S. Korean Church Offers Sympathy Over Va. Tech

SEOUL, South Korea – Catholic leaders in South Korea offered their condolences to the family members and victims of the recent shooting rampage at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

“We Korean bishops feel great shock and pain, especially (because) this incident was done by a Korean young man,” the bishops’ conference said.

They also warned against the tragedy leading to further violence or revenge against innocent people in the U.S.

“It should not create ethnic conflicts or prejudice,” said the bishops.
They said they regretted that they “couldn’t fulfill (their) duty to help people realize the importance of life that God has given us as a gift.”

Cardinal Nicholas Cheong Jinsuk of Seoul said that all Koreans, including Catholics, are “very much shocked and in deepest sorrow.”

New Hampshire Nears Same-Sex Civil Unions

MANCHESTER, N.H. – Despite the objections of Catholic officials, New Hampshire moved a step closer to legalizing same-sex civil unions when Gov. John Lynch said that he would sign such legislation if the state Senate passes it.

Bishop John B. McCormack of Manchester said the issue is not one of rights but of keeping “the meaning and the reality of marriage intact.”

He said, “Our goal should be how to strengthen marriage and not to enact laws which devalue marriage and deny it its unique and protected status in our society.”
Diocesan chancellor Diane Murphy Quinlan, who had testified against the legislation when it was in the House, expressed “great disappointment” at the governor’s decision.

Quoting the bill’s language granting same-sex couples in civil unions “the same rights, responsibilities and obligations as married couples,” Quinlan said the bill effectively enacts same-sex marriage “no matter what you call it.”

Minority Publishes View Of Brain Death Debate

VATICAN CITY – Breaching normal protocol, several participants in a 2005 Vatican-sponsored conference over the ethics of declaring someone brain dead have published the papers they delivered at the debate.

Many of the papers reproduced in “Finis Vitae: Is Brain Death Still Life?” argue that the concept of brain death was devised mainly to expand the availability of organs for transplant and claim that some patients who had been pronounced brain dead continued to live for months or even years.

Publication of the papers, which the Vatican had decided not to publish, is evidence of the strong feelings about brain death held by a minority of the members of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Roberto De Mattei, vice president of the National Research Council of Italy who is not a member of the academy, said he edited “Finis Vitae” in order “to expand the debate and bring it to a wider audience.”

While differences of opinion among theologians, philosophers and scientists, especially on ethical issues, are nothing new, it is unusual that participants in a Vatican conference published the papers that the Vatican specifically decided not to publish.

U.S.-Based Foundation Gives Pope Millions

VATICAN CITY – The U.S.-based Papal Foundation presented Pope Benedict XVI with a check for almost $4.7 million.

The foundation designated more than $4.1 million for 75 charitable projects and more than $575,000 for scholarships for priests, religious and laypeople studying at one of the pontifical universities or institutes in Rome.

Thanking the foundation members, the pope said the projects promote Gospel values and “a profound sense of communion with the universal Church in her service to the entire human family.”

Portland Ends Bankruptcy With $75M Settlement

PORTLAND, Ore. – The first Catholic diocesan bankruptcy proceeding in the nation ended April 17 when a federal judge approved a $75 million settlement of clergy sexual abuse claims and a financial reorganization plan for the Portland Archdiocese.

Smoothing the way for U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Elizabeth Perris, lawyers at the last moment negotiated payment for all remaining sex abuse claims.

A last case, which was not over sex abuse, was settled just a few hours before the court approval was announced.

Since February, lawyers from both sides worked out the two dozen most difficult cases, bringing the total settled claims under the 33-month bankruptcy to 177. Checks will go out to victims at the start of May.

The same day the Portland settlement was finalized, all parties to similar bankruptcy proceedings in the Diocese of Spokane, Wash., filed court papers there agreeing to a $48 million settlement of clergy sex abuse claims there.
More than 160 victims are reportedly involved in the Spokane settlement.

Catholics Shocked Over Murders of Protestants

ROME – Catholic leaders in Turkey were shocked by the murder of three employees of a Protestant publishing house, said an official at the Vatican nunciature in Ankara, Turkey.

“We are upset,” said Msgr. Georges Marovitch. “With each explosion of violence, it is like all our work for dialogue is being questioned.”

The three employees of the Zirve publishing house in Malatya, a city in central Turkey, were found dead with their throats slashed April 18.

Police arrested four men in the Zirve offices shortly after the murders and a fifth man, who was hospitalized with head injuries after apparently jumping from a fourth-story window in the Zirve building. Five more suspects were detained April 19.

Turkish press reports reported that some of the men arrested told police they acted to defend Islam.

Msgr. Marovitch told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, “We understand that the victims belonged to a Protestant group that distributed Bibles on the street in a Muslim society, and this irritated nationalist and fundamentalist Turks.”

Support Iraqi Refugees, Says Vatican Official

ROME – The international community must do more to welcome and support the thousands of refugees daily fleeing the “horrific violence” in Iraq, a Vatican official said.

“The world is witnessing an unprecedented degree of hate and destructiveness in Iraq,” which not only destroys the “social tissue and the unity of Iraq,” but is exerting “a widening deadly impact” on the whole Middle East, said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi.

The Vatican’s representative to U.N. and other international organizations in Geneva spoke there at an international conference addressing the humanitarian needs of Iraq’s refugees and internally displaced people.

“This is not the time to look at technical definitions of a refugee,” he said. More countries need to open their doors to greater numbers of displaced Iraqis “so that pressure within the region may be alleviated on a short-term basis.”

Some two million Iraqis are displaced within their country, while nearly two million more people have fled the country since the U.S.-led war started in 2003.

Between 40,000 and 50,000 Iraqis are leaving their homes each month, according to U.N. statistics.

Lebanese Christians Flee Islamic Fundamentalism

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Christians are fleeing Lebanon to escape an ongoing political and economic crisis amid signs that Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise in the country.

Forty-three percent of Maronite Catholics – the largest of the country’s 12 Christian denominations – polled recently said they were considering emigrating.

Nearly a third of them have applied for visas in the last six months, according to the study by Information International, an independent Beirut-based research body.

“Some 60,000-70,000 Christians have left the country in the last six months,” said George Khoury, executive director of Caritas Lebanon, the local agency of the Caritas Internationalis confederation of Catholic relief, development and social services organizations.

“In some ways Lebanon is becoming increasingly Islamized because of the demographic shift.”