Rockville Centre Ends Communion Services

WASHINGTON – Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre, has ordered an end to weekday Communion services outside the context of Mass by July 1.

Citing guidelines for the distribution of Communion in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, Bishop Murphy said in a pastoral letter that his decision would bring the diocese “into conformity with the liturgical norms of the Church.”

The order applies to parishes, schools and social and charitable organizations which had adopted the practice of offering “celebrations of the word” with the distribution of Communion when no daily Mass was scheduled.

Such usually brief services often were led by laypeople, nuns or brothers.

The distribution of Communion to the sick outside of Mass is permitted as long as the proper ritual is followed, he added.

Bishop Murphy said his decision was made after consulting with the diocese’s Advisory Committee on Canonical Affairs and the Presbyteral Council.

Fund to Defray Costs for Iraqis Attending Youth Day

WASHINGTON – Organizers for World Youth Day 2008 have established a fund to help defray travel costs for a group of about 100 Chaldean Catholics from Iraq planning to attend World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, July 15-20.

The Chaldean Catholics include bishops, priests, seminarians and youths.

The group has recorded the World Youth Day theme song in Arabic and Syriac and has been giving support and prayers to families who have been forced to leave their homes as a result of the Iraq War.

One of the delegation’s organizers is Redemptorist Father Bashar Warda, rector of the major seminary of St. Peter, which reopened earlier this year in Arbil in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

The seminary had been forced to close its Baghdad location four years ago after it was damaged by a car bomb that killed 15 people.

Vatican Agrees to U.N. Conventions on Ozone

UNITED NATIONS – By acceding to U.N. conventions on the protection of the ozone layer, the Vatican said it hopes to encourage the world community to support and implement existing treaties.

“The Holy See desires to encourage the entire international community to be resolute in promoting authentic cooperation between politics, science and economics,” said a Vatican declaration.

Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations, released the declaration May 5 at the U.N. headquarters in New York of the Vatican’s accession to the Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, as well as its four amendments.

Tight Finances Reduce Subsidies in Miami

WASHINGTON – In a budgetary move meant to maintain ministries and meet the needs of a growing Catholic population, the Archdiocese of Miami will reduce funding for financially strapped parishes and schools.

Archbishop John C. Favalora told department heads in April that growing needs brought on by an increase in the Catholic population and rising poverty in the three counties of the archdiocese are forcing officials to prioritize spending and reduce subsidies to cover parish debt and to cover shortfalls in the operation of parish schools.

“In today’s economy and the circle of poverty affecting our community, I must be a good steward and can only do what our finances will allow,” the archbishop said.

“With the current financial status facing every corporation, institution, organization and family, we too must be financially responsible. Each year a greater number of parishes and programs are seeking our financial help and therefore we must prioritize,” he added. “We can only work with what we have.”

Pope May Apologize to Australian Abuse Victims

SYDNEY, Australia – While in Sydney for World Youth Day, Pope Benedict XVI may apologize to victims of clerical sexual abuse, according to Sydney’s largest circulation newspapers.

“The pope is set to make an historic apology when he visits Sydney in July – to the tens of thousands of Australians sexually and physically abused by predatory Catholic priests,” reported The Daily Telegraph.

The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, retired auxiliary bishop of Sydney and former head of the Church’s abuse panel, as saying he hopes “the Australian bishops will quietly ask the pope to say something on the issue of abuse when he comes to Sydney. It was young people who were abused so it’s not irrelevant to World Youth Day. From what I hear, the things the pope said in the United States and especially his meeting with victims did help.”

Liturgy, Stem Cells, Sex Abuse Topics for Bishops

WASHINGTON – Matters of liturgy and language will dominate the agenda of the U.S. bishops’ spring meeting June 12-14 at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando, Fla.

But such hot-button issues as embryonic stem-cell research, medically assisted nutrition and hydration, and clergy sex abuse also will come before the bishops.

Much of the three-day meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will be closed to the media, with the schedule calling for executive session, regional meetings and an afternoon of prayer and reflection.

As they begin what Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of Paterson, N.J., chairman of the USCCB Committee on Divine Worship, called “the final phase of the process of translation and approval of the Roman Missal for use in the United States,” the bishops will vote on a new translation of the proper prayers for each Sunday and feast day during the liturgical year.

But in a break from previous practice, the 700-page draft text of the readings was distributed to the bishops not on paper but only in electronic form, except for special requests.