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HARBIN, China — Chinese government officials have forced seven priests in Heilongjiang province who resisted the illicit episcopal ordination of Father Joseph Yue Fusheng of Harbin to leave their parishes, local Catholic Church sources said.
The action was taken, the sources said, to force the priests to “repent for their wrongdoing,” reported the Asian church news agency UCA News.
WASHINGTON — Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco and named Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of Oakland, Calif., to succeed him.
Archbishop Niederauer, 76, had headed the San Francisco Archdiocese since 2005. A priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, he also served as bishop of Salt Lake City for 10 years.
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy — Pope Benedict XVI expressed his hope that the Summer Olympics would help bring peace and reconciliation throughout the world.
The Olympic Games, held this year in London, are “the greatest sports event in the world,” drawing athletes from the myriad nations of the world to one city, the pope told visitors gathered to pray the Angelus with him July 22 at the papal villa in Castel Gandolfo.
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities praised lawmakers for including two conscience provisions in the House version of the 2013 appropriations bill for the federal departments of Labor and Health and Human Services.
“Our government has a long history of respecting rights of conscience in health care, and the time is long overdue to reaffirm this laudable tradition in the face of today’s growing threats,” Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston said in a July 17 letter to members of the House Subcommittee on Labor/HHS.
PRINCETON, N.J. — Americans’ confidence in “church and organized religion” has been on the decline since 1973 and Catholics’ confidence in that institution remains lower than that of Protestants, according to the results of a new Gallup survey released July 12.
Forty-six percent of Catholics express “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence” in the church and organized religion, compared to 56 percent of Protestants. Read more »
WASHINGTON — Conflict between the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith over the reform of LCWR boils down to whether one can “be a Catholic and have a questioning mind,” the conference’s president said in an interview on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” program.
Franciscan Sister Pat Farrell also told “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross in the July 17 interview that she would like to see discussion about whether “freedom of conscience in the church (is) genuinely honored.”
LINCOLN, Neb. — A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services’ mandated contraceptive coverage under the new health reform law July 17, saying it was “based on layers of conjecture.”
U.S. District Court Judge Warren K. Urbom ruled that the seven states and various other individuals and groups that filed suit in February against the mandate had failed to show that their health insurance plans would not be grandfathered — and therefore not exempt from the requirement.
OTTAWA, Ontario — The federal government has announced it will appeal the June 15 British Columbia Supreme Court decision that struck down Canada’s laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide.
“After careful consideration of the legal merits,” the government of Canada will appeal the so-called Carter decision to the British Columbia Court of Appeal and seek “a stay of all aspects of the lower-court decision,” said Justice Minister and Attorney General Rob Nicholson July 13.
WASHINGTON — A proposed $16 billion cut in the nation’s Supplemental Nutritional and Assistance Program is “unjustified and wrong,” said a joint letter from the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ domestic and international justice committees, leaders of Catholic Relief Services and the National Catholic Rural Life Conference.
The cuts in SNAP, once known as food stamps, “will hurt hungry children, poor families, vulnerable seniors and struggling workers,” said the July 10 letter, addressed to Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Texas, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, and Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., the committee’s ranking Democrat.
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON — Defending religious liberty is part of the bigger struggle to “convert our own hearts”and “live for God completely,” Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said July 4 in Washington at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
He delivered the homily at the Mass that brought the U.S. bishops’ “Fortnight for Freedom” to a close.
