share with the Saint Joseph Oblates Chapel, JMJ provides a live audio broadcast of the chapel’s daily noon Mass. The Catholic radio station also airs the weekly Saint Ann Novena from the Basilica of Saint Ann in West Scranton on Monday at 10:30 a.m., and the Mass in Spanish celebrated every Saturday at 7 p.m. at Annunciation Parish, Hazleton.

“JMJ Radio is an affiliate of EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network), offering the very best in Catholic programs, and also airs a number of locally produced shows,” Ed remarked.

The JMJ owner also emphasized there is an urgent need — more than ever — for prayerful and financial support to keep Catholic radio on the air in the Diocese of Scranton.

JMJ Radio is a 501(c) Pennsylvania corporation, and tax-deductible donations may be sent to: JMJ Radio, P.O. Box 851, Pittston, PA 18640.

JMJ also broadcasts from their stations in Hazleton, Dushore, Laceyville, Altoona and State College. The radio station can be contacted at (570) 287-4670 or www.jmj750.com, which livestreams their programming 24 hours a day.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops affirmed its “united position” in opposition to taxpayer funding for abortion procedures, invoking the teaching of Pope Francis, following recent remarks by President Joe Biden.

During a Jan. 30 gaggle with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, a reporter said to Biden, “Catholic bishops are demanding that federal tax dollars not fund abortions.”

Biden replied, “No, they are not all doing that,” adding, “nor is the pope doing that.”

The USCCB’s president, Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, refuted the president’s remarks in a Feb. 1 statement. He said the U.S. bishops are united in their opposition to both abortion and the use of taxpayer funds to finance those procedures.

“As we are taught by Jesus, human life is sacred,” Archbishop Broglio said. “God calls us to defend and nurture life from the moment a new human being is conceived. The Catholic Church has been clear and consistent in this teaching.”

Archbishop Broglio added that the “Catholic bishops of the United States are united in our commitment to life and will continue to work as one body in Christ to make abortion unthinkable.”

“As the Holy Father, Pope Francis, has said, ‘It is not right to ‘do away with’ a human being, however small, in order to solve a problem. It is like hiring a hitman,'” the archbishop said. “Taxpayer funding of abortion would force people of good conscience to participate in this grave evil against their will. It would contradict our right to live in accord with the tenets of our faith. Our nation is better than that. I pray that we will protect every child no matter his or her age, and open our hearts to respond to mothers in need with love and support rather than the violence of abortion.”

The USCCB previously sent a Jan. 27 letter to the congressional sponsors of the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act” (H.R.7 and S.62), in support of the legislation.

Some media outlets cited the USCCB letter to suggest that Biden was denying the USCCB’s stance, but Biden was not listed as a recipient of that letter, which was addressed to Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J.

KINSHASA, Congo (CNS) – Ladislas set a machete under the crucifix. Bijoux laid a wicker mat there. And Emelda dropped military fatigues.

The three of them and other victims of violence in eastern Congo told Pope Francis horrifying stories of watching their families be slaughtered or of being kidnapped or raped repeatedly by militia members.

Pope Francis had planned to go to Goma in the violence-torn North Kivu province, but increased fighting forced him to cancel the trip to the East to protect the crowds that would gather to see him.

Instead, the pope invited about 40 victims of violence in the East to the apostolic nunciature in Kinshasa Feb. 1.

Ladislas Kambale Kombi, 16, said he watched his father being hacked to pieces with a machete and his mother being kidnapped, leaving him alone with his two little sisters. “Mom hasn’t come back. We don’t know what they did with her.”

Léonie Matumaini, an elementary school student, said she watched militia members stab her family; then, she said, they gave her the knife and dared her to bring it to the army.

Kambale Kakombi Fiston, 13, was kidnapped and held for nine months. He asked the pope to pray for children still captive in the forest.

Bijoux Mukumbi Kamala, holding one toddler and with another strapped to her back, stood in front of the pope as a friend read her testimony because she does not speak French. The 17-year-old said her “Calvary” began in 2020 when rebels kidnapped her.

“The commander chose me. He raped me like an animal. It was an atrocious suffering,” Bijoux wrote. “He raped me several times a day, whenever he wanted, for hours. This went on for 19 months — one year and seven months.”

When she and another young woman escaped, she was pregnant. “I have twin daughters who will never know their father.”

Father Guy-Robert Mandro Deholo read a testimony prepared for the meeting by Désiré Dhetsina “before she disappeared without a trace a couple months ago.”

She had survived the rebel attack Feb. 1, 2022, on the Plaine Savo displacement camp near Bule and, she wrote, she had seen “the savagery: people cut up like butcher’s meat, women disemboweled, men decapitated.”

Maiming is not uncommon, Father Mandro Deholo told the pope, holding up his left hand, which is missing a finger. As he spoke, two women in the audience raised their arms — one was missing a hand, the other was missing both. The priest accompanied the two women up to the pope, who touched their mutilated stumps and laid his hands on their heads in blessing.

On their behalf, the priest laid an axe at the foot of the crucifix placed near the pope.

Emelda M’karhungulu also had a friend read her testimony about what began on a Friday night in 2005 when she was kidnapped by armed men and “kept as a sexual slave and abused for three months.”

“They made us eat maize meal and the flesh of the men they killed,” she said. Those who refused were killed and fed to other hostages.

And, she said, “they kept us naked so we wouldn’t run away.”

“We put under the cross of Christ the clothes of the armed men who still strike fear in us because of the countless heinous and unspeakable acts of violence they continue to this day,” she said. “We want a different future. We want to leave behind this dark past and be able to build a beautiful future. We demand justice and peace.”

The testimonies, Pope Francis said, leave listeners without words. “We can only weep in silence.”

But he did use the meeting to express his closeness to all the people disappointed that he was not traveling to Goma and, especially, to “condemn the armed violence, the massacres, the rapes, the destruction and the looting” that continue to sow terror in the lives of the people of Congo.

“Put away your weapons, put an end to war. Enough,” he told those responsible.

In a country where sexual violence is a common weapon of war, Pope Francis offered special words of consolation to women and girls and strong warnings to those who would target them.

“I pray that women, every woman, may be respected, protected and esteemed,” he said. “Violence against women and mothers is violence against God himself, who from a woman, from a mother, took on our human condition.”

Later the pope welcomed to the nunciature representatives of six Catholic charitable programs working in the country, including programs run by the Focolare Movement and by the Community of Sant’Egidio.

The witness of helping others without expecting anything in return and of working with them to identify real needs and long-lasting solutions is something the nation needs, the pope said.

“Those who are prosperous, especially if they are Christians, are challenged to share what they have with those who lack the bare necessities,” the pope said. “This is not a matter of benevolence, but of justice. It is not philanthropy, but faith. For, as Scripture says, ‘faith without works is dead.'”