Retired Prelate Returns to Where He Got His Start

Albany Times Union
March 17, 2012

http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/News-Notes-3413784.php

Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, a native of the Albany Diocese, will speak on prayer and forgiveness at a deanery-wide mission this week at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Schenectady.

"It was always a joy to be a priest in the Albany Diocese," Flynn told The Evangelist.

Flynn grew up in the former St. Columba's parish and school in Schenectady and graduated from Siena College. Ordained in 1960, Archbishop Flynn taught at Catholic Central High School in Troy while serving at St. Peter's parish in Troy. He retired in 2008 after as the spiritual leader of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

Flynn received national accolades for his leadership in investigating sexual abuse by the clergy. In 2002, he was appointed chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Sexual Abuse. He played a central role when the bishops met in Dallas that year, adopting a "zero-tolerance" policy for sexual abuse.

"The church, which has never shirked from gathering the wounded stranger in her arm, cannot shirk from gathering the children wounded by her very own ministers," Flynn told the Times Union in 2003.

— Staff report

For interfaith engagement, added meaning since 9/11

ALBANY — A leading voice in Jewish-Muslim dialogue will give a public lecture, "From Cairo to Qatar," at the College of Saint Rose at Thursday.

abbi Burton L. Visotzky of the Jewish Theological Seminary will speak at 7:30 p.m. in the Hubbard Interfaith Sanctuary on how events since 9/11 have affected interfaith engagement of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities.

— Staff report

Tribe in Wyoming gets permit for bald eagle rite

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A federal permit letting the Northern Arapaho Tribe kill up to two bald eagles for religious purposes is the first of its kind issued to an American Indian tribe, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official said Wednesday.

The permit was granted under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act that allows bald and golden eagles to be taken for "religious purposes of Indian tribes" that are compatible with the preservation of eagle populations, said Matt Hogan, the agency's assistant regional director. The bird was taken off from the federal list of threatened species in 2007 after its reclassification in 1995 from endangered to threatened.