Amid what hasn’t exactly been the best run for Pope Francis lately, Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio brought the pontiff a bit of happy news last week: His ecological vision in “Laudato Si’” is flowering in America in the form of three new “green” affordable housing projects for seniors in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
The U.S. Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo, announced this week that the Administration will set the Presidential Determination, the level of refugees allowed into the United States, at 30,000 refugees for 2019.
Recent revelations and accusations related to clerical sexual abuse have been “a disaster, one crisis after another” for the Catholic Church, according to Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, and have jeopardized its moral authority to speak on other issues such as the sanctity of human life, immigration and the environment.
Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio led a group of Catholic and Buddhist leaders from Brooklyn, Chicago, Ill., and Los Angeles, Calif., at a meeting with Pope Francis Sept. 12. The delegation presented the Holy Father with sustainable projects they are working on that will provide affordable housing to serve vulnerable populations, like the elderly and formerly homeless.
Members of the Vatican’s commission for protecting young people in the Church have been listening to victims and survivors of abuse in Rome, while also pointing out they have no remit to investigate individual allegations of abuse.
Pope Francis’ silence about allegations by his former ambassador to the U.S. that he knew of abuses against seminarians by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is, for some, no more disconcerting than his silence regarding Chile, where three bishops have been subpoenaed by the prosecutor’s office to give testimony about possible abuse cover-ups.
Gabriel Rentaria was 7 years old when he started using a gun. Never to kill, he said, just to scare people. But he saw people – enemies and friends – fall dead “in my face,” he recalled.
Members of Pope Francis’ international Council of Cardinals expressed “full solidarity” with him in the midst of questions about his handling of the clerical sexual abuse scandal and said the Vatican is planning a response to allegations made against him by a former nuncio.
Bishops in several European countries issued statements urging Catholics to support Pope Francis in response to a former papal nuncio’s demand for his resignation.
In a Sept. 9 statement, the diocese of Rome announced the start of the beatification and canonization process for an Italian woman who refused cancer treatment so as not to jeopardize her pregnancy.
