La Salle HS student named Tournament of Roses Queen
PASADENA --- Camille Clark, 17, of Pasadena was chosen on Oct. 17 to reign over the 2006 Tournament of Roses Parade to be held Jan. 2.
A parishioner at St. Elizabeth Church in Altadena and a senior at La Salle High School in Pasadena, Clark belongs to the National Honor Society and the Junior Classical League. Through La Salle's service programs she volunteers at a soup kitchen at L.A.'s Union Station, helps with a clothing drive for inner city school children, and makes sandwiches for the homeless.
"Service is a big part of La Salle and I love being a part of it," said Clark, who is now preparing as rose queen to attend 150 charity and community events throughout Pasadena along with her court of rose princesses. "It's just so exciting," she said.
Former secretary says he expects late pope's beatification in June
WARSAW, Poland (CNS) --- Pope John Paul II's former secretary has said he expects the late pontiff to be beatified in June, when Pope Benedict XVI is expected to make his first visit to Poland. "I hope it can happen as early as next year -- a lot of people yearn for him to be proclaimed a saint straight off," said Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz of Krakow, who began serving as Pope John Paul's secretary in 1966, when the late pontiff was archbishop of Krakow. "No one doubts his sanctity, not only here in Krakow or in Poland. The whole world saw and knew him and has already canonized him in practice. The current beatification process serves to gain moral certainty," Archbishop Dziwisz said in an interview before John Paul II Day, celebrated Oct. 16 as a public holiday in the late pope's homeland. In an Oct. 16 interview with Italy's Avvenire daily, Archbishop Dziwisz said he personally knew of "many miraculous healings" through Pope John Paul's intercession and believed the pontiff's beatification awaited "only official confirmation" by his successor.
Eighty percent of New Orleans Catholic school students re-enrolled
PHILADELPHIA (CNS) --- Within 40 days after Hurricane Katrina hit, 80 percent of the nearly 60,000 students previously enrolled in Catholic grade and high schools in the New Orleans Archdiocese were back in Catholic schools, Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes said Oct. 14. "Forty-five percent of our schools are back in operation. Sixty percent of our students are in Catholic schools in the archdiocese. And we estimate that 20 percent more are in Catholic schools in other dioceses," the New Orleans archbishop told a national gathering of Catholic lay and church leaders in Philadelphia. He said the neighboring Diocese of Baton Rouge, La., alone had taken in nearly10 percent of the Catholic students from New Orleans. Archbishop Hughes spoke at a luncheon during the inaugural meeting of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management, held Oct. 13-14 at the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Publishers, Hispanic leaders work to improve educational tools
SAN ANTONIO (CNS) --- Greater cooperation is needed between Hispanic ministry leaders and Catholic publishers to better serve the growing Spanish-speaking Catholic population in the United States, said speakers at a three-day conference in San Antonio. People involved in Hispanic ministry emphasized the need for more and better Catholic materials in Spanish adapted to the cultural context by which Hispanic Catholics understand their religion. Publishers stressed the difficulty in finding qualified writers and creators of written and audiovisual materials in Spanish who are also attuned to Hispanic culture and the diversity among Hispanics, who come to the United States from many countries. The Oct. 12-14 conference brought together 140 publishers, creators and users of Catholic educational materials under the bilingual title "In our own tongues/En nuestras proprias lenguas."
Vocations campaign hinges on power of inviting men to priesthood
WASHINGTON (CNS) --- A new vocations campaign is being launched by the U.S. bishops with the idea that more men simply need to be invited to become priests by priests who are happy with their lives. Announced in Washington Oct.14, the program, called Priestly Life and Vocation Summit: Fishers of Men, is based on having dioceses and religious orders convene priests to discuss their vocations, emphasizing the positive aspects, and then encouraging them to invite other men to consider following them. Father Edward Burns, director of the Secretariat for Vocations and Priestly Formation at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, cited a survey of the 2003 U.S. ordination class in which 78 percent of the men about to be ordained said a priest had invited them to consider the priesthood.
Cardinal says synod won't propose married priests, women deacons
VATICAN CITY (CNS) --- Ordaining married men and women deacons will not be options proposed by the Oct. 2-23 Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist as ways to solve the problem of priestless parishes, said an African cardinal. Cardinal Peter Turkson of Cape Coast, Ghana, said the synod has recognized that the shortage of priests is a problem "and the fathers are looking for different solutions to it." But while the suggestion by some synod members to allow for the ordination of married men of proven virtue has been listened to, it is being shelved for the time being, the cardinal said. Synod participants from the Eastern churches that have married priests "are advising us a lot on this" question, he said at an Oct. 18 press briefing. But the prevailing feeling of the majority of the voting members is "let's keep (the idea of married priests) on the shelf awhile," perhaps for further study or consideration, he said. The overall opinion is "let's exhaust the other possibilities first before we come to this," he added.
Bishop: Hold broadcasters accountable in any new telecom law
WASHINGTON (CNS) --- Broadcasters should be held accountable for their public-interest obligations to the communities they serve in any new telecommunications bill, said Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., chairman of the U.S. bishops' communications committee. The Senate Commerce Committee was scheduled to begin debate Oct. 19 on several bills that would update current U.S. telecommunications law. "We ask that, in exchange for the use of tens of billions of dollars worth of new spectrum rights, broadcasters be required to put forth a substantial effort to provide programming that better serves the public," Bishop Kicanas said in a letter to Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. One of the bills would mandate that all broadcast signals now done in analog format convert to digital by 2009. Another would require cable systems to carry each of the new channels broadcasters would be able to create through digital broadcasting. The last wide-ranging rewrite of the nation's telecommunications laws took place in 1996. |