LOS ANGELES --- The leadership team for the Deacon's Mission Breakfast June 25 at St. Michael Church in South Los Angeles gathers before the start of the program focusing on Catholic evangelization in the inner city.

Keynote speaker Marian Fussey (far left) spoke before a crowd of 110 people from 12 parishes. Deacon Mission goals include organizing and developing a continuing education program for inner-city parishes, providing spiritual and personal growth instruction for future lay parish leaders, and fostering vocations to the priesthood and permanent diaconate.

Assisted suicide bill still in Senate committee

SACRAMENTO --- The controversial physician-assisted suicide bill, AB 651, appears stalled in the Senate Rules Committee and seems destined to become a two-year bill, said a representative from a broad coalition of opponents.

According to Tim Rosales, spokesperson for Californians Against Assisted Suicide, AB 651 co-authors Patty Berg (D-Eureka) and Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys) probably won't be able to rally enough support among legislators to move the bill before the July 8 deadline for policy committees to "meet and report" bills.

"This coalition remains strong and committed to fighting the legalization of assisted suicide in any platform," said Rosales. Efforts by coalition members include weekly grassroots phone calls and letter writing campaigns to legislators. Coalition members include over 24 disability rights groups, 65 Latino organizations, the California Medical Association, the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals, the California Catholic Conference of bishops and the Christian Medical and Dental Association.

Penelope Montemayor, a Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals board member, said her group has been quite active in opposing assisted suicide. "It's very dangerous to legalize physician-assisted suicide when people can't get basic health care," said Montemayor.

Man arrested for protest that disrupted Mass in cathedral

LOS ANGELES (CNS) --- Los Angeles police arrested a protester against clergy sexual abuse who disrupted Sunday worship in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels June 26 by handcuffing himself to the bishop's chair.

The incident at the 10 a.m. Mass began just after Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles finished his homily, in which he talked about personnel training, background checks and other archdiocesan efforts to protect children from sexual abuse.

The protester, James C. Robertson, 58, approached the cathedra, or bishop's chair, and handcuffed himself to the back of the chair. Security guards surrounded him and remained there silently for the rest of Mass.

When the service was over, police removed him and arrested him for disrupting a religious service in a place of worship, a misdemeanor punishable under California law by a fine up to $1,000, up to one year in prison, or both.

Robertson, who says he was sexually abused by two Catholic priests as a teenager in the 1960s, is a member of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Archdiocesan spokesman Tod Tamberg, who witnessed the incident, said the archdiocese respected SNAP's constitutional right to protest, "but that same Constitution gives people the right to worship without fear and intimidation."