VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Bishop Joseph E. Strickland of Tyler, Texas, said he asked Pope Francis about the Vatican investigation into Theodore E. McCarrick and the release of a promised report on how the former cardinal managed to rise through the church ranks.

The bishop, who was making his “ad limina” visit to Rome, drew widespread attention in August 2018 for a public statement saying he found “credible” the allegations made by retired Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former nuncio to the United States, regarding McCarrick.

Archbishop Vigano alleged that top Vatican officials, including Pope Francis, knew for years that McCarrick had been accused of sexual misconduct.

Bishop Strickland at the time called for a “thorough investigation, similar to those conducted any time allegations are deemed to be credible.”

“Pope Francis was great” in answering all the questions of the bishops of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas during an audience Jan. 20, Bishop Strickland told Catholic News Service the next day. But the pope did ask the bishops not to share certain details about the discussion.

Bishop Strickland said he does not regret what he said in his 2018 letter — “honestly, I guess I didn’t realize how controversial it was at that time” — but as someone who studied canon law and as a bishop, “credible allegations” must be investigated and dealt with.

“If I regretted anything,” he said, it would be that Archbishop Vigano called for Pope Francis to resign. “I never intended to embrace that, because that’s a major thing to say.”

“I certainly didn’t want to validate that,” Bishop Strickland said, “but I said these allegations about McCarrick need to be investigated, and they have been and the report, according to Pope Francis yesterday,” will be published.

“I’m a Catholic bishop. Of course, I support the vicar of Christ,” he said.

The summer of 2018 had been difficult for Catholics, beginning with the news in June that McCarrick had been suspended from ministry, followed by dozens of stories detailing his sexual misconduct with seminarians and then allegations of sexual abuse of children; McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals in July; and the release in August of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on abuse and its cover up in six dioceses.

Bishop Strickland said the priests and faithful of his diocese “were devastated at that time,” and his reaction to Archbishop Vigano’s report could be seen as him “taking on the smell of my sheep,” as Pope Francis would say.

The bishop said he knew people are frustrated that it is taking so long for the report to be published, but “an institution that’s been around 2,000 years doesn’t turn on a dime.”

When the report on McCarrick is published, he said, there will be a “dust-up” in the media, and it likely will cause Catholics more pain, but it also could bring “a sense of closure.”

“I’ve always said that what hit the news with McCarrick began this moment of pain and struggle and confusion in the life of the church. It won’t magically disappear with this report,” Bishop Strickland said, but it should help people move forward.

“It’s about the victims. It’s about the children of God who have suffered through the negligence and bad acting of bishops, priests and other members of the church,” he said. The report should help McCarrick’s victims by acknowledging how the church failed to protect them.

Asked if he believed Archbishop Vigano’s accusation that Pope Francis knew about McCarrick’s misconduct with seminarians as early as 2013, Bishop Strickland said, “Honestly, I’d have to say I do not know.”

But some of the things the pope told the bishops “makes you realize that it’s always a bigger picture than maybe the slice you are looking at,” he said, while insisting he could not say more. “I certainly am not ready to judge the actions in the moment of any of the pontiffs” who were in office during McCarrick’s rise from priest to bishop to cardinal.

Bishop Strickland admitted he was “a bit nervous” about meeting Pope Francis for the first time, but the bishops’ Mass that morning at the tomb of St. Peter was a reminder that God calls men, flawed human beings, to cooperate with his grace and “to guide the church inspired by the Holy Spirit.”

Copyright ©2020 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Sometimes the political choices people face can seem like a choice between supporting a “snake” or supporting a “dragon,” but Pope Francis told a group of U.S. bishops their job is to step back from partisan politics and help their faithful discern based on values, said Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston.

Meeting the bishops of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas Jan. 20, Pope Francis mentioned how, in an election, “you sometimes seem to be caught, you know, are you going to vote in one sense for a snake or you going to vote for a dragon?” Cardinal DiNardo said.

The pope’s advice to the bishops was “teach your people discernment by you stepping back from the sheer politics of it” and focus on the values at stake, Cardinal DiNardo told Catholic News Service. “If you try to step back and say, ‘but here are the major moral issues that we face,’ that’s what is most important.”

The region’s 26 bishops, including auxiliaries and retired bishops, spent about two-and-a-half hours talking with Pope Francis in English and Spanish. The pope responded in Italian so his aide could translate the responses into English.

The topics were wide-ranging and included the clerical sexual abuse crisis, migration, the challenges of a media-permeated culture and forming Christian consciences, especially in a time of deep political divisions.

Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, one of four Texas dioceses on the border with Mexico, said all of those issues were important, but for him the key was listening to the pope and being listened to him by him.

Citing the “whole host of issues” they discussed with Pope Francis, Bishop Edward J. Burns of Dallas said, “I am really looking forward to sitting, digesting, reflecting and praying over the conversation we had this morning with the successor of St. Peter.”

“It was exciting. It was exhilarating,” he said.

Pope Francis is attentive to and knows the pastoral challenges posed by modern social media and their pervasive presence in many people’s lives, said Bishop Flores, a daily Twitter user. But the pope has “a calmness about how we address that,” mainly by remaining true to the identity as pastors, proclaiming the Gospel and encouraging people to act according to it.

Bishop Flores said all the bishops realize they must learn “how to be a pastor in a media world where you keep justice and charity and a steady focus on the Gospel.”

The “ad limina” visits are “very important for deepening our sense of personal communion” with the pope, the successor of Peter, he said. “It’s not just the office, it’s the affection for your father spiritually that we need to cultivate, because it is part of the gift that is the communion of the church.”

“The narrative” that Pope Francis and many of the U.S. bishops “are on different pages,” he said, is “overblown.”

Sometimes that impression may arise when a bishop reacts to a news or social media report about something the pope has said. “It is our responsibility to hear him in his own words and to resist the temptation that sometimes hits across the spectrum of the church to jump to a conclusion because of some line that was quoted here or there.”

Even in the fast-paced world of social media, “we can afford to be judicious and thoughtful,” he said. “It’s part of our intellectual responsibility.”

Cardinal DiNardo said the pope and the bishops recognize the value and importance of media. However, he said, some on social media “may represent only a small number of people, but they make a lot of noise, and we try to sift through that,” both in what is said about the pope and what is said about the church and bishops.

Bishop Flores said he was surprised by how much Pope Francis knew about the life and witness of Blessed Stanley Rother, the Oklahoma native martyred in Guatemala in 1981. After his name appeared on a death list, Blessed Rother went back to Oklahoma, but refused to stay.

“It was very moving to hear the Holy Father, the successor of Peter, recount to us a story we all know so well,” the bishop said. It showed the pope’s awareness of “that missionary spirit and how it is alive in the United States.”

“He talked about the importance of pastors who accompany their people,” Bishop Flores said. “I found that encouraging, because they are the unsung heroes who accompany their people, day in and day out.”

Pope Francis also encouraged the bishops to be pastors, in a real sense, spending time with their faithful “not just at confirmations and on the big feast days,” he said. The pope said, “The people have a nose for the deep reality of the church, and that is that where the bishop is, there is the church.”

The pope’s words were “profoundly pastoral, profoundly theological and ecclesial — a sense of church” — as well as obviously flowing from a deep spirituality, Bishop Flores said.

On migration, Bishop Flores said the pope was clearly knowledgeable about and grateful for the decades of work the Catholic Church in the United States has done to welcome migrants and refugees and was encouraging of what the bishops are doing now, especially to speak of “the dignity of the immigrant and the just treatment” of them.

Cardinal DiNardo said the conversation also touched on the fact that “some people think when you deal with those issues that’s not church teaching, you know, that’s politics.”

Pope Francis, he said, encouraged the bishops to spend time reflecting on and sharing with their people the difference between “politics as ideology and Catholic social teaching, which stresses the human person and how we are always called to be at their behest.”

“We need to be voices for the immigrants” who do not have a voice, “pushed as they are by many different sides,” the cardinal said. The question of migration policy is complicated, but Christians must come down on the side of “the poor and those who are in need. The immigrants, at one point he mentioned, they really represent to us the face of Christ suffering. The suffering Jesus.”

Bishop Burns was among the Texas bishops who voiced their opposition to Gov. Greg Abbott’s announcement that the state would no longer resettle refugees.

The church as a mother takes care of people in need, he said. “And while every country has a right to protect its border, every person has a right to a better life.”

What really is needed, he said, is immigration reform. “It’s taking all too long.”

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Contributing to this story were Cindy Wooden, Carol Glatz and Junno Arocho Esteves.

Copyright ©2020 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

If Ray Kelly can turn things around, so can Baltimore City.

That was among the takeaways Jan. 15 at Center Stage, when the Archdiocese of Baltimore and Catholic Charities of Baltimore were host to a “Faith in Baltimore” program that highlighted the impact of Catholic institutions in the city, with Archbishop William E. Lori noting, in a play on words, that “we are the Archdiocese for Baltimore.”

Kelly, vice chair of the Executive Committee at St. Peter Claver in Sandtown and lead community liaison for the Consent Decree Monitoring Team, was the inaugural recipient of the Faith in Baltimore Award.

His history includes dealing drugs and serving a prison sentence for his involvement in a murder conspiracy. Kelly has been clean since 2008, however, and a positive influence in the community, first as the founder of the No Boundaries Coalition, now as a leader in the reform of policing in the city.

The award, Kelly said, “recognizes my commitment to walking in the way of our Lord, as best I can. I may have been a late bloomer, but I am thankful for the seed of faith planted in me so many years ago.”

“The foundation of all the outreach I do,” he added later, “is modeled after the things I’ve been seeing done at St. Peter Claver since I was a child … Thankfully, I learned the lessons of ensuring the beatitudes, of taking care of those in our community in need.”

He was introduced by Josephite Father Ray Bomberger, his pastor, who earlier noted Kelly’s constant citing of the beatitudes, which Jesus delivered in the Sermon on the Mount.

“Ray spoke at last year’s (archdiocesan) Social Ministry Convocation, and he simply went through the beatitudes, to explain his approach,” Father Bomberger said. “It all flows from the Gospel. No matter what he does, Ray sees everything coming from his faith.

“He’s come a long way in his life.”

Addressing a gathering that included Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, other elected officials and Police Commissioner Michael Harrison, Archbishop Lori acknowledged the realities confronting the community.

“In the midst of what may seem sometimes like overwhelming challenges, we proudly stand together tonight to rededicate ourselves to the City of Baltimore and renew our pledge to make this city a beacon of hope, opportunity and unity. …

“At a time when we have just marked the tragically sobering milestone of nearly 350 homicides this past year, these words may sound naïve, even foolish,” he continued. “But I for one – and I hope I speak for so many here tonight – know that crime statistics and grim headlines only tell part of the story of Baltimore.

“We are here tonight to tell the other one – the one of amazing service, commitment and impact on the part of countless leaders, workers, volunteers and everyday residents who refuse to give up hope in the face of our challenges.”

Master of ceremonies William J. McCarthy Jr., executive director of Catholic Charities, offered multiple reminders of that legacy, starting with the historical footnote that Center Stage is on property that once housed what are now Loyola University Maryland and Loyola Blakefield.

A slideshow recounted the reach of Catholic schools, Catholic Charities programs and other institutions.

“Frankly, it is hard to imagine what the City of Baltimore would be like without the presence of the church,” Archbishop Lori said.

The “Faith in Baltimore” video that was presented at the Jan. 15 event follows. Story continues below.

He also emphasized support of public schools during the current Maryland General Assembly legislative session in Annapolis.

“None of us should rest until every child in this city, regardless of what school they attend or where they live, has the opportunity to attend excellent, safe and well-resourced schools that meet their individual needs,” the archbishop said. “We cannot achieve this goal without increased investment in our city’s public school students and teachers, coupled with sound measures of accountability.”

The archbishop pledged “support to measures recommended by the Kirwan Commission that promise to achieve those goals.”

Guests climbing Center Stage’s Calvert Street steps heard the adult choir from Historic St. Francis Xavier Church, the oldest black Catholic parish in the United States, which had even caterers stepping outside to hear their voices.

Its leader is Kenyatta Hardison, better known as the teacher behind the Cardinal Shehan School choir, which makes another appearance on national TV Jan. 20, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, on “The View.” Hardison closed the program with a solo rendition of “They’ll Know We Are Christians (by our love).”

Her students are among the more than 5,000 being educated at 17 Catholic schools in the city. The biggest contributor to that figure is Mount St. Joseph High School, whose president, George Andrews, chatted with Jesuit Father Timothy Brown of Loyola University Maryland, an old friend from Wheeling College in West Virginia.

“We’re all in this together,” Father Brown said.

That commitment will grow next year, with the scheduled opening of Mother Mary Lange Catholic School, the first Catholic school to open in the city in six decades.

The event included priests, educators, staff members and parishioners. Margaret Fulcher attended parish schools at St. Peter Claver and Historic St. Francis Xavier, and graduated from St. Frances Academy. A retired accountant and resident of Fells Point, Fulcher worships at St. Ignatius, on the same block as Center Stage.

“What I like is that I see a lot of outreach to people, whether they’re Catholic or not,” Fulcher said.

A video tribute to Ray Kelly follows.

Email Paul McMullen at pmcmullen@CatholicReview.org

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Hope is the virtue needed to approach the coming year, especially when the looming threat of war surrounds a humanity scarred by violence, Pope Francis said.

During his annual address to diplomats accredited to the Vatican, the pope said that with heightened tensions and acts of violence on the rise, the “new year does not seem to be marked by encouraging signs.”

Nevertheless, acknowledging the challenges confronting the world today and courageously finding ways to resolve them open a path to hope, he said in his speech Jan. 9.

“Precisely in light of these situations, we cannot give up hope,” the pope said. “And hope requires courage. It means acknowledging that evil, suffering and death will not have the last word and that even the most complex questions can and must be faced and resolved.”

Among the most “troubling” conflicts emerging, he noted, are the increasing tensions between the United States and Iran, which not only compromise the efforts to rebuild Iraq, but also set “the groundwork for a vaster conflict that all of us would want to avert.”

“I therefore renew my appeal that all the interested parties avoid an escalation of the conflict and keep alive the flame of dialogue and self-restraint, in full respect of international law,” he said.

In his nearly one-hour speech to the diplomats, the pope reflected on the foreign trips he made over the previous year, as well as the major events and issues that emerged in 2019.

While his visit to Panama last January for World Youth Day highlighted the joy brought by young people “brimming with dreams and hopes” for the future, the pope said the Vatican summit on clergy sex abuse the following month painfully showed how young people can be robbed of that future.

Sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy and laity “are crimes that offend God, cause physical, psychological and spiritual damage to their victims and damage the life of whole communities,” he said.

The pope renewed the church’s commitment to not only bringing to light past cases of abuse, but also to ensure that such cases are dealt with in “accordance with canon law and in cooperation with civil authorities on the local and international level.”

Young people, he continued, also have brought significant attention to the issue of climate change, which “ought to be a concern for everyone and not the object of ideological conflict between different views of reality or, much less, between generations.”

“The protection of the home given to us by the Creator cannot be neglected or reduced to an elitist concern,” the pope said. “Young people are telling us that this cannot be the case, for at every level we are being urgently challenged to protect our common home and to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development.”

He also addressed the political crises in Latin America, including Venezuela, where he said he hoped “efforts to seek solutions will continue.”

“Greater polarization does not help to resolve the real and pressing problems of citizens, especially those who are poorest and most vulnerable, nor can violence, which for no reason can be employed as a means of dealing with political and social issues,” he said.

Pope Francis also expressed concern for conflicts in the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Lebanon, where growing tensions risk “endangering the fragile stability of the Middle East.”

He also called the international community to task for the “general indifference” toward the conflicts in Yemen and Libya, where intense violence “provides fertile terrain for the scourge of exploitation and human trafficking.”

Another sad consequence of such conflicts, he lamented, are the thousands of people requesting asylum who often risk their lives “in perilous journeys by land and above all by sea.”

“It is painful to acknowledge that the Mediterranean Sea continues to be a vast cemetery,” the pope said.

However, he said, the church is hopeful of efforts “made by countries to share the burden of resettling refugees, in particular those fleeing from humanitarian emergencies.”

Turning his attention to Africa, the pope expressed his concern for the “continuing episodes of violence” against Christians, especially in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.

He also expressed hope for the resolution of conflicts in Sudan and Central African Republic. The pope also said he hoped to visit South Sudan this year.

Recalling his final trip of 2019, which took him to Japan, Pope Francis renewed his appeal for a world without nuclear weapons because “true peace cannot be built on the threat of a possible total annihilation of humanity.”

“These weapons do not only foster a climate of fear, suspicion and hostility,” he said. “They also destroy hope. Their use is immoral, a crime not only against the dignity of human beings but against any possible future for our common home.”

Also see:

Don’t let the devil light fire of war in your heart, pope says

Copyright ©2020 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis began the New Year with an apology for losing his patience the night before with a woman who grabbed his hand and yanked him closer to her while he was greeting people in St. Peter’s Square.

To get away, the pope had slapped her hand and gave her a very serious scowl. A video of the incident went viral on Twitter.

Reciting the midday Angelus prayer Jan. 1, Pope Francis was talking about how God’s offer of salvation in Jesus is “not magic, but patient, that is, it involves the patience of love, which takes on inequity and destroys its power.”

Then, briefly departing from his prepared text, the pope said that “love makes us patient. We often lose our patience; me, too, and I apologize for my bad example last night.”

Returning to his text, Pope Francis said that in gazing upon the Nativity scene with the eyes of faith, “we see the world renewed, freed from the dominion of evil and placed under the regal lordship of Christ, the baby lying in the manger.”

The church marks Jan. 1 as both the feast of Mary, Mother of God, and World Peace Day, he said, urging Catholics to pray for peace and to recognize their responsibility to work for peace.

For the 2020 celebration of World Peace Day, he said, the focus was on peace as a “journey of hope, a journey which proceeds through dialogue, reconciliation and ecological conversion.”

“Jesus is the blessing of those oppressed by the yoke of slavery, both moral and material,” he said. “He frees with love.”

To those who are enslaved by vice and addiction, the pope said, Jesus bears the message that “the Father loves you, he will not abandon you, with unshakable patience he awaits your return.”

Jesus opens the doors of fraternity, welcome and love to those who are victims of injustice or exploitation; pours “the oil of consolation” on the sick and the discouraged; and opens windows of light for prisoners who feel they have no future, he said.

“Dear brothers and sisters,” he told the people in the square, “let’s get down from the pedestals of our pride and ask for the blessing of the holy Mother of God. She will show us Jesus. Let’s let ourselves be blessed, let’s open our hearts to goodness and that way the year that is beginning will be a journey of hope and peace, not through words, but through daily gestures of dialogue, reconciliation and care for creation.”

Pope Francis used his midday address to thank and encourage all the initiatives Catholics, their parishes and dioceses around the world undertake to promote peace.

“My thoughts also go to the many volunteers who, in places where peace and justice are threatened, courageously choose to be present in a nonviolence and unarmed way, as well as to the military who carry out peacekeeping missions in many areas of conflict,” the pope said.

Addressing everyone, “believers and non-believers because we are all brothers and sisters,” Pope Francis urged people to “never stop hoping in a world of peace,” which must be built together, day by day.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — There always will be martyrs among Christians in the world, Pope Francis said.

Martyrdom “is the sign that we are on Jesus’ path; it’s a blessing from the Lord that within the people of God there is someone who gives this witness of martyrdom,” he said Dec. 11 during his weekly general audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI hall, which was decorated with a large Christmas tree and Nativity scene.

The pope continued his series of talks on the Acts of the Apostles by looking at the increasing amount of suffering and persecution the Apostle Paul faced as he spread the Gospel.

“Paul is not just an evangelizer filled with passion, the intrepid missionary among pagans who brings new Christian communities to life, he is also a suffering witness of the Risen One,” the pope said in his catechesis.

Much like Jesus, Paul faced fierce persecution in Jerusalem, and he was put in chains following his arrest on charges of preaching against the law and the temple.

While most people saw his chains as a sign of him being a criminal, the pope said, Paul saw the chains with “the eyes of faith” as a sign of his love for Jesus.

“For Paul, his faith is not a theory, an opinion about God and the world, but it is the impact of God’s love in his heart, it is love for Jesus Christ,” he said.

“Paul teaches us perseverance amid trials and the ability to see everything with the eyes of faith,” the pope said. “Let us ask the Lord today, through the apostle’s intercession, to rekindle our faith and help us be completely faithful to our vocation as Christians, as disciples of the Lord, as missionaries.”

To further underline how, even in modern times, Christians still face suffering and persecution, the pope spoke about meeting with pilgrims from Ukraine earlier that morning.

He explained how Eastern-rite Catholics in Ukraine had been persecuted for their faith under communism, “but they did not negotiate the faith.”

“In the world today, including in Europe, many Christians are being persecuted. And they give their life for their faith,” he said.

“They are persecuted with ‘white gloves,’ that is, they are pushed aside, emarginated,” the pope said. “Martyrdom is the context of a Christian, of a Christian community. There always will be martyrs among us.”

The group of pilgrims that met with Pope Francis included bishops, priests, religious and laypeople from the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo, which was celebrating the 30th anniversary of no longer having to practice the faith clandestinely under Soviet oppression.

The pope told them that their church “is the mother of many martyrs,” recalling the example of their bishop, Blessed Theodore Romzha, who was killed by the Soviet secret police in 1947 and who was beatified as a martyr by St. John Paul II in 2001.

“In the darkest hours of your history,” Pope Francis said, “he knew how to guide the people of God with evangelical wisdom and courage, a tireless man,” who, like Christ the good shepherd, gave his life for his flock, the pope said.

Pope Francis noted that many of the pilgrims’ own relatives had to risk their freedom or life in order to hand down the “teaching of the truth of Christ” to them and future generations.

Copyright ©2019 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Vatican officials are moving ahead with the cause for sainthood for Mother Mary Lange, Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori said Thursday in Rome.

If canonized, Mother Lange, the founder of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, would be become the first black American saint. Mother Lange immigrated to Baltimore in the early 19th century and opened a school for black children in her small Fells Point home.

Eventually, Mother Lange founded the Oblate Sisters – the first religious order for women of African descent in the U.S. – and would operate what would later become St. Frances Academy. Lange and the Oblate sisters provided Catholic education to black children in Baltimore despite the prevailing racism of the time.

Archbishop Lori is in Rome this week with fellow bishops from the surrounding region for the “ad limina” meetings, where bishops present detailed reports on their dioceses to Pope Francis and other Vatican officials. While meeting with Vatican officials, Archbishop Lori received an update on Mother Mary Lange’s cause for sainthood, which began in 1991.

A video report from Archbishop Lori follows. Story continues below.

“I’m happy to say her cause is moving along,” Archbishop Lori said. “The position paper on her life of heroic virtue is nearly complete, and I think we should be all praying very hard that Mother Mary Lange’s cause will advance and that one day she will be canonized a saint.”

Xaverian Brother Reginald Cruz has recently completed writing his “positio,” a document arguing for Mother Lange’s sainthood. Once published, the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints will evaluate the document, and if approved the “positio” will be forwarded to the pope, who could grant Mother Lange the title of “venerable.” After the approval of the “positio,” church scholars will then have to document two confirmed miracles attributed to her intercession.

Archbishop Lori called Mother Lange “a person who was in every way a pioneer” who “stood head and shoulders above the racism of her era.”

The Archdiocese of Baltimore plans to open a new school named for Mother Lange in September 2021. The school – the first new Catholic K-8 school in the city in 60 years – will serve about 500 students from across Baltimore.

For more coverage of the bishops’ meeting with the pope in Rome, click here.

Email Tim Swift at tswift@catholicreview.org

ROME (CNS) — Tasked with finding ways his predecessor should make amends for abuses, including gross financial misconduct, Bishop Mark E. Brennan of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, was able to meet with a top Vatican official to discuss those plans.

“I was able to at least get a good meeting with the cardinal prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Marc Ouellet,” he told Catholic News Service Dec. 3.

“It was a good discussion,” he said. Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, who had been appointed by the Vatican to investigate the situation in the diocese before Bishop Brennan was appointed, also was part of the discussion, “so I think we had some good conversation about that matter.”

Bishop Brennan was one of nearly 40 bishops in Rome for a regularly scheduled series of meetings with the pope and Vatican offices as part of the U.S. bishops’ “ad limina” visits Dec. 2-6. The bishops were from U.S. Regions IV and V — District of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, U.S. Virgin Islands, West Virginia, Archdiocese for the Military Services, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee.

Bishop Brennan said he had been “anxious to be able to present my conclusions” about how his predecessor, retired Bishop Michael J. Bransfield, could make amends for the harm done to the diocese and its people.

Bishop Bransfield, 76, left his position in September 2018 under a cloud of allegations of sexual and financial misconduct. He had led the diocese for 13 years.

Pope Francis accepted Bishop Bransfield’s resignation after determining allegations of sexual abuse and excessive financial expenditures were credible and substantiated. The pope subsequently restricted Bishop Bransfield from presiding or participating in public celebrations of Mass as a priest or bishop and ordered that he not live in the diocese.

Archbishop Lori served as apostolic administrator from the time of Bishop Bransfield’s resignation until Bishop Brennan, 72, was installed Aug. 22, 2019.

Bishop Brennan told CNS that “the pope had asked me, told me, to be involved” in drawing up ways his predecessor might “go about making amends” for his misdeeds.

Bishop Brennan announced his nine-point “plan of amends” Nov. 26 in a letter he sent to the people of the diocese. He asked the former bishop to pay back more than $792,000 to cover the “inappropriate expenditure of diocesan funds to support a luxurious lifestyle” as well as to apologize to the people he is alleged to have sexually abused, to the faithful of the diocese for “the grievous harm he caused,” and to diocesan employees “who suffered from a culture of intimidation and retribution which the former bishop created.”

The plan covers several other measures, including a reduction in his diocesan pension, the loss of certain aspects of health care coverage and denial of burial in the diocese.

Archbishop Lori told CNS that what happened in Wheeling-Charleston “was not actually a subject” addressed during the group’s meeting with the pope Dec. 3, “but I think it is obviously on everybody’s mind.”

“Bishop Brennan is doing an amazing job,” he said. “I had a little experience in West Virginia — I was a part-timer and short-timer — but he has really gotten himself all around the state and he’s gone with great simplicity and great interest.

“He’s inherited a very difficult situation, but I think people sense his sincerity and goodness and his desire to help the diocese confront the past and confront it thoroughly, but also to move on,” he said.

Archbishop Lori said he accompanied Bishop Brennan to the meeting with Cardinal Ouellet “in a supportive role, as the metropolitan” of the church province to which Wheeling-Charleston belongs.

Bishop Brennan told CNS that, given the large number of bishops at the meeting with the pope, he was not able to make a comment or ask a question directly.

But, he said, the bishops who spoke did bring up a number of issues of concern and importance to all of them, including “the scandal that we’ve been dealing with in the United States” and how “helpful to us” they’ve found the pope’s 2019 document, “You Are the Light of the World,” which establishes norms for fighting abuse and holding bishops and religious superiors more accountable.

Archbishop Lori told CNS Dec. 4 that as the bishops go to “the threshold of the apostles” and meet the pope and his closest collaborators, “you bring not only yourselves, but you bring your concerns, your worries, your problems, the situation of the church that you are striving to lead and serve; you bring the concerns that your priests have expressed to you and your people have expressed to you.”

In other words, he said, “you bring the things that keep you up at night, the things that make you fall to your knees and the things that cause you to rejoice. It’s not all negative.”

Bishop Brennan said that the bishops also described to the pope their region, the Appalachian Mountains and “our concern to stop the degradation of the physical environment and to promote the health and well-being of the people.”

They also discussed racism, immigration, how to reach “the nones,” or those who say they believe in no religion, Bishop Brennan said.

“It was very it was a good discussion,” he said. “It was fascinating.”

Read more stories about the bishops’ ad limina meetings here.

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Contributing to this story was Cindy Wooden at the Vatican.

Copyright ©2019 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

ROME – A delegation from the Archdiocese of Baltimore presented Pope Francis a custom-made Ravens jersey signed by Coach John Harbaugh, a Catholic, and quarterback Lamar Jackson during a Dec. 3 audience at the Vatican. They also gave the Holy Father a “spiritual bouquet,” a book produced by the Archdiocese of Baltimore that contains prayers and greetings from people across the archdiocese in celebration of the pope’s upcoming 50^th anniversary of his priestly ordination Dec. 13.

Archbishop William E. Lori accompanied seminarians from the Archdiocese of Baltimore in presenting the gifts, with Deacon Justin Gough giving the smiling pontiff the jersey emblazoned with Jackson’s number 8 and the name “FRANCIS.”

Archbishop Lori, Bishop Adam J. Parker and Bishop Denis J. Madden are in Rome this week, along with bishops from the surrounding region (DC, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, West Virginia and the Military Archdiocese) for the “Ad Limina” visit.

Bishops from around the world visit the Vatican every few years to deliver detailed reports about their dioceses to the pope. The bishops met with the pope for nearly three hours Dec. 3, discussing a wide range of issues including the clergy sexual abuse crisis and bishops’ accountability.

Archbishop Lori shared with the Holy Father the diversity of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, describing its strengths and needs. He also received the pope’s blessing on the new Mother Mary Lange Catholic School that is being built in Baltimore City.

“We have a shepherd in Pope Francis who wants to know us and who certainly loves us and certainly cares about us,” Archbishop Lori said.

Archbishop Lori said the pope always asks for prayers. In presenting the spiritual bouquet, Archbishop Lori told him the people of the archdiocese are praying for him and “here’s how we’re doing it.”

The archbishop added that the pope gave the Ravens’ jersey a “thumbs-up.”

A video report from Archbishop Lori follows. Story continues below.

In a Dec. 4 press conference in Baltimore, Harbaugh noted that Archdiocese of Baltimore holds the distinction of being the founding Catholic diocese in the United States. He called it “great” that the pope received a Ravens jersey.

“We’ll see if he’s wearing his jersey anytime soon,” Harbaugh told reporters.

The Ravens coach noted that his brother, Jim Harbaugh, a former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, met the pope several years ago.

Archbishop Lori asked Deacon Gough, who is in his fourth year studying theology at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, to assist with the presentation of the jersey to the pope, who is more comfortable with Italian and Spanish than with English.

It was the second time Deacon Gough had a chance to meet Pope Francis, the first being when he served for the pope at a Mass while Deacon Gough was in second year of seminary training. “It’s always nerve-wracking to meet the Holy Father, but when you’re the only one who’s doing something out of the ordinary, you just add a little suspense to it, he said.

The pope is an incredibly gracious person, Deacon Gough said, “and his eyes just lit up as soon as I stepped forward and showed him the jersey.” He explained that the team is named the Ravens and noted they play “fútbol Americano” – American football – as opposed to soccer, which is commonly known in Europe and South American as simply “fútbol.”

“He had a great big smile on his face and he said in Italian, ‘That’s great,’ and gave us a big thumbs up,” Deacon Gough said. “It was so nice to bring something that is so near and dear to our city and to our identity as Baltimoreans and to bring that to the Holy Father and to then be unified by his prayers” with the bishops and seminarians present.

In a letter to Pope Francis published in the spiritual bouquet given to the pope, Archbishop Lori said the people of the Archdiocese of Baltimore “give thanks that throughout the 50 years of your own priesthood, you have shown us what it means to accompany others and bring God’s mercy to the ‘peripheries.”

“A priest’s ministry is not about glorifying himself,” the archbishop wrote. “It must be focused on glorifying God and serving others.”

Archbishop Lori said the people of the archdiocese “take seriously your call to encounter people wherever they are and in whatever circumstances they find themselves.”

The 38-page spiritual bouquet includes messages from priests, deacons, religious and lay faithful reflecting on the ways they evangelize, welcome the stranger, build a culture of inclusion, promote the sanctity of all life, protect creation, share God’s mercy and cultivate holy priests.

Father James Boric, rector of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, wrote in his message to the pope that the Holy Father’s call for priests to get out of their offices and be with their “sheep” inspired him to start an urban missionary program through which two young men minister to the marginalized on the streets of Baltimore.

Mary E. Cox of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Ellicott City told the pope she left the church 40 years ago because of a culture of “exclusion and judgement,” but returned because of the pope’s example.

Mary V. Tamplin of St. John the Evangelist in Severna Park was among many who said they pray for the pope daily and members of the Bonardi family at St. Alphonsus Rodriquez in Woodstock said they try “to emulate you by sharing the love and gifts God has given to us with others who are less fortunate.

Contributing to this report were Christopher Gunty in Rome and George Matysek in Baltimore.

To read the entire spiritual bouquet, click here.

UPDATE: This story was updated at 3 p.m. on Dec. 4 to add comments from Archbishop Lori. It was again updated at 4 p.m. to include the video message and 5:02 p.m. to include Deacon Gough’s comments.  

Also see:

From abuse to ‘nones’; U.S. bishops share concerns with pope

Archbishop Lori: Bishops must focus on poor, not seek personal gain

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — While digital technologies have led to advancements in communication and education, they also have led to the exploitation of children on the internet, Pope Francis said.

The “spread of images of abuse or the exploitation of minors is increasing exponentially, involving ever more serious and violent forms of abuse and ever younger children,” the pope told participants at a two-day conference sponsored by the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences.

“The challenge before us,” he told them Nov. 14, “is to ensure that minors have safe access to these technologies, while at the same time ensuring their healthy and serene development and protecting them from unacceptable criminal violence or grave harm to the integrity of their body and spirit.”

The Nov. 14-15 conference, titled “Promoting Digital Child Dignity — From Concept to Action,” brought together religious leaders, academics, policymakers and tech industry leaders from around the world to discuss ways to combat the exploitation of children online.

According to the pontifical academy’s website, the event was “a follow-up of the process that began with a joint commitment for the protection of children during the Child Dignity in the Digital World meeting in 2017.”

Speaking to journalists at the Vatican press office Nov. 11, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, president of the board of directors of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Foundation and board member of the Child Dignity Alliance, said the purpose of the meeting was to discuss and develop “concrete solutions and initiatives” to protecting children online.

Among the issues discussed were ways to restrict access using age verification in order “to protect children from this invasion. Parents find it difficult to confront this issue,” Father Lombardi said.

Current studies, he said, indicate that “the median age in which children begin to have experiences of encountering pornography on the internet is 11 years old,” and the median age is continuing to decrease.

“I know that this is a concern that parents have and rightly so,” Father Lombardi said.

In his address, the pope said the church “senses the duty to approach these issues with a long-term vision,” especially as the church continues to confront the clerical sexual abuse crisis.

“In recent decades, from painful and tragic experience, the Catholic Church has become profoundly aware of the gravity and effects of the sexual abuse of minors, the suffering it causes and the urgent need to heal wounds, combat such crimes and establish effective means of prevention,” the pope said.

Child exploitation on the web, he continued, is due in part to “the dramatic growth of pornography,” which is “the fruit of a general loss of the sense of human dignity; frequently it is linked to human trafficking.”

Additionally, he acknowledged the tension that exists between the idea of the digital world as “a realm of unlimited freedom of expression and communication” and the “need for responsible use of technologies and consequently a recognition of their limits.”

“The potential of digital technology is enormous, yet the possible negative impact of its abuse in the area of human trafficking, the planning of terrorist activities, the spread of hatred and extremism, the manipulation of information and — we must emphasize — in the area of child abuse, is equally significant,” the pope said.

Although parents have the primary responsibility for raising their children, he said, it is becoming increasingly difficult to “control their children’s use of electronic devices.”

Pope Francis recommended that tech leaders “cooperate with parents” to develop new regulations to restrict children’s access to pornography.

“Man’s creativity and intelligence are astonishing, but they must be positively directed to the integral good of the person from birth and throughout life,” the pope said. “Every educator and every parent is well aware of this and needs to be helped and supported in this task by the shared commitment born of a new alliance between all institutions and centers of education.”

Copyright ©2019 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

BALTIMORE (CNS) — Hours before the fall general assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops officially began in Baltimore, some fellow bishops congratulated Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, and others said to him in passing, “Great work you’re doing down there.”

Some of it referred to a recent letter he wrote detailing the pain of Mexican-American and immigrant communities in his diocese, where racism, targeted at Latino communities, bolted into the normally tranquil border city of El Paso Aug. 3, as a gunman set on attacking those populations went inside a Walmart with an assault weapon and managed to kill 22 people and injuring two dozen others.

In the wake of the tragedy, the Diocese of El Paso — priests, religious and laity — stepped in to help, but their shepherd, worried that as the days went by people wanted to put the incident behind, boldly decided to put it front and center again in the form of a powerful document on church teaching called a pastoral letter.

In it, Bishop Seitz forced a raw look at racism, including inside the church, and at the way words, including by government officials, coupled with a person’s embrace of white supremacy, contributed to the deadly event and profoundly wounded, in particular, El Paso’s Latino community.

“Although I myself am not of Latino origin, they’re my people,” Bishop Seitz told Catholic News Service in a Nov. 10 interview. “They’re my family. They’re my flock, if you will. They’re the people I’m called to serve and to guide and, in some way, to protect, and they’ve been assaulted. I saw their faces. I heard their pain.”

Those in his diocese with whom he spent time in the aftermath — even though they may have not been shot at or were family of those who were hurt — also are victims in some form, he said.

“I heard a woman in her 40s, who had grown up in El Paso, and she said to me, ‘You know, all my life growing up here, I felt like a full citizen of this country, but with these events, for the first time in my life, I feel like I have been made a target simply because of the color of my skin.’ And that was so painful to hear.”

He said he wanted the letter to be a “conversation starter” and also one that would explore the underlying causes of the shooting, “something that would lead to further dialogue, especially because the people in my diocese were still suffering from that event.”

The letter has opened the doors of conversation, he said, to ask “what has been your experience in the past? Have you experienced something that showed prejudice toward you, discrimination toward you because you are of Latino origin? And I’ve been surprised at the answers.”

Previously, he had heard examples of such discrimination from El Paso seminarians sent to study in other states about their treatment outside of the border city.

“We, in El Paso, don’t have a seminary, so we send them to other places. And very often there are places where there is not a Latino majority. And so we were surprised at the kind of things that came out of that,” he said, mentioning things that had been said to seminarians who were Latino.

“They told us stories about being ‘kidded,’ whether they were involved in running drugs, you know, whether they were themselves documented, whether they were legal or not and so on. People don’t seem to realize: That’s not funny, it’s not funny. And those stereotypes have even reached into our seminaries,” Bishop Seitz said.

The shooting brought to the forefront issues surrounding racism directed at Latinos, immigrants, and, in a general way, to anyone with brown skin, he said. A mass shooting of any type is horrible, and with the El Paso shooting Latinos joined Jewish, African American and Muslim victims targeted by supremacists.

“And now, in a particular way, it’s come home,” he said. “This white supremacist ideology, which is growing in our country, has drawn blood.”

So, it gave him pause to hear others wanting to seek distance from the incident in El Paso.

“We continue to have this trauma of this pain we’ve experienced,” he said. “There is a large portion of our community, however, and many of whom were significantly traumatized by it, but who are saying now in these last two to three months since the event took place that, ‘OK, we’ve grieved. We’ve been there. We’ve responded as a community and now let’s move on.'”

Though he said he understood what they were saying and why, he thought it was important to talk about it.

“It can’t simply be put under the rug as though this was just another passing experience where an individual was deranged, came and shot people,” he told CNS.

“This event, it was, in some ways,” he continued, “the tip of an iceberg that consists of a growing ideology that either is latently racist in their attitudes, especially toward people of Latino origin … a rhetoric that makes it seem acceptable to exclude a whole group of people, immigrants and, more broadly, people of Hispanic origin, simply because of their origin and this we cannot simply put under the carpet. We have to deal with that because it’s not going away.”

So, he wrote the letter, and it got unusual mainstream attention for a bishop’s pastoral document.

“The reaction outside of El Paso to my letter, that I have heard, has been overwhelmingly positive and embarrassingly so in a certain way because people have been so, a few, effusive in their praise,” he said. “I didn’t expect that. I expected this to be a little bit edgy, in a certain way, in dealing with these very difficult issues.”

But he said it was affirming to hear praise from Latinos, “people whom I have come to love so dearly, members of the Latino, Latina community in our country. It is so affirming to me.”

Even on Facebook, parishioners from the Diocese of El Paso praise the bishop and what he wrote.

“His letter to us was from within the depths of his ‘corazon’ (heart),” wrote Gloria Duran. “We love you.”

To deal with what happened in the diocese, the bishop said he’s organizing listening sessions and the content of the letter can be adapted to study guides to assist in ongoing conversations about what happened in the community.

“I hope it will bring healing, certainly, but also will challenge this notion and make people more aware that language matters, that stereotypes matter, that people die if you’re not careful about the way that you speak, especially if you’re a leader.”

What’s in the letter is fully rooted in the Gospel, he said.

“This is something that arises from the teachings of Jesus Christ, about the dignity of every human person as a child of God and about the special respect that needs to be given to those who are among the poor, in one way or another, for those who are looked at as being, what Pope Francis would call, the periphery of society … those who are looked down upon, those considered ‘less than,’ like the Samaritan.”

He said for him it’s easy to speak out about it, as hard as it is, “because we know who is at our side.”

“And as I mentioned in the letter, in a beautiful Spanish poem, which concludes it, ‘they can only threaten us with the resurrection,’ which I just love because it says fear, it does not need to be in the equation. Jesus of course, makes this point so many times. Ultimately, we, as Catholic Christians, we know, that the resurrection wins.”

Editor’s Note: The full text of Bishop’s Seitz’s letter, titled “Night Will Be No More,” can be found online in English and Spanish at https://bit.ly/2rGwQxu.

Copyright ©2019 Catholic News Service / U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

BALTIMORE (CNS) — Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles was elected to a three-year term as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops during the bishops’ fall general assembly in Baltimore.

The native of Mexico was chosen Nov. 12 with 176 votes from a slate of 10 nominees.

Archbishop Gomez, 67, is the first Latino to be elected president. He has served as conference vice president for the past three years, working alongside Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, the outgoing president. His term as president begins when the assembly ends.

The Los Angeles prelate has been a leading advocate of immigrant rights, often voicing support for newcomers as they face growing restrictions being implemented by the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies.

In subsequent voting, Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron of Detroit was elected conference vice president. He was elected on the third ballot by 151-90 in a runoff with Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services.

Under USCCB bylaws, after the election for president, the vice president is elected from the remaining nine candidates.

The two top officers begin their terms at the conclusion of the fall assembly Nov. 13.

Because Archbishop Vigneron is conference secretary, the bishops were to vote later Nov. 12 for his replacement.

The bishops also voted for the chairman of one committee, chairmen-elect of five other conference committees and three representatives on the board of Catholic Relief Services, which is the U.S. bishops’ overseas relief and development agency.

In the first committee vote, there was a tie vote between Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami and Bishop George V. Murry of Youngstown, Ohio, for chairman of the Committee for Religious Liberty. Each candidate received 121 votes, but Bishop Murry, at 70, became chairman under USCCB bylaws because he is the older of the two candidates. Archbishop Wenski is 69.

The committee had been chaired by Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, but he stepped down earlier this year to undergo treatment for bladder and prostate cancer. Bishop Murry will serve the remaining year of Archbishop Kurtz’s term.

Vote tallies for committee chairmen-elect are:

— Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance: Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki of Milwaukee elected over Bishop Mark L. Bartchak of Altoona-Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 144-97.

— Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs: Bishop Daniel P. Talley of Memphis, Tennessee, elected over Bishop Steven J. Lopes of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, 123-114.

— Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis: Auxiliary Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of St. Paul and Minneapolis, elected over Bishop Thomas A. Daly of Spokane, Washington, 151-88.

— Committee on International Justice and Peace: Bishop David J. Malloy of Rockford, Illinois, elected over Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, California, 140-101.

— Committee on Protection of Children and Young People: Bishop James V. Johnson of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, was elected over Bishop W. Shawn McKnight of Jefferson City, Missouri, 167-77.

Each chairman-elect will begin his three-year term as chairmen at the end of the 2020 fall general assembly.

In addition, several chairmen-elect chosen last year will become committee chairmen at the end of this year’s assembly and will serve three-year terms:

— Committee on Catholic Education: Bishop Michael C. Barber of Oakland, California.

— Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations: Bishop James F. Checchio of Metuchen, New Jersey.

— Committee on Divine Worship: Archbishop Leonard P. Blair of Hartford, Connecticut.

— Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development: Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City.

— Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth: Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco.

— Committee on Migration: Auxiliary Bishop Mario E. Dorsonville of Washington.

A final vote was taken for three seats on the CRS board. Elected were Bishop Frank J. Caggiano of Bridgeport, Connecticut; Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas; and Bishop Anthony B. Taylor of Little Rock, Arkansas.

Copyright ©2019 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.