Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, a theologian, physicist, author and a leader of the Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation, died Oct. 24 in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., after a long illness. He was 73.
Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley celebrated the funeral Mass Oct. 28 at St. Mary’s Church in New York.
The native of Puerto Rico, who was educated in Washington, D.C., and Rome and was briefly president of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, held advanced degrees in space science and applied physics as well as in sacred theology. He was sought out as a speaker and writer on the intersection of faith and science as well as a range of theological and social topics.
Msgr. Albacete, who also was a columnist and frequent lecturer, had been a friend of St. John Paul II ever since the priest escorted then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow, Poland, around New York City in 1976. He told an interviewer in 2000 that the friendship helped him understand the beauty of the Incarnation.
Msgr. Albacete had been one of the leaders of the Communion and Liberation movement in the U.S., serving until recently as its national director, and an offshoot, Crossroads Cultural Center, which focuses on the relationship between religion and culture. Msgr. Albacete was its chairman at the time of his death.
He was a co-founder and instructor at the John Paul II Institute in Washington and also taught at St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, N.Y., and was an adviser on Hispanic affairs to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
His columns appeared in the Italian daily Il Sussidiario, The New York Times and New Yorker magazine.
Helen Hull Hitchcock, the founding director of Women for Faith & Family who urged Catholics to “stand up for the faith,” died Oct. 20 in St. Louis after a brief illness. She was 75.
Her funeral Mass was celebrated Oct. 27 at St. Roch Church, St. Louis.
Hitchcock founded Women for Faith & Family in 1984 to support traditional Church teachings on women, family and priesthood. She said the group was needed to counter what she described as a media tendency to focus on the views of radicals and feminists who were not representative of most Catholic women.
Hitchcock published many articles and essays in a wide range of Catholic journals and was the author/editor of “The Politics of Prayer: Feminist Language and the Worship of God,” published by Ignatius Press in 1992. It was a collection of essays on issues involved in translations.
In the early 1980s, she and her organization were among vocal critics of a pastoral on women the U.S. bishops tried to draft.
In addition to her husband, she is survived by four daughters and six grandchildren.
