Newspaper Page Text
The Southern Cross, Page 2
Thursday, November 1, 2001
Pope calls massacre at
Pakistani church ‘tragic act
of intolerance’
Vatican City (CNS)
ope John Paul II called the slaying of
16 Christians in a Pakistani church a
“tragic act of intolerance” and sent his
condolences to the families of the victims.
Five masked gunmen burst into the Cath
olic Church of Saint Dominic in Baha-
walpur October 28, and fired automatic
weapons at a Protestant congregation
meeting there for about five minutes. It
was the worst act of anti-Christian vio
lence in recent memory in Pakistan. The
gunmen escaped, and there was no imme
diate claim of responsibility for the shoot
ings. Church leaders in the area said the
attack appeared to be a reaction—probably
by extremist Muslims —against U.S. air
strikes in Afghanistan.
Cardinal Egan leaves synod
TO RETURN TO ‘HURTING’ FLOCK
Vatican City (CNS)
he U.S. cardinal who guided much of
the discussion at the October Synod
of Bishops missed its final days to be
with his “hurting” flock in New York
City. Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the
synod’s general reporting secretary,
returned to New York October 23, five
days before the synod’s end. A synod
member who worked closely with
Cardinal Egan said the U.S. prelate suf
fered because he had to be away so long
from New York. “I told him jokingly,
‘Your body is here, but your heart and
mind are in New York’,” Italian Bishop
Marcello Semeraro of Oria, the synod’s
special secretary, told reporters October
26. In the first days after his return,
Cardinal Egan attended several funerals
and met with family members of victims.
Baptist-Catholic
CONVERSATION ENDED
Washington (CNS)
he co-sponsors of the national
Southern Baptist-Catholic Conver
sation have announced the termination of
their current round of formal conversa
tions. In a joint statement in October,
they said the national conversation was
only one of several forms of Catholic-
Southern Baptist cooperation. Its ending
“should not be seen as a diminished com
mitment in either community to contin
ued collaboration whenever possible,”
they said. The Catholic co-sponsor, the
bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and
Interreligious Affairs, said the decision to
end the conversations was made by the
North American Mission Board of the
Southern Baptist Convention, co-sponsor
on the Baptist side.
Vatican approves
EUCHARISTIC SHARING
with Chaldeans, Assyrians
Vatican City (CNS)
ecognizing the validity of the eu-
charistic prayer used most often by
the Assyrian Church of the East, the
Vatican said Chaldean Catholics and
Assyrians can receive Communion at
each other’s liturgies when a priest of
their own church is not available. “The
principal issue for the Catholic Church in
agreeing to this request related to the
question of the validity of the Eucharist
celebrated with the Anaphora of Addai
and Mari,” an ancient eucharistic prayer,
said an October 25 Vatican statement.
The statement from the Pontifical Council
for Promoting Christian Unity said the
Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith undertook “a long and careful
study” of the prayer and concluded in
January that it “can be considered valid,”
even though it does not contain a narra
tive of the institution of the Eucharist in
the manner familiar to Catholics.
Welsh archbishop resigns
AFTER CONTROVERSIES,
MEETING WITH POPE
Manchester, England (CNS)
rchbishop John Ward of Cardiff,
Wales, resigned following a meeting
with Pope John Paul II, ill health and sev
eral controversies surrounding sexual
abuse in the archdiocese. In a statement
issued October 26 by the Catholic Media
Office in London on his behalf, Arch
bishop Ward said he was “weary” at the
“lack of loyalty” he had experienced.
Some priests in the archdiocese had
called for Archbishop Ward’s resignation
after a number of high-profile child abuse
cases. The Vatican announced that Bishop
Peter Smith of East Anglia, England,
would be the new archbishop of Cardiff.
Bishop of Juneau, Alaska,
*
ALSO TO ADMINISTER FAIRBANKS
Diocese
Anchorage (CNS)
he Diocese of Juneau announced
October 23 that its bishop, Bishop
Michael W. Warfel, has been appointed
interim apostolic administrator of the
Diocese of Fairbanks. Bishop Warfel, 53,
will remain bishop of the southeastern
Alaska diocese while taking on the added
responsibility in the Fairbanks Diocese,
r
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As apostolic administrator, Bishop Warfel
assumes all the rights, faculties and duties
of a bishop for Fairbanks until a new
bishop is selected for that diocese. The
letter of appointment was issued by
Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, prefect of the
Vatican Congregation for the Evan
gelization of Peoples.
Chinese church leaders say
PAPAL APOLOGY SHOWS POPE’S
OPENNESS
Hong Kong (CNS)
T wo Hong Kong bishops agreed that
Pope John Paul IT’s apology to the
Chinese people expressed the pope’s
openness to dialogue between the Holy
See and China. However, Hong Kong
Coadjutor Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-kiun
said he is not optimistic about prospects
for normalization of Chinese-Vatican
relations, despite the pope’s October 24
apology for the past errors of some mis
sionaries, reported UCA News, an Asian
church news agency based in Thailand.
Pope John Paul has shown his openness
and generosity in admitting the errors of
some Western missionaries to China, who
might not have understood the Chinese
people and their culture, Bishop Zen said
October 25.
U.S. PRELATES SAY CONSENSUS
EMERGES ON BISHOPS’
CONFERENCES
Vatican City (CNS)
A s the October Synod of Bishops
wound down, a consensus appeared
to emerge on a prominent role for bish
ops’ conferences and decentralization of
decision making on certain pastoral
issues, two U.S. participants said. Even
before the approximately 250 bishops
voted on final propositions October 26, it
was clear that the profile of bishops’ con
ferences had been raised “quite a bit” by
the synod, Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza,
president of the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops, said in an interview.
“There was a lot of agreement that the
rights of bishops’ conferences should be
more recognized,” said Bishop Fiorenza,
who heads the Diocese of Galveston-
Houston. Cardinal William H. Keeler of
Baltimore said in an interview that he
was heartened by the great number of
participants who spoke in favor of bish
ops’ conferences. “This synod is about
the role of bishops, and many bishops
have found that the conferences are a
help to them in their ministry,” he said.
<——>
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