The Dialog

By Catholic News Service

TOULOUSE, France — Flash flooding created by heavy rains forced officials to close the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes June 18.

Authorities evacuated about 200 people, most of them from campgrounds near the shrine, after water levels rose quickly following heavy rain and unseasonal snowfall in the area a day earlier.

The Lourdes grotto, where Mary is reported to have appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous in 1858, was under as much as 5 feet of water, Mathias Terrier, who is in charge of communications at the shrine, told AFP.

The nearby Gave de Pau River was flowing about 11 feet above its normal level, Terrier said.

He said the floods posed a greater threat to the shrine than those of last October that caused damage amounting to more than $1 million.

“It’s very serious, the water is still rising. There is nothing we can do. We just have to wait and cross our fingers and hope,” he said.

“We have taken preventative measures to evacuate everyone. At the moment, we are most concerned with trying to rehouse people and once that is done we will look at any damage caused. People are the priority at the moment,” he added.

Shrine officials planned to keep the sanctuary ringing the grotto closed June 19, but that Mass would be celebrated at the Basilica of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception, which is safely out of reach of the flood waters.

By Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON — Dr. Edmund D. Pellegrino, who founded and directed Georgetown University’s Center for the Advanced Study of Ethics and was a former president of The Catholic University of America, died June 13. He was 92.

A wake was scheduled for June 18 at the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Md. A noon funeral Mass was to be celebrated June 19 the Bethesda church, followed by burial in St. Gabriel’s Cemetery in Potomac, Md.

Considered one of the most prominent founders of the field of bioethics and an early pioneer in teaching humanities in medical schools, he was the author of more than 600 published articles in medical science, philosophy and ethics and author or co-author of 23 books.

Pellegrino, who would have turned 93 June 22, was a former director of Georgetown’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics. He also founded and directed the university’s Center for Clinical Bioethics, which just this year was renamed the Edmund D. Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics.

“We offer our thoughts and prayers to Ed’s family and loved ones,” Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia said in a statement. “We feel this loss deeply, and will always be grateful for Ed’s countless contributions and his caring for our community, its members, and his profession.

“We will also carry with us his example — of his remarkable capacity for both passion and gentleness, deep reflection and decisive action, intellect and heart.”

In 1978, he became a professor of clinical medicine and community medicine at Georgetown and also that year was named the 11th president of The Catholic University of America. He was the second layman to hold the position.

During his tenure as president, Pope John Paul II made his historic visit to campus in 1979 and addressed Catholic educators.

“We remember a distinguished scholar and educator who was lauded during his presidency for his administrative ability and his rapport with students, faculty, and staff,” said the university’’s current president, John Garvey. “Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this time.”

Ethics were at the core of Pellegrino’s work as physician, educator, philosopher and scientist. He was a leading voice of opposition to assisted suicide, euthanasia, artificial reproduction, abortion, certain forms of genetic manipulation and other threats he saw to human life.

Born June 22, 1920, he received his bachelor’s of science degree from St. John’s University and his medical degree from New York University. He served residencies in medicine at Bellevue, Goldwater Memorial, and Homer Folks Tuberculosis Hospitals, after which he was a research fellow in renal medicine and physiology at New York University.

He was the recipient of 52 honorary doctorates in addition to numerous other awards and honors.

“Medicine is a moral enterprise,” he once told Georgetown Magazine. “And if you take away the ethical and the moral dimensions, you end up with a technique. The reason it’s a profession is that it’s dedicated to something other than its own self-interests.”

In a 1997 interview with Catholic News Service, he noted how the high-tech world of medicine could offer all types of procedures and protocols that made an enormous difference in people’s lives.

But at the same time, he said, the practice of medicine had changed in other ways, made more difficult by the business of medicine, the bureaucracy of health insurance companies and the demands of managed care.

But one of the constants in medicine was the need for compassion, for the physician to put the patient’s interests first, which is “the most important element in medicine,” Pellegrino said.

All patients need “emotional support, which means we have to give of ourselves to them,” said Pellegrino. Compassion is having “the ability to feel something of the patient’s predicament and to assure the patient he or she will not be abandoned,” he added.

By Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama June 14 nominated Ken Hackett, retired president of Catholic Relief Services (CRS),  to be U.S. ambassador to the Holy See.

Obama’s announcement about Hackett came late in the day, along with his nominees for ambassador posts in Brazil, Spain, Germany, Denmark and Ethiopia.

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Ken Hackett, retired president of Catholic Relief Services, and Miguel Diaz, U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, leave the consistory led by Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican last year. President Barack Obama had nominated Hackett to be the new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. (CNS/Paul Haring)

Ken Hackett, retired president of Catholic Relief Services, and Miguel Diaz, U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, leave the consistory led by Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican last year. President Barack Obama had nominated Hackett to be the new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. (CNS/Paul Haring)

It gives me great confidence that such dedicated and capable individuals have agreed to join this administration to serve the American people. I look forward to working with them in the months and years to come,” the president said.

Hackett retired in December 2011 after 18 years as president of CRS, the U.S. bishops’ overseas relief and development agency.

If confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, he would succeed Miguel Diaz, who left the post in late 2012. Diaz now is a professor of faith and culture at the University of Dayton, Ohio. As of June 18, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee had not yet scheduled a confirmation hearing on Hackett’s nomination.

Hackett was appointed president of CRS in 1993. During his tenure, he established a division focusing on outreach to dioceses, parishes, Catholic organizations, and colleges and universities, and laypeople were first appointed to the CRS board of directors.

Catholic Relief Services now operates in more than 100 countries, with a global staff of nearly 5,000.

“Ken’s dedication to the poorest and most vulnerable on behalf of the church, and through programs often sponsored by the U.S. government, reflects his ability to engage both sectors in serving those in need in highly complicated environments,” said Carolyn Y. Woo, CRS’ current president and CEO, said in a statement June 17.

Strengthening ties with the Catholic Church, both in the United States and at the Vatican, was one of the themes of Hackett’s tenure at the helm of CRS. “Under his leadership, the agency renewed its spiritual core even as it grew into one of the largest nongovernmental aid agencies in the United States with a budget that exceeded $800 million,” the agency said in a press release.

Diaz said Hackett “brings a wealth of experience and perspective on issues related to global health and humanitarian assistance, as well as service to the poor, an important focus for Pope Francis. I wish him much success as he builds bridges between the United States and the Holy See.”

Born in West Roxbury, Mass., Hackett joined the Peace Corps shortly after his 1968 graduation from Boston College. Assigned to a Catholic mission in rural Ghana, he worked in an agricultural cooperative and saw “the actual impact of American food aid on the health and well-being of very poor kids in a very isolated part of a West African country,” he said recently.

After completing his Peace Corps assignment, Hackett joined CRS, the U.S. Catholic relief and development agency, in 1972. He started his career in Sierra Leone, where he managed a nationwide leprosy program and a maternal and child health program.

Subsequent positions took him to various posts in Africa and Asia, as well as in CRS’ Baltimore headquarters. As regional director for Africa, he managed the agency’s response to the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85. He also supervised CRS operations in East Africa during the crisis in Somalia in the 1990s.

In February 2012, Hackett and Diaz represented the U.S. government at the consistory led by Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican ceremony. Pope Benedict XVI created 22 new cardinals from 13 countries, including two from the United States and one from Canada.

In May of that year, he received the University of Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal during commencement ceremonies. The medal has been given annually since 1883 to a Catholic “whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the church and enriched the heritage of humanity.”

In announcing that honor, Holy Cross Father John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame’s university president, said in a statement: “Ken Hackett has responded to a Gospel imperative with his entire career. His direction of the Catholic Church’s outreach to the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick and unsheltered of the world has blended administrative acumen with genuine compassion in a unique and exemplary way.”

Hackett is a former North American president of Caritas Internationalis, the confederation of humanitarian agencies of the Catholic Church and a former member of the board of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum at the Vatican. He also has been an adviser to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

By Catholic News Service

MIAMI — Although the Second Vatican Council called on the Catholic Church to mirror the life of the Trinity, the church is still far from being converted to that vision, a leading Australian theologian said June 8.

“The major issue is that the Holy Spirit is given very little institutional breathing room,” Father Ormond Rush said in a plenary address to the annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America in Miami.

Father Rush said the 1983 Code of Canon Law does not mention the Holy Spirit and provides no structures for discerning the Spirit, a process that was critical in New Testament times.

“Ecclesial conversion cannot take place if the very divine agent of conversion is not given opportunities to convert the church,” said Father Rush, an associate professor of theology at St. Paul’s Theological College at Australian Catholic University in Banyo. He is the author of “Still Interpreting Vatican II.”

The topic of his address was “Ecclesial conversion after Vatican II: Renewing ‘the face of the church’ to reflect ‘the genuine face of God.’”

The council, he said, sought to change the face that the church presents to the world. “Vatican II wants to stop the scowl and give a smile; and even shed a tear.”

The church is called to “mirror the genuine face of the God whom she proclaims,” said Father Rush, a priest of the Diocese of Townsville, Australia. Yet one fundamental concern in implementing the agenda of Vatican II, he said, is “that the face of the church is not always resplendent with the light of Christ.”

Light shines through the Holy Spirit window in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, (CNS file/Nancy Phelan Wiechec)

Sinfulness in the church is a barrier to reform, and it includes clergy sexual abuse of children, “ecclesial corruption and inner power struggles,” and what Pope Francis has called careerism, he said.

It also includes “sins of patriarchy, clericalism, sexism, racism, collusion with economic, political, and social exclusion and oppression,” he said.

That sinfulness is not just a matter of the sins of individuals, he said. Instead, he explained, its sins can become embedded in the church’s institutional culture and structures.

Another barrier to change, he said, is the failure to take account of the council’s “new perspective on how God works in history.” Over the four years that Vatican II met, the council fathers came to see that God is revealed in the present as well as in the past, he added.

“As the Holy Spirit leads the church in history through conversion to the fullness of truth, God is challenging the church to discern the new things that God is doing in Christ through the Spirit, by scrutinizing the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel.”

Father Rush cited the late Cardinal Avery Dulles’ view that Vatican II represented “creative transformation.” The church, Dulles said, can innovate in ways “that do not simply grow out of its own previous tradition.”

New questions arise that the church has never previously faced or even envisaged, “because it was inconceivable to have even thought of them, due to the worldviews of the time,” Father Rush said. “Through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the church must respond to God working in history.”

While there has been a great emphasis on the church as a hierarchical communion, he said, the council also spoke of two other types of communion.

One was “the communion of local churches ‘in which and out of which’ the one church of Christ exists,” he said. The other is “the communion of the faithful throughout the world-church, all the individual baptized believers.”

Those three types of communion need to be balanced, he said. Doing so would lead to “a culture of dialogue” in which the integrity of local churches and their lived faith is respected, and there would also be respect for the Holy Spirit “speaking to church of churches” through the sense of the faithful, he added.

By Catholic News Service

SAN DIEGO — Three bishops weighed in on the ongoing congressional debate on immigration reform legislation June 10, warning against amending a Senate bill in ways that would block the path to legalization for undocumented immigrants.

At a news conference in San Diego, held as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opened its annual spring meeting, the chairmen of three committees reiterated the bishops’ support for comprehensive immigration reform that protects families and workers.

Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, Calif., speaks on immigration reform legislation during a news conference June 10 at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in San Diego, where U.S. bishops were meeting for their spring meeting and retreat. As the issue is debated in Congress, the bishops reiterated their support for comprehensive immigration reform that protects families and workers. (CNS photo/David Maung)

“Each day in our parishes, social service programs, hospitals and schools, we witness the human consequences of a broken immigration system,” said Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration. “Families are separated, migrant workers are exploited, and our fellow human beings die in the desert.”

He called the status quo morally unacceptable, adding, “This suffering must end.”

Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the Committee on Communications and former chair of the migration committee, specified a handful of concerns for changes to the bill that might be attempted on the Senate floor. The Senate began debate on the bill the previous week and was scheduled to take a procedural vote over whether to allow debate to continue June 11. A panel of House members was reportedly still working on a version of a bill for that chamber.

“Some will argue that before we can begin welcoming new citizens, we will need more fencing and blockading of the border,” Bishop Wester said. “However, making the legalization program contingent upon border metrics that are practically impossible to achieve would effectively prevent the undocumented from ever becoming citizens, or even legal residents. Such a step would render the immigration reform program useless and the bill not worth supporting.

“We urge Congress to maintain the current balance between enforcement goals and improvements in the legal immigration system, including a path to citizenship.”

He said the bishops also would oppose amendments to reduce the number of people who might pursue the path to citizenship laid out in the bill, S. 744. “Additional measures to make the path to citizenship more difficult, such as an increase in fines or imposition of other difficult income and employment requirements, or amendments to remove the citizenship option altogether, also will meet our opposition.”

Bishop Wester said efforts to prevent immigrants in the legalization program from obtaining benefits such as the earned income tax credit, Social Security and eligibility for health care coverage also would meet the church’s opposition.

People who pay taxes and otherwise contribute to the economy “should not be barred from these benefits, to which every worker should be entitled,” he said.

Bishop Wester said he hopes the legislative process would lead to improvements in the Senate bill, not additional restrictions.

Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, a member of the board of directors of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, warned that attempts to reform the immigration system would fail if they don’t allow for immigrants to fully incorporate into American society.

He said the key points of the bishops’ policy goals for immigration reform include:

• An accessible and achievable path to citizenship that includes the maximum number of people. If the goal of reform is to address the problem of irregular immigration in a humane manner, he said, then all undocumented people should be brought out of the shadows and placed into the new system. “Leaving a large group behind does not solve the problem, and in the future, could create new ones.”

• Family unity as the cornerstone of the system. “Immigrant families help our nation both economically and socially” he said. “This nation cannot take an immigrant’s labor and deny the immigrant’s family.”

• “Enforcement by itself, especially along our southern border, will not solve the challenge of irregular immigration,” said Bishop Soto. “The punitive enforcement-only approach has been the default policy for the last two decades. It has only aggravated the problem of irregular immigration. Our southern border should be a place of mutual support and an extension of hands across boundaries, not a militarized zone. Sadly, many of our elected officials see more enforcement along our border as the sole solution to irregular migration. We oppose the acceleration of border enforcement as a prerequisite for a legalization program that includes citizenship. An effective legalization program with a path to citizenship will lead to more effective border management.”

Bishop Soto said that it’s important to consider why people risk their lives to come to the United States, and how to address global poverty and persecution.

Archbishop Gomez said as the debate continues, the nation must answer several questions:

“Do we want a country with a permanent underclass, without the same rights as the majority? Do we want to continue to separate children from parents, creating a generation of young U.S. citizens who are suspicious and fearful of their government? Do we want a nation that accepts the toil and taxes of undocumented workers without offering them the protection of the law?”

“The answer to these questions, of course, is a resounding no,” said Archbishop Gomez.

By Catholic News Service

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Just five days after his 57th anniversary as a priest, retired Auxiliary Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan of Brooklyn died June 7 of injuries he suffered in a car accident a week earlier on the Long Island Expressway in Syosset. He was 83.

Funeral home visitation and a wake for Bishop Sullivan were to be held June 10 and 11 at McLaughlin & Sons Funeral Home in Brooklyn. A vigil Mass was to be celebrated June 11 at Our Lady of Hope Church in Middle Village and a funeral Mass scheduled for June 12 at his childhood parish church, St. Ephrem in Brooklyn. Burial was to follow at St. John’s Cemetery in Middle Village.

A native of Brooklyn, Bishop Sullivan lived, studied and worked his entire life in and nearby his hometown, serving in many positions that allowed him to use his training in social work and his commitment to Catholic health care.

He retired in 2005 but continued to serve on boards for Catholic hospitals and other health institutions, said Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio.

“He epitomized the best of our church’s teaching and the fundamental option for the poor,” Bishop DiMarzio said in a statement. “He was an outstanding priest.”

“During his tenure, Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens became a nationally recognized provider of social services,” said Bishop DiMarzio.

As auxiliary bishop, Bishop Sullivan served as regional bishop for 62 parishes and as vicar for human services, where his work included the formation of St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers. The diocese describes St. Vincent’s as joining the hospitals and medical facilities of the diocese with those run by the New York Sisters of Charity.

He also served on numerous church and civic boards involved with health and human services, including the chairmanship of the Catholic Health Association, of the Catholic Medical Center of Brooklyn and Queens and membership on the board of Catholic Charities USA.

He served as chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Domestic Policy Committee in the 1980s and was for many years a member of the committee.

Within the bishops’ conference, he chaired an ad hoc committee in the 1990s that produced a pastoral letter on charity, “In All Things Charity: A Pastoral Challenge for the New Millennium,” approved by the bishops in 1999.

He described the letter as intended to “reclaim the meaning of charity,” which he said had become a pejorative term in society.

Bishop Sullivan was born March 23, 1930, one of 11 children of the late Thomas and Margaret Sullivan. He attended St. Ephrem’s elementary school and St. Michael’s High School, both in Brooklyn, before going on to Manhattan College.

After studying at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington, Long Island, he was ordained June 2, 1956, at Brooklyn’s St. James Cathedral.

Three years into his priesthood, after working at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Queens Village, he began studies in social work, leading to a master’s degree from Fordham University in 1961. He was quickly named assistant director of Catholic Charities’ childcare division and became director four years later. After obtaining a second master’s degree in public administration from New York University, then-Father Sullivan was named executive director of Catholic Charities, and later joined its board of trustees as executive vice president.

In October 1980, Pope John Paul II named him an auxiliary bishop, along with two other Brooklyn priests, now-retired Auxiliary Bishop Rene Valero, who remained in Brooklyn, and the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, who went on to head the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

News reports said Bishop Sullivan’s car got a flat tire as he drove on the expressway May 30, causing him to stop in the HOV express lane, where his car was hit from behind and that car also was hit. He was airlifted to Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, N.Y., where he died the following week. The driver of the second car also was briefly hospitalized and then released.

Six of Bishop Sullivan’s siblings survive him: his sisters Betty, Dolly and Fran, and brothers John, Pete and Ralph, along with more than 100 nieces, nephews, and grandnieces and grandnephews.

By Catholic News Service

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York’s bishops, led by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, said they would oppose a portion of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Women’s Equality Act that preserves abortion rights.

The bill, introduced June 4, “would ease restrictions in state law on late-term abortion and runs the serious risk of broadly expanding abortion access at all stages of gestation,” the bishops said in a June 4 statement.

“While the bill’s proponents say it will simply codify federal law, it is selective in its codification,” they added, “Nowhere does it address the portions of federal laws that limit abortion, such as the ban on taxpayer funding, the ban on partial-birth abortion or protections for unborn victims of violence.”

The bishops said, “We fully oppose this measure, and urge all our faithful people to do the same, vigorously and unapologetically.”

The Women’s Equality Act is a 10-point program unveiled by Cuomo, a Democrat and a Catholic.

Those points, according to the governor’s website, are: achieving pay equity; stopping sexual harassment in the workplace; allowing for the recovery of attorneys’ fees in employment and credit and lending cases; strengthening human trafficking laws; ending family status discrimination; stopping source-of-income discrimination; stopping housing discrimination for victims of domestic violence; stopping pregnancy discrimination; protecting victims of domestic violence by strengthening order-of-protection laws; and protecting “a woman’s freedom of choice.”

“We support the first nine points in the governor’s agenda that enhance the true dignity of women,” the bishops said. “We commit ourselves to examining those proposals and working with the legislature on any and all efforts that help guarantee real equity for all women and men. Our position on these issues will be consistent with all the efforts of the Catholic Church throughout the world to enhance the dignity of women.”

But, the bishops added, “the direct taking of the life of a child in the womb in no way enhances a woman’s dignity.”

The bishops said, “Instead of expanding abortion and making abortions even more prevalent, we would like to protect both the woman and the child in the womb. In New York, where one in every three pregnancies ends in abortion, and upwards of six in 10 in certain communities, it is clear that we as a state have lost sight of that child’s dignity.”

A June 4 analysis of the bill by David Masci, a senior researcher fir Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life said Americans continue to be of two minds on abortion.

A January Pew Forum poll showed that Americans, by better than a 2-to-1 margin, did not want Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion virtually on demand, to be overturned.

In the survey, 63 percent said they did not want Roe v. Wade struck down, while 29 percent said it should be completely overturned. In response to another question, though, 47 percent of American adults said it was morally wrong to have an abortion, compared to 27 percent who said abortion is not a moral issue, 13 who view abortion as morally acceptable, and 9 percent who said the morality of abortion depends on the situation.

By Catholic News Service

CHICAGO — The Chicago archdiocese’s new “To Teach Who Christ Is” campaign is well named because it describes exactly the mission of the Catholic Church, said Cardinal Francis E. George.

It’s “what we do; we teach the world who Christ is,” he said.

The three-year campaign will raise $350 million for Catholic education and faith formation. The funds will support archdiocesan Catholic schools, religious education for children and teens, adult faith formation and capital needs for parishes and schools.

“The Catholic schools of the Archdiocese of Chicago and our faith formation programs make their case in the lives of those transformed by them,” Cardinal George said in a statement.

“The alumni of our schools and parishes are living and working in Chicago, the suburbs and around the world. They are the reason, and the winning conclusion, to the need to conduct the ‘To Teach Who Christ Is’ campaign.”

The archdiocese launched the new initiative at a press conference June 5 at St. Stanislaus Kostka School.

According to press materials, the “To Teach Who Christ Is” campaign is an archdiocesan-wide, parish-based effort that will be rolled out in parishes over a three-year period.

It has a major gift component that has already brought in $82.5 million, or approximately 24 percent of the total.

Press materials about the campaign said that administrators, educators, pastors and staff gave their input on the priorities for allocating the funds. Those include: $150 million for scholarships; $8 million to enhance programs at Catholic schools; $10 million to strengthen religious education programs; $2 million to develop and pilot new approaches to religious education and faith formation; $30 million for specific capital needs in Catholic schools and related parish facilities; and $150 million for parish-specific needs through the parish-based portion of the campaign.

The total goal for parishes is $250 million with 60 percent of the funds, or $150 million, raised to remain in the parishes for their needs and 40 percent, or $100 million, to be distributed through the archdiocese.

“The spirit and the substance” of the initiative can be seen in the archdiocese’s mission to generate “sufficient funding to help all of us teach God’s word and the beauty of our Catholic faith,” said Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Francis J. Kane, the campaign’s general chair.

By Catholic News Service

OKLAHOMA CITY — As communities across central Oklahoma continued to recover from the “powerful and deadly tornadoes” of May 19 and 20, they have experienced an “overwhelming” outpouring of “prayer, love and support from across our great state and from around the nation,” said Oklahoma City’s archbishop.

“It is bringing comfort to those who have lost loved ones, suffered injuries and whose homes, businesses and properties have been damaged or destroyed,” Archbishop Paul S. Coakley said.

Volunteers remove debris from a hilltop May 27 in a neighborhood heavily damaged by the May 20 tornado in Moore, Okla. Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City said that through the kindness “of neighbors and strangers” the hard-hit community is recovering. (CNS photo/Lucas Jackson, Reuters)

He made the comments in his column, “Put Out Into the Deep,” in the online issue of the Sooner Catholic, the archdiocesan newspaper.

On May 31, the western suburbs of Oklahoma City were hit by a tornado the National Weather Service rated days later as an EF5. Nineteen people were killed in the storm and the flooding that followed. The dead included three storm chasers who were doing tornado research, according to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman.

Eleven days earlier the suburb of Moore also bore the brunt of an EF5 tornado. It hit mid-afternoon May 20, killing 24 people. More than 200 others were injured in that storm.

Among efforts to help storm victims, the Catholic community established a disaster response center at All Saints Catholic School in Norman. By June 3 several recovery centers were opened by state and federal agencies, including the Federal Management Agency. In addition many of the nation’s major insurance carriers had established an “insurance village” at a Baptist church to expedite people’s claims.

In his column, Archbishop Coakley said that response efforts were “still fluid and adapting to changing needs and circumstances.”

But in the days since the worst tornadoes, “emergency responders, relief workers, counselors, chaplains, friends, neighbors and strangers,” have come together “to bring comfort and sustain hope where hope has been shaken,” Archbishop Coakley said. “And Jesus still weeps. God is with us.”

The Catholic community “stands shoulder to shoulder with religious, government and volunteer organizations and agencies” to assist in the recovery, he continued.

He noted that each has had a “different role in the response.”

“Some are first responders. Others offer assistance with cleanup and with immediate needs such as temporary shelter, meals and clothing. Some help facilitate spiritual, physical and emotional healing. Still others focus on long-term needs in accessing community resources,” he added.

He said parish clergy and staff members in the affected areas “have been engaged from the beginning. They have been contacting parishioners and assessing needs.”

He praised Catholic organizations such as Catholic Charities USA, the Knights of Columbus and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for “reaching out and providing support in the various areas affected by these devastating storms.”

The Knights’ national organization set up relief efforts in St. Andrew Church in Moore, where the twister hit hardest, to coordinate response to community requests and to register volunteers. A few days after the tornado members of the local Knights council visited parish families to assess property damage and people’s needs.

Archbishop Coakley called the Knights’ efforts “incredible” and said that in addition to addressing immediate needs and offering counseling, Catholic Charities and St. Vincent de Paul “are offering long-term case management to help storm survivors rebuild their lives over the course of many months to come.”

During a May 26 visit to Moore to view the devastation, President Barack Obama praised residents for inspiring the nation “with their love, their courage and their fellowship.”

“This is a strong community with strong character. There’s no doubt they will bounce back. But they need help,” he said, assuring the community of the federal government’s ongoing help with cleanup and rebuilding efforts.

The tornado killed 24 people, 10 of whom were children, including seven from an elementary school that was destroyed. About 350 families lost their homes.

Archbishop Coakley expressed gratitude for Pope Francis offering a special prayer for the tornado victims during his early morning Mass May 21 and that he sent his condolences. He said he was thankful, too, for the letter he received on behalf of the Catholic community from Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In a letter to all the U.S. bishops, Cardinal Dolan requested they urge their pastors to take up a special collection over the coming weeks to assist in recovery efforts from the tragic storms in Oklahoma and from other natural disasters that the Catholic Church and the country “may suffer this year.”

“I request that we broaden this appeal in anticipation of more domestic disasters possibly awaiting us this year.”

He said the funds collected in “this one-time special appeal for the 2013 storms and disasters” will be used to support the efforts of the USCCB and Catholic Charities USA, the official domestic relief agency of the U.S. Catholic Church, “as they respond to immediate emergency needs for such necessities as water, food, shelter, and medical care, as well as to the long term need to rebuild after widespread destruction, and to the pastoral and reconstruction needs of the church.”

Cardinal Dolan added that the church is still responding to the needs of dioceses affected by last year’s Hurricane Sandy.

“The church must serve as a primary source of healing and peace when tragedies such as this occur. However, as is so often the case, the church itself is both an aid responder and a victim,” he continued, adding that in some places hit by Sandy church structures were damaged “and resources depleted.”

Archbishop Coakley in his column noted that in his archdiocese damage sustained by the area’s religious institutions was “minimal.”

Cardinal Dolan in his letter of May 22 acknowledged that on the weekend of June 29-30, many dioceses are also scheduled to take up the Peter’s Pence Collection in support of the Holy Father, and he urged bishops “not to substitute one collection for another, as the generosity of Catholics is widespread in response to individual needs.”

Businesses are pitching in, too, to help with Oklahoma recover efforts. For example, Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores, a chain of more than 200 truck stops and convenience stores, announced it will donate $3 million to support immediate and long-term relief efforts in Oklahoma; $500,000 was to go to Catholic Charities.

The recovery ahead, Archbishop Coakley wrote, “is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. We are never alone in our distress and suffering. Through the love and kindness of both neighbors and strangers Jesus is demonstrating his faithfulness.”

By Catholic News Service

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — In his small parish outside of Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, Father Maximo Mateos is filling his chalice with less than half the amount of wine he formerly used.

The priests at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish in Caracas are precariously close to running out of sacramental wine.

And for the Sisters of the Adoration, finding good wheat flour to make Communion wafers is becoming harder and more expensive.

A woman carries products at a state-run supermarket in Caracas, Venezuela, June 4. Sporadic shortages of basic goods in the country can turn a roll of toilet paper into a rare commodity. Clergy and religious are worried about running low on altar wine and wheat to make hosts. (CNS photo/Jorge Silva, Reuters)

In Venezuela, sporadic shortages of basic goods can turn a roll of toilet paper into a rare commodity; add bread and wine to the list of scarce products.

Catholic leaders in the South American country have advised priests to conserve what supplies they have as they search for an alternative supply to ease the shortage.

In the publication La Iglesia Ahora, three bishops said there is an “extreme need” for supplies of wine. The supplier, Bodegas Pomar, “can’t guarantee consistent production and regular distribution due to the lack of some goods needed to bottle the product.”

Phone messages left for Bodegas Pomar were not returned, but church officials said less than three months of wine remained in storage.

“We’ve had to do what we can to conserve while hoping that it’s just a temporary shortage,” Father Mateos told Catholic News Service. “We do live in a country where shortages of all things are common. So this is not uncommon.”

Supplies of everything from toilet paper to milk, sugar and oil sporadically disappear from store shelves.

In late May, authorities seized 2,500 rolls of toilet paper, 7,000 liters of juice and 400 diapers from a clandestine warehouse in Caracas — proof, the government said, of hoarding that is to blame for the shortages.

The Venezuelan government announced in early June that it would start testing a program designed to prevent hoarding. The program will digitally track shoppers in the state of Zulia, which includes the country’s second-largest city, Maracaibo, and will limit the amount of basic goods they can buy in one day. The pilot program will be put in place in 65 supermarkets, officials said.

The government of oil-rich Venezuela has kept in place price and currency controls introduced under the government of President Hugo Chavez, who died in March after a prolonged battle with cancer. Those restrictions have limited the availability of products to consumers.

“They have kept the prices down with controls, and that has kept inflation relatively low, but it can’t last,” said economist Robert Bottome, who runs a consultancy in Caracas. “Things are going to get worse.”

Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, has tried to ease some of the pressures by making the dollar more available to some businesses, thereby allowing them to import more goods, but shortages have persisted.

In Caracas, a member of the Sisters of the Adoration, who produce wafers for Communion, said they have started buying flour in local bakeries and pastry shops because finding pure wheat flour has become more difficult.

That has raised prices, limiting the number of wafers they turn out. The congregation has cut production by two-thirds in recent years.

Father Honegger Molina of La Boyera parish told local reporters that he used to receive 10,000 wafers at a time from the congregation, but now “they tell me to take 2,000 and come back in 15 days for 2,000 more.”

The situation is more difficult when it comes to sacramental wine, which has to be pure and without additives, making finding alternatives difficult.

Jose Antonio Conceicao, who works in the liturgy department at the Venezuelan bishops’ conference, said the number of Masses will not be reduced due to the shortage. Catholic leaders, he said, believe the shortage will only be temporary as they are working to find another supply.

Catholic leaders said they are talking with suppliers in neighboring Colombia, but that no supply has yet been located.

Meanwhile, parishes are saving what they can.

“We’re asking other parishes for help, but it’s something we’re all going through,” said a representative for Our Lady of the Rosary Parish. “We just hope what little we have will last until they find a solution.”

Father Pablo Urquiaga, a priest at Resurrection of the Lord Parish in Caracas, said the temporary shortage can serve as a reminder of what’s important.

“We should worry ourselves more with the quality of our Masses and less with the quality of the wine,” he said.