Ss. Cyril and Methodius Ukrainian Catholic Church

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris greet each other as they debate for the first time during the presidential election campaign at the National Constitution Center on Sept. 10, 2024, in Philadelphia. / Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 11, 2024 / 08:50 am (CNA).

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris debated abortion policy, contested each other’s records on the economy and immigration, and communicated different visions for American foreign policy during their first debate together on Tuesday night.

The Sept. 10 debate was hosted by ABC at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. As polls continue to show a tight race nationally and within key swing states, the two candidates sought to appeal to middle-class voters and paint each other as extreme.

Trump accused Harris of being “a Marxist” and criticized the economy of the Biden-Harris administration. 

“We have a nation in decline and they have put it into decline,” he said. “We have a nation that is dying.”

Harris alleged that Trump’s rhetoric contained “a bunch of lies, grievances, and name-calling.” 

“The American people want a president who understands the importance of bringing us together knowing we have so much more in common than what separates us, and I pledge to you to be a president for all Americans,” she said.

Federal vs. state approach on abortion

The two candidates sparred over how abortion rules should be set in the country, with Trump arguing in favor of a state-by-state approach and Harris favoring a federal law that creates a legal right to abortion. 

Trump refused to answer whether he would veto a national abortion ban as president and Harris dodged questions about whether she supports late-term abortion. 

“Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade, and they did exactly as he intended, and now in over 20 states, there are Trump abortion bans,” Harris said in the debate. The Supreme Court repealed the long-standing abortion rule in 2022. 

If elected, Harris said she would “proudly sign” a law that would “put back the protections of Roe v. Wade.”

Trump maintained support for the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, crediting “the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices” for the accomplishment. 

“Each individual state is voting,” Trump said. “It’s the vote of the people now. It’s not tied up in the federal government. I did a great service in doing it. It took courage to do it and the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it.”

Harris did not directly answer a question from the moderators about whether she would support any restrictions on abortion but simply said she would support the standards set in Roe v. Wade. 

When later pressed by Trump about whether “she [would] allow abortion in the eighth month, ninth month, seventh month,” Harris interjected with “come on.” Trump continued, saying: “That’s the problem because under Roe v. Wade, you could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month,” to which Harris responded: “That’s not true.”

Harris alleged that Trump would “sign a national abortion ban,” which the former president called “a lie,” adding: “There’s no reason to sign a ban because … the states are voting.” 

But when moderators pressed Trump about his running mate J.D. Vance’s comment that Trump would veto a national ban on abortion, Trump said he had never discussed it with Vance and never said he would veto it.

The vice president also criticized Trump for people “being denied IVF treatments,” to which the former president said, “I have been a leader on IVF.”

Immigration and the economy

Both candidates sought to defend their records on border security and the economy during the debate. 

Trump accused the Biden-Harris administration of allowing “terrorists,” “common street criminals,” and “drug dealers” through the southern border, claiming that “millions” of immigrants have entered the country illegally, “taking jobs that are occupied by African Americans and Hispanics and by union [workers].”

“They are taking over the towns,” Trump said. “They are taking over buildings. They’re going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden let into our country.”

Harris criticized Trump for opposing a bipartisan immigration bill, saying he’d “prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.” She also said she “prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs, and human beings” while working as a prosecutor.

The candidates debated who had a stronger record on the economy, with Trump calling inflation during the Biden-Harris administration “probably the worst in our nation’s history” and alleging that “the only jobs they got were bounce-back jobs” that returned after the COVID-19 crisis.

Harris promoted her plan to establish a newborn tax credit of $6,000 and a tax deduction for start-up small businesses of $50,000. She also criticized Trump’s proposal to increase tariffs, alleging it would amount to a national “sales tax.” 

Trump disputed the characterization, saying that only “China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years” would pay the tax.

Foreign policy

The candidates debated the effects of the Biden-Harris withdrawal from Afghanistan and the best way to approach the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine conflicts.

Trump called the withdrawal from Afghanistan “one of the most incompetently handled situations anybody has ever seen.” Although he expressed support for leaving Afghanistan, he opposed how the administration handled it.

“We were getting out … but we wouldn’t have lost the soldiers, we wouldn’t have left many Americans behind and we wouldn’t have left $85 billion of brand-new beautiful military equipment behind,” he said.

Harris expressed support for Biden’s decision to leave Afghanistan but did not directly answer a question from the moderators about whether she takes any responsibility for the lives lost during the withdrawal. She also criticized Trump for his negotiations with the Taliban.

“He does not … appreciate the role and responsibility of the president of the United States to be commander-in-chief with a level of respect,” Harris said.

On Israel, Harris said the country “has a right to defend itself ” but criticized the way the Israeli military has handled its invasion of the Gaza Strip, saying: “Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed — children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end. … We need a cease-fire deal and we need the hostages out.”

Trump asserted that if he were president, the war “would have never started” and criticized the Biden-Harris administration for lifting sanctions on Iran: “They had no money for terror. They were broke. Now they’re a rich nation.” 

Harris advocated continued military aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia, saying: “Because of our support … Ukraine stands as an independent and free country.” She claimed that if Trump were in office, Russia would win the war. 

Trump said he would “get the war with Ukraine and Russia ended if I’m president-elect, I’ll get it done before even becoming president.”

An unborn child, a victim of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, is remembered at the 9/11 memorial in New York City. / Credit: Katie Yoder/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 11, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Nearly 3,000 names are engraved in bronze at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. But 10 of the victims in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are different: They have no names. Instead, each is remembered as an “unborn child.” 

Among those memorialized this way are “Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas and her unborn child.”

On Sept. 11, Jack Grandcolas lost the two people he held most dear: his wife, Lauren, and their unborn child. His pregnant 38-year-old wife died on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after the passengers fought back against hijackers redirecting the flight to Washington, D.C. Grandcolas recounts his loss and search for hope in a memoir called “Like a River to the Sea: Heartbreak and Hope in the Wake of United 93.”

The book was published by Rare Bird on Sept. 6, 2022, and opens with a dedication to his lost child.

“Dear Son … or Daughter,” he begins. “I am writing this book at the advice of my therapist. She felt it would be helpful to share a little bit about your mom and dad, and why you will always have your place in history.”

Today, that child would be 22 years old. Her name would be Grace, if a girl — Gavin, if a boy.

Lauren was three months pregnant, Grandcolas recalls, when she flew from their home in California to New Jersey for her grandmother’s funeral. At her insistence, he stayed behind to care for their sick cat.

“We were giddy at the thought of becoming parents, having spent the previous decade trying to get pregnant,” he writes. “There had been plenty of heartbreak along the way, including a miscarriage in 1999, when Lauren was 36. Two years later, we had pretty much resigned ourselves to raising only cats ... and then a miracle happened.”

Lauren and their “miracle” were supposed to return to California on Sept. 11, 2001.

That morning, Grandcolas woke up to the sound of the answering machine. He fell back asleep, only to wake up again and spot what he calls the “shape of an angel.” 

Had someone he knew recently died?

It must be Lauren’s grandmother, he thought. Then he realized it was Lauren.

When he checked the answering machine, he heard a message that would change his life forever. 

“Honey, are you there? Jack? Pick up, sweetie,” he heard Lauren’s voice say. “Okay, well, I just want to tell you I love you. We’re having a little problem on the plane. I’m fine and comfortable and I’m okay for now. I just love you more than anything, just know that. It’s just a little problem, so I, I’ll … Honey, I just love you. Please tell my family I love them, too. Bye, honey.”

“In that moment I knew Lauren and our baby were gone,” he writes of his college sweetheart and their little one. 

His wife’s funeral was held at a Catholic church in Houston. Lauren, he says, was not a religious person. But in the months before her death, she began attending a weekly Bible study.

“One evening she came home and said, ‘I finally get it,’” he remembers. When he prodded her by asking, “Get what?” she responded: “The meaning of it all.”

While raised Catholic, Grandcolas struggled with his faith. 

“What kind of merciful God would take my sweet Lauren and our child?” he asked. He later concluded that it was not God but human ideology.

He encountered God again after a conversation with Bono, the lead vocalist of the famous rock band U2. Bono performed “One Tree Hill” — Lauren’s favorite U2 song — in her memory at a 2005 concert at the Oakland Coliseum. Afterward, Grandcolas opened up to the singer.

“Being brought up Catholic, you’re given all this guilt about things that you didn’t do right,” he told Bono. “I worry that I may have screwed up in this life and mortgaged my opportunity to see Lauren again.”

“You’ll see her again. I know it. We all screw up in life,” he says Bono reassured him. “That’s why God grants us forgiveness. It’s his most powerful gift.”

Bono’s words changed him and his faith, he says. 

“Ever since 9/11, I had questioned God and his plan for me,” he writes. “The night was a tribute to her but in a very important way it set me free, allowing me to be more forgiving of myself and rekindle my belief in God’s mercy.”

Grandcolas introduces readers to Lauren as a woman with a beautiful smile, radiant personality, and even a mischievous streak. They married after meeting in college and stayed together as he progressed with a career in the newspaper industry and she took charge as a marketing manager.

After losing her and their baby, he struggled with depression, PTSI (post-traumatic stress injury), heavy drinking, fear of abandonment, and survivor’s guilt. With the help of EMDR psychotherapy, he said, he discovered that “for all these years I had been mourning Lauren without fully grieving for the baby we lost.”

“Over the years that child grew up in my mind, growing older every year,” he writes. “I knew I would not be able to move on until saying goodbye to the baby I never got to hold.”

Today, the memory of Lauren and their unborn baby lives on at memorials across the country, through the Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas Foundation, and, now, his book.

“[A]s I continue to reflect on the highs and lows of the last two decades, I’ve come to realize that I am very lucky indeed,” he says. “I found true love, twice. I’ve endured a pair of horrific tragedies but still have a resilient spirit and zest for life. I’ll always carry the emotional scars of losing Lauren and our child, just as I’ll always have the physical scars from my burns, but all of my wounds continue to heal.”

“We all suffer loss. We all endure heartbreak. It’s how you respond to these cataclysms that define you,” he concludes. “Sometimes the most beautiful things grow out of our hardest moments.”

This article was first published on Sept. 11, 2022, and has been updated.

St. Teresa of Calcutta. / Credit: © 1986 Túrelio (via Wikimedia-Commons), 1986 / Lizenz: Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-2.0 de

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 10, 2024 / 17:38 pm (CNA).

The “spiritual darkness” that Mother Teresa describes in her writings can be difficult to comprehend, but this feeling of emptiness was not caused by either depression or a loss of faith, according to a lecturer at an academic conference organized by the Mother Teresa Institute.

St. Teresa of Calcutta’s “dark night of the soul” was a distinct charism that helped her build her faith and serve others rather than a mere chemical imbalance that induces depression or an abandonment of the Catholic faith, said Loyola University Maryland philosophy professor Derek McAllister at a Sept. 6 symposium held at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., one day after the saint’s feast day. 

“If it’s a mental emotional problem, they do not of themselves promote virtue or increase depth of relationship with God,” McAllister said. “Whereas we know with the dark night, the nights do of themselves greatly increase love, humility, patience, and the like. And they decidedly prepare one for deeper prayer.”

The lecture focused on some of Mother Teresa’s letters, which describe an emptiness and a spiritual darkness — essentially an inability to feel the presence of God. St. Teresa, who founded the Missionaries of Charity, was an Albanian sister who spent most of her life serving the poor in Calcutta, India. She was canonized in 2016.

“The darkness is so dark, and I am alone,” St. Teresa wrote. “Unwanted, forsaken. The loneliness of the heart that wants love is unbearable. Where is my faith? Even deep down, there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. My God, how painful is this unknown pain? It pains without ceasing.”

St. Teresa wrote that “the place of God in my soul is blank, there is no God in me” and “I just long and long for God and then it is that I feel he does not want me — he is not there.”

McAllister noted that other saints have had such feelings and referenced St. John of the Cross’ 16th-century poem “Dark Night of the Soul” and his subsequent commentaries on that poem. It describes the Spanish mystic’s crisis of faith and an inability to feel the presence of God even though God was truly present and guiding the experience.

“In darkness and secure, by the secret ladder, disguised — oh, happy chance! — in darkness and in concealment, my house being now at rest,” St. John’s poem reads.

McAllister cited St. John’s descriptions of his experience, noting that “he identifies, by name, melancholy and says that’s not what I’m talking about.” McAllister argued that an “affective condition that overwhelms people” does not accurately describe those experiences, but rather that the experience actively pushed St. John to grow closer to God.

“While you may experience desolation of God’s felt presence of the senses, you’re being purgated and drawn closer to God, but you don’t feel that you are while you’re experiencing that,” McAllister explained.

In the case of Mother Teresa, McAllister compared and contrasted the symptoms described in her writing with the criteria used to diagnose major depressive disorder.

According to McAllister, depression often includes an unhealthy introspection and a lack of realism, which he said “advice does little to remedy.” Further, someone who has clinical depression, he noted, will often experience chronic fatigue, insomnia, and a depressive affect. He also argued that depression does not promote virtue in and of itself: “That’s why it’s called a disorder.”

He cited her writing to show that she was seeking answers to her spiritual darkness, as when she said to her confessor: “Each time your yes or no [to a question] has satisfied me as the will of God.” He also said that she did not experience the other symptoms that commonly accompany depression or depressive affect in everyday activities. The fruits of her experience, he noted, also do not point to a disorder such as depression. 

“What’s this [spiritual darkness] for in and of itself?” McAllister asked rhetorically. “Does it bring about humility, charity, kindness, and growth in Christ? And just look at what happened. Yes, absolutely [it did].”

The conference was attended by numerous sisters in the Missionaries of Charity along with lay members of the order, some priests, and a few professors and graduate students.

It was held a short walk from the St. John Paul II National Shrine, which is displaying a Mother Teresa exhibit until Nov. 11. The exhibit contains a first-class relic of St. Teresa and many of her personal items. 

Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the president of the Mother Teresa Institute, told CNA that the organization functions as “the academic arm of the Mother Teresa Center” that focuses on her writings and her words. He said there is “a lot more depth to Mother Teresa’s holiness” than many realize. 

“I think she has a message for the Church,” Kolodiejchuk said. “She was one of the great figures of the last century.”

Pro-life protestors hold signs outside the Missouri Supreme Court on Sept. 10, 2024 advocating against Amendment 3, which would dramatically expand abortion access in Missouri if passed in November. / Credit: Courtesy of Thomas More Society

St. Louis, Mo., Sep 10, 2024 / 16:20 pm (CNA).

The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that a proposed constitutional amendment to dramatically expand abortion in the state will remain on the Nov. 5 ballot after a circuit judge blocked the measure earlier this week.  

The ruling dealt a blow to pro-life activists in the state, who had argued that the final proposed language not only violates state law by failing to list which laws it would repeal but also misleads voters about the scope and gravity of what they will be voting for. A Catholic law firm led the legal effort to get the proposed amendment struck from the ballot. 

Missouri’s proposed Amendment 3, which originally qualified for the November ballot in August after garnering thousands of signatures, would mandate that the government “shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including “prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions.”

Missouri law currently protects unborn babies throughout all of pregnancy with the only exception being cases of “medical emergency.” With the Tuesday ruling, Missouri remains one of 10 states that will vote on abortion-related measures in November. 

In a brief order issued in the early afternoon Sept. 10 — just hours before the state deadline for finalizing the November ballot — the Missouri Supreme Court overruled a lower court’s opinion that held that the proposed amendment violates state law by failing to mention the specific laws to be repealed if voters approve the measure. The court, under Chief Justice Mary Russell, said opinions would follow. 

The Thomas More Society, a Catholic public interest law firm based in Chicago, had filed the lawsuit challenging the pro-abortion amendment language in August on behalf of Missouri state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, pro-life advocate Kathy Forck, state Rep. Hannah Kelly, and Peggy Forrest, president and CEO of Our Lady’s Inn, a St. Louis pro-life pregnancy center. 

The Missouri Catholic Conference (MCC) had urged Catholics to pray and fast for the amendment’s removal from the ballot. 

In a statement to CNA, MCC executive director Jamie Morris expressed disappointment with the court’s ruling.

“Missourians should have the right to know what laws will be overturned when they are asked to sign an initiative petition. The Missouri Catholic Conference will continue to educate the public on the dangers this amendment poses to women’s health by removing even basic safeguards currently in law,“ Morris said.

“We encourage the faithful to continue to pray for a conversion of hearts and minds so that the pro-abortion Amendment 3 is defeated.“

In his Sept. 6 ruling, Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh wrote that the defendants’ failure to “include any statute or provision that will be repealed, especially when many of these statutes are apparent, is in blatant violation of” state law. 

Ahead of the Supreme Court’s Tuesday ruling, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft had on Monday decertified Amendment 3 from the November ballot, citing the lower court’s ruling. Following the Supreme Court’s opinion, Ashcroft will be required to recertify the proposed amendment. 

A hearing before the Missouri Supreme Court took place this morning at 8:30 a.m.

During the oral arguments before the Missouri Supreme Court, Charles Hatfield of Stinson LLP in Jefferson City, arguing for the pro-amendment side, said Article 3, Section 49 of the Missouri Constitution reserves to the people the right to propose amendments through an initiative process — a right that he said ought to be upheld.

Mary Catherine Martin of the Thomas More Society countered by arguing that voters need to be fully informed to exercise their rights properly and argued that the amendment’s failure to disclose significant impacts misleads voters.

Martin said in a statement following the ruling that the decision “is a failure to protect voters by not upholding state laws that ensure voters are fully informed going into the ballot box.“

“Missouri’s Amendment 3 will have far-reaching implications on the state’s abortion laws and well beyond, repealing dozens of laws that protect the unborn, pregnant women, parents, and children — a reality that the initiative campaign intentionally hid from voters. We implore Missourians to research and study the text and effects of Amendment 3 before going to the voting booth,“ Martin said.

This is a developing story. 

Blackrock College in Dublin, May 30, 2009. Extensive abuse took place at Blackrock College according to a 2022 radio documentary called “Blackrock Boys.” The Scoping Inquiry was set up in the aftermath of the relrease of the documentary. / Credit: Sarah777, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Middlesbrough, England, Sep 10, 2024 / 15:35 pm (CNA).

The Irish government has promised to set up an official investigation to examine historical abuse in religious-run day and boarding schools in the light of “appalling” abuse accounts.

The announcement comes as an initial 802-page, five-volume Scoping Inquiry report from the Irish government revealed that 2,395 allegations of abuse had been made in 308 schools between 1927 and 2013. The total number of allegations is believed to be far higher. The allegations were made against 884 abusers. It is believed that half of them have died.

The Scoping Inquiry was set up in the aftermath of a 2022 radio documentary called “Blackrock Boys,” which revealed how extensive abuse took place at the Spiritan-run Blackrock College in Dublin.

“I am announcing today that the government has accepted the principal recommendation of the Report of the Scoping Inquiry, which is for the establishment of a Commission of Investigation,” Minister for Education Norma Foley said Sept. 3. “Historical sexual abuse is a profoundly serious matter and needs to be examined in detail. The Report of the Scoping Inquiry is a harrowing document, containing some of the most appalling accounts of sexual abuse.

The Scoping Inquiry, written by senior counsel Mary O’Toole, contains extensive accounts of sexual abuse, rape, and sexual assault, and there are warnings in the report that it “may be distressing to read.”

Foley acknowledged the experiences of David Ryan and his late brother Mark, whose testimonies were featured in Blackrock Boys. She said they were both “instrumental in the establishment of the Scoping Inquiry.”

Some of the “harrowing” allegations mentioned by Foley concerned schools for disabled pupils. There are also descriptions of “physical punishment and violence” in some schools.

Central to the Scoping Inquiry was a survivor engagement process to ascertain the extent of the allegations of historical child sexual abuse in the schools. This involved consultation with survivors in order to “learn what is important to survivors now and what the next steps should be.”

The Catholic Education Partnership, which represents the entire Catholic education community across Ireland, acknowledged “the significance of this report, the grave harm caused to survivors and their families, and those who suffered but are no longer with us.” Lamenting the safeguarding failings, the partnership denounced the “gravely dysfunctional and abusive education system with respect to child safeguarding.”

“It is painfully clear that children and the trust of their families were betrayed in the most devastating of ways,” the partnership added. It promised to “fully cooperate” with the Commission of Investigation and pointed out that safeguarding practices have improved significantly in recent years. 

“Catholic schools have robust child safeguarding procedures, most recently reviewed in 2023,” the partnership said, adding that it is “fully committed to maintaining effective child safeguarding.”

Bishop Kevin Doran from the Irish Bishops’ Conference described the report as a “tragedy,” given the large numbers of people affected.

“The tragedy of the report is not simply that there are so many of them but that so many of them had to carry their experience alone for so many years before they felt sufficiently free to tell someone else,” Doran said. “I am conscious that behind every paragraph is the experience of real people who, as children, suffered abuse and violence in a place where they should have been safe.”

The bishop also offered an apology to those affected but acknowledged that the words “may sound hollow to survivors and their families” and said that “actions speak louder than words.”

Doran, who is both bishop of Elphin and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Achonry in Ireland, said: “Together with the safeguarding teams in both dioceses, I am committed to ensuring that the policies and procedures which have been put in place for the safeguarding of children will continue to be fully implemented.”

The Irish government is yet to announce who will chair the Commission of Investigation or a time frame for the investigation.

French Catholic priest Abbé Pierre appears on the TV programm “La Marche du Siecle” in Paris on Dec. 19, 1988. / Credit: GEORGES BENDRIHEM/AFP via Getty Images

CNA Staff, Sep 10, 2024 / 14:50 pm (CNA).

A foundation that supports a prominent Catholic movement in France is changing its name after revealing nearly 20 fresh abuse allegations against the famed Abbé Pierre, a formerly beloved Capuchin priest who died in 2007. 

A Sept. 6 statement released by Emmaus International, a solidarity movement with over 400 member associations that seeks to combat poverty and homelessness worldwide, detailed new allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct by Pierre, who founded the movement in 1949.

A previous July 17 report from Emmaus had detailed allegations involving at least seven victims, including one who was a minor at the time of her alleged assault. Emmaus France said it first received a report from a woman accusing Pierre of sexual assault in 2023.

The group said it commissioned consulting firm Groupe Egaé to set up a system to allow additional alleged victims to come forward. Since then, Groupe Egaé said, at least 17 additional victims have come forward alleging “sexual violence committed by Abbé Pierre against girls and women.”

In light of the allegations against its founder, the Abbé Pierre Foundation, which provided nearly 4 million euros (about $4.4 million) in funding to Emmaus in 2023, has “decided to change its name and has begun the necessary paperwork,” Emmaus International said last week. 

In addition to the foundation name change, the Emmaus France board will submit a proposal for the removal of “Abbé Pierre, founder” from its logo at an extraordinary general assembly that will take place in December. 

A museum and cultural center at the house where Pierre lived in Esteville, France, meanwhile, will “remain closed for good” while discussions take place about what to do with it. 

Finally, the group said, a panel of independent experts will be commissioned to “apprehend and explain the flaws in the movement that allowed Abbé Pierre to behave as he did for more than 50 years.”

“Our movement knows what it owes to Abbé Pierre. He inspired our organizations and led them for many years. He was a tireless advocate who sparked waves of solidarity. He is a historic figure for the significance of his actions for good,” Emmaus International said in its statement. 

“Now, we must also confront the unacceptable suffering that he forced upon others. We must take decisions: first, out of respect for the victims who spoke up; but also for the volunteers, employees, and companions of the Emmaus movement, as well as its supporters and donors. Their daily work for the movement, which is both invaluable and necessary, would be profoundly tarnished if nothing changed.”

Groupe Egaé’s full report, dated Sept. 4, details allegations of Pierre’s forcible touching, rape, sexual remarks, and other sexual contact with adult women and with children. (Warning: The full report contains explicit descriptions of abuse.) The allegations received “took place between the 1950s and the early 2000s.” 

Most of the alleged incidents took place in France but also in the U.S., Belgium, Switzerland, and Morocco. The group also received tips from anonymous victims — whom they were unable to contact for follow-up information — about additional alleged abuse. 

Several victims told Groupe Egaé’ that “members of Abbé Pierre’s close circle would presumably have been informed of some of these acts.”

“We reaffirm today our full support of the victims. We commend their courage and thank them for their trust. We believe them and we stand with them,” Emmaus said in its Sept. 6 statement. 

The tipline email and phone number set up by Groupe Egaé in July will remain active and available through the end of 2024, Emmaus said. All victims will be offered a session with a psychologist specializing in psychological trauma, and “those who wish to speak with leaders of the Emmaus movement will be welcomed.”

Who was Abbé Pierre?

Prior to these recent allegations and findings, the Catholic priest and Capuchin friar, born Henri Groues in 1912, was one of the Church of France’s most beloved and iconic figures. 

After being part of the French Resistance in World War II, the priest took on the name “Abbé Pierre” as a cover for his work in manufacturing fake identity papers and helping Jews cross the French border into Switzerland.

Pierre was particularly applauded for his efforts to assist the homeless population in France, often raising large sums of money and persuading the French Parliament to pass laws acting on behalf of the homeless, including a 1950s law forbidding landlords from evicting tenants during the winter. This “Trêve Hivernale,” or “Winter Truce,” law still exists in France today.

Despite his popularity, Pierre faced other controversies before the most recent one of alleged sexual assaults. The priest faced public scrutiny in 1996 after defending a friend’s book, “Founding Myths of Israeli Politics,” which questioned the number of Jewish people killed by the Nazis in World War II.

In a 2005 book of interviews by Frederic Lenoir titled “My God… Why?” Pierre suggested he had broken his vow of celibacy by having sex as a younger man. Among other comments made in the book, Pierre expressed his support for married clergy and the ordination of women.

Pierre is the latest French founder of a well-known Catholic movement to face serious sexual and spiritual abuse allegations, with other recent notable examples being Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche, and Father Marie-Dominique Philippe, founder of the Brothers of St. John Community.

Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, chapel and statue. / Credit: Joseph Antoniello, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

CNA Staff, Sep 10, 2024 / 14:05 pm (CNA).

Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio is set to launch a Washington, D.C., program for its students, including residential and learning facilities, the university announced last week.  

The Ward and Kathy Fitzgerald Franciscan University Homeland Mission (FUHM) is part of the university’s new “Encounter” initiative, designed to extend Franciscan University’s mission and impact beyond its campus in Steubenville, Ohio. It is designed to equip students for “advancing the great global missionary cause of positively impacting the principles and policies guiding the United States government.”

The university has purchased a $3 million property on Massachusetts Avenue in the District of Columbia for the program thanks to a $10 million gift from Ward and Kathy Fitzgerald. Their donation helps fund the Outreach and Evangelization component of the university’s ongoing $110 million Rebuild My Church Capital Campaign. 

“The Franciscan charism of ongoing conversion, which invites everyone to continually and humbly draw closer to Christ, will be key to carrying out this mission,” said university president Father Dave Pivonka, TOR, in a Sept. 3 press release. 

“The Franciscan University Homeland Mission will invite others to deeper conversion through three pillars grounded in the university’s mission: Evangelization and Joyful Presence, Intellectual and Personal Formation, and Support for Human Dignity,” Pivonka said.

FUHM’s operation will be headed by Stephen Catanzarite, executive director of Encounter, along with the political science department and other Franciscan departments and partners. 

The program is intended to bring Gospel values as well as Catholic social teaching “to bear on the political and social atmosphere of Washington, D.C.,” the press release said. “This engagement will not only bring the Church’s witness to the legislative and political process, but it will also serve to draw more people to Christ and his Church.”

“Programs and events at the FUHM will challenge students to work and witness ongoing, systematic change in federal government, placing the sacred human dignity of all people at the center of the work.”

Ward Fitzgerald is the CEO of international real estate private equity firm fund investment group EQT Exeter. The Fitzgeralds are members of the Trustees to the Papal Foundation.

“We have been provided great Providence to be able to be vessels of the Holy Spirit by participating with such a worthy university and its students, faculty, and administration,” Kathy Fitzgerald said in a statement. “We are too well mindful that nothing we have created or hold is our own but graces and gifts from Our Lord to do his work.”

Student rotations at the new center in Washington, D.C., are set to begin this fall on a limited basis and expand in spring 2025. 

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn speaks at the launch of Amoris Laetitia at the Vatican on April 8, 2016. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

CNA Staff, Sep 10, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, OP, archbishop of Vienna, said in a recent interview with a French Catholic magazine that in the face of rising secularization and the growth of Islam in many historically Christian nations, Catholics should “trust in the work of grace” and remember that the Church is “an expert in humanity.”

“The Church is alive and will always be, albeit under different circumstances. We must accept the decline of Europe. We tend to gaze at our ecclesiastical navel, but it is an undeniable continental movement,” Schönborn said, speaking to Famille Chrétienne. 

“In 20 years, the European population will not be the same as it is today, and it is already not the same as it was 50 years ago. This is inevitable, above all due to the decline in the birth rate in Europe but also due to immigration and the increasing presence of Islam. This poses new challenges for us Christians. We must also not forget that the Lord is at work in his Church! Just think of the 12,000 baptisms of adults and young people in France this year.”

The Austrian cardinal, who helped to produce the Catechism of the Catholic Church, said that despite the decline of the Church’s influence in Europe, he is convinced that the Church “has not yet breathed its last.”

“Despite secularization, the great questions of men and women remain the same as before: birth, growth, education, illness, economic worries. And then there is the family, marriage, and death,” Schönborn noted. “There is a lot of talk about change, but too little attention is paid to the constants of society. The Church must remember that it is an expert in humanity, as Paul VI said.” 

The cardinal called the idea that France and Europe are “no longer Christian” because of Islam’s influence “absurd,” but he firmly stressed that “Catholics should return to the Church.” 

“If Catholics have left the Church, we should not be surprised that they are in the minority,” he continued, calling for a “fraternal rapprochement” with Islam, echoing the words of Pope Francis, noting that Christians “do not take up arms but trust in the work of grace.” 

“Both our religions have an absolute appeal. For Muslims, God has demanded that the whole world be subjected to him and the Koran. As for Christ, he has entrusted us with a universal mission: ‘Make disciples of all nations.’ Neither of them can therefore renounce their mission. But the Christians’ way of acting is not that of the Koran but the following of Christ in all dimensions of our lives,” he said. 

Addressing the ongoing Synod on Synodality — the final session of which will take place in October in Rome and is expected to produce a final report for the pope’s approval — Schönborn said “synodality is central to Francis’ pontificate, but there is continuity with previous synods, which have been about communion, participation, and mission.”

“You may be disappointed that the specific topics are a little up in the air, but this is first and foremost a synod about the ‘modus operandi’ within the Church,” Schönborn said. 

“In my diocese, I have experienced this synodality with the priests in small groups and tried to live it through spiritual conversation. Everyone agreed that the exchange had never been so deep.”

Asked about Fiducia Supplicans, a document published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in December 2023 that authorized nonliturgical blessings for same-sex couples and others in “irregular situations,” Schönborn said he believes the document shows “confusion” on the part of the Church. The cardinal had previously, in 2021, criticized the Vatican’s rejection of blessings for same-sex couples, saying the document was marked by a “clear communication error.”

“I experienced it as I experience things — concretely,” the cardinal said. “If friends say to me: ‘Our son has just announced to us that he is homosexual and that he has found a partner,’ I then ask them: ‘Is he still your son?’ Most often, the answer comes naturally. I believe that with the two successive documents from Rome [the 2021 Responsum ad Dubium and Fiducia Supplicans], the Church has shown its own dismay in the face of this question. These texts, in my eyes, are shaky. We are faced with a question for which there can be no right answer.”

“The path that Pope Francis proposes to us is that of discernment, trying to see what the Lord is showing us,” he continued. “Incidentally, the misfortune of the German [Synodal Way] is that they want sharp, unambiguous answers. And unambiguity does not work in concrete life.”

Asked about Pope Francis’ restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass by way of the 2021 document Traditionis Custodes, Schönborn expressed the hope that the “new generation” might “easily” move from the TLM to modern movements and “prayer groups” such as the Emmanuel Community. 

The Austrian prelate added: “Let us accept that Francis has his reasons for closing the doors again, at least partially, just as we have accepted that Benedict XVI had his reasons for opening them. Let us trust that the Lord is leading the Church.”

Schönborn was finally asked what “profile” the next pope after Francis, who turns 88 in December, should have.

“On that day, the Holy Spirit will lead the Church. We should not worry. If it is an African, it will be an African. Maybe it will be an Asian or a man from old Europe. But the most important thing is that he believes that he is a servant of Christ and that he loves the Church. This is how the Church will move forward,” Schönborn said. 

James Earl Jones attends the "The Gin Game" Broadway opening night after party at Sardi's on Oct. 14, 2015, in New York City. / Credit: Jemal Countess/Getty Images

CNA Staff, Sep 9, 2024 / 18:15 pm (CNA).

James Earl Jones, a distinguished actor of stage and screen who was a convert to the Catholic faith, died Monday at age 93. 

Known for lending his booming voice to such characters as Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” saga and Mufasa in “The Lion King,” Jones’ career spanned nearly seven decades. 

He was one of the few entertainers, male or female, to have earned the coveted “EGOT” slate of acting awards: an Emmy (for TV), Grammy (for music), Oscar (for movies), and Tony (for the stage).

Born in poverty in Mississippi, Jones overcame a stutter early in life in part by discovering a gift for poetry. He joined the military after graduating from college, moving to New York after serving to pursue acting full time. 

A prolific stage actor who became well known as a Shakespearean, Jones also entertained generations of moviegoers with dozens of roles. These included perhaps his most famous voice performances — the unimpeachable lion monarch Mufasa and the inimitable Sith menace Darth Vader — as well as memorable live-action appearances in “The Sandlot” and “Field of Dreams.”

Jones did not talk much about his Catholic faith but said in a 1987 interview that he converted to the faith during his time serving in the military. He said that while discerning whether to stay in the military or pursue his true passion — acting — the only things that he had in his life that were “not geared toward the art of killing” were his Catholic faith “and the complete works of Shakespeare.''

In 1985, he voiced Pharaoh in the first episode of Hanna-Barbera’s “The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible.” He also recorded an audio edition of the King James version of the New Testament.

Jones died Monday morning at his home in Dutchess County, New York, according to his agent.

Jim Gaffigan attends SiriusXM's “Unfrosted” Town Hall at SiriusXM Studios on April 30, 2024, in Los Angeles. / Credit: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for SiriusXM

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 9, 2024 / 17:06 pm (CNA).

Six-time Grammy-nominated Catholic comedian Jim Gaffigan will host the 2024 Al Smith Dinner on Oct. 17, an annual event organized by the Archdiocese of New York that the two major presidential candidates — former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris — are expected to attend.

Gaffigan posted a copy of an invitation on X that lists Trump and Harris as guests along with the stand-up comedian listed as master of ceremonies. In his post, Gaffigan joked that he was unfamiliar with the names of the two presidential candidates.

“I’m so honored to be MC-ing this year’s Al Smith Memorial Dinner on Oct. 17,” Gaffigan said. “Too bad I don’t recognize those two names in the middle of the invitation. Anyone ever heard of them?”

The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, first held in 1945, is organized to raise money for charitable causes in the archdiocese. In 2023, the archdiocese raised $7.1 million for people in need. The black-tie affair is named after the first Catholic to be nominated for president by a major party — four-term New York Gov. Al Smith, who was the Democratic Party’s 1928 presidential nominee.

Gaffigan, who has acted in dozens of movies and has performed numerous stand-up comedy specials, has been a staunch critic of Trump.

Gaffigan frequently references his Catholic faith in his stand-up comedy. For example, in the 2018 comedy special “Noble Ape,” he discusses saints and patronage.

“Of course, I’m talking about Catholic saints because I’m Catholic,” he says in the special. “I’m not a good Catholic. Like if there was a test for Catholics, I would fail. But then again, most Catholics would fail, which is probably why there’s not a test.”

In September 2015, Gaffigan performed at the Festival of Families in Philadelphia, which was attended by Pope Francis during his papal visit to the United States. In June of this year, he met the pontiff at the Vatican with 100 other comedians, including Stephen Colbert and Chris Rock. 

At The New Yorker Festival in 2015, Gaffigan spoke about a “fear of being associated with being Catholic” in the entertainment industry. 

“I’m Catholic,” he said. “98% of my friends are atheist or agnostic. I was an atheist until I met my wife. I was raised Catholic.”

Gaffigan has deviated from Church teaching on at least one issue by promoting homosexual pride and civil marriages.

The comedian ventured into political discourse during the 2020 presidential election to criticize Trump. He Tweeted that Trump is “a traitor and a con man who doesn’t care about you” and called him “a liar and a criminal” in August 2020. Gaffigan also alleged that “Trump is not pro-life and obviously not Christian or a decent person” when a Twitter user asked Gaffigan whether he was still pro-life.

Both Trump and then-candidate Joe Biden attended the 2020 Al Smith Dinner, which was held a little more than a month before the election. Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both attended in 2016. At both events, following tradition, the two candidates delivered humorous remarks, skewering themselves and each other.