Category: Diocese of Scranton News

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – The U.S. Senate passed two major online child safety reforms July 30, but the bills face an uncertain future in the House.

The bills – the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act and the Kids Online Safety Act, sometimes called COPPA 2.0 and KOSA – were approved by the upper chamber in a bipartisan 91-3 vote. But the legislation faces some criticism from tech industry groups and the American Civil Liberties Union, and it is not yet clear if it would have the necessary support to pass in the GOP-controlled House.

KOSA would create the new obligation of “duty of care,” a requirement for social media companies to mitigate potential harms to children. COPPA 2.0 would expand the parental consent requirement for data collection and would ban companies from targeting children with advertising.

Jessica Heldman, a child rights professor at the University of San Diego, a Catholic university, and a member of its Children’s Advocacy Institute, told OSV News, “the research is clear that social media puts children at risk.”

“They are being bullied, exploited, exposed to drugs and harmful content through platforms designed to keep their attention to the point of causing addiction,” she said July 30. “The legislation overwhelmingly passed by the Senate today is an important and long-awaited step toward protecting the safety and well-being of children online. Quite simply, it will save lives.”

Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., spearheaded KOSA after reporting by The Wall Street Journal that social media companies were aware of risks presented by their platforms to kids, including Instagram’s adverse effects on the mental health of teen girls.

Blackburn said in a July 30 statement their legislation “provides young people and parents with the tools, safeguards, and transparency they need to protect against online harms.” Blumenthal added, “It will be the first internet safety reform in nearly three decades — a resounding bipartisan achievement showing democracy still works.”

COPPA 2.0, was spearheaded by Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Bill Cassidy, R-La. In remarks on the Senate floor July 30, Markey said its passage would mean “an end to the manipulative personalized ads that trick young people into purchasing unwanted goods and services.” Cassidy said in a statement, “The internet is an integral part of children’s lives today. It is time our laws reflect this new reality.”

In a statement, President Joe Biden urged the House to follow the Senate’s lead.

“Today, the Senate took a crucial bipartisan step forward to make our kids safer online,” Biden said July 30. “There is undeniable evidence that social media and other online platforms contribute to our youth mental health crisis. Today our children are subjected to a wild west online and our current laws and regulations are insufficient to prevent this. It is past time to act.”

He said his administration “has taken important steps to address the harms of social media and online platforms” but “we need action by Congress to protect our kids online and hold Big Tech accountable for the national experiment they are running on our children for profit.”

Biden said the KOSA bill “answers the call from the Unity Agenda of my first State of the Union Address, when I said it was time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, and demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children.”

But groups including the ACLU criticized KOSA, arguing it would censor protected speech.

“KOSA compounds nationwide attacks on young peoples’ right to learn and access information, on and offline,” Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said in a statement. “As state legislatures and school boards across the country impose book bans and classroom censorship laws, the last thing students and parents need is another act of government censorship deciding which educational resources are appropriate for their families. The House must block this dangerous bill before it’s too late.”

The bill’s path forward in the House is not yet clear, and the chamber is scheduled to be in recess until September.

Prior to the Senate’s passage of the legislation, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told Axios he is focused on finding consensus in his chamber on the matter.

(OSV News) – Organizers of the Paris Olympic Games apologized during the Games’ daily news conference July 28 to those offended by a drag performance during the opening ceremony that the French bishops said “included scenes of mockery and derision of Christianity.”

In what was supposed to be a feast of unity and joy for the world, France put itself in the eye of the storm July 26 as television cameras shown LGBTQ+ performers, one of whom wore a crown, seated at a table. The shape of the crown brought to mind a monstrance or halo.

The scene was immediately interpreted as a parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic wall painting in Milan’s Dominican convent of the Last Supper.

The drag queen table scene was later complemented with a nude singer appearing in the middle of a fruit basket, to represent Dionysus, ancient Greece’s God of wine, with the Olympic Games official profile on X, formerly Twitter, saying the depiction made us “aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.”

In a statement July 27, the French bishops deplored the scenes at the opening of the Olympic Games.

While the ceremony was a “marvelous display of beauty and joy, rich in emotion and universally acclaimed,” they said, it “unfortunately included scenes of mockery and derision of Christianity, which we deeply regret.” The Olympic celebration, they said “goes far beyond the ideological biases of a few artists,” the bishops stressed.

“Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group,” Olympic spokeswoman Anne Descamps told reporters July 28. “If people have taken any offense we are, of course, really, really sorry.”

Thomas Jolly, the French creative director of the opening ceremony, said at the news conference that he “did not intend to be subversive or to mock or shock,” saying the show included “ideas from the French Republic,” “inclusive ideas,” because in France “we’re allowed to love who we want, how we want.”

Right after the apology, Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, went on X, formerly Twitter, to say that while he complained about the Last Supper scene July 27 on social media and “had no intention of returning to the issue,” he decided to do so after the “so-called apology from the organizing committee” was “anything but an apology,” he said.

Reacting to Descamp’s comments that there “was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group,” Bishop Barron said, “Give me a break.”

“So we have a group of drag queens cavorting in a kind of sexually provocative way, clearly in imitation of Da Vinci’s Last Supper, which presents to the world the Last Supper of Jesus. And no disrespect was meant. Do you think anyone takes that seriously?” Bishop Barron asked.

To the comment by the show’s director that what was intended was celebrating “community tolerance,” Bishop Barron responded: “Yeah, tolerance. Except for those pesky, 2.6 billion Christians on the planet. Everyone’s welcome. Everyone’s tolerated, all this lovely diversity. Until you get to anyone that disagrees with your ideology. Like these 2.6 billion people,” Bishop Barron said, referring to the size of the world’s Christian population.

He noted the organizers said that “celebrating tolerance was achieved.”

“I wonder what planet they’re living on if they think this, that harmony and peace and all this was achieved by this clear affront to Christians,” he said.

“Christians were offended because it was offensive, and it was intended to be offensive,” Bishop Barron said, adding that “a real apology would be something like: This was a mistake. It should never have been done, and we’re sorry for it.” Bishop Barron also said that Christians “should keep raising our voices.”

In a conversation with OSV News, Bishop Emmanuel Gobilliard of Digne, the special representative of the Holy See for the 2024 Paris Olympics, said July 27 that what shocked him most “is that the freedom of spirit and tone claimed by those who set this up shouldn’t be directed against others.”

Bishop Gobilliard said, “You can make fun of your own ideas, laugh at yourself, why not. But to mock the faith and religion of others in this way … is very shocking. That was my first reaction.”

He further stressed that the Olympic Games are the last place to create such divisions and that the scene violated the Olympic charter.

Rule 50 of the charter says: “It is important, on both a personal and a global level, that we keep the venues, the Olympic Village and the podium neutral and free from any form of political, religious or ethnic demonstrations.”

Two days after the opening ceremony, a 16-year-old Catholic Brazilian skateboarder, Rayssa Leal, used sign language to quote John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” to celebrate her bronze medal in the women’s street skateboarding final in Paris.

“I did it because I do it in every competition. For me it is important, I am Christian, I believe a lot in God. There I asked for strength and sent a message to everyone, that God really is the way, the truth and the life,” Leal told Brazilian media outlet UOL.

Brazilian media however raised a question whether after displaying her faith in a silent way two days after the controversial opening ceremony, Leal may be punished by the International Olympic Committee.

Meanwhile, the Polish state broadcaster suspended a sports television star journalist, a Catholic, who, during the controversial Olympic Games opening ceremony, reacted to a performance of John Lennon’s “Imagine” by saying it was a “vision of communism.”

“A world without heaven, nations and religion. This is the vision of communism, unfortunately,” Przemyslaw Babiarz said live on air July 26. Lennon’s song asks to imagine no heaven or hell, no countries, and no possessions.

After state-owned Polish Television suspended Babiarz, Polish state Ombudsman spoke up on July 29, saying that the Polish constitution protects free speech of journalists and “the public broadcaster is obliged to respect it in particular, and should ensure that journalists are able to express themselves unhindered and that there is a plurality of views.”

Almost 30 current and former Olympians, and dozens of Babiarz’s colleagues from the sports newsroom of Polish Television signed a letter of support July 30, asking the CEO of TVP to let Babiarz come back on air and continue commenting on the Olympic Games.

Babiarz doesn’t shy away from talking about his faith. In a meeting with university students back in 2012 he said: “I think I talk about God with more commitment than about sports. This happens for a simple reason: God is more important to me.” He is one of the most iconic sports commentators in Poland, which for 50 years was under communist rule — a regime St. John Paul II helped overturn in 1989.

Suspending Babiarz for his opening ceremony remarks, Polish Television said in a statement that “sports should be free from politics,” but many commentators in Poland saw the journalist’s comments as a remedy for the controversial ceremony that made headlines for mocking the Catholic faith.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Thanks to Jesus’ promise to be with his disciples always, the faithful can be fully present for others, especially those in need, Pope Francis told thousands of altar servers from around the world.

“Thanks to Jesus, always and only thanks to him — you also can say to your neighbor, ‘I am with you,’ not in words, but in deeds, with gestures, with your heart, with concrete closeness,” the pope told the young people July 30.

The faithful can show their closeness concretely, he said, “by weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice, without judgment or prejudice, without selfishness and excluding no one.”

This closeness is to be extended “even with those we might not like; with those different from me; with foreigners; with those whom we feel do not understand us; with those who never come to church; with those who say they do not believe in God,” he said.

The pope presided over an evening meeting of prayer, song and sharing experiences with nearly 50,000 altar servers from 20 countries making an international pilgrimage to Rome. The majority of young men and women came from Germany, but there also were pilgrims from Austria, Hungary, France and other countries. The last international pilgrimage was in Rome in 2018.

The pope first arrived by popemobile with a few children accompanying him. He spent about 20 minutes circling St. Peter’s Square, which was only about half-full, as well as a portion of the wide boulevard outside the square where thousands of visitors and altar servers were stuck, having not gotten to their seats in time before security closed the area. After the pope was seated in front of the basilica, security allowed the special guests to take their seats and fill the square.

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg is president of Coetus Internationalis Ministrantium, the association of altar servers that hosted the meeting along with the German bishops’ conference.

He told the pope that altar servers approach Jesus in a special way during their service at Mass. “Through the special bond with Christ comes a true friendship, a connection between us,” which also means “drawing closer to one another.”

Jesus inspires the faithful “to be true friends of all people with the help of Christ,” which means extending a hand to those in difficulty: the poor, the persecuted, the oppressed, the homeless, the unemployed, the refugees or those without a homeland, the cardinal said.

The pope gave brief remarks that were then translated into German for the crowd.

Reflecting on the pilgrimage’s theme of “With You,” the pope said, “Your experience of serving the liturgy reminds me that the first subject, the agent of this ‘with you,’ is God.”

“This occurs above all during Mass, in the Eucharist, where the God who is ‘with you’ becomes a real and concrete presence in the body and blood of Christ,” he said. “When we receive holy Communion, we experience that Jesus is ‘with us’ both spiritually and physically.”

“You too, in Communion, can say to the Lord Jesus, ‘I am with you,’ not in words, but with your heart and your body, with your love. Precisely because Jesus is with us, we can truly be with him” and then with others, he said.

The pope thanked the young people “for coming here as pilgrims in order to share the joy of belonging to Jesus, of being servants of his love, servants of his wounded heart that heals our wounds, that saves us from death and that gives us eternal life.”

At the end of the prayer service, the pope spent another 20 minutes greeting the many bishops who had accompanied their dioceses’ altar servers and scores of young people seated in front of the basilica, signing the back of their tickets, taking selfies, exchanging remarks and receiving gifts.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis has called on political leaders to be at the service of the poor, the unemployed and the common good.

The world cannot promote “universal fraternity” without good politics, the pope said in a video message released July 30 by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network.

The network posts a short video of the pope offering his specific prayer intention each month. For the month of August, the pope dedicated his prayer intention to political leaders.

“Today, politics doesn’t have a very good reputation: corruption, scandals, distant from people’s day-to-day lives,” Pope Francis said.

“But, can we move ahead toward universal fraternity without good politics? No,” he said.

Good politics, as St. Paul VI defined it, is “one of the highest forms of charity because it seeks the common good,” Pope Francis said.

As opposed to “politicking,” he said, it is a “politics that listens to what is really going on, that’s at the service of the poor, not the kind that’s holed up in huge buildings with large hallways.”

“I’m speaking of the politics that’s concerned about the unemployed” and understands what it is like for people who are not able to work, he said.

“If we look at it this way, politics is much more noble than it appears,” he said.

“Let’s be grateful for the many politicians who carry out their duties with a will to serve, not of power, who put all their efforts toward the common good,” the pope said.

“Let us pray that political leaders be at the service of their own people, working for integral human development and the common good, taking care of those who have lost their jobs and giving priority to the poorest,” he said.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – Legislation under consideration in Congress would help faith-based organizations respond to a shortage in affordable housing by easing restrictions on the use of their land to develop affordable housing, supporters say.

The Yes in God’s Backyard Act, introduced in March by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, would provide technical assistance to faith-based and nonprofit groups interested in using land they already own to respond to housing shortages in their communities, as well as technical assistance to local governments to facilitate training on best practices for working with such groups.

The bill would also create challenge grants to provide additional resources to communities that ease burdensome regulations on affordable rental housing on property owned by faith-based organizations and institutions of higher education.

In a July 12 letter to members of Congress, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urged lawmakers to pass the bill, arguing it would “would help faith-based and nonprofit organizations improve their capacity to meet the housing needs of poor and vulnerable community members.”

Metropolitan Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, said, “The United States is in the midst of a profound and prolonged housing crisis. A systemic lack of affordable housing drives up housing costs for low-income households, exacerbating their financial insecurity.”

The legislation, he argued, would help the church serve low-income individuals and families at risk of homelessness by “empowering faith-based and other nonprofit institutions to use their resources responsibly to serve more vulnerable families.”

Brown’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from OSV News about the status of the bill, but a review of the Congressional Record shows its status has been unchanged since it was referred to the Senate Housing committee in March.

In a March 12 statement issued when he introduced the legislation, Brown said, “Housing is too expensive and too hard to find in almost every community in America.

“This is a common sense solution – families need more housing, and churches, synagogues, and other religious organizations want to put their faith into action by developing housing on land they already own.” Brown said. “By helping these institutions cut through red tape, we can lower the cost of housing and expand options in Ohio and around the country.”

Other signatories on the USCCB letter included Jesuit Father Christopher Kellerman, secretary of the Office of Justice and Ecology at the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States; Kerry Alys Robinson, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA; and John Barry, president of the National Council of the United States for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the U.S. has a shortage of 7.3 million rental homes that are affordable and available to renters with extremely low incomes, defined as incomes “at or below either the federal poverty guideline or 30% of their area median income, whichever is greater.” The group’s data shows that only 34 affordable and available rental homes exist for every 100 extremely low-income renter households.

LOS ANGELES (OSV News) – Jesus Christ may have been the main protagonist at the National Eucharistic Congress July 17-21, but the golden, unusually large monstrance used to carry him each night before thousands at Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium caught people’s attention, too.

Where did they get such a big, beautiful monstrance from? And as one reporter jokingly asked, had Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, board chairman of the National Eucharistic Congress Inc., been lifting weights to be able to carry it through the stadium?

The monstrance, Bishop Cozzens told journalists at the congress, was actually the same model that organizers had seen images of Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez use in a Eucharistic procession through the streets of San Gabriel in March 2023.

Almost immediately after the event, congress organizers at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops asked Archbishop Gomez’s office, “Where can we get one of those?”

The inquiry led them to Father Miguel Angel Ruiz, a 31-year-old Los Angeles priest ordained in 2019 with roots in Guadalajara, Mexico. Father Ruiz was known for having the same monstrance, and often lending it to other priests in the Los Angeles Archdiocese for special events. It was his monstrance, in fact, that the late LA Auxiliary Bishop David G. O’Connell borrowed when he famously blessed Los Angeles in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020.

Father Ruiz told the officials that the monstrance was made by a liturgical store in Guadalajara, Articulos Religiosos San Jose. They ordered an exact replica of the monstrance — one of the store’s most popular ones — in a hurry, since Pope Francis had agreed to bless it in a private audience in Rome a few weeks later.

Four feet tall and weighing more than 20 pounds, the new monstrance — together with hosts specially sized for it — was shipped from Guadalajara to Tijuana, where Father Ruiz drove to pick it up. From across the border in San Diego, he had it shipped to USCCB headquarters in Washington, just in time for the congress delegation led by Bishop Cozzens to bring it to Rome for the pope’s blessing.
“It’s big. It’s beautiful,” the pope said with a smile to members of the congress planning team at the June 19, 2023, meeting.

Father Ruiz, now administrator at Our Lady of the Rosary of Talpa Church in East LA, told Angelus, the archdiocesan news outlet, that his personal connection with the monstrance actually began at a convent in Guadalajara he used to visit as a seminarian.

While praying before the Blessed Sacrament in the convent’s adoration room, “I would think to myself, ‘When I become a priest, I want one like that one,'” he recalled.

A few years later, the sisters at the convent purchased the monstrance as a gift for Father Ruiz’s ordination to the priesthood. The rest, as he says, “is history.”

(OSV News) – Ethiopian Cardinal Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel of Addis Ababa has expressed deep sorrow at the deadly landslide in Gofa Zone, in the southern part of Ethiopia, where the death toll has reportedly reached 257.

Humanitarian agencies, including those that are faith-based, have scrambled to rush emergency relief to Kencho Shacha Gozdi, a remote village in the Gofa Zone, following the first landslide that struck July 22.

Gofa Zone is part of the state known as Southern Ethiopia, about 199 miles from the capital, Addis Ababa. Days of heavy rains in this part of Ethiopia triggered the landslide. Images of people digging through the mud, carrying bodies and women wailing have spread since.

Following the first landslide that engulfed four homes, local people rushed to the scene, digging through mud to rescue their fellow villagers. But another landslide hit July 22, swallowing many of those who were attempting to rescue the victims.

“This tragic event has resulted in a significant loss of life. We offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of those who have lost their loved ones,” said Cardinal Souraphiel in a July 25 statement.

“As urgent rescue and humanitarian assistance are needed, on behalf of the Ethiopian Catholic Church, I express my profound sorrow and assure you of our unwavering support to the affected zone,” the statement said.

The United Nations put the death toll at 257 July 25, while warning that the number could rise to 500. This came as hundreds of young men for the third day continued to dig through mud — with their bare hands, spades and pickaxes — in hope of finding more survivors.

The number of missing persons is still unknown, but reports indicate that administrators, teachers, agriculturalists and other professionals were lost in the tragedy.

Cardinal Souraphiel, who is also the president of Ethiopia’s bishops’ conference, said the Development Office of the Ethiopian bishops, priests and staff of the Sodo Vicariate, and representatives of the Catholic Relief Services had visited the disaster site and witnessed the extent of the damage. CRS, the humanitarian relief and development agency of the U.S. bishops, has a strong presence in Ethiopia, responding to man-made and natural disasters and also supporting mitigation and recovery activities.

“I call upon all Catholics and people of goodwill to contribute in any way they can to the recovery efforts,” the cardinal said.

Archbishop Abune Mathias, patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, offered his condolences to the families affected by the landslide.

In a July 24 statement, the patriarch noted that while Ethiopia had faced its share of tragic events, the magnitude of this disaster was particularly difficult to comprehend. He stressed the importance of faith in times of crisis, highlighting the belief in the resurrection of the dead as a source of comfort and solace.

Archbishop Mathias called for prayers and support for the victims and their families, and urged the community to come together in solidarity and compassion.

Since the disaster, humanitarian agencies have been dispatching food, nutrition, health and other critical supplies to help people affected by the landslides.

An estimated 15,000 people at risk of further landslides need to be evacuated from the region, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Among these are at least 1,300 children under 5 and over 5,000 pregnant and lactating women.

In Ethiopia, Africa’s second populous nation, more than 21 million people, or about 18% of the population, live on humanitarian assistance. This is due to climate change-driven disasters, including floods and drought, and conflicts.

A war fought between the national army and the rulers of the northern region of Tigray left at least 1,5 million people displaced.