San Diego Diocese Settles Cases for $198 Million

SAN DIEGO – The Diocese of San Diego Sept. 7 announced an agreement to pay $198.1 million to settle lawsuits with 144 victims of sexual abuse by priests.

The diocese had originally offered $95 million to settle the claims. The plaintiffs sought $200 million.

Earlier in the year, the diocese filed for bankruptcy protection hours before a trial was to begin in one of the first lawsuits alleging that the Church was responsible for sexual abuse by priests.

The judge in the bankruptcy case had recently threatened to throw out the bankruptcy case if the Church didn’t reach an agreement with the plaintiffs. The settlement is one of the largest in the country.

The Los Angeles Archdiocese announced an agreement in July to settle 508 lawsuits for $660 million.

Clean Technologies Will Clean the Earth, Says Pope

VATICAN CITY – Industrialized nations “must share clean technologies” with developing nations, as well as curb the demand for goods that damage the environment, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Countries with emerging economies and undergoing rapid industrialization “are not morally free to repeat the past errors of others by recklessly continuing to damage the environment,” the pope said in a written message to environmental and religious leaders meeting in Greenland.

As such, “highly industrialized countries must share clean technologies and ensure that their own markets do not sustain demand for goods whose very production contributes to the proliferation of pollution,” he said.

The Sept. 1 message was addressed to Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, one of the sponsors of the seventh Religion, Science and the Environment symposium on the Arctic.

The meeting in Ilulissat, Greenland, brought together religious leaders from numerous traditions to focus on the impact pollution and climate change have had on the island’s rapidly melting glaciers.

Religious Order to Turn Prison into Religious Site

BOGOTA, Colombia – An infamous Colombian prison named “La Catedral,” once home to narco-trafficking kingpin Pablo Escobar, soon will be turned into a center of prayer.

The administration of the prison site recently was given to the Monastic Brotherhood of St. Gertrude the Great, which plans to invest less than $60,000 to turn the ruins into a religious site and spiritual retreat.

A cross will stand at the site of an old guard tower and a sculpture of St. Gertrude will look down on the city.

The brotherhood also plans to build a chapel and rooms to serve as spiritual retreats.

When Colombian authorities finally were ready to arrest Escobar in 1991, he agreed to go to prison – but in a luxury facility built to his own specifications on a mountainside above the city of Medellin.

From inside the prison, which was equipped with a soccer field, a waterfall and a giant dollhouse for his daughter, Escobar continued ruling his drug empire and ordering murders.

But Escobar lived there only 13 months before learning he was to be transferred to a real prison.

He fled in July 1992, but was hunted down by police and shot dead on a rooftop the next year.

Richmond Sets New Guides For Marriage Preparation

RICHMOND, Va. – Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo of Richmond has approved a new diocesanwide marriage preparation process that will require engaged couples to take a premarital inventory, a full course in natural family planning and an educational program on Pope John Paul II’s “theology of the body.”

The changes came at the urging of a committee formed to review and recommend enhancements to the diocese’s existing marriage preparation process.

Engaged couples still will begin their marriage preparation process by meeting with their parish priest or deacon.

However, that meeting will be followed by a premarital inventory to assess the couple’s strengths and areas that need further exploration.

Additional components of the marriage preparation process will include a new catechetical program on marriage and sexuality called “God’s Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage” and instruction in one of the many natural family planning methods taught in the diocese.

Pope Benedict Meets Israeli President, Hopes for Peace

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy – Pope Benedict XVI met with Israeli President Shimon Peres and expressed hope that new diplomatic moves can bring peace in the Middle East.

After 60 years of suffering endured by the peoples of the region, it is imperative to make “every effort” to find a just settlement, the Vatican said after the Sept. 6 meeting.

Following his 35-minute private audience with the pope, Peres held separate talks with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, and Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican’s top foreign affairs official, to discuss the Middle East and church-state relations in Israel.

The encounters came as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were preparing to renew negotiations. Meanwhile, diplomats were setting the stage for a U.S.-sponsored international conference on the Middle East in November.

The Vatican statement said the prospect of an international conference raised new hopes and created a “particularly favorable context” for progress.

Pope Discusses Exodus of Christians from Iraq

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI met with Syria’s vice president to discuss the exodus of Christian and other refugees from Iraq, many of whom have fled to Syria.

During a private audience, Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa gave the pope a personal message from Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, the Vatican said in a statement.

Later, the Syrian vice president met for separate talks with Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican’s top foreign affairs expert.

The Vatican said the discussions focused on Syria’s efforts to host hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees and on Syria’s requests for aid from international agencies.