Catholic Social Ministry Gathering a time for building peacemakers

BY MARY CLIFFORD MORRELL  Contributing Editor

For more than 30 years, the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering brings together hundreds of participants from around the nation who focus on pressing domestic and global challenges that affect vulnerable people everywhere.

This year’s three-day conference drew more than 500 attendees to Washington. The theme, “Blessed are the Peacemakers,” embodied the call for healing in a world broken by conflict, division and inequality.

Organized by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, along with 10 other USCCB departments and 20 national Catholic organizations, the late January conference explored how social justice ministries of the Church are often intertwined, offering opportunities for presentations and discussion on a broad spectrum of topics, including helping women and children thrive; workers’ rights; community needs; race and housing; food insecurity; refugee resettlement, and care for creation, among others.

One panel discussion, titled “Pro-Worker, Pro-Woman, Pro-Family: Advocating for Policies that Build a Truly Pro-Life Society,” explored the issues that intersect with abortion and how the Church could respond in a holistic way.

Speakers frequently referenced the U.S. bishops’ post-Roe call for “radical solidarity” with both mothers and the unborn, citing a letter they sent to Congress laying out the expanded child tax credit and paid parental leave as top priorities.

The expanded pro-life theme of the conference was apparent to the Diocese of Trenton’s Brenda Rasher, executive director, Office of Catholic Social Services, who said, “All the workshops ... had the underlying theme that all we do ... is pro-life from conception to natural death, echoing the words of Bishop David M. O’Connell, C. M., during a Jan. 20 Mass, when he spoke about ‘standing together for life.’”

Rasher also acknowledged her appreciation for the opportunity to be part of “one workshop presented by the National Catholic Partnership on Disability that was looking at working with those who have mental health needs.”

Of particular interest, she noted, was the effort to work with police in responding to crisis calls involving someone with a mental health issue in a way that was health based, not criminally based – an initiative that Catholic Charities Diocese of Trenton has begun working on.

Rasher also appreciated the discussion about “a program to help persons with mental health issues on an intensive community basis to achieve such benefits as reduced hospitalizations,” something Catholic Charities DOT has been doing for years through their Program of Assertive Community Treatment (PACT), she said.

“We should be so proud of the forward thinking of our Catholic Charities here in the Diocese of Trenton,” Rasher reflected.

The morning Mass on the final day of the gathering served as a “sending forth” of the attendees, who headed to Capitol Hill to advocate on a broad swath of issues related to the Church’s social teaching in meetings with policymakers.

Some information for this article came from OSV News.

WOMEN PLAY DECISIVE ROLE IN VATICAN DIPLOMACY, SAYS SENIOR OFFICIAL

VATICAN CITY (CNS) • Women play an increasingly “decisive” role in Vatican diplomacy and promoting peace worldwide, said the undersecretary in the Vatican’s foreign ministry office.

In an interview published March 3 by L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Francesca Di Giovanni reflected on her tenure as the first woman named to a managerial position in the Secretariat of State. Pope Francis appointed Di Giovanni to her role in January 2020, after working in the Secretariat of State for 27 years.

Di Giovanni called her nomination “prophetic” in the interview and said she thought it could lead the way for women in senior Vatican positions to become the norm. “Female intuition and the specific talents of women working in the service of peace allow for a healthy and enriching collaboration with men when they are listened to on an equal level.”

Those specific talents, she explained, include a tendency to seek “forms of cooperation rather than competition” and an attention to interpersonal dynamics. In particular, she said diversity among those pursuing the Vatican’s international interests allows the Secretariat of State to properly respond to the multilateral contexts it operates in.

VATICAN STATISTICS SHOW DECLINE IN CLERGY, RELIGIOUS WOMEN, WORLDWIDE

VATICAN CITY (CNS) • The number of Catholics and permanent deacons in the world rose in 2021, while the number of seminarians, priests, and men and women in religious orders declined, according to Vatican statistics.

At the end of 2021, the number of Catholics in the world reached 1.378 billion, up 1.3% from 1.36 billion Catholics at the end of 2020, according to the Vatican’s Central Office of Church Statistics. The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published a brief overview of the global numbers March 3.

The total number of diocesan and religious order priests decreased globally by 0.57% to 407,872, the Vatican office said. The total number of religious women, it said, was 608,958 at the end of 2021 – a decrease of 1.7% from 619,546 at the end of 2020. The number of permanent deacons – 49,176 –saw a 1.1% increase over the previous year, with the majority of them serving in the Americas. The number of seminarians has been declining each year since 2013, the Vatican office said. The only increase by region for 2021 was in Africa with 0.6% and the sharpest decline in the number of seminarians was in North America and Europe with a 5.8% decrease each in 2021.

SIX SAINTHOOD CANDIDATES, INCLUDING TWO LAY WOMEN, CLOSER TO CANONIZATION

VATICAN CITY (CNS) • Pope Francis has moved six candidates for sainthood closer to canonization.

In a meeting with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the Pope signed decrees Feb. 23 recognizing a miracle attributed to the intercession of an Italian religious sister and the heroic virtues of five others: two laywomen, two priests and a religious woman.

The process for being proclaimed a saint includes a study of the candidate’s life and writings to determine whether he or she lived the Christian virtues in a heroic way. A miracle attributed to the candidate’s intercession is required for beatification and another miracle is needed for canonization.

With the Pope’s recognition of a miracle through her intercession, a beatification ceremony can be planned for Sister Elisabetta Martinez, founder of the Congregation of the Daughters of St. Mary of Leuca. The Italian, who lived 1905-1991, founded the congregation to care for young children and single mothers. The miracle reportedly involved saving a fetus experiencing blood clots and other complications; the baby was born in good condition in 2018.