Newspaper Page Text
The Southern Cross, Page 2
Pope says he hopes days of
FASTING* PRAYER HELP COOL
WORLD SITUATION
Vatican City (CNS)
P ope John Paul II said he hoped a
church-wide day of fasting in Decem
ber and an interreligious summit in
January would help cool down the interna
tional situation, marked by multiple wars.
Meanwhile, the Vatican announced it was
collecting donations that on Christmas
Day the pope would allocate to victims of
terrorism and war. Speaking December 2
to pilgrims in Saint Peter’s Square during
a midday blessing, the pope noted the
day’s liturgy contained Isaiah’s Old
Testament prophecy that the nations “shall
beat their swords into plowshares” and
renounce warfare.’These words contain a
promise of peace that is more urgent than
ever for humanity and, in particular, for
the Holy Land, from where even today,
unfortunately, sorrowful and worrying
news reaches us,” he said.
Doctrinal congregation
TAKES CONTROL OVER PRIESTLY
PEDOPHILIA CASES
Vatican City (CNS)
I n a new set of norms, the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith has taken
juridical control over cases of sexual abuse
of minors by priests, classifying it as one
of several “graver offenses” against church
law. The move represents a Vatican effort
to centralize procedure and oversight on
these kinds of sexual abuse cases, said
canon law experts in Rome. The norms,
outlined in a letter to the world’s bishops,
affect how church law treats such cases;
the typical punishment for those convicted
is dismissal from the clerical state. Civil
law deals with the crime separately. The
new norms require local bishops to report
probable cases of clerical sexual abuse
against minors to the Vatican’s doctrinal
congregation, headed by Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger. The doctrinal congregation then
either could allow a local diocesan tribunal
to handle the case under the congrega
tion’s procedural rules or intervene and
take up the case immediately in its own
tribunal. The congregation also said that
for priestly sexual abuse cases involving
minors, its tribunal is the first court of
appeals for the diocesan tribunal.
Lay teachers strike at New
York archdiocesan schools
New York (CNS)
T he association representing lay teach
ers in the 10 high schools operated by
the Archdiocese of New York went on
H®adlliiKi<e H®ps€©t€lh
Thursday, December 6, 2001
strike November 29. The action originally ■
was scheduled to begin September 11, but
was delayed after the attack on the World
Trade Center. Henry Kielkucki, business
manager for the Lay Faculty Association,
told Catholic News Service that the teach
ers were asking for a 15 percent increase
over the three years of the contract, and
that the archdiocesan offer is much lower
than what they want.
Pope calls Catholic leaders
in Holy Land to meeting
Vatican City (CNS)
P ope John Paul II has asked Catholic
leaders from the Holy Land to come
to the Vatican December 13 to discuss the
church’s pastoral work in a region
marked by conflict and tension. The
meeting will have “a purely pastoral
character,” said Joaquin Navarro-Vails,
the Vatican spokesman, announcing the
meeting November 28. The pope himself
called the meeting, the spokesman said.
“Given the delicate situation in the Holy
Land, he wants to reaffirm once again his
spiritual closeness to those peoples and to
share the drama of their daily existence,
too often marked by acts of violence and
discrimination,” Navarro-Vails said.
Catholic-Methodist dia
logue GROUP LOOKS AT NATURE
OF CHURCH
Washington (CNS)
C atholic and United Methodist schol
ars and leaders met in Washington
recently to discuss the nature of the
church, both universal and local. The sec
ond meeting of the sixth round of the
United Methodist-Catholic Dialogue took
place November 9-12 at Saint Paul’s Col
lege in Washington on the theme, “The
church universal and local.” The co
chairs of the dialogue—Methodist Bishop
Walter Klaiber of Frankfurt, Germany,
and Catholic Bishop William S. Skylstad
of Spokane, Washington—reported to the
participants on the recently completed
Bishops’ Council (Methodist) and Synod
of Bishops (Catholic). “Debates in both
the council and synod over questions of
subsidiarity, collegiality and the relation
ship of universal and local dimensions of
church decision-making, though different
in the Methodist and Catholic churches,
drew on the same theological roots and
addressed the same questions of mission
and pastoral care,” Christian Brother
Jeffrey Gros, associate director of the
U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Ecumenical
and Interreligious Affairs, said in a state
ment issued after the dialogue session.
Deadlock in dialogue with
Orthodox must be over
come, says POPE
Vatican City (CNS)
P ope John Paul II told a top Orthodox
patriarch the Catholic Church was
ready to do everything in its power to
restart theological talks stalled for more
than a year. “The difficulties encountered
in recent years by the international mixed
commission for theological dialogue must
be analyzed and overcome,” the pope said
in a message to Ecumenical Orthodox
Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.
Recent commission work has been stymied
by disagreement over the theological and
canonical status of Eastern Catholic
churches, which share Orthodox traditions
but are in communion with the pope. The
papal message, released at the Vatican No
vember 30, was delivered by a Vatican del
egation to the ecumenical patriarchate in
Istanbul, Turkey, for the feast of the patri
archate’s patron, Saint Andrew the Apostle.
Algerian archbishop says
TERRORISM WAS OFTEN
IGNORED—UNTIL NOW
Rome (CNS)
A lgeria’s Muslim majority and tiny
Christian minority have spent 10
years under terrorism by armed Muslim
extremist groups, but the world paid little
attention, said Archbishop Henri Teissier of
Algiers. “The world left us alone to deal
with this terror, but now things have
changed because Westerners, not Algeri
ans, have died,” the archbishop said
November 28. When the World Trade Cen
ter in New York was attacked September
11, “Algerians felt two things simultane
ously: that this proves that organized
extremist terrorism exists, but also a fear
that all Muslims would become the vic
tims” of the U.S.-led war on terrorism. The
fear, he said, is not unfounded, although
U.S. operations through November focused
on Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden.
Bulgarian officials say pope
TO VISIT THEIR COUNTRY IN MAY
Vatican City (CNS)
P ope John Paul II will make his first
pastoral visit to Bulgaria next May,
according to Bulgarian officials. Bul
garian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy
announced November 28 that the pope
would visit the country May 23-25,
according to news agencies in Bulgaria.
Passy made the announcement after
meeting with Monsignor Renato Boccar-
do and other Vatican trip planners in
Sofia, the Bulgarian capital.
To Subscribe
Send this form in to your parish,
together with your check for $20.00, made out to your parish.
For more information call The Southern Cross at
(912) 201-4100.
Name
Address
City, State, Zip
Phone ( )_
Parish
The
Southern
Cross
(USPS 505 680)
Publisher:
Most Rev. J. Kevin
Boland, D.D.
Director of
Communications:
Barbara D. King
Editor:
Rev. Douglas K. Clark,
S.T.L.
Assistant to Editor:
Anne E. Smith
Editorial and
Business Office:
Catholic Pastoral Ctr.
601 E. Liberty Street
Savannah, GA
31401-5196
Telephone:
(912) 201-4100
Toll-Free (in GA only):
(888) 295-7144
Fax: (912) 201-4101
E-mail:
DClark5735 @ aol.com
or
Southemcross@
ix.netcom.com
Web Address:
http://www.diosav.org
Deadline:
All material for
publication on
Thursday must be
received at the latest by
noon on the previous
Friday.
Postmaster:
Send change of address
to circulation office:
Chalker Publishing
Southern Cross
Subscription Dept.
P. O. Box 948
Waynesboro, GA
30830
Subscription Price:
$20.00 per year
Periodicals Postage
Paid at Waynesboro,
GA 30830
Published weekly
except the second and
last weeks in June, July
and August and the last
week in December,
at 601 E. 6th Street
Waynesboro, GA
30830
^fSS