Tennessee Register - Diocese of Nashville

Transcription

January 2, 2015
Tennessee Register 1
January 2, 2015
| A Voice of Tennessee Catholic Life since 1937 | www.dioceseofnashville.com
Pope Francis continues to ‘take the world by storm’
Carol Zimmermann CNS
W
ASHINGTON. During the
second year of his pontificate,
Pope Francis was still feeling
the love, and not just from Catholics or
those from his homeland of Argentina.
A Pew Research Center study released Dec. 11 showed that the pope
has broad support across much of the
world. Sixty percent of the 43 nations
polled had a positive view of the pontiff.
And Americans, in particular, have
shown their fondness for Pope Francis,
often extolling his simplistic style. According to the Pew study, 78 percent of
Americans view the pope favorably.
Put another way: Archbishop Joseph
E. Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., who just
completed his first year as president
of the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops, said the pope has “taken the
world by storm.”
He recently told Catholic News
Service that 2014 brought worldwide
attention to almost everything Pope
Francis said and did – which “in so
many ways,” he said, made the U.S.
bishops’ work easier.
And the bishops were not the only
ones to recognize the pope’s appeal.
The pontiff, who was on the cover of
many magazines in 2013, still had the
coveted cover spot – not usually reserved for religious leaders – on Rolling Stone magazine this February.
He was also the topic of a number of
books issued this year and innumerable Catholic discussions either dur-
CNS photo/Paul Haring Pope Francis, who continures to enjoy worldwide popularity, greets children as he arrives to celebrate Mass at
St. Joseph Parish in Rome last month.
ing coffee and doughnut socials after
Masses or larger-scale symposiums at
Catholic universities.
During a Feb. 3 talk on the “Francis
factor” at Georgetown University, panelists used descriptors such as “troublemaker” and “anti-establishment” in
their discussion about Pope Francis.
They also commended his strong leadership and management style and of
course, his popularity.
Continued on page 7
Woman ensures financial health of parish she loved
Theresa Laurence
M
ildred Patt Brown, a lifelong
dedicated member of Sacred
Heart Parish in Loretto, “loved
to dedicate her time, talents and treasures” to her church, according to her
niece Amy Brown.
Although Mildred Brown died over
a year ago, her treasure will sustain
Sacred Heart far into the future. The
disbursement of Brown’s estate was
recently finalized, and that included a
nearly $191,000 donation to pay down
the Sacred Heart Building Fund, leaving the parish with only about $10,000
left on its loan payment.
“Thanks to Mildred’s very generous
donation, the debt owed on the Parish
Life Center is basically gone,” said Father Lukas Arulappa, MSFS, pastor of
Sacred Heart and St. Joseph parishes in
Lawrence County.
Brown’s donation to Sacred Heart, a
small parish located in the rural southern tip of the Diocese of Nashville, was
welcomed and celebrated by pastor and
parishioners alike. Father Arulappa
honored Brown with a special Mass on
Nov. 22, with many family and friends
in attendance. “She was totally committed to the church…a very practicing
Catholic who attended Mass daily,” said
Father Arulappa. “She was so honest
and sincere.”
When Mildred Brown died, her family
“lost our matriarch, genealogist, family historian, beloved aunt, sister and
friend,” said Amy Brown, one of her
24 nieces and nephews. “We are very
honored to have had her in our lives
and to have shared her with everyone
at Sacred Heart.”
“Mildred wasn’t just a co-worker, she
was my best friend, a shoulder to cry
on when things got hard, and a great
advisor, a confidant, and a fill-in if I was
off,” said Donna Hindman, who worked
with Brown in the Sacred Heart church
office for more than a decade. Brown
spent countless hours volunteering at
the church, motivated by “her love for
her church,” Hindman said. It was “her
way she could give back.”
Brown, a native of Lawrence County,
was born May 31, 1935, and baptized at
Sacred Heart when she was just a few
days old. She received all of her sacraments at Sacred Heart and stood in
the church many times as godmother,
confirmation sponsor and witness at
numerous weddings, according to her
niece Amy Brown.
Continued on next page
Local artist working on third papal portrait ... page 8 | Volunteers stretch Catholic Charities’ reach … page 15
2 Tennessee Register
January 2, 2015
Woman ensures financial health of parish she loved
Continued from front page
“Sacred Heart was a major part of her
life, it was really her second home,” she
said.
Brown, a retired
vice president of
the local SunTrust
Bank, where she
worked for more
than 40 years, was
a member of the
Sacred Heart altar
society, choir, parish
Brown
council and finance
board. Many Sacred Heart parishioners and Lawrence County residents
remember her from serving as cashier and accountant at various parish
events, especially the annual Fourth of
July picnic.
“It was no surprise to her family that
she left this parish half of her estate,”
Amy Brown said.
Hindman recalls that Brown was
“very meticulous in her accounting.
She kept a ledger with every person
that gave, no matter how small or
large.” She also assisted with counting the Sunday Mass collections and
school receipts. Even as her eyesight
and overall health began to fail in recent years, Brown still wanted to help
with the accounting work in the church
office. She trained a new volunteer so
she could step away from the daily demands of the position.
For her years of dedicated service to
Sacred Heart Parish, Brown was recognized as the 2007 Volunteer of the Year,
and a plaque and a photo of her still
hangs in the church office.
“Mildred will always be part of the
Sacred Heart Church office,” said
Hindman.
Brown was also very proud of living
with and managing her diabetes for
more than five decades. She received a
medal from the Joslin Diabetes Center
at Harvard Medical School for surviv-
ing the disease for 50 years. “She was
very proud of the medal,” Amy Brown
said.
“Aunt Mildred” shared her generosity
with her family and her parish, but she
is also remembered for sharing much
more than that. “She taught many of us
to pray the rosary and the importance
of Jesus in our lives,” said Amy Brown.
She shared her talents of playing the
piano, knitting, crocheting and quilting
and passed along her love of genealogy,
photography, puzzles and reading to
many family members, Brown added.
Hindman noted that Brown “always
had a smile on her face.” If there was
ever a stranger at Mass, she went out
of her way to welcome them. “She
touched the lives of everyone she
knew.” !
Leaving a legacy behind to support church ministries
From staff reports
T
he late Margaret Patt Brown’s
$191,000 donation to Sacred
Heart Church in Loretto was
an extremely generous gift from a parishioner who worked hard, lived frugally, and saved money for decades,
planning for a sizeable portion of her
estate to go to her beloved church.
High dollar donations from individuals like Brown to parishes in the Diocese of Nashville are rare, according
to Ron Szejner, executive director of
the Catholic Community Foundation
of Middle Tennessee. “We’re trying to
change that,” he said. “We would like
more people to think about leaving a
legacy to a parish.”
Brown did not go through the
Catholic Community Foundation of
Middle Tennessee to make her donation; it is still a fairly new option for
members of the diocese to pre-plan
their estates. In his role with the
CCFMT, Szejner works to spread the
word about how individuals can plan
their giving to support their chosen
ministries and institutions in the most
effective way possible.
The Foundation works with donors
to capitalize on the benefits of charitable planned giving, with the ability
to reduce their taxes and leave a
legacy for future generations. Working through the Foundation can offer
advantages to the donor during their
lifetime, as well as ensuring their
funds are disbursed as planned after
their death, Szejner said. “We offer a
range of solutions to support people
whose philanthropy is church.”
The Catholic Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee is a nonprofit, independent charitable organization that supports the religious, ed-
ucation and philanthropic objectives
of the Diocese of Nashville. It serves
the needs of individuals and families
who wish to make a lasting, growing
contribution to the advancement of
Catholic values and to benefit their
charitable objectives at any level. The
Foundation helps to sustain the works
of parishes, schools, agencies and
outreach programs in the Diocese of
Nashville and Middle Tennessee.
As more people become aware of
the Foundation and “prayerfully consider growing the good things that
are happening in the diocese,” Szejner said, he is confident that more
people will consider following the
generous lead of Mildred Brown and
others who have chosen to leave a
legacy to their church.
For more information, visit the
Foundation’s website at www.ccfmtn.
org. !
Pope warns Vatican officials of ‘spiritual Alzheimer’s,’ other ills
Francis X. Rocca CNS
V
ATICAN CITY. Pope Francis’
Christmas greeting to the
Vatican bureaucracy this year
was an extended warning against a
host of spiritual ills to which he said
Vatican officials are prone, including
“spiritual Alzheimer’s,” “existential
schizophrenia,” publicity-seeking, the
“terrorism of gossip” and even a poor
sense of humor.
The pope made his remarks Dec.
22, in a biting half-hour speech
to heads of the Roman Curia, the
church’s central administration, and
to cardinals resident in Rome.
Popes have often used their annual
Christmas speech to review events of
the previous year and lay out priorities for the next. Pope Francis’ ninemember Council of Cardinals is currently working on an overhaul of the
Curia, but the pope’s speech did not
address specific reforms. Instead, he
spoke in general terms of virtues and
values, saying he hoped his words
might serve officials as a “support
and stimulus to a true examination
of conscience” in preparation for the
sacrament of reconciliation.
The pope, who has made criticism
of the church’s leaders a common
theme of his preaching, called the
Curia a “dynamic body” naturally vulnerable to “maladies, to dysfunction,
to infirmities.”
He offered what he called a “catalog” of 15 such diseases. Most cor-
CNS photo/Paul Haring Cardinals are pictured as Pope Francis gives his speech during an audience
to exchange Christmas greetings with members of the Roman Curia in
Clementine Hall at the Vatican Dec. 22. Pictured from left are: Cardinals
Gianfranco Ravasi, Elio Sgreccia and Fernando Filoni.
responded to vices for which he has
frequently rebuked the hierarchy,
including self-promotion, greed and a
focus on bureaucratic efficiency over
pastoral solicitude. But the pope’s
rhetoric this time was especially impassioned and forceful.
Following a year in which Vatican
officials and other bishops aired differences to a remarkable degree in
the press, especially during the October Synod of Bishops on the family,
Pope Francis warned against “exhi-
bitionism,” the “malady of persons
who seek insatiably to increase their
power and to that end are capable of
calumniating, defaming and discrediting others, even in newspapers and
magazines.”
The pope denounced the “hypocrisy typical of the mediocre” and said
an apostle who puts excessive faith
in planning becomes a mere “bookkeeper or accountant” who would
“confine and control the liberty of the
Holy Spirit.” He said an official who
forgets his personal relationship with
Jesus becomes completely dependent
on his “passions, whims and manias,”
“incapable of carrying out any autonomous activity, living in a state
of absolute dependence on his often
imaginary views.”
Officials who idolize their bosses
are “victims of careerism and opportunism,” “mean persons, unhappy and
inspired only by their own fatal egoism,” the pope said, acknowledging
that bosses often encourage such attitudes to obtain “submission, loyalty
and psychological dependence” from
their staff.
Deriding a “gruff and grim” manner
he described as characteristic of the
insecure, Pope Francis called for a
“joyous spirit, full of humor and even
self-mockery, that makes us amiable
persons, even in difficult situations.”
The pope said that every day he recites a prayer, which he attributed to
St. Thomas More, asking God for a
sense of humor.
The pope wound up his remarks on
a note of encouragement, saying that
the failings of a few have discredited
the virtuous majority of the church’s
ministers. He quoted an adage that
“priests are like airplanes, they make
news only when they fall, but there
are so many that fly.”
After the speech in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall, the pope spent about
half an hour exchanging Christmas
greetings with individual cardinals
and curial members. !
January 2, 2015
Necrology
The Diocese of Nashville asks for your
prayers for vocations, for our priests
and for the following deceased clergy of
the Diocese of Nashville:
Rev. Joseph Francis Murray
Januar y 4, 1904
Rev. Thomas B. Woodley
Januar y 4, 1965
Rev. Joseph B. Tarpey
Januar y 7, 1989
Most Rev. Richard Scannell, D.D.
Januar y 8, 1916
Most Rev. Joseph Rademacher, D.D.
Januar y 12 1900
Rev. Daniel W. Ellard
Januar y 14 1915
Rev. Ambrose J. Heim
Januar y 13 1854
Rt. Rev. Msgr. Thomas Tobin
Januar y 18, 1924
Rev. William A. Shannon
Januar y 19 1925
Rev. Daniel A. Clements
Januar y 20 2013
Rev. William Walsh
Januar y 21 1902
Zomi Catholics spread Christmas cheer for bishop
Rev. Alphonse B. Parker
Januar y 22 1927
Members of the Zomi Catholic Association of Nashville recently made a visit to Bishop David Choby’s house
to sing Christmas carols and to spread some holiday cheer. The community has about 100 members, most of
whom were refugees resettled in Nashville. Their home country is Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The
community celebrates Mass at 2 p.m. on Sundays at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on Nolensville Road, which
is near the neighborhoods where most of the members live. The earliest signs of Catholicism in Myanmar date
as early as 1287. After the discovery of the route to India by Vasco da Gama in 1497, Portuguese missionaries
began accompanying soldiers, sailors and settlers who were arriving in Myanmar. Catholicism has grown over
the centuries and the clergy in Myanmar is now mostly native.
Rev. Francis T. Marron
Januar y 25 1918
Rev. John J. Tierney
Januar y 25 1977
Rev. Joseph Edward Wesley
Januar y 30 1984
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Photo by Andy Telli
Celebrating vocations
January 2, 2015 | Volume 78, Number 1
Publisher Most Rev. David R. Choby
Editor in Chief Rick Musacchio
Managing Editor Andy Telli
Staff Writer Theresa Laurence
Administrative Nancy Mattson
Production Debbie Lane
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Diocese of Nashville seminarian Dillon Barker talks with Father David
Perkin during the annual Vocations Dinner sponsored by the Serra
Clubs of Nashville and Williamson County. The dinner was held Friday,
Dec. 19, at Christ the King Church. The Serra Club is an organization of
laypeople dedicated to supporting and promoting vocations.
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January 2, 2015
COMMUNITY CALENDAR
January
4 Sunday
brar y, 10-11 a.m., 4210 Harding Pike,
Nashville. The event is for children 5 and
under, accompanied by an adult, and features stories, music, and snacks.
13 Tuesday
† St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
Father Ryan Alumni Reception, 3-5:30
p.m., Catignani-Drennan Fieldhouse, 700
Nor wood Dr., Nashville. RSVP: www.fatherryan.org/pearl50.
5 Monday
† St. John Neumann
Nashville Sports Council Luncheon,
11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m., Wildhorse Saloon. Celebrate 50 years of sports equality. Then
learn more about this time in history with
an exhibit of photos and memorabilia in
the Civil Rights Room at the Nashville
Public Library at 3:30 p.m. Luncheon registration: http://bit.ly/NSClunch.
50th Anniversar y of the Historic
Game between Father Ryan and Pearl
Cohn High School, 5 p.m., Municipal
Auditorium, Nashville. Info/tickets: www.
fatherryan.org/pearl50 and Ticketmaster.
6 Tuesday
† St. Andre Bessette
Refuge, 6:45 p.m., St. Edward, 188
Thompson Ln., Nashville. Join Fr. Nolte
and Fr. Reehil for praise, worship, adoration, and catechesis. Bring your bible,
notebook, and pen.
7 Wednesday
† St. Raymond of Pennafort
† St. Hilary of Poitiers
Mass for Vocations, 7:15 a.m., Father
Ryan High School, 700 Nor wood Dr.,
Nashville. Sponsored by Serra Club of
Nashville.
Father Ryan Academic Blend for parents of 8th graders, 9:30-11:30 a.m.,
700 Norwood Dr., Nashville. Have coffee
with Vice Principal and Academic Dean
Sara Hayes to learn about the school’s
academic program. RSVP required: fatherryan.org/coffee.
and Fr. Reehil for praise, worship, adoration, and catechesis.
14 Wednesday
† St. Felix of Nola
Divorced, Separated or Widowed Support Group, 7 p.m., St. Stephen, 14544
Lebanon Rd., Old Hickory. Info: (615) 8835351.
15 Thursday
† St. Paul the Hermit
Ser ra Club of Williamson County
Mass, Program, and Cof fee, 9 a.m.,
St. Philip Church, 113 Second Ave. S.,
Franklin.
Divorced, Separated or Widowed Support Group, 7 p.m., St. Stephen, 14544 Lebanon Rd., Old Hickory. Info: (615) 883-5351.
Overeaters Anonymous Meeting for
Men, 12-1 p.m., St. Henry Parish Library,
6401 Harding Pike, Nashville. Info: noonthursday@gmail.com.
8 Thursday
16 Friday
† St. Thorfinn
† St. Fursey
Nashville Catholic Business League
Prayer Breakfast, 7 a.m. Mass, Cathedral, 2015 West End Ave., Nashville. The
breakfast program is from 7:30-8:30 a.m.
in the Fleming Center. Info: www.catholicbusinessleague.org.
Weekend Renewal for Married Couples, Jan. 16-18, begins with a social and
dinner at 5 p.m., Garner Creek Retreat
Center, 700 Sam Hollow Rd., Dickson.
Offered by Lloyd and Jan Tate from New
Orleans and Fr. Joe McMahon. Info/registration: Lucy Blair (615) 373-4696 x 225 or
lucy.blair@holyfamilycc.com. Cost: $350/
couple.
Overeaters Anonymous Meeting for
Men, 12-1 p.m., St. Henry Parish Library,
6401 Harding Pike, Nashville. Info: noonthursday@gmail.com.
Christ the King School Open House,
6-7 p.m.; followed by the prospective kindergarten parent meeting at 7 p.m., 3105
Belmont Blvd., Nashville. Info: Jeanette
Vogt (615) 292-9465.
9 Friday
† St. Theodosius the Cenobiarch
Johnny Drennan ’85 Memorial Wrestling Tour nament, Jan. 9-10, Father
Ryan, Catignani-Drennan Fieldhouse, 700
Norwood Dr., Nashville.
11 Sunday
Red Cross Blood Drive, 8 a.m. -1 p.m.,
St. Joseph, Parish Life Ctr., 1225 Gallatin
Pike S., Madison. Registration: after Mass
or (615) 860-0128.
Tridentine Liturgy, 4 p.m., St. Catherine,
3019 Cayce Lane, Columbia.
12 Monday
† St. Marguerite Bourgeoys
Stor y Time at Overbrook School Li-
18 Sunday
† St. Volusian
Tridentine Mass (The Extraordinar y
Form of the Mass), 1:30 p.m., Assumption Church, 1227 Seventh Ave. N., Nashville. Info: (615) 256-2729.
Seven Dolors of the BVM Fraternity of
the Secular Franciscan Order Meeting, 2 p.m., St. Philip Church, 113 Second
Ave. S., Franklin. Info: Deacon Simeon
Panagatos (615) 459-2045.
20 Tuesday
† St. Fabian
and Fr. Reehil for praise, worship, adoration, and catechesis.
ADORATIONS
Visit www.dioceseofnashville.com
for regularly scheduled adorations.
The children and youth of St. Anthony Church in Fayetteville portray the
birth of Christ during the parish’s annual performance of “Lessons and
Carols.”
St. Anthony parishioners
celebrate Christmas with song
T
he parishioners of St. Anthony
Church in Fayetteville, both
young and old alike, gathered
on the evening of Sunday, Dec. 14,
to celebrate the Christmas season
with song and fellowship.
The Christmas festival began with
“Lessons and Carols,” presented by
the parish choir, youth and children.
While the choir sang traditional
carols, the children and youth of the
parish enacted the nine lessons.
Scenes included Adam and Eve
in the garden, the Old Testament
prophet proclaiming the coming
savior, the Annunciation and the pro-
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cession to the manager by the Holy
Family, prophets and wise men.
After “Lessons and Carols,”
the parish’s Hispanic community
brought the story of the “Little
Drummer Boy” to life.
The night also included the
lighting of a very special parish
Christmas tree. The lights on the
tree were dedicated in honor or in
memory of friends and relatives of
parishioners. They will remain lit
every night throughout the Christmas season, as a reminder of the
love and prayers for the people they
represent.
The grand finale of the night was
the kindergarten and pre-kindergarten religious education classes performing the opening of “Joy to the
World” with color bells. The congregation and organ joined in to sing
the song before everyone adjourned
to the social hall for a Tex-Mex chili
supper. The Hospitality Committee
served home-made dishes supplied
by the choir, Hispanic community
and several parishioners. !
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January 2, 2015
St. Philip reaches out to community to spread Christmas spirit
Briana Grzybowski
E
ach December, as they have
for over four decades, St. Philip
parishioners enthusiastically embraced the giving spirit of the Christmas season.
In 1969, the Men’s Club at St. Philip
Parish in Franklin delivered food and
Christmas gifts to two needy families
in the parish as a way of feeding the
hungry. The Christmas Basket program is now celebrating its 45th year
and spreading Christmas joy to roughly
1,100 individuals and an additional 400
nursing home residents annually.
It has also become the biggest community outreach project St. Philip does
each year, inviting parishioners of all
ages to help care for the needy living
among them.
“It originally was the late Jay
Swauger’s idea to start this program,”
said St. Philip parishioner Craig Henderson, who is in charge of running
the Christmas basket program. “Over
the years, this project grew more and
more. Eventually, he founded the nondenominational ministry Graceworks,
so we’ve been partnering with them to
reach out to about 400 families in Williamson County every year.”
Graceworks does about half the work
needed to make the program succeed.
“They provide the food and the names
of roughly 200 families needing help
over the holidays, as well as the num-
ber, ages and genders of the children in
each of those families,” Henderson said.
“The other 200 families have reached
out directly to us or are our own parishioners. And a few come from the
Church of the Nativity in Spring Hill,
since they’re our sister parish,” he
added. “We also provide the Christmas
gifts for all the families who receive
help from us. We ask parishioners to
donate new and gently used toys and
clothing. And when we wrap them, we
label the packages with people’s ages
and genders so the gifts are distributed
correctly.”
Planning the event begins two
months in advance. “Around October,
we discuss the successes and failures
we had the past year, to figure out what
worked and what didn’t,” Henderson
said. “We also begin talking to Graceworks to get the names of people who
need our help.
“In November we finalize the plans
for the year. And in December we order
the food, make the appeals for money
and gifts and have the actual event
itself,” he said. “And it goes smoothly
every year.”
Henderson is amazed at how many
parishioners donate their time to help
out each year. “I can’t really give an
estimate on how many people come in
a given year, but it’s somewhere in the
hundreds. We have a different event
each day of the week, and we see new
faces in the crowd every day.
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“On Sunday night, we have people
lining the floor of the community center with plastic and setting up boxes
for food. On Tuesday, we collect the
Christmas gifts from parishioners,
and we have more people coming to
do that. On Wednesday morning, the
Women’s group sorts out the toys, and
they’re spending hours working on
that. That night, people bring their entire families to wrap the gifts.
“When we go caroling at local nursing homes on Thursday, we have yet
another group of people showing up.
On Friday night and Saturday morning,
when we pack the boxes and deliver
them, we still have more people coming,” Henderson said. “It’s really an
incredible thing to see.”
St. Philip parishioners are also very
generous with their financial support
for the program. “We spend about
$40,000 per year on food alone. The
weekend before the program officially
starts, we make announcements at
all the Masses to ask parishioners to
donate money. Every year, we start out
with nothing, and we’ve always been
able to pay our bills,” Henderson said.
“If we have extra money left over, we
either donate it to local charities or we
buy grocery gift cards for the families
we reach out to through this program,”
he said. “But either way, every penny
we make goes towards helping the underprivileged in our community.”
Henderson’s favorite part of being
involved with the Christmas basket program each year is delivering the food
and gifts to the families who benefit
from it.
“Seeing the look on the face of someone receiving something as simple as
food or a Christmas gift is what I love
the most,” Henderson said. “The act of
giving of one’s self is the most rewarding thing a follower of Christ can do.
I feel that every year when I see the
gratitude we receive from the people
we help.” !
Photo by Rick Musacchio
Knights support seminarian fund
Announcing the 2015 Catholic Campaign for Human Development MultiMedia Youth Arts Contest including
visual arts, literary arts, CDs or DVDs.
Sponsored by Catholic Charities of Tennessee.
A literary and visual arts and multimedia contest about our Catholic response to poverty. For students grade 712.
Submit entries to Catholic Charities, 30 White Bridge Rd. by
February 27, 2015, 4 p.m.
This year's theme is
“Do Justice, Love Goodness,
Walk Humbly with God”
(Micah 6:8)
For more information, please contact Fran Rajotte at frajotte@cctenn.org
www.usccb.org/youthcontest
(Spanish) www.usccb.org/concurso-juvenil
John Park, state deputy of the Knights of Columbus, presents two
checks to Bishop David Choby in the board room at the Catholic
Center. He presented a check for the Seminarian Education fund for
$3123 and for the Bishop’s Burse for $7000. Checks for the same
amounts were also presented to the bishops of Knoxville and Memphis
from funds raised by the Knights of Columbus councils in Tennessee.
January 2, 2015
‘Happy’ about warming of U.S.-Cuba
relations, pope praises diplomacy
Carol Glatz CNS
V
ATICAN CITY. Pope Francis
expressed his joy over the historic turning point in U.S.-Cuba
relations as the two countries agreed
to restore diplomatic ties after half a
century.
“Today we are happy because we
have seen how two peoples who were
distanced for so many years took a step
toward each other yesterday,” he told a
group of new ambassadors.
The pope credited the breakthrough
to the consistent, constant efforts of the
nations’ ambassadors and the “noble”
task of diplomacy.
The pope’s comments came Dec. 18
in a speech to 13 new ambassadors to
the Vatican who were presenting their
letters of credential to the pope. Among
the 13 were ambassadors representing
Mongolia, Rwanda, Qatar, New Zealand
and Bangladesh.
The pope told them that the work of
an ambassador is carried out with “tiny
steps, tiny things” even “really tiny” efforts.
But all of those efforts “always end
in creating peace, bringing people’s
hearts closer together, sowing fraternity among peoples,” he said.
Referring to the announcements by
the United States and Cuba Dec. 17
to restore relations, but without specifically naming the two countries, the
pope told the diplomats that the rapprochement “was moved forward by
ambassadors, by diplomacy. Your work
is noble, very noble.”
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, said the pope’s “culture
of encounter” was a decisive tipping
point for restored relations and offers
the key to diplomatic success stories in
the future.
The pope’s call for “encounter” means
that “when there are problems then
one must apply the method of dialogue,
and the more problems there are, the
more difficulties there are, the more
there must be dialogue,” he said in an
interview with Vatican Radio Dec. 18.
“If the dialogue is sincere its final goal,
its aim is always helping people come
together, even in their respective differences and help them collaborate,” he said.
The cardinal said this landmark
move has come after many years of the
hard work, patience and “small steps”
of many people, including the popes,
starting with St. John XXIII.
However, he said, Pope Francis, as
the first pope from Latin America, “was
decisive because he was the one who
took the initiative to write to the two
presidents to invite them to overcome
the difficulties existing between the
two countries and to find a point of
agreement, a point of encounter.
“Certainly this is also due to the fact
that he comes from that region and
therefore effectively knows the problems and he also found the right way,
let’s say, to foster a bit a solution to the
separation and a coming together of the
two sides,” he said.
Cardinal Parolin said he believed
the breakthrough between the United
States and Cuba will serve as an inspiration and model for the rest of Latin
America and the world when it comes
to solving its problems.
“It’s a kind of model,” he said, showing how “two nations that had many
problems, many difficulties in their relations were able to, thanks to the good
will and courage on behalf of their leaders, too,” find a positive resolution.
“Perhaps it will inspire other leaders
to also have the courage to look for the
path of dialogue and encounter,” he said.
Pope Francis, like his predecessors,
will continue to insist that “it is possible
to understand each other, it is possible
to reach an understanding, it is possible to end up collaborating and to also
find a way out of the difficulties that
separate us,” the cardinal said.
Meanwhile, a Vatican diplomat said
he expected other landmark moves in
the future because of the pope’s approach and the skill of Cardinal Parolin.
Archbishop Antonio Mennini, papal
nuncio to Great Britain, said in an interview with an Italian journalist that the
pope was playing an important role in
world diplomacy.
In addition to the cardinal’s “notable
qualifications,” Pope Francis possesses
“a personal diplomacy” and an approach of dialogue “that will bear much
fruit,” he said in the interview, which
appeared on the Aleteia website.
“His being from Latin America,
among other things, helps him have
a unique view of every situation that
involves all the communities of this
continent. I am sure we will see other
similar results,” the archbishop said.
The Italian archbishop, who served
as nuncio to the Russian Federation for
eight years as well as Uzbekistan and
Bulgaria before that, said this “great
gesture of an easing of tensions can be
a sign of similar initiatives with other
countries too,” specifically, he said, between the United States and Russia in
the wake of sanctions imposed after the
crisis in the Ukraine.
“Russia needs the West, but the West
also needs Russia,” particularly in helping resolve the crises in the Middle
East, Syria and the nuclear question in
Iran, he said.
He said Pope Francis is following the
footsteps of popes before him who were
instrumental in landmark diplomatic
moves by “responding to the evangelical call to ‘be shrewd as serpents and
simple as doves.’”
“The church doesn’t have enormous
powers but it can offer dialogue and
friendship like (Pope Francis) does,
and we hope that the Lord may always
help him in this task in order to offer a
remedy to the “World War ‘in bits and
pieces’” being waged today, he said.
Meanwhile, the Cuban bishops’ conference expressed “special gratitude” to
the pope for his role as a “major player
in a desire that has now become reality” and to God for the “new horizons of
hope” shining before the Cuban people.
The bishops also said in their written
statement that they hoped that “the
good will expressed by the presidents
(of Cuba and the United States) may
contribute to the material and spiritual
welfare of our people.”
They added their appreciation for the
release and return of three Cubans,
who were imprisoned in the U.S. for
about 14 years, as well as the release of
a “North American prisoner” who was
reunited with his family. !
NEWS BRIEFS
Catholic News Service
Fatal shooting of two
New York police officers
called ‘brutal, irrational’
NEW YORK. New York Cardinal
Timothy M. Dolan joined in mourning
what he called the “brutal and irrational execution of two young, promising
and devoted police officers” fatally
shot Dec. 20 as they sat in their New
York Police Department cruiser on a
Brooklyn street.
“God’s holy word, which we just
heard, and the sermon that follows,
are supposed to be good news. Some
days that’s tough to give, this good
news, and this is one of them,” the cardinal said in his homily during Mass
Dec. 21 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
According to police, officers Rafael
Ramos and Wenjian Liu were ambushed as they sat in their marked
police car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant
section of Brooklyn.
“We tear up thinking about their
heartbroken families; as we are in
solidarity with our police officers who
experience a ‘death in the family’; as
we worry about a city tempted to tension and division,” the cardinal said.
“‘Good news’ might seem distant, difficult, even indiscrete, as we anticipate
the joy of Christmas four days away,
and feel more like we’re near Good
Friday.”
A gunman opened fire on Ramos and
Liu, shooting both fatally in the head.
The suspected shooter, identified as
Ismaaiyl Brinsley, then fled to the
subway where, police say, he committed suicide. An AP story said Ramos
and Liu were part of a special detail
assigned to help reduce crime in that
part of Brooklyn.
Church plan on Ebola:
pastoral care as well as
health, education
CAPE TOWN, South Africa. Pope
Francis will boost the church’s response to Ebola in West Africa through
an initiative that focuses on pastoral
care as well as health and education, a
Vatican official told Liberian President
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Monrovia.
Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of
the Pontifical Council for Justice and
Peace, met with Sirleaf and Liberia’s
three bishops Dec. 18 in Monrovia.
Msgr. Robert J. Vitillo, health adviser
for Caritas Internationalis, attended
the meeting and told Catholic News
Service that caring for orphans who
face rejection after losing parents to
Ebola will be among the priorities.
Cardinal Turkson, who spent two
days in Sierra Leone and Liberia meeting with church and other leaders, told
the president of the pope’s “solidarity
and concern,” said Msgr. Vitillo, who
represents Caritas at U.N. agencies in
Geneva.
The death toll from Ebola in Liberia,
neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea,
the three worst-affected countries in
West Africa, has risen to nearly 7,400
from more than 19,000 cases, the
World Health Organization said Dec.
20.
Sirleaf thanked the cardinal for all
the work the church has done since
the outbreak started in March and
noted “her joy at the reopening of St.
Joseph’s Hospital,” Msgr. Vitillo said
in a Dec. 21 telephone interview from
Monrovia, Liberia.
Indianapolis auxiliary
bishop appointed
to head Vermont diocese
WASHINGTON. Pope Francis has
named Auxiliary Bishop Christopher
J. Coyne of Indianapolis to head the
Diocese of Burlington, Vt.
Bishop Coyne, 56, succeeds Bishop
Salvatore R. Matano, who was installed last January as the ninth
bishop of Rochester, N.Y. The appointment was announced Dec. 22
in Washington by Archbishop Carlo
Maria Vigano, apostolic nuncio to the
United States.
Bishop Coyne, 56, has been an auxiliary bishop in Indianapolis since 2011
and was the archdiocesan vicar general. Most recently, he has had special
responsibilities in three deaneries of
the archdiocese and been administrator at two parishes.
He will be installed Jan. 29 at St. Joseph Co-Cathedral in Burlington.
In a statement, Bishop Coyne said,
“I am grateful to Pope Francis for his
confidence in me in appointing me to
Burlington. Personally, I could not be
happier to be assigned here and look
forward to returning to my native
New England.” He added, “While I
will miss the great people of Indiana
and all of my friends there, I am ready
to commit myself fully to the work
of the Catholic Church here in Vermont.”
2014 Heisman Trophy
winner says everything
he does is for God’s ‘glory’
PORTLAND, Ore. The winner of
college football’s 2014 Heisman Trophy attended Hawaii’s only all-boys
Catholic high school, the successor
to the school St. Damien of Molokai
briefly attended in preparation for his
ordination in Honolulu.
Marcus Mariota, the University of
Oregon’s dual threat quarterback, is
a 2011 graduate of historic St. Louis
High in Honolulu. Though he and
his family are not Catholic, Mariota
attended Mass at St. Louis and also is
a regular at the Ducks’ weekly team
Masses and shows up at campus ministry liturgies on occasion.
“He is a great kid,” said Dominican Father Peter Do, pastor at St.
Thomas More Newman Center in
Eugene. “He is very humble.”
In an interview before the 2014
football season, Mariota told the
Fellowship of Christian Athletes
Magazine that faith plays a major
role in his life. “When things start to
get rough, you find comfort in your
faith,” he said. “Knowing that no matter what, you can dust yourself off
and be OK. And you know you do it
for (God’s) glory. You do it for your
teammates, your family, but also for
his glory and to represent his name.”
Mariota told the publication that
his faith is “the steadying force that’s
pushed me, along with my family, my
friends and my teammates.” !
January 2, 2015
In Middle East, a year marked by upheaval leaves millions suffering
Barb Fraze CNS
W
ASHINGTON. The story of the
Middle East in 2014 is one of war
and displacement, broken families and tireless aid workers, and the rise
of a new group one scholar referred to as
“al-Qaida on steroids.”
It’s a story of populations stretched to the
limit, but still welcoming more refugees as
neighbors. And it’s a tale of religious leaders calling for prayer, meeting for dialogue
and urging an end to the violence.
The continuing civil war in Syria created
what Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees, called “the
defining humanitarian challenge of our
times.” His agency estimated in December that more than 3.3 million Syrian refugees lived in the neighboring countries of
Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.
UNHCR also estimated that, within
Syria, 12.2 million people were in need
– including 7.6 million people displaced
from their homes. Of those displaced, half
were children.
Amid the migration of Syrians to neighboring countries, a group calling itself the
Islamic State began driving Christians,
Yezidis and even Muslim minorities from
parts of Syria and Iraq. The minorities
told stories of the Islamic State group cutting off electricity for weeks ahead of the
main troops’ arrival. When the militants
arrived, minorities were told to convert to
Islam, pay a protection tax or be killed.
Mary Habeck, associate professor in
strategic studies at Johns Hopkins School
of Advanced International Studies in
Washington, described the Islamic State,
and its parent group, al-Qaida, as “merchants of violence” trying to “use Islam for
their own purposes.” The groups are “a
very tiny group of extremists that have decided that they understand what Islam is,
and they are going to force the rest of the
Muslim-majority world in their direction.”
After capturing Mosul, Iraq, in June, the
Islamic State group declared a caliphate,
or Islamic empire. Habeck said the group
views itself as “the only legitimate government in the entire world.”
Faced with the choice of renouncing
their faith or being killed, hundreds of
thousands of Christians and other minorities in Iraq’s Ninevah province fled Mosul
to places like Qaraqosh. Later, as Islamic
State fighters advanced, the minorities
fled again to cities like Irbil, Iraq, where
they slept in churches or in tents in parks
and on the streets.
The mass migration of Syrians and
Iraqis – combined with Palestinians left
homeless after a 50-day Israeli incursion
into the Gaza Strip, created a huge challenge for international aid organizations,
including those run by the Catholic
Church. Most refugees in the Middle East
do not live in camps, but in local communities. This placed a strain on the host
countries.
Church agencies focused on helping
those communities. For instance, between
August and early November, Caritas Jordan registered 4,000 Iraqis; the agency
helped more who did not register.
Lebanon, a country 70 percent the size
of Connecticut, has a population of 4
million and hosted 1.5 million additional
refugees.
Jordan, slightly smaller than Indiana,
with a population of 6.5 million, recognized 44 different nationalities as refugees. From 1921 to 2011, Jordan had a
$10 billion deficit; since the Arab Spring
began in 2011, it has picked up an additional $10 billion deficit.
Although the Jordanian government
welcomed those fleeing, for the past three
years it said that 30 percent of any aid
going to help Syrian refugees must help the
host community. It set similar quotas when
Iraqis began fleeing to Jordan in 2003, at
the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Christian aid agencies tried to coordinate their work, focusing on various aspects of aid: One agency might help with
mattresses and personal items; another
might help with education.
Church agencies also coordinated aid in
Gaza after the Israeli-Hamas war left 2,000
Palestinians dead, thousands injured and
more than 100,000 people homeless.
In July, the Catholic aid agencies met
three times in as many days, planning for
Gazans’ psychosocial and material needs.
“We are talking about a massive number
of people who will be in need of help, and
of at least 200,000 children who will need
intervention,” Sami El-Yousef, regional
director of the Jerusalem office of the
Catholic Near East Welfare Association,
told Catholic News Service in July.
During a May visit to the Holy Land,
Pope Francis made an unscheduled stop
to pray for peace before the controversial
separation wall built by Israel throughout
the West Bank land. He invited Israeli
President Shimon Peres and Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas to the Vatican
to pray for peace.
Throughout the year, he made repeated
calls for peace in the Middle East. In
early October, he met with the region’s
apostolic nuncios and top Vatican officials;
later that month, he included a discus-
sion on the Middle East during the Oct.
20 consistory of cardinals in order to let
the region’s seven patriarchs, who were
taking part in the Synod of Bishops, also
attend the proceedings.
At that meeting, Pope Francis said the
Middle East was experiencing “terrorism
of previously unimaginable proportions”
in which the perpetrators seem to have
absolutely no regard for the value of
human life.
The Mideast Catholic and Orthodox
patriarchs as well as bishops from North
America, Europe and Oceania visited the
Holy Land and northern Iraq to express
solidarity with their fellow Christians. And
although patriarchs expressed concern
about Christians fleeing the violence in
northern Iraq, laypeople were not the
only ones leaving the advance of Islamic
State: Twelve Chaldean religious men and
priests living in the United States, Canada,
Australia and Sweden were suspended
from exercising their priestly ministry for
not receiving permission from their superiors before emigrating from Iraq.
Once the Iraqis and Syrians fled, they
hoped for resettlement in another country. One refugee described waiting for
resettlement as “miserable days doing
nothing.” Almost all Iraqis interviewed by
a variety of news sources said they would
not return to their country.
Father Rifat Bader described the refugees: “They are teachers. They are normal people, very kind people.” Faith “is a
part of their identity.”
The Iraqis, he said, “are knocking at the
doors of the embassies” trying to get resettled. But after their initial appointment,
they were being forced to wait six months
for a second appointment, he said. !
Pope Francis continues to ‘take the world by storm’
Continued from front page
Kerry Robinson, executive director of
the National Leadership Roundtable on
Church Management, said the pope’s
strongest action so far had been urging
people to personal conversion.
The conversion he seeks in the world,
she said, “starts now, with us.”
At the same gathering, hosted by
Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic
Social Thought and Public Life, John
Allen, associate editor at the Boston
Globe, said there are likely some cardinals who might say the pope has done
things that make them nervous, but
they would still no doubt appreciate his
overall appeal.
One catch, so far with the pope’s popularity, is that it has not, as of yet in the
U.S., drawn more people, or those who
have left the church, back to Mass or
the sacraments in measurable numbers,
according to a Pew Research Center
poll earlier this year.
Some observers have said the pope’s
impact shouldn’t be measured in returning Catholics, but in the restored image
of the Catholic Church and the number
of Catholics who feel proud of their faith
again thanks to Pope Francis.
Eileen Burke-Sullivan, associate theology professor at Creighton University in
Omaha, Neb., told CNS in March that in
visits to various parishes in the country,
she heard numerous stories of parents’
grown children who have been inspired
by the example of the pope and want to
come back to the church.
She also said parishes should be prepared for these returning Catholics and
be sure they are ready to serve as “field
hospitals” welcoming all, as the pope has
said they must do.
This fall, the pope had a lot of eyes on
him during the extraordinary Synod of
Bishops on the family at the Vatican. The
pope opened the first working session,
but never expressed his views during the
gathering.
At the synod’s end, many news outlets
said the final report was a “setback” or
“loss” for the pope, because it did not
include the midterm’s conciliatory language toward people with ways of life
contrary to church teaching, or reflect
the theme of mercy, the pope so often
articulates.
German Cardinal Walter Kasper,
who gained attention during the synod
for his proposal to make it easier for
divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion, told an
audience at The Catholic University
of America in Washington in early November that Pope Francis is “a pope of
surprises.”
In using words that almost sound
like something the pope would say, the
German cardinal said Pope Francis has
“succeeded in a short time in brightening up the gloomy atmosphere that had
settled like mildew on the church.”
He also acknowledged that the pope
has his detractors, saying: “What for
some is the beginning of a new spring,
is for others a temporary cold spell.”
The cardinal said the pope doesn’t
“represent a traditionalist or a progressive scheme,” but instead “wants to lead
faith and morality back to their original
center,” to the heart of the Gospels.
That’s a recurring theme of Pope
Francis and for many it was echoed in
the pope’s appointment this fall of Archbishop Blase J. Cupich as the new archbishop of Chicago.
The archbishop’s simple and very pastoral style has often been compared to
Pope Francis.
When he was asked why he was given
this new position, the archbishop has
repeatedly told reporters that the pope
“sent a pastor.”
He also referred to the pope’s remarks at the synod’s opening session
when he said he sees his role as guaranteeing unity in the church. Archbishop
Cupich told CNS that in many ways a
bishop has that same responsibility: “to
make sure that we walk together, to accompany each other.”
And certainly many Catholics will
accompany each other next fall when
Pope Francis will make his first visit to
the United States to attend the World
Meeting of Families in Philadelphia in
late September.
Plans call for the pope to attend the
Festival of Families Sept. 26 – a cultural
celebration expected to draw up to
800,000 participants – and to celebrate
Sunday Mass the afternoon of Sept. 27
on the steps of the Philadelphia Mu-
seum of Art for a crowd of about 1 million people.
Donna Crilley Farrell, executive director of the 2015 World Meeting of Families, said numbers for the gathering are
expected to grow each day and could
reach close to 2 million people.
Other details of the U.S. trip have not
been announced, but this summer Pope
Francis told reporters that President
Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress
had invited him to Washington and that
the U.N. secretary-general had invited
him to New York.
Other cities that have put in “bids” for
the pope to visit, through letter-writing
campaigns or personal pleas from civil
and church leaders include: Birmingham, Ala.; Boston; Buffalo, N.Y.; Chicago; Dallas; Detroit; El Paso, Texas;
Green Bay, Wisc.; St. Augustine, Fla.;
and Tucson, Ariz.
Carol Carey, superintendent of secondary schools of the Philadelphia
Archdiocese, thinks young people
will be drawn to see the pope because
his “sincerity and love has taken hold
among young people” and “the Francis effect is powerful for many young
Catholics.”
Eustace Mita, a member of the World
Meeting of Families’ board of directors,
similarly believes the pope’s visit will
make an impact, saying it will be felt for
decades in the Philadelphia region.
“He truly is the pope of unity, bringing
Catholics and non-Catholics together,”
she said. !
January 2, 2015
Nashville-based artist ‘paints from life’ to complete papal portraits
Ned Andrew Solomon
P
ainter Igor Babailov has made his
home in Brentwood, Tenn., since
2004, but the scope and reach of
his work is worldwide.
Born in the Udmurt Republic of
Russia in 1965, Babailov was a child
prodigy at age 4, winning prizes in
nursery school for his artistic talent.
On request, he did a painting of his
best buddy’s father, and since that early
start, has created more than 2,000 portraits.
He is currently at work on the official
portrait of Pope Francis which will
hang in the Vatican, already home to
Babailov’s commissioned portraits of
St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
“I’ve been fortunate in my life to
meet a lot of interesting people,” said
Babailov.
A humble statement from an artist
who has captured the likenesses, characters and personalities of international
statesmen like George W. Bush, Gen.
David Petraeus, Hillary Clinton, Nelson
Mandela, Prince Andrew and Vladimir
Putin; entertainers like Regis Philbin
and James Gandolfini; trophy winning
athletic figures like Bobby Hull, Reggie Jackson and Boomer Esiason; and
many other lesser known people who
have commissioned Babailov to immortalize a moment in their personal
Russian-born artist Igor Babailov, who now lives in Brentwood, Tenn., meets
with Pope Francis at the Vatican in the photo above. Babailov prefers to paint
“from life” whenever possible, rather than using a photograph. His portrait of
Pope Francis, a work in progress, will be his third official papal portrait.
histories.
“First they are clients,” Babailov said.
“Then they become friends. Painting
portraits is a very intimate experience.”
To truly understand Babailov’s process and personal philosophy, you
should know that none of these portraits were done from photos; each one
began from a live sitting, which adds to
that “intimate experience.”
“Every chance I get I like to paint
from life,” explained Babailov. “I think
that is the only way to explore the
beauty and essence of God’s most perfect and complex creations, which you
cannot get from copying photographs.
Unfortunately, a lot of artists paint from
photos because that’s what they’re
taught in schools.”
Babailov’s schooling was an immersion in the work of the masters. At age
13 he competed against thousands of
other young students for one opening
at the prestigious Moscow Secondary
School of Fine Arts, where he studied
the classical visual arts. He graduated
four years later with honors and was
accepted into the world renowned Surikov Academy, which had produced
many of history’s most influential
painters, including the American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler of
“Whistler’s Mother” fame.
“To have the skill, you have to have
the education,” Babailov said. “It’s like
learning a language, or learning the
alphabet from A through Z. If you don’t
know the alphabet, you cannot write.
It’s the same with art – there are certain rules, if you want to paint like the
Masters.”
Now Babailov’s creations are hanging
alongside the work of those masters.
His portrait of Pope Benedict XVI was
included in an international exhibition,
the “Vatican Splendors,” which celebrated 2,000 years of Vatican art and
history and filled 10 galleries. Showcasing art and relics that align with
each papacy, Pope Benedict XVI chose
Babailov’s portrait of him to denote his
contribution.
“Many masters of the Renaissance
were included, like Michelangelo,
Bernini, Guercino and Giotto,” said
Babailov. “My portrait hung next to a
Michelangelo, which was an incredible
honor.”
That honor might not have transpired, if not for Babailov’s gorgeous
work on “Believe,” the portrait of St.
John Paul II, commissioned by the
Canadian Office of Prime Minister and
the Canadian Conference of Catholic
Bishops on the occasion of the 25th
anniversary of his pontificate and the
2002 World Youth Day held in Toronto.
Babailov chose to surround the Holy
Father, who is known as “the people’s
pope,” with youth from a diversity of
backgrounds, who, according to the
artist, represent St. John Paul II’s humanity, as well as a hope for the future.
Babailov is well on the way to completing Pope Francis’s portrait, which
will also incorporate images that are
representative of the pontiff’s life and
work.
In keeping with his desire to “paint
from life,” Babailov did preliminary
sketches of all three popes, which he
likes to call, “a study of character and
personality.” These are typically done in
a black and white medium, often with
just a graphite pencil. Then, to get the
face color and other details just right, Babailov takes a series of photographs and
researches other reference materials.
“Every Pope is very special,” explained Babailov. “There is some kind
of magical and sacred aura around
them. They’re all very different ideologically, because each is an individual
person.”
When doing the initial live sketches,
he prefers not to talk with his subjects,
though he is able to ascertain their
“character and personality” in other
ways. “When I work with a person in
front of me, even if we don’t talk, there
is a conversation,” Babailov said. “An
interaction, a communication can be
without words. In fact, sometimes it is
richer without words!”
Like St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI before him, Pope Francis
does not know the exact nature of the
final piece. “I am fortunate to have that
freedom, to create what has to be done,
based on my skills and expertise,” said
Babailov. “There is a trust factor. This
will not be just a likeness, or a photographic image. It will tell a story – with
details about the person’s beliefs, the
person’s interests, and where the person is in their faith.
“At the same time, this is my third
papal portrait, so it’s a tremendous
responsibility,” continued Babailov. “It
has to be different than the other two,
and it has to be better!”
For those who live in the area,
Babailov loves to give tours of his
home and studio, which is a veritable
museum of his family and celebrity
portraits, architectural sketches, landscapes and still lifes. “I’m not one of
those artists who locks up, and doesn’t
let anybody in,” Babailov said. “I like to
discuss the idea of what I do. It’s part of
my mission to share it with the people.”
Babailov also periodically teaches
painting at Plaza Artist Materials in
downtown Nashville. To make an appointment for a personal tour, to find
out about his Master Workshops, or to
see more images from his extensive
and varied oeuvre, visit www.babailov.
com. !
In addition to the official papal portrait of Pope Francis, Igor Babailov also
painted portraits of St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, pictured at left.
January 2, 2015
Trip to Uganda focuses high school senior on life of service
Andy Telli
P
ope John Paul II High School senior
Grace Wood visited Uganda and
found a new direction for her life.
“The first time I went over I was kind
of into service but it wasn’t a focus of
my life,” said Wood, a parishioner at
Our Lady of the Lake Church in Hendersonville.
But on that trip during her junior
year she saw first-hand the ravages of
Uganda’s AIDS epidemic, the orphans
left behind, the poverty, and the limited
economic opportunities in a developing country. She had to answer the
question, “Do I want to step outside my
comfort zone to find out how God wants
to use me?”
The answer came back clearly. “Now,
I really want to make service a focus of
my life.”
During her junior year, Wood’s door
to Uganda was opened by Dr. Mary
Kay Koen, who has visited the country
numerous times on mission trips. Dr.
Koen was going back to Uganda and
was taking her son Michael, another
JPII senior. She asked Wood and her
mother, Jennifer Wood, if they wanted
to go on the trip with them. Also on that
trip was JPII senior Christian Cook, his
mother, Shannon Cook, and Lauren
Hutchison, a student at Hendersonville
High School.
While on that first trip to Uganda, Wood
and the group met Mama Phoebe Sosi.
When the AIDS epidemic hit Uganda,
many of Mama Phoebe’s dying friends
asked her to take care of their children.
“There was so much death around
her,” Wood said. She ended up caring for so many AIDS orphans, Mama
Phoebe eventually opened an orphanage in an area known as Ground Zero
for the country’s epidemic, Wood said.
While at the orphanage, Wood said,
“we were just trying to build relationships with the kids and let them know
we care and love them.”
Grace Wood, a senior at Pope John Paul II High School and a parishioner
at Our Lady of the Lake Church in Hendersonville, has made two trips to
Uganda, where she has forged some lasting relationships with the people
there. Wood has raised money to buy goats for poor women living in rural
Uganda, giving them some economic idependence. She and her family also
are sponsoring an AIDS orphan’s education at a boarding school.
During a church service, a little girl
named Juliette caught Wood’s eye and
they smiled at each other. “I felt like I
should help her, but didn’t know how or
even if she needed help,” Wood said.
She saw Juliette again the next day
and found out her family had been devastated by AIDS and she needed surgery for an umbilical hernia protruding
from her stomach.
Wood’s family decided to sponsor Juliette and paid for her surgery. The doctor
told Wood if Juliette had waited another
two months for the surgery, the hernia
would have ruptured and killed her.
Wood’s interest and help wasn’t limited to Juliette.
“Going to a foreign country and doing
a mission project was frightening,”
Wood said. “I didn’t know how I was
going to help people.”
She found her answer in a goat. Wood
raised $700 for a program that provides
women two goats.
“A goat in the United States doesn’t
mean much,” Wood said, but in rural
areas of Uganda, a goat is a source of
milk and their offspring are a source
of meat. And when the women raise
a herd of goats, they can trade it for a
cow, which is worth even more, Wood
explained.
Wood returned home with a new attachment to Uganda and its people. When she
learned that Dr. Koen was going back to
Uganda last summer, Wood started making plans to go with her.
“Uganda touched my heart, and I
wanted to go back,” Wood said.
Before the trip, Wood raised another
$1,800 for the goat project “just asking
people I knew and spreading the word
about what I was doing,” Wood said.
“People here are so willing to serve and
willing to help. I didn’t have to ask for
money. People would hear what I was
doing and offer to donate.
“A lot of teachers at JPII and students
gave money. They want to know they
can be a part of something,” Wood said.
“Raising the money wasn’t as hard as
it might sound. I really believe it was
God’s will.”
The goat project has changed and
grown, Wood said. The women who
receive the goats sign a contract promising they will take care of the goats
and will meet with the other recipients
regularly, where the group can learn
other skills.
The women also agree to donate one
of the offspring of their goats to another
woman in the community, Wood said.
“Mama Phoebe said she thinks it will be
self-sustaining in the next five years.”
On the second trip, Wood also was
able to check on Juliette, who is now living at a boarding school established by
Mama Phoebe.
“She’s kind of a celebrity in her town
because of her surgery and her sponsorship,” Wood said of Juliette. “Other
kids follow her to church” because they
realize she found help and hope there,
Wood said.
On her second trip to Uganda, Wood
helped set up field clinics as part of the
medical mission. At the time, she was
thinking of being a surgeon and helped
with some of the operations the mission
team performed.
It was an eye-opening experience. The
operations were performed in a thirdworld school house, that looks like a
shed with dirt floors, wooden walls and
benches for the students, Wood said.
The team put a sterile cloth over a wood
Continued on page 14
Grace Wood, left, assists during a medical mission in Uganda during a visit there last summer. She also is helping women in Uganda, like the one pictured
at right, by raising money to buy goats for them, which they can use to provide milk for their families and to build some economic independence.
January 2, 2015
Dispensary of Hope channels donated medications to the uninsured
Ned Andrew Solomon
O
n the main page of the Dispensary of Hope website
it reads, “Billions wasted.
Millions in need.” Those simple
sentences sum up the efforts of this
organization to collect unused medications from doctor’s offices and
pharmaceutical companies to distribute to those who are disadvantaged
and uninsured.
The Dispensary does not supply
medications directly to patients; it
joins forces with charitable safety net
clinics and pharmacies by supplying
their licensed providers with an inventory of donated, surplus drugs.
“We provide steady supply to between 200 and 225 of the most high
demand chemicals and strengths
needed in the U.S. primary care
safety net,” said Chris Palombo,
chief executive officer of Dispensary of Hope. “Each dispensing site
agrees to enroll each patient, meaning that they review income and
residency information to confirm
that the patient is low income and
uninsured.”
Typically, these uninsured patients
are between 18 and 65 years old,
with income at or below 200 percent
of the federal poverty level.
It is a noble, innovative effort
that garnered Dispensary of Hope
the Catholic Health Association’s
2014 Achievement Citation, which
acknowledges an outstanding program’s commitment to carry on
Jesus’ mission of compassion and
healing.
Dispensary of Hope began in 2006,
when a doctor placed a bin inside a
Saint Thomas Health system hospital, hoping to collect unexpired medicines that could be given to those
less fortunate. From those humble
beginnings, Dispensary of Hope
became a subsidiary of Ascension
Health’s Saint Thomas Health, with
a staff of 13, and an operating budget of $1.6 million, which includes
private foundation monies and grant
funding from Ascension Health Mission and Ministry and the Foundations of Saint Thomas Health.
Almost immediately, the initiative’s reach stretched well beyond
its home base in Middle Tennessee.
Today it is the nation’s only fullylicensed, charitable, medication distributor that works across the entire
spectrum of health care.
“Dispensary of Hope grew quickly
and soon demand came from farther away than Nashville,” said Dr.
Mike Schatzlein, president and chief
executive officer of Saint Thomas
Health. “Because our supply of medicine was greater than our local need,
we began helping other communities
and eventually grew to become a
national ministry of the Church overseen by Saint Thomas and Ascension
Health. Ensuring that unused medicine, likely destined for incineration,
is provided to the poor and vulnerable represents good stewardship
and smart healthcare.”
The process works like this: medication manufacturers and physicians
donate new product or medicine that
might be within months of reaching
an expiration date. The pharmaceu-
Tennessee Register file photo by Theresa Laurence
The Dispensary of Hope, which offers sample medications to uninsured patients free of charge, started in 2006 at
Saint Thomas Hospital West and has since grown to include more than 80 non-profit healthcare centers around
the country. The Dispensary recently received the Catholic Health Association’s 2014 Achievement Citation for its
commitment to carry on the Catholic healthcare mission of compassion and healing.
tical companies mail packages or
deliver the medications by truck;
participating physicians – more than
1,300 in the United States – receive
reusable “Hope Boxes,” which they
fill with sample medications and ship
to the Dispensary.
At a warehouse, Dispensary staff
track and log every shipment that
arrives, and post available medications to an on-line inventory. Medications are then distributed to more
than 80 not-for-profit access sites,
including federally-qualified health
centers, free clinics and charitable
pharmacies. In turn, those sites use
the drugs to fill prescriptions free of
charge for eligible recipients.
That may sound simple, but it
requires competing drug manufacturers, competing health systems,
and funders, each with their own
agendas and priorities, to play nice.
According to Palombo, the Dispensary’s ability to bring together these
sometimes disparate entities may
have been an impetus for its 2014
recognition by the Catholic Health
Association.
“As a national collaborative effort sponsored by Saint Thomas
Health, and its parent company, St
Louis-based Ascension Health – the
nation’s largest Catholic and largest non-profit health system – each
partner has agreed to join together
for the good of the patient and the
common good of the collaborative,”
Palombo said. “I believe the inspiration for the award was the powerful
partnership and neutrality espoused
by the partners in this project, as
well as the thoughtful stewardship of
resources and focus on the poor.”
The Dispensary estimates that
between 2009 and 2013, $29 million
worth of medication – more than
5.8 million doses – was dispensed to
patients served by its network clinics
and pharmacies.
“Our most current information is
that 40,000 people are served across
the U.S. each year by the Dispensary
of Hope,” said Palombo. “Many of
these people are very ill, and need
more than one prescription.”
Although the Affordable Care Act
will help many who have never had
access to health insurance before,
the Congressional Budget Office
claims 30 million people will remain
uninsured after the the Act’s full
implementation. That means the demand for the Dispensary’s resources
will not go away any time soon.
“We can assume that 30 to 40 percent of those will have a chronic
illness and will need medications,”
said Palombo. “Many are of such
low income that there will be no way
that they can afford basics for life,
including medication. The result
is that even after the ACA, this collaborative effort will be desperately
needed.”
For more information about the
Dispensary of Hope or to donate,
visit www.dispensaryofhope.org. !
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January 2, 2015
2014 brought a chance at change for millions of immigrants
Patricia Zapor CNS
W
ASHINGTON. The year 2014
brought potentially significant
changes for millions of people
who are in the United States illegally
and either arrived here as minors or
who have U.S. citizen or legal-resident
children.
Likewise, a smaller population of kids
in Central America may benefit from
a safer, legal way to reunite with their
parents, in response to a surge in unaccompanied minors and families with
children who were making dangerous
multi-country crossings to reach the
U.S. border.
Those actions taken by the administration stirred a backlash among Republicans. The House quickly passed a bill
rebuking the administration for “overreach” and declaring the actions “null
and void.”
For more than a decade, there was little progress to report in an annual look
back at what had happened on efforts to
address the problems with having more
than 11 million people in the country
who lack legal immigration status.
As 2014 drew to a close, permanent
legislative fixes were still elusive, but
nearly half of that population might soon
be able to “come out of the shadows,” as
some put it, under enforcement changes
announced Nov. 20.
President Barack Obama that day
announced steps he is taking administratively to use discretion in who is pros-
ecuted and – at least temporarily – protect potentially millions of people from
deportation and give them documents
allowing them to work legally.
One change will expand the Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals program,
or DACA, by ending an upper age limit
and rolling forward the date by which
an applicant must have arrived in the
United States as a minor.
The bigger change will create a similar
program for potentially about 4 million
people who lack legal status, but whose
children are U.S. citizens or legal residents. It will apply only to people who’ve
been in the country for five years or longer and who pass background checks,
register with the government and pay
probably hundreds of dollars in fees.
The executive actions also include:
s2EVISEDENFORCEMENTPRIORITIES
for who will be deported, focusing on
criminals and new arrivals, and avoiding deporting longtime U.S. residents
who have family here and lack criminal
records.
s4HEEXPANSIONOFPROVISIONALWAIVers that allow people to apply for legalization without leaving the country.
s"ROADERDEFINITIONSOFWHOMAY
qualify for certain waivers, known as
“parole,” from immigration agency requirements. Those will affect relatives of
military personnel and some people with
pending immigration cases who wish to
leave the country for a short time.
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The actions riled Republicans, some
of whom threatened to block approval
of spending bills or to impeach the
president over what they said was an
overreach of executive powers. The
administration responded by providing
a phalanx of legal experts who said the
actions were well within prosecutorial
discretion and in fact echoed steps taken
by previous presidents.
Obama also challenged the Republican-dominated House to take up a
comprehensive immigration reform bill
passed by the Democratic-controlled
Senate nearly a year and a half earlier.
Obama’s actions might affect about half
the people in the country illegally and
may be summarily reversed by a future
president. But legislation could be
broader-reaching and more permanent.
When the Republicans control both
houses of Congress in January, new efforts at changing immigration law will
begin again, but there’s a broad range
of ideas for how to accomplish that, especially in a way that will win the president’s signature.
The governors of 17 states Dec. 3 sued
Obama in a Texas federal court, charging that the executive actions violate his
constitutional obligation to enforce laws,
that they put unfair financial burdens on
states and that Obama failed to follow
procedures for federal rule-making.
Meanwhile, another new administration program allows some families to
apply for status permitting their children to come legally to the U.S. without
making a dangerous, expensive and
illegal trip to cross the U.S. border from
Mexico.
That in-country process launched in
early December was developed in response to a separate immigration-related
crisis revealed this summer. In June,
Obama announced that federal agencies and social service providers were
scrambling to handle an unprecedented
surge of unaccompanied minors and
families with young children who were
appearing at the border and turning
themselves in to Border Patrol agents.
By the end of the fiscal year Oct. 1,
more than 68,500 unaccompanied children and more than 68,400 families,
primarily from El Salvador, Guatemala
and Honduras, had been detained by the
Border Patrol. Most had crossed in the
Rio Grande Valley of Texas, overwhelming government and private agencies
that deal with their legal status as well
as provide short- or long-term housing.
Some families were held in immigration detention centers while their legal
cases were considered, others were
given dates to appear in court and released. Church-run programs around
the country quickly mobilized and provided for their needs.
But federal law requires juveniles to be
cared for by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, in the Department of Health and
Human Services, until they can be placed
with relatives or foster families. !
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January 2, 2015
2014 was a year of many blessings for the diocese
EDITORIAL
T
he Diocese of Nashville
received many blessings
in 2014. As we look back,
we give thanks to God our
Father who showered us with
grace.
In recent years, the diocese
has seen a rather dramatic
increase in the number of men
called to life as a priest. In 2014,
the diocese was able to reap a
great harvest of this growing
interest in religious vocations.
On July 26, nine men were
ordained priests for the diocese.
It was the largest class of new
priests to be ordained at the
same Mass in the history of the
diocese, which was founded in
1837. They joined the long line
of dedicated and zealous priests
who have served in the diocese,
helping people to find Christ in
their lives.
The day was special for a
second reason. It was the 100th
anniversary of the dedication
of the Cathedral of the Incarnation, the site of the ordination
Mass. Welcoming the many
families and friends who filled
the Cathedral for the ordination,
Bishop David Choby noted the
historic nature of the day. “One
hundred years ago today, my
predecessor, Bishop Thomas
Sebastian Byrne, dedicates this
site of Catholic life,” he said.
“I can’t think of a better way to
celebrate this day than with the
ordination of these nine men
who have offered themselves
in service to the people of the
Diocese of Nashville.”
The nine new priests – Fathers Michael Fye, Phillip Halladay, John Hammond, Gervan
Menezes, Delphinus Mutajuka,
Anthony Mutuku, Paul Nguyen,
Christiano Nunes da Silva and
Daniel Reehil – had an international flavor. Five of the nine were
born outside the United States.
They will serve a church that
is becoming more diverse, with
Catholic communities of people
from Asia, Africa, Central and
South America living and worshipping in Middle Tennessee.
In 2014, Bishop Choby also
ordained one of the diocese’s
largest classes of permanent
deacons, when 29 men were
ordained on June 9 at St. Henry
Church. Eight of the new deacons speak Spanish, providing
the diocese more clergy to help
shepherd the growing Spanishspeaking population in Middle
Tennessee.
In the last year, the diocese
also found a new home for
many of its ministries. On Aug.
15, the diocese closed on the
purchase of The Fellowship
at Two Rivers property on
McGavock Pike in Donelson
overlooking Briley Parkway.
The complex, which includes
226,000 square feet of space on
a 37.5-acre tract, will be named
the Catholic Pastoral Center,
reflecting its role in serving
the needs of the people of the
diocese, now and well into the
future.
There were sad days for the
diocese in 2014 as well. William Carmona, a seminarian
for the diocese studying at
Assumption Seminary in San
Antonio, Texas, was on track to
be ordained in the summer of
2015. But his battle with cancer
threatened his dream of becoming a priest.
Lying in his hospital bed as
he struggled to stay alive, surrounded by his classmates and
teachers from Assumption Seminary, he was ordained a priest
by Bishop Choby on Sept. 8, his
lifelong dream realized. Father
Carmona died two days later.
And the people of the diocese
said goodbye to the Daughters
of Charity, who had been a
part of Catholic life in Middle
Tennessee for 116 years. The
Daughters, who founded Saint
Thomas Hospital and spent the
next century caring for the ill,
feeding the hungry, comforting the troubled and teaching
children, withdrew from Nashville to serve where they were
needed more. They left behind
a community better for their
presence, prepared to carry on
their ministry to those in need.
We thank God for the blessings we received in 2014 and
we pray that they will continue
in 2015 as we strive to bring
Christ’s light to the world. !
New pope, new leadership changed tone of visitation of U.S. religious
VATICAN LETTER
Cindy Wooden
V
ATICAN CITY. During the
process of the apostolic
visitation of communities
of U.S. religious women, a shift
in tone took place.
The Vatican’s final report on
the visitation, released Dec.
16, made observations, not accusations. Instead of giving the
women instructions, it made suggestions – mostly encouraging
them to continue discernment
about their identity, vocations
promotion and formation, fidelity
to Christ and the church, community life and cooperation with
the wider church, including local
bishops.
The tone change was partially
the result of the dialogue style
those conducting onsite visits
were instructed to take, and partially because the sisters decided
to share their own decades of
discernment and struggle with
the visitors.
Mother Mary Clare Millea,
superior general of the Apostles
of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and
the apostolic visitor appointed by
the Vatican, told Catholic News
Service Dec. 16 the biggest
change she saw was in the public
perception of the visitation.
“The surprise announcement (of the visitation) caught
people off guard and made them
guarded,” she said.
But a change in the leadership of the Vatican congregation
overseeing the visitation also
contributed to the new tone.
Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz,
who was named prefect of the
Congregation for Institutes of
Consecrated Life and Societies of
Apostolic Life in 2011 – two years
after the visitation began – told
reporters Dec. 16 that he and his
leadership team have decided
their main approach to religious
orders will be to spend time
with them, visiting them – not
conducting visitations, except for
very serious reasons.
“We are putting more of an
accent on going to them, not to
identify mistakes or judge situations, but to listen to the sufferings, see the difficulties, listen
to what they are going through,”
the cardinal said. The congregation wants “more of the climate
of a family – I’m not saying this
didn’t exist before – but we are
emphasizing it more.”
However, the biggest change
since the visitation began in 2009
was the election of Pope Francis.
As a Jesuit and former Jesuit
provincial, one who admits he
made mistakes by being authoritarian as a young superior, Pope
Francis knows the world of consecrated religious life from the
inside. Throughout his pontificate he has used that experience
to instruct, encourage and exhort religious to be courageous,
joyful and prophetic, to “wake up
the world.”
Although he will sometimes
apologize for giving “publicity” to
St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, time and again Pope Francis
looks to his order’s founder for
inspiration and instruction, just
as women religious look to their
founders. His meditations on the
meaning of poverty, chastity and
obedience lead to very concrete
and nuanced observations; he,
too, made those vows as a way of
following Jesus as completely as
humanly possible.
And then there are his observations about community life,
which his comments highlight as
an essential – and perhaps most
challenging – part of consecrated
life.
Meeting in early November
with the superiors of men’s communities in Italy, the pope said,
“Please, don’t let the terrorism
of gossip exist among you. ...
If you have something against
your brother, tell him to his
face. Sometimes it might end in
fisticuffs,” he said, causing the
superiors to laugh. “That’s not a
problem. It’s always better than
the terrorism of gossip.”
While tough on gossip, Pope
Francis is even tougher on people breaking with the church’s
tradition, creating scandal or
division or acting as if the Holy
Spirit could lead them to ignore
the hierarchy.
Responding to God’s call
to enter religious life means
feeling, thinking and acting in
communion with the church,
which “generated us through
baptism,” he told the women’s
International Union of Superiors
General in May 2013. Christians
do not do good because of a “personal inspiration, but in union
with mission of the church and
in its name.”
Religious superiors, Pope
Francis told the women, need
to ensure their members are
educated in the doctrine of the
church, “in love for the church
and in an ecclesial spirit.”
Quoting Pope Paul VI, he said,
“It’s an absurd dichotomy to
think one can live with Jesus,
but without the church, to follow
Jesus outside the church, to love
Jesus and not the church.”
A month later, meeting with
members of the Latin American
and Caribbean Confederation
of Men and Women Religious,
or CLAR, he urged religious to
put greater effort into dialogue
with their bishops and to courageously minister to the poor
without worrying they might
receive a questioning letter from
the Congregation for the Doc-
trine of the Faith.
If the letter comes, “don’t
worry. Explain what you have to
explain, but keep going,” he told
them, according to a leaked report from one of the participants.
“You are going to make mistakes; you are going to put your
foot in it. That happens,” he said.
“I prefer a church that makes
mistakes because it is doing
something to one that sickens
because it stays shut in.”
As both a former Jesuit superior and former archbishop
of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis
recognizes how much effort and
good will is needed to respect
both religious orders’ discernment of what ministries to
engage in as well as a bishop’s
responsibilities as shepherd,
teacher and leader of the local
church.
In November 2013, meeting
with the international men’s
Union of Superiors General,
Pope Francis announced that he
had asked the congregation for
religious to revise “Mutuae Relationes,” a set of directives issued
jointly with the Congregation for
Bishops in 1978. The document
said that religious orders are
part of the local church, though
with their own internal organization, and that their “right to
autonomy” should never be considered as independence from
the local church.
The point is not to allow religious to set up parallel structures or have free rein in a diocese, but to allow them to offer
their unique gifts to the church
and the world. After all, Pope
Francis insists, the church exists
to bring God’s love to the world
and the Holy Spirit has a variety
of ways to do that.
Meeting with members of the
Vatican congregation for religious in late November, Pope
Francis said he knows not all
the news about religious life is
good and the church should not
“hide the areas of weakness,”
including “the diminished ability
to attract new members, the not
irrelevant number of those who
leave – this really worries me!”
At the same time, “consecrated
life will not flourish as a result of
brilliant vocation programs, but
because the young people we
meet find us attractive, because
they see us as men and women
who are happy,” he wrote in a letter for the 2014-15 Year of Consecrated Life. Consecrated life
is not about efficiency, he said,
but about “the eloquence of your
lives, lives which radiate the joy
and beauty of living the Gospel
and following Christ to the full.”
Copyright (c) 2014 Catholic
News Service/U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops !
Columns and letters to
the editor represent the
views of authors alone.
No viewpoint expressed
necessarily reflects any position of the publisher, of
any Tennessee Register staff
member, or of the Diocese
of Nashville.
The Tennessee Register is published by the
Diocese of Nashville and
welcomes your comments
and opinions.
Please clearly mark letters
to the editor and send to:
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2400 21st Ave. S., Nashville, TN 37212-5302
You may fax your letters
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e-mail: tnregister@ dioceseofnashville.com.
January 2, 2015
In Jesus, we find reconciliation with God
NEXT SUNDAY
Gift of kindness warms
the heart, lifts the spirit
Msgr. Owen F. Campion
PINCH OF FAITH
B
ACKGROUND. The
weekend of Jan. 11 the
Church invites us to
celebrate the great Feast of
the Baptism of the Lord, great
because it commemorates a
very important event in the life
of Jesus and in the unfolding of
salvation but also draws our attention to marvelous and fundamental aspects of our salvation.
Jesus, the Son of God, the Redeemer, very much is the centerpiece of all three readings,
although of course the Book of
Isaiah, from which comes the
first reading, only prefigures
Jesus. The Lord was not yet
born as a human when this
first reading was written.
Isaiah mentions no one by
name, but the reading describes a faithful servant of
God who, although suffering
unjustly and greatly, will be
steadfastly faithful to God.
Over the centuries, this passage from Isaiah, similar to
three others quite in literary
construction and in reference
to the figure that Christians
have called the “Suffering Servant,” has been very popular
among the pious. Believers
through the ages have seen in
them a description of Jesus.
(These “songs” also provide
readings for Holy Week, precisely for Good Friday.)
In the second reading, from
the Acts of the Apostles, Peter
stands as the principal figure.
Peter appears before Cornelius,
whose name indicates Roman
origins. In itself, this encounter
is greatly revealing. Peter did
not limit his interest to Jews,
whose heritage Peter shared.
Rather, Peter preached the
Gospel to pagans, and indeed
to the despised Romans, who
were responsible for the military conquest and occupation
of the Holy Land, a circumstance detested by the Jews.
Peter’s message is crisp but
profound. Salvation is in Jesus.
The Holy Spirit anointed Jesus as
the Savior. God was with Jesus as
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
Readings:
Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7
Acts of the Apostles 10:34-38
Mark 1:7-11
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Second Sunday
in Ordinary Time
Readings:
1 Samuel 3:3b-10, 19
1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20
John 1:35-42
Mary Margaret Lambert
T
CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz, Long Island Catholic Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist at the Jordan River is
depicted in a stained-glass window at St. Francis of Assisi
Church in Greenlawn, N.Y. The feast of the Baptism of the
Lord, celebrated Jan. 11 this year, marks the end of the
Christmas season.
the Lord went about “doing good
works” and healing the sick.
This point too is crucial. The
pagan Cornelius yearned for
what is good and perfect and
thus wholeheartedly accepted
Christ.
St. Mark’s Gospel furnishes the
story of the Lord’s baptism in the
River Jordan by John the Baptist.
Ritual washings, or baptisms,
had become popular in certain
Jewish circles in the First Century A.D. Homes were even
built with ceremonial baths. The
idea was that a person could visibly state the desire to be rid of
sin, as if sin literally soiled the
body, by washing in water.
John the Baptist acknowledges Jesus as the Redeemer.
John insists that he himself is
not the Savior. John confesses
that he is “not worthy to loosen”
the sandal-straps of the Savior.
The Gospel is clear. Jesus is
the perfect, innocent and absolutely sinless Lord. Still, and
critically, Jesus assumes the
sinfulness of humankind. Then
God identifies Jesus as the Savior, and moreover as the Son of
God. To make this declaration
clear, God speaks, and gestures, in ancient Old Testament
words and symbols that no Jew
would have misunderstood.
Reflection
This feast is great because it
reveals to us the Lord’s identity. He is the Son of God. Not
even a prophet of John’s holiness and tenacious faith was
the Lord’s equal.
Secondly, Jesus assumes the
sinfulness of us all. As stated
elsewhere in the Scriptures by
St. Paul, Jesus is a new Adam,
a new and perfect representative of the human race. Unlike
Adam, Jesus causes union with
God, not estrangement from
God. Jesus brings life not death.
Common human nature
unites all people with the Lord.
He confirms this union by assuming the responsibility for
human sin.
Note that Peter spoke for the
other Apostles, for the Christian community, and most importantly for Jesus; the Church
calls us to the Lord our Savior.
We are sinners, but in
Jesus, we find reconciliation
with God. Our reconciliation
through Jesus is perfect, unbroken, and absolute, and in it
is eternal life.
Msgr. Owen Campion, former
editor of the Tennessee Register, is associate publisher of Our
Sunday Visitor. !
here was a time, not so
very long ago, when no
one locked their front
doors. Children played outside all day long with never a
thought about their safety or
well being.
Before I lost my baby teeth, I
was sent to the neighborhood
market, crossing a busy thoroughfare, with a shopping list
pinned to my dress. There was
no need for money since my
grandparents, as well as all of
their neighbors, had a charge
account at the store, which they
paid every month. As a bonus,
the grocery store owner always
gave me a piece of penny candy
for the walk back home.
On Saturdays, a group of
other children joined me for a
day at the movies. We walked
the several blocks to the theatre without any adults. For a
quarter each, we paid our admission, got a bag of popcorn
and a big soda fountain drink,
and settled in to watch the latest installment of our favorite
cowboy serial, cartoons and a
feature film. There was no violence, nudity, crude language
or suggestive behavior on or
off the screen.
After several hours of cinema
entertainment, we hurried
home before it got dark. There
was no way to call our parents,
but we knew what was expected
of us, and they knew that we
would obey the rules, so we always made it home on time.
Times have changed.
Children can no longer play
outdoors without adult supervision, and houses are securely locked with the added
protection of security alarm
systems in some. Movies
are rated, according to their
content, and language strong
enough to make a sailor blush
is the norm, rather than the
exception. A quarter would not
even cover the down payment
on any item at a theatre concession stand, and everyone
seems to need reminding to
“silence their cell phone” in
any public venue.
We live in a technologically
progressive world, where
people are often exposed to violence and crime. I sometimes
find it difficult to go to sleep
after I watch the late evening
news, and wonder if honesty
and compassion are becoming
extinct in our society. Recently,
my faith in the goodness of
others has been restored.
Because of a bad fall, I have
been forced to rely on a walking
cane to get around. Since it was
essential to have it, I found the
ordinary ones rather unattractive and managed to get myself
a unique purple paisley cane. I
receive many compliments, and
more than a few curious stares,
whenever I am in public.
Because it is so unusual, I
plastered my address label on
it and added my phone number in case I ever left it somewhere. The likelihood of that
occurring was very slim, as I
am dependent on it to move
from one spot to another.
I have been pleased to note
how many cars stop to allow
me time to cross streets, and
how helpful people have been
towards me.
During the pre-Christmas
rush of getting all my shopping done, I was distressed
when I reached the cashier’s
desk and discovered that my
cane was missing from my
shopping cart. A thorough
search of the entire store by
my friend and I yielded nothing. After recruiting the assistance of a couple of helpful
store clerks, we still came up
empty handed. I left my name
and phone number with the
store manager, and felt that I
had seen the last of my cane.
Hobbling to the car, I realized how much I needed it and
I was happy to arrive home
safely. I managed to locate
my grandfather’s old “walking stick,” which would have
to suffice until I could get
something more satisfactory.
Shortly after I got home, I
heard my husband talking on
the phone to a caller.
“Yes, this is her home. Yes,
she did. Wait and I’ll let you
speak with her.”
I was surprised to hear the female caller ask me if I had lost
my cane. She was still in the
store where it had vanished,
and she had it in her hand. I
told her she could leave it at the
customer service desk as they
had my contact information.
She declined, saying that she
was going to take it to her car
and lock it safely in the trunk. I
asked her where she lived and
told her we could come to pick
it up, but she insisted that it
was not at all a problem for her
to deliver it to my home.
Within a couple of hours, she
rang our doorbell and handed
me the cane. Feeling like we
were old friends, a hug seemed
to be in order and was mutually welcomed. Her gift was a
priceless one and will remain
with me throughout the coming weeks and months, reminding me that there are indeed
good people still in this world.
Copyright © 2014 Mary Margaret Lambert !
January 2, 2015
Trip to Uganda focuses high school
senior on life of service
Continued page 8
table. “That was our operating table,”
Wood said. “We had to do the best with
what we had.”
When she returned to the United
States, she had a two-week internship
with a vascular surgeon in Nashville.
The conditions in the two places were
polar opposites, Wood said.
Wood has been inspired by her visits
to Uganda. She is considering taking a
gap year after graduating from JPII to
serve in a third-world country before
starting college. “I definitely want to
take time to do service,” she said.
And Uganda remains close to her
heart. “In Uganda, they are the most
The first and second grade classes at St. Matthew School in Franklin,
inspired by books they read in school, recently raised enough money to buy
chickens and a cow for needy families in Haiti.
St. Matthew students
help Haitian families
S
t. Matthew School first and second
grade students recently shared
some of their good fortune to
make a difference in the lives of families in Haiti.
Inspired by the book “The Sparkle
Box” by Jill Hardie, Angela Coleman’s first grade class began collect-
ing coins in their own “sparkle box,”
and raised $100, enough to buy 10
chickens to help families in Haiti.
The second grade classes, inspired
by “Penny’s Christmas Jar Miracle”
by Jason Wright, raised enough
money, $200, to purchase a cow for a
Haitian family. !
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loving people I’ve ever met,” Wood said.
While walking to church one day in
Uganda, “I had a swarm of kids on me,”
Wood said. One little girl fought her
way through the crowd and slipped
a bunch of beads and necklaces into
Wood’s hand.
“It was the most loving act I’ve ever
experienced,” Wood said. “She didn’t
expect anything in return. It was her
only possession.”
Wood wanted to return the kindness
but the only thing she had was an unopened Chapstick. The girl’s response
was a huge smile. “It was the best moment. … I still have the bracelet and
necklace in my room to remind me of
the power of love.” !
POSITION AVAILABLE
PRINCIPAL
Sacred Heart Cathedral School, Knoxville, Tenn.
Sacred Heart Cathedral School (www.shcschool.org), founded in 1956, is a SACS
accredited Catholic school, grades K-8, with 580 students and a pre-school with 120
students. It is a ministry of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a diverse parish
of over 1400 families located in Knoxville, TN, near the Smoky Mountains, an area
with a growing Catholic population. The start date for the position is June 1, 2015.
The successful candidate will be a practicing Catholic with at least an MA in
Educational Administration, 3-5 years of classroom teaching experience and 3 years of
administrative experience. Interested candidates should email a current resume, cover
letter and three references, including a pastor reference, to searchcommittee@shcknox.
org. The closing date for applications is March 1, 2015.
POSITION AVAILABLE
PRINCIPAL BEGINNING 2015-16
Sacred Heart Model School, Louisville, KY
Sacred Heart Model School in Louisville, Kentucky, a Catholic co-ed K-8 school with
the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme, is accepting applications
for Principal for the 2015-2016 school year. With an enrollment of 360 students,
Sacred Heart Model School is one of four Sacred Heart Schools. The Model School
is located on the 48-acre Ursuline Campus and is sponsored by the Ursuline Sisters
of Louisville. Sacred Heart Model School faculty, staff, and students strive to live out
the Ursuline Core Values of community, reverence, service, and leadership daily. The
Model School is the only Catholic and private school in Kentucky authorized as a
Middle Years Programme school for grades 6-8. The small class sizes, differentiated
instruction, specialized science faculty, concentration on world language development,
and expansive arts offerings set the Model School apart. Sacred Heart Model School is
a Catholic school where all faiths are welcomed.
The principal will be a dynamic and highly motivated individual, will provide
outstanding leadership, and will collaborate with all constituents as well as Sacred
Heart Schools personnel. The principal must be a mission driven, visionary leader
committed to diversity with exceptional communication and organizational skills,
who is current in education and technology trends and has experience in instructional
leadership, curriculum development and school management. The applicant must be
a practicing Catholic, with a minimum of 3-5 years administrative experience and
be eligible for Kentucky certification in instructional leadership. Doctorate preferred.
Sacred Heart Model School is a member of Sacred Heart Schools and is sponsored by
the Ursuline Sisters. Send resume and cover letter to steve@angelgroup.com. EOE.
January 2, 2015
Volunteers stretch Catholic Charities’ reach in helping others
Briana Grzybowski
W
hen Joseph Weekly was living
in Memphis, he was a volunteer
for an after-school refugee tutoring program. Since moving to Nashville,
he’s been able to continue volunteering
in a similar program operated by Catholic
Charities of Tennessee.
“I’ve been volunteering at Catholic Charities in Nashville for a little over a year
now. It’s been great to get to know Jeremie,” Weekly said of the 15-year-old boy
from Tanzania he has been mentoring.
“We do some school-related things
and some fun things,” Weekly explained.
“I’ve been helping him with his English
homework, his Spanish homework, his
computer class work, and other academic
stuff. But we’ve had a lot of fun too. We’ve
gone to the Opry Mills Mall, to the movies, and the Frist Museum. We’ve gone to
Predators games. And we’re planning a
day trip to the Chattanooga Aquarium.”
Catholic Charities, not to mention Jeremie and all its clients, depend on volunteers like Weekly.
“Volunteers are tremendously important to the work of Catholic Charities in
Middle Tennessee,” said Mark Barry,
Catholic Charities’ director of marketing.
“We have about 150 employees in all. We
simply could not do all that we do if it was
up to the employees alone.
“Our volunteers stretch our capabilities
to serve in so many different ways, all for
the benefit of our clients and their fami-
Joseph Weekly, right, is a volunteer mentor for Jeremie Remezo, a refugee
from Tanzania whose family has been resettled in Nashville. Weekly is one
of many volunteers for a variety of Catholic Charities of Tennessee programs.
Volunteering has enriched Weekly’s life, he said, and he encouraged others
to become volunteers for Catholic Charities.
lies,” he said.
Catholic Charities serves approximately
70,000 people per year from many different walks of life. Clients include immigrants and refugees, the poor, the elderly,
women and families in need of pregnancy
and adoption services, children and the
homeless.
Many volunteers are required to meet
the needs of those turning to Catholic
Charities for help with food, clothing, shelter and employment, among other things.
“We had about 7,500 volunteer opportu-
nities available this past year,” said Barry.
“That includes people on the Loaves
and Fishes kitchen crews, board members, Christmas Wishes gift wrappers,
volunteers working with our Refugee
Handicrafts ladies, Refugee Youth adult
mentors, perishable food distribution
helpers, people providing general office
assistance, and the list goes on and on.”
It is relatively easy to become a volunteer for Catholic Charities, although the
difficulty of applying can vary depending
on which department a potential volun-
teer wishes to serve.
“Our volunteer opportunities are as
different as our services and clients are.
There is no set rule. Applications and
background checks are required for
some, especially when children and elders
are involved. In other cases, assisting with
a perishable food distribution, for example, the requirements are not as detailed,”
Barry explained.
Applications and opportunities to serve
can be accessed through the Catholic
Charities website, www.cctenn.org/volunteer.cfm.
“We list upcoming volunteer opportunities on our home page down near the bottom of the page,” Barry said. “We also have
a page dedicated to volunteer information.
That page is accessible by clicking ‘Volunteer’ on the bar at the top of the home page.
“We have opportunities which are ‘one
time’ activities and opportunities which
are more on-going in nature,” he added.
“It really depends on the time that the volunteer has available, the type of help he
or she wishes to provide and where (geographically) the people want to serve.”
Volunteering is an opportunity to receive as much as it is to give. Weekly says
his volunteer work has enriched his life.
“It’s been an incredible journey getting
to know Jeremie and his family. Whether
it’s watching him play a tennis match on
his school’s team or hanging out with
him outside of school, it’s been exciting
to see him and his family adjust to American culture and think of America as their
new home,” he said. “I think anyone who
wants to get involved with Catholic Charities should check it out!” !
St. Patrick students shine with new reading program
Briana Grzybowski
A
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Rebecca A. Horton
Yvonne H. Hobbs
Serving Nashville for over 50 years
graduate school assignment to create a literacy program for young
students inspired first and second
grade teacher Ashley Farmer to do just
that at St. Patrick School in McEwen.
The I.R.I.S.H (I Read, I Shine) program at
St. Patrick has completed its first semester
but has already seen tremendous success
in instilling a love for reading in students.
“I am currently in grad school at UTMartin studying to be a reading specialist,”
Farmer said. One of my assignments for
a class this semester was to come up with
some sort of literacy project to be implemented in a school or community setting.
I was required to do it in my school or
community, make it literacy and researchbased, and spend at least 30 hours on it.”
Farmer felt that her idea would suit the
students at St. Patrick well. “I have always
wanted to help build a strong reading
community at St. Patrick’s.
“In the past, individual teachers had
their own system for encouraging reading, tracking progress, checking comprehension, etc.,” she explained. “What we
did not have was a school wide program,
like many schools do, to motivate students to read.
“There were several options on programs that we could have gone with,
but those types of programs are very
expensive and just were not right for St.
Patrick’s at this time,” Farmer said. “So,
I decided to just create one myself and
implement it school wide. It is something
that St. Patrick’s really needed.”
Students are allowed to choose their
own books to read, based on their per-
sonal interests and reading abilities. But
they must also work through a system of
goal-setting and reading assessments to
track their progress through the program.
“Students complete Book Checks I’ve
made to ensure that they understand what
they read,” Farmer said. “Many similar
programs use tests but I came up with
these Book Checks. They are tailored to
each grade level. They can range from
kindergartners drawing a picture and
writing a sentence about their favorite
book character or plot point to eighth
graders writing a book review. Once they
turn in a Book Check and I review it, they
receive credit for reading that book.”
The program also uses a system of
goal-setting and rewards for motivating
students to read. “Goals are tailored for
each student,” Farmer said. “Each quarter, each student has a personal goal, and
they get closer with each Book Check
they complete. The teachers set students’
personal goals.
“The younger and older grades have
their own systems for tracking progress,”
Farmer said. “Pre-K through fourth
grades have pots of gold in their classrooms, and add a piece of gold for every
Book Check they do. Fifth through eighth
grades keep binders with individual
charts for each student.
“Each class combines personal goals to
create a class goal. All classes who reach
their class goals are invited to a celebration at the end of the academic quarter,”
Farmer said. “In the library, we set up a
rainbow and left it white in the beginning.
Each grade has a different color, and
they’ve gradually colored in their sections
as they’ve met their goals. The students
enjoyed seeing the visual progress they
made towards reaching their goals, and it
created a friendly competition among the
different grades.”
The overall objective of the I.R.I.S.H program is to instill a life-long desire for reading and learning in the students at St. Patrick. “As a school, when the program was
introduced, we talked about ways that reading allows us to shine. It is the goal of the
I.R.I.S.H program to help students realize
that they can shine when they read. They
can learn, grow, experience happiness and
joy, help others, and use and develop the
skill of reading that God has given them.”
Farmer and St. Patrick Principal Sister Mary Grace Watson, O.P., think that
I.R.I.S.H has achieved both of those objectives.
“I think this program has created excitement among the kids for reading, and the
desire to read more,” said Sister Mary
Grace. “Whenever I’m visiting the classrooms, I’ve noticed that the kids are reading a lot more on their own than they used
to, and they do it because they want to.”
Farmer agrees. “I can already see the
benefits of the I.R.I.S.H Reading Program
across all grades at St. Patrick’s. Our
students are fired up about reading. It
has been a game-changer in classrooms.
Whenever students have a second of free
time, they have a book out and are reading or working on their Book Checks. Students are showing development in fluency
and comprehension skills as well.
“We went from having a need for a literacy community in our school to having
a booming literacy community,” Farmer
said. “It is a wonderful and very exciting
thing to see.” !
January 2, 2015
Ladies of Charity feed needy with Christmas baskets
From staff reports
T
his holiday season, 775 needy families
in Middle Tennessee were touched by
the kindness of the Ladies of Charity’s
annual Christmas Basket program when
they received a box full of food.
Each box includes: eggs, oranges, apples,
sugar, hot chocolate, saltine crackers, spaghetti, spaghetti sauce, butter, bread, rice,
chicken noodle soup, macaroni and cheese,
stuffing mix, applesauce, potatoes, oats,
ham, bacon, carrots, cookies, dried beans,
peanut butter, jelly, tuna and candy, said Pat
McCabe, the program chairperson and a parishioner at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church.
The Ladies of Charity use the help of
Catholic school students, parishes, businesses and people in the community to
provide the food to those in need, McCabe explained.
Catholic schools were asked to collect donations of one or two of the items included
in each box, McCabe said. The schools and
what they donated include: Christ the King,
spaghetti; Father Ryan High School, sugar;
Holy Rosary Academy, cookies and hot
chocolate; Immaculate Conception, 18-oz
jars of grape jelly; Sacred Heart School in
Lawrenceburg: hot chocolate; Sacred Heart
in Loretto, spaghetti; St. Ann, saltine crackers; St. Bernard Academy, saltine crackers
and dried beans; St. Edward, dried beans;
St. Henry, spaghetti; St. Joseph, hot chocolate; St. Matthew, candy; St. Pius X Classical Academy, saltine crackers; St. Rose,
cookies; St. Stephen Religious Education
classes, cookies.
Photo by Andy Telli
Regan Carell, left, Christine Warrick, center, and Sophia Koetters, students at Father Ryan High School, organize
some of the 775 Christmas baskets distributed to needy families this Christmas season by the Ladies of Charity.
Lady of Charity Mary Ann McGinn was
instrumental in getting all the boxes the
food was packed in donated, McCabe said.
The program also received monetary
donations from members, businesses and
some parishes donated their money collected at Thanksgiving Masses, McCabe
said. The money was used to buy the
items that weren’t donated.
Students from several schools helped
pack the boxes, including Father Ryan,
Pope John Paul II High School, St. Edward, the Boy Scout troop from Christ the
King, and the Antioch High School special
education class, whose teacher Anne
Schultz of St. Ignatius, is a member of the
Ladies of Charity, McCabe said.
The baskets were distributed on Satur-
day, Dec. 20. Representatives from various
parishes picked up about half of the boxes
to distribute, and the Ladies of Charity
distributed the other half to people from
the community who had called asking for
help, McCabe said.
In 2015, McCabe will hand over leadership of the program to her co-chair in 2014,
Margie Druffel of St. Ann Church. !
THROUGH
JANUARY 25
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Hospitality Sponsor
LYNN & KEN
MELKUS
The Frist Center for the Visual Arts gratefully acknowledges the Friends of Italian Art.
This exhibition has been made possible in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Robert Lehman Foundation.
T H E F R I S T C E N T E R F O R T H E V I S U A L A RT S I S S U P P O RT E D I N PA RT B Y
D O W N TO W N N A S H V I L L E
Antiphonarium Basilicae Sancti Petri (detail of fol. 78 r), ca. 1270. Parchment with ink, paint, and gold, 13 3/8 x 9 1/4 in. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS B. 87. © 2014 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
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10/30/14 11:22 AM

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