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Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) — At Catholic college and university graduations across the United States this May, the graduates were urged to make a difference in today’s world, equipped with tools and experience from their college years. Read more »
WASHINGTON (CNS) — The United States’ use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, to hunt down suspected terrorists deserves a wide-scale public discussion, said the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace.
Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, raised a series of ethical and moral questions regarding the use of drones in places such as Pakistan and Yemen in detailed two-page letters to Thomas E. Donilon, national security adviser, and the chairs of several House and Senate committees dealing with national security, foreign relations, intelligence and government oversight. Read more »
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Marking the 25th anniversary of the Missionaries of Charity soup kitchen and women’s shelter at the Vatican, Pope Francis said that while unbridled capitalism has taught people that money is more important than anything else, works of Christian charity witness to God’s love for each person.
“Unbridled capitalism has taught the logic of profit at any cost, of giving in order to receive, of exploitation without looking at the person,” Pope Francis said May 21, visiting the “Dono di Maria” or “Gift of Mary.” The results of such attitudes, he said, “we see in the crisis we are now living through.” Read more »
Catholic News Service
ANNANDALE, Va. (CNS) — Behind all the musical prowess of Carlos Ibay is a young man whose strong connection to the heart of Jesus can be recognized through the many outlets of his ingenuity.
It’s evident in his life, his voice and his song. Read more »
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis was scheduled to help the Pontifical Mission Societies of the United States broaden its reach around the world by unlocking a smartphone app.
During an audience with national directors of pontifical mission societies from around the world, the pope was set to launch the organization’s new Missio app from the Vatican May 17, sending news and content in eight languages. Read more »
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) — Worker advocates have turned to a new tool to educate low-wage employees about wage theft.
Welcome the comic book.
The first issue of “Wage Theft: Crime & Justice,” published by Chicago-based Interfaith Worker Justice, may not be coveted by comic book collectors, but clients at worker centers around the country are poring over the bilingual book to learn how best to regain wages owed to them by deceitful employers. Read more »
Catholic News Service
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (CNS) — Minnesota businessman Cy Laurent remembers the moment the Holy Spirit lit a path for what would become his lay ministry, the Laboure Society. Talking to a young woman about a job, she told him she had discerned a vocation but had been stymied by her debts.
Laurent, a Catholic, rallied some of his business associates to help pay down the woman’s outstanding debt, allowing her to pursue her vocation.
“It’s been 12 years since she professed her final vows, thanks be to God,” Laurent said. “That experience was quite wonderful, and I started to look around to see if there were others in that situation.” Read more »
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY — Like Jesus who dined with Pharisees and sinners and St. Paul who preached to idol worshippers, true evangelizers build bridges that lead unbelievers into the church, not walls to protect it, Pope Francis said.
The pope’s words came in a homily May 8 during morning Mass in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican guesthouse where he lives. The Vatican employees present included those responsible for furniture and decor in Vatican buildings.
Pope Francis kisses a child as he arrives to lead his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican May 8. (CNS photo/Stefano Rellandini, Reuters)
Commenting on the day’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, in which St. Paul preaches to pagan Athenians at the Areopagus, Pope Francis said that “Paul is a pontifex, a builder of bridges. He doesn’t want to become a builder of walls.”
“He doesn’t say: ‘Idolaters, go to hell!’” the pope said. “This is the attitude of Paul in Athens: Build a bridge to their heart, in order then to take another step and announce Jesus Christ.”
Pope Francis said that the apostle followed the example of Jesus himself, who “dined with Pharisees, with sinners, with publicans, with doctors of the law. Jesus heard everyone, and when he said a word of condemnation, it was at the end, when there was nothing else to do.
“Christians who are afraid to build bridges and prefer to build walls are Christians who are not sure of their faith, not sure of Jesus Christ,” he said.
“When the church loses this apostolic courage,” he said, “it becomes a stalled church, a tidy church, nice, very nice, but without fertility, because it has lost the courage to go to the peripheries, where there are so many victims of idolatry, of worldliness, of weak thinking.”
In these terms, the pope said, “now is a good time in the life of the church, the last 50 or 60 years have been a good time.
“Because I remember when I was a child one would hear in Catholic families, in my family: ‘No, we cannot go to their house, because they are not married in the church, eh!’ It was like an exclusion. No, you couldn’t go. Or ‘because they are socialists or atheists, we cannot go,’” Pope Francis said.
“Now, thank God, that isn’t said, right?” he said. “It was like a defense of the faith, but with walls. The Lord made bridges.”
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Salesian Sister Jennifer Kane is a living conversion story, who has gone, she said, from “bombs to Bibles.”
A 16-year military veteran who at one time was a missile systems engineer working on intercontinental nuclear weapons, Sister Jennifer is preparing to make her first profession of vows with the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco in August.
How does someone make the conversion? Read more »
STILLWATER, Minn. — For Laura Sobiech, the image of Mary is clear: standing silently, helplessly at the foot of the cross, watching her son die.
For Catholics, it’s at the heart of understanding who Mary is and why she matters to our faith.
In Sobiech’s case, it doesn’t take much to conjure up the sight of the suffering mother of God. She just needs to sit at the foot of her son Zach’s bed.
Zach Sobiech and his parents, Rob and Laura, parishioners at the Church of St. Michael in Stillwater, Minn., are pictured at their home April 24. Faith has been a big part of the family’s journey as Zach reaches the final stage of his fight against a rare form of bone cancer. (CNS photo/Dave Hrbacek, The Catholic Spirit)
Zach is dying of a rare form of bone cancer called osteosarcoma. He is now in the final stages of the disease, at home in hospice care and taking only medications to help ease the pain and make him feel comfortable.
“Identifying with Mary’s suffering has been huge,” said Laura, of St. Michael in Stillwater. “To meditate from her point of view, watching her son suffer, has just really brought me peace and shown me how to do it. … Mary was there for the whole thing, and there was nothing she could really do but be there.”
Like Mary, Laura has resolved to be by her son’s side for whatever time he has left. She is joined faithfully by her husband of 23 years, Rob. Together, both have shared the ups and downs, joys and deep sorrows of their son’s battle with cancer, which began in the fall of 2009.
Zach, the third of the Sobiechs’ four children, was out on a run trying to get in shape for the upcoming basketball season at Stillwater High School when he began experiencing pain in his hip. But when he sought treatment for what he thought was a hip flexor, Zach instead was told he had a tumor.
Said Rob: “It was like someone punched you in the gut.”
Not long after the diagnosis on Nov. 13, 2009, Laura got serious about a goal she had set several years earlier, praying the rosary.
“When things started with Zach in 2009, it was pretty immediate that I needed that lifeline,” Laura said. “That’s when I decided that this was going to be part of my daily routine. So, I actually set up my work schedule to start later so that I could make sure I would get prayer in before I started my day.”
Now Laura craves her daily time with the Blessed Mother as much as ever. Though a lifelong Catholic, only recently has she developed a devotion to Mary and the rosary.
“Any time we have a struggle in the family, I go right to the rosary because I know that’s where we’re going to get the grace, or I’m going to get the grace, to get through things,” she said. “I just don’t have to do it on my own. It’s my safety net.”
The safety net of faith is what has helped the whole family get through the dozen-plus surgeries, the 100-plus days in the hospital, and the grim reports from doctors. And, it has given them eyes to see Zach’s illness as something more than just pure misery and heartbreak.
“We were given our situation as an opportunity,” Rob said. “It’s had purpose. It was part of God’s plan. Now, every day I look at it, I’m going, ‘I don’t like it.’ But, if you can understand that there’s an eternal (component), then the whole suffering part makes a lot more sense.”
Though Rob and Laura have found peace in the midst of their son’s failing health, their suffering remains intense.
Fortunately, they have been able to experience some joyful moments, like the day Auxiliary Bishop Lee A. Piche of St. Paul and Minneapolis came to St. Mary in Stillwater for family friend Matt Brown’s confirmation. Zach was his sponsor and the parish asked that Matt’s confirmation be moved up to April 22 and be held at St. Mary’s so that Zach could be there.
Permission was granted, and Bishop Piche expressed admiration for Zach’s courage during the Mass.
“It was huge,” Laura said. “I think all of us felt that the Holy Spirit really was there, not just for Matt, but was spilling over to all of us. We had this unique opportunity for all of us to be together for this really cool thing.”
Though Zach’s condition slid downward in the days after Matt’s confirmation, he summoned up the strength to offer a few brief thoughts.
“It seemed a lot more special for him, which I enjoyed a lot,” said Zach, who turned 18 on May 3. “I feel like he’ll look back on his confirmation and remember it more than a lot of other kids will because he got that personal touch. And, I think that will help guide him more.”
As his illness progresses, Zach will be surrounded by his family, which includes sisters Alli, 22, and Grace, 14, and brother Sam, 20. Then there’s his longtime friend and singing partner Sammy Brown, plus Zach’s girlfriend Amy Adamle, who belongs to St. Ambrose in Woodbury.
“He has this sense of joy, and he shares it with everyone, even when he’s down,” Adamle said. “His faith has made my faith stronger because even in dark times, he still looks to God. It helps me know that I can do that.”
By Dave Hrbacek, The Catholic Spirit
