Category: Diocese of Scranton News

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis expressed his solidarity and closeness with Catholics in Nigeria after gunmen stormed a church and reportedly killed at least 50 people during a Pentecost Mass.

“While the details of the incident are being clarified, Pope Francis prays for the victims and the country, painfully stricken in a moment of celebration, and entrusts both to the Lord, so that he may send his Spirit to comfort them,” said Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, in a statement June 5.

According to the Reuters news agency, gunmen fired at people inside and outside St. Francis Xavier Church in Owo, located in the southwestern state of Ondo. No group had claimed responsibility for the attack as of June 6.

In addition to those who were killed, dozens more were injured and rushed to nearby hospitals.

Father Augustine Ikwu, communications director for the Diocese of Ondo, said the attack “has left the community devastated.”

He also said June 5 that “all the priests in the parish are safe and none were kidnapped” as was reported on several social media sites.

“Let us continue to pray for them and the good people of Owo and the state at large,” Father Ikwu said. “We turn to God to console the families of those whose lives were lost in this distressing incident, and we pray for the departed souls to rest in peace.”

In a series of tweets posted shortly after the attack, Rotimi Akeredolu, governor of Ondo state, said, “The vile and satanic attack” was “a calculated assault on the peace-loving people of (Owo) who have enjoyed relative peace over the years.”

“I want to express my condolences to those who lost their dear ones to this gruesome murder. This is a great massacre,” Akeredolu tweeted. “Our people in Ondo state will not let down their guard. This will not happen again. I have urged the heads of security agencies to take all necessary steps.”

 

SCRANTON – Just minutes before being ordained a Deacon – as Michael J. Boris laid on the floor of the Cathedral of Saint Peter – five words from the Litany of Supplication really caught his attention.

As the crowd of several hundred prayed to all of the saints, asking for God’s blessing on the Dallas native, Boris said he was struck by the words: “Lord, deliver us we pray.”

“I found myself really saying that from the heart. I think it was the spirit speaking within me to say, Lord, deliver us so that we may experience the Joy of the Gospel, deliver us from our failings and our fears,” Boris said in an interview with The Catholic Light directly following his Ordination Mass.

Boris, 26, was ordained as a transitional deacon on May 28, 2022, the ordination serving as the last major step before ordination to the priesthood, which typically occurs a year later after additional pastoral, liturgical and educational preparation.

“It really does feel unreal, I know it’s cliché to say that, but it is such a simple moment when the bishop lays his hands on your head and says the Prayer of Ordination. The Holy Spirit is working in powerful ways and I’m trusting that,” he added.

During the Ordination Mass, Boris was called forward by name and officially declared his intention to be ordained to the Diaconate. Following the Litany of Supplication, the Most Reverend Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, laid his hands on Boris’ head and then recited the Prayer of Ordination.

Following that Prayer, Boris vested as a Deacon and received the Book of Gospels from Bishop Bambera who said, “Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you have become. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.”

In addition to serving as ordaining prelate, Bishop Bambera also served as principal celebrant and homilist for the Ordination Mass.

During his homily, he acknowledged the large crowd that filled the Cathedral, saying the day is not only a blessing for Michael and his family, but also for the entire Diocese of Scranton.

“While we ordain one man today, it is so apparent that it takes the entire Church to nurture and bring a vocation to fruition,” Bishop Bambera said. “None of us is ordained for ourselves or to achieve some personal sense of accomplishment. We are called by God and sent forth for mission – to serve God’s holy people. We ought never lose sight of this reality!”

The Bishop noted that Boris is being ordained at a unique moment in the life of the Church. For more than two years, the world has been dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and most recently, the War in Ukraine has shown the need for peace in the world.

“Our people continue to look to the Church and to the Lord whom we proclaim as their greatest hope. Michael, the Church needs you now, more than ever! Give God’s people reason to hope,” the Bishop explained.

Reflecting on the readings from Mass, the Bishop used Saint Paul’s words from his letter to the Church at Ephesus to explain God’s Spirit will pour grace and mercy into Boris’ life to help bring people that hope, healing and peace.

“If you want your ministry as a deacon to be fruitful, Michael, you must root yourself in Jesus’ life and love. The disciplines of prayer, obedience and celibacy that you are called to embrace this day are meant to enable you to grow in the same spirit of service and mercy that so characterized Jesus’ ministry,” Bishop Bambera added. “These disciplines are not obstacles, hurdles or distractions that are somehow detached from what it means to be an ordained minister of the Church. They are not meant to set you up as being better or greater than others. Rather, they are the vehicles that will carry you to a deeper relationship with Jesus.”

As a Deacon, Boris’ ministry will be three-fold. He will assist the Bishop and his priests in ministries of the Word, Liturgy and Charity. This includes proclaiming the Gospel, leading intercessions, preaching, preparing the altar, celebrating baptisms, leading the faithful in prayer, distributing holy communion, witnessing marriages and conducting wake and funeral services. Deacons also identify the needs of poor and underserved, and shepherd the Church’s resources to meet those needs.

“While you have been given tremendous gifts and talents, we pray that you will always rely upon the grace of God to fill up whatever may be lacking in you to carry out fully the ministry entrusted to you this day,” Bishop Bambera ended his homily by saying.

As he listened to the Bishop explain the roles and responsibilities he now assumes, Boris recognized the gravity and importance of the work he undertakes.

“Obviously, it felt serious before, but during the homily, where he was listing the responsibilities, it started to settle in more that this is what I’m committing to and the moment of making the promise, it really is an unreal experience,” Boris said. “I made the promise and I’m going to keep it to the best of my ability!”

Following Mass, family, friends and many faithful greeted Boris. That includes parishioners from his home parish of Saint Andre Bessette, Wilkes-Barre, as well as people from Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saint Rose of Lima in Carbondale where he served a pastoral year and will be assigned for summer ministry.

“It was really great. I saw a lot of people that I haven’t seen in a couple years. Friends, family and a lot of them don’t even know each other, but the fact that we have the common bond – not only of me – but God’s grace bringing us together,” Boris said.

As he looks to the future, and God-willing, being ordained to the priesthood next year, Boris simply said, “I’m taking it one day at a time. I think what brought me to this moment as a deacon is one day at a time and when God’s ready, he’ll prepare my heart for the next step.”

SAN DIEGO (CNS) – Cardinal-designate Robert W. McElroy told reporters May 31 that when he learned he is among the 21 new cardinals Pope Francis will create Aug. 27, “I said a big prayer.”

“I said several prayers because I was stunned and so shocked by this,” said the 68-year-old prelate who heads the San Diego Diocese. He is the only American in the group the pope announced May 29.

“It was prayer in gratitude for my family and the many people who have helped form me over the years and thanksgiving to God for all their roles in my life,” he said during a 25-minute news conference held outside the diocesan pastoral center.

After the consistory, he will be among 132 cardinals under the age of 80, who will be eligible to vote in a conclave. The number of those over 80 will be 97, bringing the total number of cardinals to 229.

A native of San Francisco, Bishop McElroy is the sixth bishop of San Diego. He was installed April 15, 2015. Ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of San Francisco April 12, 1980, he was an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese from September 2010 until he was named to head the Diocese of San Diego in 2015.

“By naming Bishop Robert McElroy as a cardinal, Pope Francis has shown his pastoral care for the church in the United States,” said Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez, who is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “I have known and have had the privilege of working with Cardinal-designate McElroy for many years.”

As brother bishops, he said, they have worked together “on many issues and initiatives in service” to the USCCB and the California Catholic Conference, which is the public policy arm of the state’s Catholic bishops.

“His strong faith and the pastoral concern for the faithful he has shown in his diocese will serve the global church well,” Archbishop Gomez said in a May 29 statement. “Please join me in praying for the continued ministry of Bishop McElroy.”

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco also sent his congratulations to Cardinal-designate McElroy.

The San Diego bishop told reporters he did not know ahead of the pope’s announcement he would be made a cardinal. He awoke that morning to a flood of calls, texts and emails congratulating him.

“I thought to myself, ‘Congratulations on what?'” he said.

Cardinal-designate McElroy said he is deeply honored to be named to the College of Cardinals and also is happy to know he will be staying in San Diego. “That delights me,” he said.

In a statement he released May 29, he said he was “stunned and deeply surprised by the news” the pope had named him a cardinal.

“My prayer is that in this ministry I might be of additional service to the God who has graced me on so many levels in my life. And I pray also that I can assist the Holy Father in his pastoral renewal of the church,” he said.

Leading the Catholic community of San Diego and Imperial counties, which make up the diocese, “is my privilege,” he added.

Cardinal-designate McElroy said at the news conference he believes the pope “wanted to have a cardinal on the West Coast.”

“There’s no cardinal now west of Houston,” he said, referring to Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston. “There was a desire to have a cardinal on the West Coast, so that was part of it.”

But he said another reason for the pope choosing him could be that San Diego is a border diocese with ministries that reflect the priority the pontiff places on the church and society welcoming migrants and refugees unconditionally.

“As you know this pope is very concerned about migrants and refugees, and we’re a diocese on the border so we face all of those issues and we have a very large immigrant population here and particularly within the Catholic community,” Cardinal-designate McElroy added.

Like the pope, the San Diego prelate talks often of “mutual accompaniment” by a bishop with the faithful.

“This image of the church as the pilgrim people of God demands that the ministry of a bishop be enmeshed in a culture of mutual accompaniment that suffuses the local church,” then-Bishop McElroy said in his homily during his installation Mass as San Diego’s bishop.

“The theological foundation for this culture of mutual accompaniment lies in the priesthood of all believers and the universal call to holiness,” he said.

He was one of only two U.S. bishops personally named by the pope to participate in the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon Oct. 6-27, 2019. The other was Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston. The synod was predominantly comprised of Latin American prelates.

The only other American there was Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell, who participated in his role as prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.

As the synod opened, the San Diego bishop said ecology and synodality were at the heart of the Amazon discussions. He has urged his brother bishops in the U.S. to fully embrace the pope’s “Laudato Si'” encyclical on caring for the environment.

“Pope Francis has a series of initiatives that he’s trying to bring to the life of the church,” Cardinal-designate McElroy told reporters May 31. “And I have tried to take those initiatives and plant them here.”

When asked about prohibiting Catholic politicians from Communion based on their public policies supporting legalized abortion, he said such a move “is destructive … partly because it diminishes the Eucharist in my view and it contributes toward the weaponization (of Communion), and even more so, it contributes to the increased partisanship within our society.”

“We sadly live in a society which is deeply divided along partisan and ideological lines, and we see some of that seeping into the life of the church,” he said. Such division is “a great tragedy,” he said. “I think it’s important that we not go in that direction.”

Asked about the clergy abuse crisis, he said that “the great problem in the church was when they (priest abusers) got reassigned after it was known they had abused. That was a terrible, sinful pattern in the life of the church.”

“We can’t change it by putting it behind us. We need to always remember what happened, and how we got into a very bad pattern,” he said.

On Aug. 13, 2019, then-Bishop McElroy gathered all 2,500-plus diocesan employees for the first time in the diocese’s history to announce an expansion of the fight against the sexual abuse of children not just within the local church but in the greater society.

Among other actions, he called on every diocesan employee to report child abuse they suspected was occurring, not just so-called mandated reporters obligated by law to do so, such as teachers and priests.

He also announced formation of a task force to develop programming to raise awareness among the diocese’s families at schools and parishes of the epidemic of child abuse and what they could do to prevent it and to help its victims to heal.

Cardinal-designate McElroy also gave an update on his health. In November 2021, he underwent four-way bypass heart surgery. It was a planned procedure that he and his doctors began discussing following test results he received over the summer of that year. Fluid was found in his lung and doctors found he had four blocked arteries.

He had no complications, he said, and “felt no pain” after the surgery.

As the news conference wrapped up, he was asked if it were possible he could become pope one day.

“I don’t think an American should be pope,” he replied, explaining that the U.S. has power “in so many levels,” that if the church were led by an American pope, it would be a “counterpoint to the witness that the church has to continue to be giving.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Old age, frailty and vulnerabilities should not be hidden, Pope Francis said.

“We are all tempted to hide our vulnerability, to hide our illness, our age and our seniority, because we fear that they are the precursor to our loss of dignity,” the pope said June 1 at his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

“Do not hide old age, do not hide the fragility of old age,” he said, because society needs to be taught and reformed to respect all seasons of life.

Continuing his series of talks about old age, the pope looked at Psalm 71, in which the author, an elderly man, laments his many afflictions and misfortunes, and pleads to the Lord for help, expressing, in the end, hope and praise.

The psalmist shows how the process of becoming more weak, fragile and vulnerable with advancing age “becomes an opportunity for abandonment, deception and for prevarication and arrogance, which at times prey upon the elderly,” the pope said.

Even today, “in this throwaway society, this throwaway culture, elderly people are cast aside and suffer these things,” he said. It is “a form of cowardice in which we specialize in this society of ours” where there are many people “who take advantage of the elderly, to cheat them and to intimidate them in myriad ways.”

“Shame should fall on those who take advantage of the weakness of illness and old age,” he said.

“Such cruelty also occurs within families,” he said, asking people reflect on how they relate to their older relatives: “Do I remember them, do I go to visit them? Do I try to make sure they lack nothing? Do I respect them?” and talk with them to “obtain wisdom?”

“Remember that you, too, will become elderly. Old age comes for everyone. And treat the elderly today as you would wish to be treated in your old age,” the pope said.

Everyone in society “must hasten to take care of the elderly – they are its treasure,” he said.

“How is it that modern civilization, so advanced and efficient, is so uncomfortable with sickness and old age? How is it that it hides illness, it hides old age? And how is it that politics, which is so committed to defining the limits of a dignified survival, is at the same time insensitive to the dignity of a loving coexistence with the old and the sick?” he said.

The elderly author of the psalm first sees his old age as a defeat, then he “rediscovers trust in the Lord. He feels the need to be helped. And he turns to God,” the pope said.

This is a lesson for everyone to learn: that God never rejects the prayer of those in need of help and that “we all need to abandon ourselves to the Lord, to invoke his help,” and to abandon oneself to the care of others, he said.

“Do not hide frailties,” he said, because there is a “magisterium of frailty,” which is a teaching that “opens up a decisive horizon for the reform of our own civilization. A reform that is now indispensable for the benefit of the coexistence of all.”

“The marginalization of the elderly – both conceptual and practical – corrupts all seasons of life, not just that of old age,” he said.

BROOKLYN, N.Y. (CNS) – A burglar cut through a metal protective casing to steal a historic tabernacle valued at $2 million at a Brooklyn Catholic church.

In the course of the crime, angel statues flanking the tabernacle were decapitated, and consecrated hosts from inside the tabernacle were thrown all over the altar, according to a Brooklyn diocesan news release.

The burglary is suspected to have taken place May 27 at St. Augustine Catholic Church in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn and the theft was discovered by the pastor May 28, the release said.

A safe in the sacristy also was cut open but nothing was inside, it added.

“This is devastating, as the tabernacle is the central focus of our church outside of worship, holding the body of Christ, the Eucharist, which is delivered to the sick and homebound,” said Father Frank Tumino, the pastor.

The tabernacle dates back to when the church was built in the 1890s. “This holy sacramental receptacle is irreplaceable due to its historical and artistic value,” the diocesan said.

The New York City Police Department was investigating this “brazen crime of disrespect and hate” and has asked the community for any tips that could lead to solving it.

“To know that a burglar entered the most sacred space of our beautiful church and took great pains to cut into a security system is a heinous act of disrespect,” Father Tumino said.

In the neighboring Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan planned to visit a Manhattan Catholic church May 31 that a news release said was the victim of “a hate crime” a week earlier.

Vandals beheaded and smashed statues in the Our Lady of Fatima Grotto at Our Lady of Sorrows Church.

The cardinal planned to pray an evening rosary, which “will be offered in reparation for this act of vandalism and hate.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The COVID-19 pandemic not only caused a one-year delay in holding the World Meeting of Families, it also prompted a look at new ways to involve Catholic families from around the world and to ensure that they take the lead in ministering to each other.

Gabriella Gambino, undersecretary of the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life, presided over a news conference at the Vatican May 31 to present the final program for the gathering June 22-26 online and in Rome.

Instead of including academic theological conferences, she said, the 2022 version of the World Meeting of Families will feature moments of “encounter, listening and discussion” among those engaged in pastoral work with couples and families.

And, she said, the lead will be taken by families from around the world who are working with priests and bishops to promote healthy marriages and strong families and to assist those in difficulty.

The congress, which will be livestreamed and translated into English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian as well as Italian sign language and English sign language, will cover topics ranging from promoting collaboration between priests and married couples to accompanying couples in their first year of marriage. Difficult topics like forgiveness and healing after a betrayal or helping families dealing with addiction also will be part of the agenda, Gambino said.

Asked by a reporter if same-sex couples would be welcome at the meeting, she responded that in the church’s pastoral outreach, “the idea is to promote a process of welcome, accompaniment and discernment” that helps every Catholic move toward what the world meeting’s theme professes, “Family Love: A Vocation and a Path to Holiness.”

In total, she said, there will be some 30 panels with a total of 62 speakers — only three of whom are priests. Most are married couples; they come from 17 countries and are involved in outreach to families through their parish, diocese, bishops’ conference or movement.

About 2,000 official delegates from 120 nations will attend the Rome meeting, representing bishops’ conferences and international Catholic movements and organizations. About 75% of the delegates are laypeople, while the others are bishops or priests in charge of marriage and family offices or committees.

The event will kick off June 22 with the “Festival of Families,” an event that previously was held on the Saturday night before the world meeting ended. In addition to prayer and music, the festival will feature the testimonies of five families talking about: the call to sacramental marriage, the call to holiness, the call to forgiveness, the call to welcome and the call to fraternity.