News - February 2019 RSS Feed

VATICAN CITY – The time has come for an “all-out battle” against the abuse of minors, erasing this abominable crime from the face of the earth, Pope Francis said, closing a global four-day summit on child protection in the Catholic Church.

Mental health care is on track to become a pastoral priority in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

An innovative play that took verve and vision to introduce into the Catholic Youth Organization sports program at St. Hilary School in Tiburon now seems like a slam dunk: Using high school students as coaches.

Choir members from St. Augustine Parish, South San Francisco, will soon board planes for Rome to participate in the Rome Festival of Peace and Brotherhood. The ensemble includes 35 adults and 25 children.

You know how you sometimes think you know everything about something but then new information crosses your path? That is exactly the case with me and the St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Mateo County.

The theme of this year’s 30th Annual Archdiocesan Respect Life Essay Contest, “The Unborn Child: One of Us,” highlighted the essential humanity of the baby in the womb – and God’s personal love for these smallest of all human beings.

February’s celebration of Black History month prompted reflection on the U.S. Catholic bishops’ first pastoral letter on racism in 40 years, an initiative that encourages discernment, conversion, prayer, teaching and preaching on racial attitudes the document defines as “a failure to the acknowledge another person as a brother or sister created in the image of God.”

OAKLAND – The Diocese of Oakland, which serves two California counties in the East Bay area, published Feb. 18 a list of priests, deacons and religious brothers who have worked in the diocese and been credibly accused of abuse, dating back to the diocese’s founding in 1962.

DENVER – Denver Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila, on behalf of the bishops of Colorado’s three Catholic dioceses, joined Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser at a news conference Feb. 19 to announce several measures to address child sex abuse, including an independent review of records on abuse claims from the three dioceses.

WASHINGTON – If you attended college, you probably remember the Newman Center as a place of barbecues, Bible studies and fun-loving priests trying zealously to minister to what is typically a religiously disengaged demographic.

Speakers highlighted the reality of abuse across the global church at a panel Feb. 19, as discussions ranged from New Mexico to India and Uganda. Santa Clara University’s Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley hosted a panel of speakers, including the Diocese of San Jose’s Coadjutor Bishop Oscar Cantu, to discuss abuse within the diverse contexts of the global church.

VATICAN CITY – “Every time I refused to have sex with him, he would beat me,” an abuse survivor from Africa told Pope Francis and bishops attending the Vatican summit on child protection and the abuse crisis.

Discussions around clergy abuse need to be grounded in data and kept distinct from other contentious issues, like homosexuality and celibacy, Santa Clara University psychology professor Thomas G. Plante said Feb. 24 at St. Peter Church in Pacifica.

ROME – People must stop using homosexuals as scapegoats for the sexual abuse of children, two male survivors of abuse by priests told reporters.

VATICAN CITY – The Catholic Church needs “new legal structures of accountability” for bishops accused of sexual abuse or of negligence in handling abuse allegations, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago told the Vatican summit on safeguarding.

VATICAN CITY – The hypocrisy of Catholic leaders who claimed to be guardians of morality yet remained silent about clerical sexual abuse has left the church’s credibility in shambles, an African woman religious told bishops at the Vatican summit on abuse.

In the first reading, we are told that we have no right to criticize others if we exempt ourselves from criticism. One way to encourage others to be truthful is to be truthful ourselves.

VATICAN CITY – Technology holds the potential to benefit all of humankind, but it also poses risky and unforeseen results, Pope Francis said.

I agree with columnist George Weigel (“The moral depravity of Andrew Cuomo and friends,” Feb. 14), that our country, and to some degree our church today, suffer moral depravity. But while he focuses only on legal abortion, I wonder how many Catholics would add other kinds of moral depravity that many of us tolerate or maybe ignore. I think the pro-life movement, to be authentic, should merge with those who call for an end of gun violence and capital punishment.

I wish George Weigel had the courage to “call out” the moral depravity of Donald Trump (“The moral depravity of Andrew Cuomo and friends,” Feb. 14), a man who enjoys not just loving to kiss any woman he wants to. This man has caused human misery (not paying workers, not renting to blacks, calling African countries sordid names), and now he wants to take money from emergency funding for fires and true disasters; $2.4 billion for a wall that is for his delusions and hatred of nonwhite people. That is moral depravity on the face of it as is the killing of living babies. But I bet this letter will not be printed: The hierarchy like Trump.