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	Society of St. Vincent De Paul Announces National Officers Catholic News Service December 31, 2011 http://www.catholicnews.com/data/briefs/cns/20111230.htm The Society of St. Vincent de Paul has announced four new national officers. Benjamin Vaissade, a retired retail executive in the San Francisco Bay area, has been named vice president of the national council of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. His duties include coordinating the efforts of the organization's eight regional vice presidents throughout the United States. He joined the organization in 1992 and has served as Western regional vice president for the past six years. Margarita Galindo, a retiree of the Sweetwater School District in Chula Vista, Calif., has been named vice president for Hispanic involvement for the organization's national council. A member since 2004, she is a founding member of the organization's only Spanish-language chapter in the Diocese of San Diego. Michael J. Nizankiewicz has been named treasurer of the national council. He is currently serving as the interim CEO of the Vascular Disease Foundation in Denver. Althea Graham, a customer service representative for AT&T in Detroit, has been named secretary for the national council. A member of the society since 1994, she served as president of the St. Vincent de Paul chapter in her parish before being elected president of the organization's Detroit West district council for six years. - - - Milwaukee priests join abuse survivors in urging victims to report MILWAUKEE (CNS) -- Four Catholic priests have collaborated with victims of childhood sexual abuse by clergy to make a joint public appeal urging survivors to come forward by a Feb. 1 court deadline and urging full accounting by the Milwaukee Archdiocese for the "action or inaction that may have allowed these crimes to occur, the offender to go unpunished, and other children to be harmed." Their message, in the form of a full-page advertisement in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Dec. 27, featured a small dove with an olive branch at the top of the page. That image sets the tone for the message, according to Father James Connell, pastor of St. Clement and Holy Name of Jesus parishes in Sheboygan, vice chancellor of the Milwaukee Archdiocese, and the person who paid for the $10,320 ad with money from his personal savings account. Although he said he had not specifically requested that art appear with the ad, "it showed up in the final drafts ... and it's a great symbol of what we were trying to say. It's time to turn the page, there's got to be another way" to deal with the abuse crisis, he added. "A Message from Priests and from Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse by Clergy" was signed by Father Connell; Father Richard Cerpich, a senior priest of the archdiocese; Father Howard Haase, pastor of St. Mary Parish, Waukesha; and Father Gregory Greiten, pastor of St. Bernadette Parish, Milwaukee. Other signers included survivors: Peter Isely, Midwest director for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP; John Pilmaier, SNAP Wisconsin director; Mike Sneesby, SNAP Milwaukee director; survivors Vicky Schneider and Karen Konter; and the mother of a survivor, Marilynn Pilmaier. - - - WORLD Documents show how pope tried to end Irish inmates' 1981 hunger strike DUBLIN (CNS) -- Declassified British documents reveal the extent to which Pope John Paul II tried unsuccessfully to intervene to end a 1981 hunger strike by Catholic prisoners in a British jail in Northern Ireland. The documents claim that, after the pope sent a special envoy, the leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army prisoners, Bobby Sands, was willing to suspend the fast just days before he died. The offer was conveyed to the British authorities by the pope's secretary, Irish Msgr. John Magee, whom Pope John Paul dispatched to persuade the prisoners to call off the hunger strike. The state papers, declassified under the 30-year-rule, claim that Sands told Msgr. Magee, who later became the bishop of Cloyne, that he would suspend his strike in return for discussions with a British government official, two priests and three other prisoners as witnesses. However, the British rejected the offer, claiming it was an attempt to open negotiations. The prisoners, incarcerated for paramilitary activity against British rule in Northern Ireland, had begun their hunger strike in a bid to be reclassified as political prisoners, a move Britain vehemently rejected. Sands died May 5, 1981, after 66 days on hunger strike; he was buried with a crucifix that Msgr. Magee had given him as a gift from Pope John Paul. Ten prisoners starved themselves to death before a compromise was reached that October. The hunger strike significantly polarized tensions between the majority-Protestant and minority-Catholic communities in Northern Ireland. More than 100,000 Catholics attended Sands' funeral, and Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, began contesting elections for the first time. - - - Absentee landowners? West Bank landowners can't get to their land BETHLEHEM, West Bank (CNS) -- Jamal Salman stood on one side of the double chain-link fence, on land belonging to his family. On the other side of the Israeli-erected fences, only a few hundred yards away but beyond his reach, was more family land with a grove of olive trees. In November, Salman and more than 180 Bethlehem landowners were informed that Israel had placed their olive groves -- more than 1,700 acres of land located beyond the barrier -- under the Guardian of Absentee Property, deeming the owners of these lands as "absentees." This is the last step before formal confiscation. "I stand here ... and I can look onto my land over the fence as an absentee (property owner)," Salman said, pointing across the fences to the trees. The last time he was permitted through the barrier to work his olive grove was 2009. The 73-year-old is leading a campaign of mostly Christian landowners in an attempt to prevent yet more of their land from being confiscated. They are considering challenging the absentee decision in the Israeli Supreme Court, he said. The expropriation of land is not a new story here, said Salman, a Catholic and the former town manager of Bethlehem. After Israel built the separation barrier in 2002, farmers were not allowed to cross through the fence to the valley to reach their olive groves. Salman was left with only 360 square yards of land, while the other 1,560 square yards of his property was confiscated and now lies on the other side of the barrier, he said. "These lands used to earn us and our families a lot of money," from the olive oil produced from the olives, he said. "We also got our own olives and olive oil from there. We lost everything." - - - Vatican agency says at least 26 church workers killed in 2011 VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- At least 26 Catholic pastoral workers were killed in mission lands or among society's most disadvantaged communities, although they were more often the victims of violent crimes than persecution for their faith, said a Vatican news agency. Each year, Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, publishes a list of pastoral workers who died violently. The 2011 list was released Dec. 30. The agency said that over the course of the year, it registered the deaths of 18 priests, four religious women and four laypeople. Twenty-five church workers were killed in 2010 -- a figure down from an unusually high number of 37 workers murdered in 2009. For the third consecutive year, the Americas, particularly Latin America, registered the most murders with the death of 13 priests and two laypeople: seven in Colombia, five in Mexico and one each in Brazil, Paraguay and Nicaragua. Six pastoral workers were killed in Africa, four in Asia and one priest was killed in Europe. In their commitment to serving the needs of others, the men and women made their own safety their last priority, Fides said. Like other years, "many were killed in an attempted robbery or kidnapping that ended badly, caught in their homes by bandits in search of imaginary riches. Others were killed in the name of Christ by those opposing love with hatred, hope with despair, dialogue with violent opposition, the right to perpetrate abuse," it said. - - - Cardinal says Nigeria bombings show need for interreligious dialogue VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Christmas bombings of churches and other targets in Nigeria clearly demonstrate the need to strengthen religious teaching that violence cannot be committed in God's name, said the head of the Vatican's office for interreligious dialogue. Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, said the attacks "convince me even more of the importance of dialogue between religions and of the need to intensify it always." Boko Haram, a Nigerian group that purports to be inspired by Islam, claimed responsibility for the Christmas bombings that killed more than 40 people, including Muslim passersby, at two churches. The country's mainstream Muslim leaders condemned the attacks. In an interview Dec. 30 with L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Cardinal Tauran said the Christmas bombings "underline the urgency of interventions by all religious leaders to infuse the hearts and minds of their faithful with a true mentality of peace." A true religious leader teaches "the idea of a nonviolent God who loves all men and women without regard to race, culture, convictions or social condition, a God in whose name one cannot commit violence or arouse hatred," he said. Cardinal Tauran said interreligious dialogue "does not have the aim of uniting the faithful of different religions into one temple or church," but rather to promote knowledge of one another's teaching, mutual respect and cooperation for the good of humanity. True religious leaders condemn violence, he said, but some seem to have difficulty in convincing their communities. - - - Nigerian bishops announce day of prayer, say Boko Haram 'declared war' LAGOS, Nigeria (CNS) -- The Nigerian bishops' conference described the Christmas church bombings as the equivalent of war and declared Dec. 31 a day of fasting and prayer to ask God's forgiveness for the acts. "Pray for Nigeria in distress and pray for peace in our nation and pray for good governance," said the Dec. 30 statement signed by Archbishop Felix Alaba Job of Ibadan, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Nigeria. The Islamic extremist group Boko Haram took credit for the Christmas bombings outside that left more than 40 people dead. "This group has apparently declared war on Nigeria and, at times of war, nations are calling on their reserves. It is apparent that, if we depend only on our available active security agents, we shall not make much progress," the bishops' statement said. It asked Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan "to recall the retired experts in criminology and employ foreign experts in this field to assist the active security agents to put an immediate end to the Boko Haram menace." One of the churches targeted on Christmas was St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, just outside of Abuja. On Dec. 28, six children and an adult were injured in the bombing of an Islamic school in Sapele. No one has claimed responsibility for that attack, in which the homemade bomb was lobbed from a passing vehicle. - - - PEOPLE Formerly paralyzed Maryland priest sees miracle as he begins walking EPHRATA, Pa. (CNS) -- When Redemptorist Father John Murray bashed his head against a railing after tripping along a New Jersey boardwalk 15 months ago, the consequences were devastating. The former pastor of St. Mary in Annapolis and St. Wenceslaus in Baltimore suffered a broken neck that left him instantly paralyzed from the chest down. Rushed to a hospital, he underwent emergency spinal cord surgery and later began rehabilitation at a prominent New Jersey institute. Doctors had little encouragement for the once-active priest who was known across the East Coast for his preaching abilities. The chances he would ever walk again were virtually zero. "When they said I'd never be able to move again, they took away all hope," Father Murray told The Catholic Review, Baltimore archdiocesan newspaper. But on Nov. 28, 2010, Father Murray did something everyone said would be impossible. While living and undergoing rehabilitation at Stella Maris in Timonium, Md., he moved his left leg ever so slightly, gently lifting his foot off the ground. "I was ecstatic," Father Murray recalled with a smile. "Here I was about six weeks after they told me in New Jersey I'd never move again and, lo and behold, I could move. Just the foot, but it kept going and going and going." Today, Father Murray is completely mobile. Using a walker, he is able to walk on his own at his new residence at St. Clement Mission House in Ephrata. Father Murray sees only one explanation for his renewed gift of independence: An encounter with the miraculous. When most people think of miracles, he said, they usually bring to mind instantaneous cures of a debilitating disease or terminal illness. "We think of it as any exceptions to the laws of nature," the priest explained. "In biblical times, what was called a miracle was anything that showed the power of God. What happened to me wasn't instantaneous, but it certainly was miraculous."
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