Category: Diocese of Scranton News

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Gospel calls Christians to bring the elderly to the center of their lives and away from the margins of families, politics and financial markets that banish them as “unprofitable waste” in society, Pope Francis said.

“Let it not happen that by pursuing the myths of efficiency and performance at full speed we become unable to slow down to accompany those who struggle to keep up,” he said in his homily at a Mass for World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly in St. Peter’s Basilica July 23.

“Please, let us mingle and grow together,” he said.

Elderly persons in wheelchairs were seated in the front row before the altar and alongside Pope Francis. Several grandparents with young children in tow were scattered among the estimated 6,000 people in attendance in the basilica.

“We need a new alliance between young people and the elderly,” Pope Francis told them in his homily, “so that the sap of those who have a long experience of life behind them will nourish the shoots of hope of those who are growing.”

“In this fruitful exchange we can learn the beauty of life, build a fraternal society and in the church we can allow for encounter and dialogue between tradition and the newness of the Spirit,” he said.

Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life – which organizes the world day – was the main celebrant at the altar. The theme for this year’s celebration was “His mercy is from age to age,” taken from St. Luke’s Gospel.

In his homily, the pope related the elderly’s role in society to the three parables Jesus tells in the day’s Gospel reading from St. Matthew.

In the first parable, the devil plants weeds among a wheat crop while the householder is asleep, but rather than tell his slaves to pull them up he allows them to grow until harvest for fear of uprooting the wheat with it.

“The good and the bad are intertwined to the point of appearing inseparable,” Pope Francis said. But, “Christians, enlivened by hope in God, are not pessimists, but neither are they naive people who live in a fairy-tale world, who pretend not to see evil and say ‘all is well.'”

“No, Christians are realists: they know there is wheat and weeds in the world,” he said.

The pope noted the common temptation to create a “pure” society and church that risks making people “impatient, intransigent, even violent toward those who have fallen into error.”

“In that way, together with the weeds we pull up the good wheat and block people from moving forward, from growing and changing,” he said. Instead, by “beating the temptation to divide the wheat from the weeds, we are called to understand the best ways and moments to act.”

The elderly, who have “already come a long way in life,” he said, are examples of embracing life’s beauty as well as its challenges.

“Old age is a blessed time also for this reason: it is the season to be reconciled, to look with tenderness at the light that has advanced despite the shadows, in the faithful hope that the good wheat sowed by God will prevail over the weeds with which the devil has wished to infest our hearts,” said the pope.

He also recalled the parable of the tiny mustard seed that grows into a large bush where birds make nests among its branches.

“At the beginning we are a small seed, then we are nourished by hopes, we fulfill projects and dreams, the most beautiful of which is becoming like that tree, which doesn’t live for itself but makes shade for who wants it and offers space for who wants to build a nest,” said Pope Francis.

He said that grandparents and grandchildren “grow together” like the tree and the birds that settle in its branches, where they “learn the warmth of home and experience the tenderness of an embrace.”

Urging the elderly and young people to engage with one another, the pope turned to the parable of the yeast in which a whole batch of bread is leavened by a small measure of yeast. He encouraged the young and elderly to “mix with one another” and to “come out from yourself to join with others.”

Such intergenerational interaction, he said, “defeats individualism and selfishness, and helps us generate a more humane and fraternal world.”

After Mass, five elderly people in St. Peter’s Basilica symbolically handed over a pilgrim’s cross to five young people traveling to World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal, which is scheduled for Aug. 1-6. The gesture represents the elderly’s commitment to “pray for the departing youth and accompany them with their blessing,” the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life said in a statement.

Shortly after, Pope Francis appeared at the window of the papal studio overlooking St. Peter’s Square with a young person who was going to attend World Youth Day and his grandmother on either side of him. The pope noted the significance of a day dedicated to celebrating the elderly right before World Youth Day begins.

“May the closeness of these two days be an invitation to promote an new alliance between generations of which there is so much need; so that the future may be constructed together, in the sharing of experiences and reciprocal care between young people and the elderly,” he said after praying the Angelus.

Noting the strong heat waves in many countries and recent flooding in South Korea, Pope Francis called on governments to act concretely to reduce polluting emissions, and he asked the estimated 20,000 people in St. Peter’s Square not to forget the ongoing migration crisis in northern Africa.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Cardinal Matteo Zuppi hand-delivered a letter from Pope Francis to U.S. President Joe Biden as part of his three-day papal mission to help promote humanitarian efforts and open avenues of peace in Ukraine.

The pope had sent the cardinal, who is archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian bishops’ conference, to Washington July 17-19 for meetings with top church and government leaders, including members of the U.S. Helsinki Commission and the Senate Prayer Breakfast.

Cardinal Zuppi and other members of a Vatican delegation went to the White House July 18 “where they were received by President Joseph R. Biden, to whom Cardinal Zuppi delivered a letter from the Holy Father, emphasizing the pope’s sorrow for the suffering caused by the war,” said a Vatican communique published July 19.

“The meeting, which began shortly after 5 p.m. and lasted over an hour, took place in an atmosphere of great cordiality and mutual listening,” it said.

During the conversation, assurance was made of there being a “full willingness to support humanitarian initiatives, especially for children and those who are most fragile, both to respond to this urgency and to foster paths of peace,” the Vatican said.

Early July 19, the Vatican delegation attended the Senate Prayer Breakfast, which is held Wednesday mornings in the U.S. Capitol for senators to meet, talk and pray together.

During this gathering, the Vatican said, “Cardinal Zuppi had the opportunity to brief the participants on the meetings he had over the various stages of his peace mission. During the meeting, appreciation was expressed for the Holy See’s efforts and the responsibility of each individual to strive for peace was emphasized.”

He also traveled to Russia and Ukraine in recent months to meet with church and government officials on the pope’s behalf.

Cardinal Zuppi arrived in Washington the evening of July 17 and had a meeting with USCCB President Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of Military Services at the apostolic nunciature.

“Some reflections were exchanged on the war in Ukraine and the Holy See’s initiatives in support of victims and peace” during that meeting, the Vatican said.

The next morning the Vatican delegation went to the Rayburn House Office Building and met with some members of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission. This independent U.S. government commission seeks to promote human rights, military security and economic cooperation in 57 countries in Europe, Eurasia and North America.

The Vatican delegation, which included Cardinal-designate Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States, and Msgr. Séamus P. Horgan, charge d’affaires at the apostolic nunciature, presented to the commission “the nature and conduct of the mission entrusted to it by the pope, reflecting together on ways in which it could be made more effective.”

According to Cardinal-designate Pierre, the top priority for Cardinal Zuppi in his meeting with President Biden was the repatriation of children forcibly deported from Ukraine to Russia.

The overall objective of that closed-door meeting, he told the Italian daily, La Repubblica, was “to contribute to peace and more precisely to cover the humanitarian aspects, in particular concerning children. The discussion revolved around this.”

When asked if this meant that the immediate goal was facilitating the reunification of Ukrainian children with their families, the cardinal-designate said, “Yes, that is the cardinal’s, and obviously the pope’s, more specific goal, also because it is a more concrete issue.”

“Obviously, however, the idea is to think about peace, in the complicated context that exists,” he said in the interview with the newspaper, published in Italian July 19.

“The cardinal is very realistic, we try to do what is possible,” Cardinal-designate Pierre said.

In general, Cardinal Zuppi’s mission was “to listen and be listened to. To report on what has already happened in order to see how one can proceed,” the papal nuncio said.

“This is a first step. We are realists, we know perfectly well that this is not easy. But the pope wants to contribute to (bringing) attention to a situation that will in any case have to reach an outcome,” Cardinal-designate Pierre said.

Meanwhile, the White House said in a statement July 18 that President Biden shared with Cardinal Zuppi “his wishes for Pope Francis’ continued ministry and global leadership and welcomed the recent nomination of a U.S. archbishop as cardinal,” referring to Chicago-born Cardinal-designate Robert F. Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops.

The U.S. president and Cardinal Zuppi “also discussed the Holy See’s efforts providing humanitarian aid to address the widespread suffering caused by Russia’s continuing aggression in Ukraine, as well as the Vatican’s advocacy for the return of forcibly deported Ukrainian children,” the White House statement said.

Pope Francis had sent Cardinal Zuppi to Washington as part of his ongoing humanitarian efforts to help Ukraine.

The July 17-19 visit is “in the context of the mission intended to promote peace in Ukraine and aims to exchange ideas and opinions on the current tragic situation and to support humanitarian initiatives to alleviate the suffering of the most affected and fragile people, especially children,” the Vatican said in a communique July 17.

The cardinal visited Bucha and Kyiv in early June and met with Ukrainian officials including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In Moscow in late June, he met with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow; Yury Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign policy adviser and former ambassador to the United States; and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, accused by the International Criminal Court of aiding the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Cardinal Zuppi had told reporters at a book presentation in Rome July 4 that the Vatican was working on a “mechanism” to help Ukrainian children that have been taken into Russia, Vatican News reported.

“The children should be able to return to Ukraine,” he said. “The first step is verifying the children and then seeing how to return them, starting with the most fragile.”

“There is no peace plan (or) mediation,” he said, “there is a great aspiration that the violence ends, that human lives can be saved starting with the defense of the youngest.”

The cardinal said July 2 that Pope Francis’ concern is to “create all opportunities to see, to listen and encourage everything that can lead toward a resolution to the conflict.”

“Of course there are small openings, we must look for them,” he said. “It is precisely in the darkness that the light of peace must be sought while knowing no one has a magic wand.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Treated to songs, gifts and a paper medallion designating him “hero,” Pope Francis visited children attending a summer camp at the Vatican.

About 250 children of Vatican employees welcomed the pope, who greeted the children and counselors, and posed for pictures July 18. He spoke to the kids, who ranged in age from 5 to 13, and answered their questions, according to a report by Vatican News.

“What message can we bring to our heroes, our parents?” a young boy named Edoardo asked. Pope Francis invited them to show gratitude and always tell their parents, “Thank you,” for all they do to raise them.

A child named Elena asked the pope who his superheroes are. “Grandparents,” he said, because they possess so much wisdom “and that is why it is important” to talk to them.

Raffaele asked the pope how they can be heroes “in the digital world.” The pope said they should focus on technology’s “usefulness” in such a way that the tools serve the person and not the other way around.

The pope received a color drawing of himself with dozens of the kids’ signatures, two handmade plastic bracelets and a large paper medallion held by a blue ribbon which he promptly pulled over his head. It said “hero” in Italian and pictured St. Peter’s Basilica and a smiling pope saying, “peace.”

Two children gave the pope a backpack and T-shirt from the summer program telling him he could bring these with him on his upcoming trip to Lisbon for World Youth Day.

Other children held up a large colorful poster the kids made showing a large hornet’s nest hanging in a tree surrounded by bees and the words, “You help us to ‘bee’ heroes,” reflecting the theme of this year’s camp dedicated to honeybees and heroes.

The large hall, which normally seats thousands for audiences with the pope, was turned into an indoor playground with bouncy houses and huge inflatable slides, some shaped like ships, including a sinking Titanic.

The summer program, running from July 3 to Aug. 4, is organized by the Salesians and the private associations, Play It and “Tutti in una Festa.” The program offered the children activities such as swimming, tennis, games, crafts and educational initiatives aimed at building friendships and values.

The children sometimes receive other special guests, such as chefs from Rome’s “Gelato Academy” who came and explained how Italian “gelato” is made, Salesian Father Franco Fontana, a chaplain at the Vatican overseeing the program, told Vatican News July 13.

(OSV News) – Abuse allegations against Catholic clergy and religious in the U.S. declined last year, but challenges remain regarding protecting vulnerable adults and ensuring online safety, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

On July 14, the USCCB’s Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection released the “2022 Annual Report – Findings and Recommendations on the Implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”

USCCB President Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of Military Services said in his preface the report was “a milestone accounting of the continued efforts in the ministry of protection, healing, and accompaniment.”

The document – covering the period July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022 – consists of a progress report from the secretariat; an audit report conducted by the Rochester, New York-based consultants StoneBridge Business Partners; and a survey of abuse allegations and costs by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University.

Now in its 12th year of performing the audit, StoneBridge visited 62 dioceses and eparchies, 48 in person and 14 virtually.

The report itself is the 20th of its kind since 2002, when the U.S. bishops established the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” as a number of clerical abuse scandals emerged.

Commonly called the “Dallas Charter” for the city in which the bishops met at the time of its ratification, the document lays out a comprehensive set of procedures for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. The charter also includes guidelines for reconciliation, healing, accountability and prevention of abuse.

During the 2022 report period, 1,998 individuals came forward with 2,704 allegations of abuse, with claims down 399 from 2021 and 1,548 from 2020. The decrease was largely due to resolutions of allegations received through lawsuits, compensation programs and bankruptcies. Most allegations (83%) were initially brought to diocesan officials by an attorney.

Sixteen reports during the period involved current minors, with all other allegations made by adults citing abuse as minors.

The CARA portion of the report said that 194 responding dioceses and eparchies had judged 245 allegations of sexual abuse of a minor by a priest or deacon to be credible. Of those, 20 allegations involved children who were under the age of 18.

CARA also calculated that total costs incurred by dioceses and eparchies due to allegations were down 19% from the previous year, totaling over $157 million. (Costs for men’s religious communities, by contrast, rose 53%, approaching $45 million.)

The secretariat said in its assessment “the year-over-year trends are encouraging as the number of current minor allegations in the U.S. remains low.”

Many dioceses and eparchies “have taken certain measures that go beyond the specific requirements of the charter,” StoneBridge noted in its report.

Among the measures cited were recurring adult training, parish audits and background check renewals (which are not currently required by the charter).

However, StoneBridge found that more than 30% of diocese and eparchies it had visited during the report period struggled with “some dysfunction” in their review boards, including “lack of meetings, inadequate composition or membership, not following the by-laws of the board, members not confident in their duties (and) lack of rotation of members.”

Auditors pointed out an unevenness in the charter’s overall application, with “196 different implementations” of the document resulting from the various policies of dioceses and eparchies.

Another concern centers on the protection of “vulnerable adults,” a definition for which is not contained in the charter, said auditors.

A year after the charter’s most recent revision in 2018, Pope Francis issued the motu proprio “Vox Estis Lux Mundi” (“You are the light of the world”), outlining global legal procedures for how the church should deal with clergy sexual abuse, including procedures for investigating bishops.

The document, implemented for a three-year experimental period beginning June 1, 2019, included the term “vulnerable person,” defined as “any person in a state of infirmity, physical or mental deficiency, or deprivation of personal liberty which, in fact, even occasionally, limits their ability to understand or to want or otherwise resist the offense.”

On March 25, Pope Francis published an updated version with the specific term “vulnerable adults,” without altering the previous definition. The revised text also was broadened to include investigations of leaders of Vatican-recognized international Catholic lay associations and movements.

Yet Suzanne Healy, chairwomen of the lay-led USCCB National Review Board, highlighted findings by StoneBridge in her remarks in this report, saying that while the charter addresses clerical abuse of children, “there is confusion in reporting matters pertaining to “Vos Estis Lux Mundi” and canon law regarding penal sanctions.

The board “recommends the pursuit of a separate auditable resource with specific guidelines for these adult and lay matters of abuse,” she wrote.

The audit results represent 194 of the 196 dioceses and eparchies in the U.S., with the report listing the Chaldean Eparchy of St. Peter the Apostle and St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy as not participating.

Father Richard Janowicz, vicar general and safe environment coordinator for the Chicago-based St. Nicholas Eparchy, said in an email to OSV News he was “quite surprised” to learn the eparchy had been listed as such, since it had been audited by StoneBridge on April 17 of this year, and confirmed in a June 21 letter that the eparchy had remediated its initial lack of a children’s safe environment training program. It remains unclear as to why the eparchy was listed in the report as “not participating,” and OSV News has reached out to the USCCB for clarification.

Father Simon Esshaki, secretary to Bishop Emanuel Shaleta of the St. Peter Eparchy in El Cajon, California, said in an email to OSV News that the eparchy “did in fact have a full ‘Protecting God’s Children’ program for 2022,” but “unfortunately for some reason the statistics were not shared with the USCCB.”

The dioceses of Birmingham, Alabama, Lubbock, Texas, and St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands were each found noncompliant regarding Article 2 of the Dallas Charter, which in part specifies a required review board, comprised of mostly laypeople not employed by the diocese, that meets regularly and serves as a consultative body to the bishop. Each diocese subsequently corrected the deficiency.

For the Birmingham Diocese, the problem was one of timing, Donald Carson, director of communications and public relations, told OSV News.

Two resignations due to health concerns and the transfer of a religious sister left three vacancies on that review board during the audit period. The seats “have since all been filled, bringing the number of representatives not employed by the diocese back in compliance with the requirements of the charter,” he said in an email to OSV News.

In the Lubbock Diocese, COVID was at its height during the reporting period and had “stopped many areas of our work,” Lucas Flores, communications director, told OSV News in an email, adding that the diocese had resumed review board meetings.

OSV News was awaiting a response from the Diocese of St. Thomas.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – The Food and Drug Administration announced July 13 it approved the sale of a birth control pill without a prescription for the first time in the United States, a move that will increase the availability of oral contraception and impact ongoing debates about abortion policy post-Dobbs.

In a statement, Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said the approval of Opill, a progestin-only pill, “marks the first time a nonprescription daily oral contraceptive will be an available option for millions of people in the United States.”

“When used as directed, daily oral contraception is safe and is expected to be more effective than currently available nonprescription contraceptive methods in preventing unintended pregnancy,” Cavazzoni said.

Currently, a woman seeking to use birth control pills must do so with a doctor’s prescription.

While some have called for expanded access to contraception in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the high court’s jurisprudence on abortion as a constitutional right, others have argued that proliferating contraception without medical supervision could lead to more unintended pregnancies.

In a guide about the church’s teaching on issues including contraception, the National Catholic Bioethics Center describes contraception as “any action that is specifically intended, whether as an end or as a means, to prevent procreation either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse.”

While contraception “is never to be directly intended,” the guide states, its use for “therapeutic means needed to cure diseases is not illicit, even if it results in a foreseeable impediment to procreation — provided the impediment is not directly intended for any motive whatsoever.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that unlike contraception, “the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality.” These are known as fertility-based awareness methods of family planning; the methods are sometimes collectively referred to as natural family planning.

Opill is expected to be available for retail sale in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2024, its maker, Perrigo, said in a statement.

The FDA said the most common side effects of Opill include irregular bleeding, headaches, dizziness, nausea, increased appetite, abdominal pain, cramps and bloating; and the drug should not be used by those who have or have ever had breast cancer.

Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, said in a statement that the oral contraceptive announcement “flies in the face of responsible medical practice and concerns for women’s health.”

“Claims that the benefits of this action outweigh the risks are unfounded, especially in light of strong evidence of the many harmful risks of hormonal contraception to women’s health,” the bishop said. “Allowing this hormonal contraception to be dispensed ‘over the counter’ — without the supervision of a doctor and contrary to the mounting evidence of many harmful side effects — violates the Hippocratic Oath by putting the health of women at grave risk.”