March 5, 2010

Caritas struggles to reach rural victims of Chilean earthquake

(CNS PHOTO/ELISEO FERNANDEZ, REUTERS)

By Barbara J. Fraser Catholic News Service

A resident looks at partially destroyed San Francisco de Curico Church March 1 after it was damaged in a major earthquake in Curico, Chile. Nearly 800 people reportedly were killed when the massive quake struck the country’s central coast early Feb. 27.

LIMA, Peru – While media attention focuses on looting in Concepcion, the largest city near the epicenter of last week’s magnitude 8.8 earthquake, Catholic Church workers struggle to reach quake victims in rural areas who are far from the spotlight.

“We are receiving funds to help the poorest people, who are in the countryside,” Father Waldo Alfaro, head of the Caritas Chile office in Linares, told Catholic News Service March 1 in a telephone interview. Linares is in the Maule region, where most of the quake deaths occurred.

“The entire coast was hard-hit, but

St. Elizabeth School to close; enrollment declines, debt rises

By Rick DelVecchio Facing declining enrollment and growing debt, St. Elizabeth Catholic School, a parish school in San Francisco’s Portola District since 1949, will close at the end of this academic year.

The closure was announced at a Feb. 24 parish meeting attended by St. Elizabeth pastor Father Charito Suan, Archdiocese of San Francisco Schools Superintendent Maureen Huntington, Principal Gene Dabdoub and about

Catholic san Francisco

this is an area where the poorest rural residents live,” Father Alfaro said. “Aid is not reaching them because these are very small villages.”

Three trucks left Linares early March 2 to distribute supplies, especially food and water, to residents of far-flung villages in the farming region. The greatest need is for milk, water, food, fuel and cots for victims, as well as assistance in rebuilding houses that collapsed in the quake, Father Alfaro said.

The adobe houses common in the poorest rural regions “are the ones that collapsed,” he said. The Linares office of Caritas, the church’s social assistance agency, is compiling an inventory of damaged and destroyed homes.

CHILEAN EARTHQUAKE, page 11

100 members of the school and parish community.

Also attending were Monsignor Robert McElroy, representing the archdiocesan Council of Priests, and Father William Brady, pastor of St. Emydius Parish in the nearby Ingleside District.

A four-year effort to reverse the enrollment decline at St. Elizabeth fell short, Huntington said in a letter to the school community.

ST. ELIZABETH SCHOOL, page 8

Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

Parishes and schools adopt Operation Rice Bowl for Lenten prayer and giving

By Tom Burke Spurred by Lent and daily cries of hunger from the poor in countries around the world, more than two dozen parishes, schools and religious education programs in the Archdiocese of San Francisco have signed on to participate in Operation Rice Bow this Lenten Season.

“Operation Rice Bowl is an opportunity to stand in solidarity with those in hunger,” said Patricia Ribeiro of the Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns of the archdiocese, which is coordinating the fundraising campaign here. “During the season of Lent we pray with our families and communities while learning more about our global community and the challenges of poverty overseas.”

Operation Rice Bowl had its beginnings in 1975 as a response to a drought in Africa. Overseen nationally by Catholic Relief Services, ORB has since then collected $191 million – $8 million in 2009 – to support CRS development projects to improve people’s ability to access food in communities around the world and in the United States. The participating groups in the archdiocese are part of more than 14,000 faith com-

munities across the country supporting Operation Rice Bowl this year.

Recent ORB collections in the Archdiocese of San Francisco have raised $18,000 in 2007; $31,000 in 2008, and $13,000 in 2009.

Vice-Principal Sharon Hupf is coordinating Operation Rice Bowl at Ecole Notre Dames des Victoires in San Francisco. Tyson Scofield is in charge of ORB activities at Notre Dames des Victoires Parish.

The student body and staff at NDV School, a parish catechism class, and parishioners are taking part, Hupf told Catholic San Francisco. “The Rice Bowl program, through its educational piece, helps our students understand more about those in need and their responsibility to help them,” she said.

A prayer service on the second Wednesday of Lent begins ORB at Ecole Notre Dames des Victoires and materials including ORB collection boxes are sent home with students. Materials are also distributed at Masses the following weekend at the parish church. Boxes are collected the week before Easter, funds from the school and parish combined, OPERATION RICE BOWL, page 5

‘Archbishop’s Hour’ On 1260 AM Radio “The Archbishop’s Hour” with San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer airs each Friday morning at 9 a.m. on Immaculate Heart Radio – 1260 AM in the Bay Area.

Repeat broadcasts air Friday evening at 9 p.m., Sunday at 11 a.m., and Monday at 9 p.m.

March 5, 2010

Poster for Operation Rice Bowl encourages Lenten prayer and giving.

INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION Religious freedom . . . . . . . . . 3 New school construction . . . 7 News in brief. . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Archbishop’s Journal. . . . . . 12 Scripture & reflection. . . . . 14

Sacred Heart Sister professes final vows ~ Page 7 ~

Books: overcoming losses with healing ~ Page 16 ~

ONE DOLLAR

Datebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Services, classified ads . 18-19

www.catholic-sf.org VOLUME 12

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Catholic San Francisco

March 5, 2010

from then until now in forming students to be “generous, loving spouses and parents.” In remarks before Mass, Father John Balleza, OLMC pastor, noted that in the school’s founding year – 1885 – “no one had heard of Teddy Roosevelt, and the Civil War had ended just 20 years prior.” The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur began teaching at OLMC in 1885. Notre Dame Sister Margaret Hoffman, an OLMC alumna, was among members of the congregation who attended the Mass. Alicia Aguirre, Redwood City vice mayor, was present as official and

By Tom Burke school parent – alumni Pablo and Eric Zatarain-Aguirre - with a proclamation from the city congratulating OLMC on its 125th anniversary. .…

Happy birthday to new cenIt was standing-room only for tenarian, Lillian Rasband, a Mass of Thanksgiving opena native San Franciscan ing Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and longtime member of Elementary School’s 125th year St. Gabriel Parish who Jan. 31. Archbishop George H. celebrated her 100th birthNiederauer presided. In his homday Jan. 20. Thanks to ily, Archbishop Niederauer spoke Nancy Grey and her mom of the school’s long history and Ann Nolte for sending us the “four and five generations of the good news about their the same families” who have sent “dear cousin.”… Archbishop their children to the Redwood George Niederauer presided City school. “For 125 years the at Confirmation rites Jan. 24 torch has been passed,” he said, at St. Finn Barr Church in “the torch of knowledge, wisdom, Lillian Rasband San Francisco. Father Jose sacrifice, good example, deep faith, love, and generous service.” He also told of “teach- Corral, pastor, concelebrated the Mass with Deacon ers who were dedicated, patient and kind” and assisted Willy Sevilla assisting. Among those receiving the sacrament were Monica Castro, Brian Keane, Jordi Molina, Alonzo Aguilera, Adriane Suangco, Nayeli Vazquez, Luis Gerardo Vazquez, Myka Macaraeg, Stephanie Aldama, Luis Valle, Sai McNamara, Elora Cuenco, Heather Park, Clayton Smith, Derick Clemente, Jenna Harkins, Fernanda Rendon, Jianna Fontanilla, Winter Curtiss, Sandra Lacayo, and Celeste Oliva….Treading the boards as LeFou in this weekend’s Beauty and the Beast at Carlmont High School is freshman Sean Traynor of St. Pius Parish in Redwood City. Acting since age 5, Sean has played in 19 shows. He likes the part of LeFou because of its comic dimensions.

One day he’d like to produce a Teresa Anthony, principal of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Elementary School, Broadway project. The actor’s was honored Jan. 31 by Archbishop George H. Niederauer for her 20 years proud parents are Martha and of leadership at the Redwood City school. At left is OLMC pastor, Stephen Traynor…. Checkmate has become a regular part of the Father John Balleza. Sitting behind Teresa is Deacon Tom Boyle. vocabulary of Michael K. Lin, Teresa’s husband Bruce Anthony teaches math and serves as a senior at St. Ignatius College assistant admissions director at Junipero Serra High School.

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Michael Lin, Marlo Studley and Catherine Teitz, all seniors at St. Ignatius College Preparatory, donned togas for national convention of the Junior Classical League at UC Davis.

of the Jesuit Grandmaster Chess Tournament. The competition took place on-line with entrants from each of 52 Jesuit high schools in the United States taking part.

Michael, ranked as high as 25th in the nation for his age group, considers chess a sport demanding constant training and practice. Michael sees opportunity for creativity as well as parallels to life in the game. “Similar to life, chess is a game of choices,” he told me in an e-mail.

“On every step, seemingly good but disastrous moves tempt us, and we have to use a discerning eye to separate these from the stronger moves. We can play every move perfectly until the last move of the game where we spoil our hard-fought advantage, just as one angry outburst can undo years of hard work spent building a good reputation.

I find myself utilizing the same principles and tactics that form the foundation of my game in my daily life, and I appreciate the opportunity to learn about these lessons through chess.” Mighty proud are his mom, Yi Zhang, and dad, Dong Lin…. This is an empty space without you. E-mail items and electronic pictures – jpegs at no less than 300 dpi – to burket@sfarchdiocese.org or mail them to Street, One Peter Yorke Way, SF 94109. Thank you.

My phone number is (415) 614-5634.

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Catholic San Francisco

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Cardinal: Catholics, Mormons must defend religious freedom together PROVO, Utah – Catholics and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must continue to stand together as a “vital bulwark” against those in American society who want to “reduce religion to a purely private reality,” the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told a historic gathering at Brigham Young University in Provo.

Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago spoke Feb. 23 on “Catholics and Latter-day Saints: Partners in the Defense of Religious Freedom” as part of the Mormon school’s forum series. He was the first cardinal to speak at the university.

Cardinal George praised the Mormons for their work with Catholics to protect the conscience rights of health care providers and institutions that do not want to participate in abortion or assisted suicide and to defend marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

“When the government fails to protect the consciences of its citizens, it falls to religious bodies to defend them,” he said.

True religious freedom means not just freedom to worship or “individual conscience rights as long as you don’t make anyone unhappy,” but the right to “influence the public square,” he added.

The cardinal said Catholics and Mormons shared not only a common understanding of religious freedom, but the common experience of growing from a small, sometimes persecuted religious minority to larger communities of 67 million U.S. Catholics and about 6 million U.S. Mormons today.

“Both our communities have prospered in a nation that respects religious freedom and recognizes that government should never stand between its citizens and almighty God,” he said.

Catholics and Mormons also have stood side by side in efforts against “the degradations associated with pornography” and in promoting “respect for the lives of those waiting to be born and respect for marriage,” he added.

Although he did not refer directly to the successful 2008 campaign to overturn same-sex marriage in California, in which Catholics and Mormons were prominent, Cardinal George said both religious communities believe that “every single person is made in God’s image and must be respected.”

“But that does not mean you accept everything they

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do,” he said. “The relationship is at question here, not the persons.”

He also said that those who “have gay people in their families, as I do ... have to be there for them and love them.”

The audience at the 22,700-seat Marriott Center gave Cardinal George a standing ovation after his talk, which also

Cardinal Frances E. George is shown speaking at Brigham Young University Feb 23 in Provo, Utah.

was attended by two top officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – Elders Quentin L. Cook and M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve.

Cardinal George told the gathering that his own experiences with the church began when he went to Salt Lake City as a child with his mother, a church organist, who wanted to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Many years later in 2007, he was offered an opportunity to serve as guest conductor for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for one song. “Never had I been asked to do something like that,” he said. “It was a tremendous feeling of awe and power and great satisfaction.”

It was also “something of an ego trip” to have “that great choir waiting for me,” Cardinal George said. And when he moved his arm, the choir erupted into “a magnificent sound – all in unison, all in harmony,” he added.

“I thought to myself, ‘I’m doing better with the Mormons than I am with the Catholics,’” the cardinal said with a laugh. “I’ve had a lot harder time getting (Catholics) to sing together.”

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Catholic San Francisco

March 5, 2010

obituary

Father William Worner, Archdiocesan priest for nearly 65 years A funeral Mass was celebrated March 4 for Father William H. Worner at St. Gregory Parish in San Mateo where he served as pastor from 1977 – 91. Father Worner died Feb. 28. Ordained to the priesthood June 16, 1945, he was 89 years of age.

The future-Father Worner was born in San Francisco and attended St. Ignatius College Preparatory and St. Joseph’s College in Mountain View before entering St. Patrick’s Seminary and University in Menlo Park in 1940.

His first assignment as a priest was as a parochial vicar, then known as an associate pastor, at St. Michael Parish in San Francisco. Service continued at assignments including St. Kevin Parish in Bernal Heights and St. John the Baptist Parish in El Cerrito – the Diocese of Oakland would be formed from the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1962 – as well as Corpus Christi Parish in Piedmont, St. Bartholomew Parish in San Mateo, and St. Teresa Parish in Potrero Hill.

In 1964, Archbishop Joseph T. McGucken assigned Father Worner to establish the Church of the Ascension in Saratoga – the Diocese of San Jose would be formed from the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1981 – on thirteen acres of family property that had been offered to the Archdiocese by Joseph Pon. The buildings on the property were not structurally safe for large gatherings of parishioners, so a nearby drying shed was initially converted into the first Ascension Church. In November, 1966, the beams of the present church building were hoisted, and Father Worner, first pastor of the parish, began offering Mass on the new altar in June, 1967.

In 1977, after 13 years at Ascension, Father Worner was assigned by Archbishop John R. Quinn as pastor of St. Gregory Church in San Mateo. Following 14 years of ministry at Saint Gregory, Father was appointed Director of the Office of Development, with residence at the newly established Serra Retirement Center (later renamed Serra Clergy House).

Father Worner retired from active ministry on March 1, 1994, but accepted Archbishop Quinn’s request at that time that he serve as co-Director with the now-late Father Patrick Keane of the Archdiocesan program for Retired Priests. In 1995, he was appointed Director of Serra Clergy House, and Representative for Retired Priests in San Mateo County, a responsibility he undertook faithfully until January, 2004.

“Father Bill Worner was a very positive person and very hospitable especially to priests,” said Msgr. James Keane, retired pastor Our Lady of Loretto Parish in Novato and a seminary classmate of Father Worner’s. “His rectory was always open to visitors. He was a very priestly priest who helped many people quietly and never looked for compliments. He was also a man of action. If something needed to be done, he would get it done.”

Msgr. Keane and Father Worner often played golf together through the years. “He loved golf,” Msgr. Keane said. “However good or not good he was at it, he was always competitive. It was a great relaxation for him.”

“Bill Worner was a doer,” said Father James O’Malley, retired pastor of St. Kevin Parish and ordained in 1946.

“He did nothing but great things for the kids especially poor kids and kids in trouble. He did a great job at all the parishes he served and certainly has a star in heaven for that. The people loved him. I have nothing but the utmost love, respect and admiration for Bill.”

“Bill Worner was one of the finest priests we ever had,” remembered Father Clement C. Davenport, retired pastor, Church of the Nativity in Menlo Park and ordained in 1948. “He was a terrific person who reached out to people and to priests who were having troubles. I have nothing but admiration for Father Bill Worner.”

In recent years, Father Worner resided at Alma Via of San Francisco (2007), and Alma Via of Union City (2008). “I use the occasion of this memo to thank, in particular, Sister Annette, Suzanne, Farida and the staff at Alma Via of Union City for the competent and loving care they provided as Father’s health declined,” San Francisco Auxiliary Bishop William Justice said in a an announcement of Father Worner’s death March 1.

Father Worner is survived by a nephew, Rich Worner; nieces, Sue Tierney, Judy Hurabiell and Nancy Fleck; and sister-in-law, Evelyn Worner. Remembrances may be made to the Priests Retirement Fund of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco 94109.

Workshops scheduled to train priests, diocesan leaders on new missal

By Catholic News Service WASHINGTON (CNS) – Registration is now open for a series of workshops to help prepare priests and diocesan leaders for implementation of the revised Roman Missal.

The 22 workshops will take place in each of the nation’s

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15 regions beginning in April and continuing into November.

They are sponsored by the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship and the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, in cooperation with the National Organization for Continuing Education of Roman Catholic Clergy and the National Association of Pastoral Musicians.

Each seminar will be staffed by either Msgr. Anthony Sherman, executive director of the divine worship secretariat, or Father Richard Hilgartner, associate director.

Topics to be covered include the historical and theological context of the new missal; the role of the priest celebrant in both proclaiming and singing the texts; the impact of change on both priests and laypeople; and suggested strategies for implementing the missal locally.

According to an announcement at the Vatican in late January, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the

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Sacraments is pulling together the final version of the English translation of the missal. Because bishops’ conferences approved the Roman Missal in sections over a period of years, a final review and minor edits were needed to ensure consistency, said a congregation official.

Most English-speaking bishops’ conferences are preparing materials to introduce and explain the new translation with the hope that people will begin using it in parishes at the beginning of Advent 2011. The exact date for implementation in each country, however, will be set by the bishops’ conference in that country after final Vatican approval of the translation.

The dates and locations for the workshops are: April 15-16, Cincinnati; April 20-21, Richmond, Va.; April 29-30, Phoenix; May 11-12, Grand Rapids, Mich.; May 13-14, Kansas City, Mo.; May 19-20, Helena, Mont.; May 24-25, St. Paul, Minn.; June 8-9, Denver; June 21-22, Orange, Calif.; June 29-30, Louisville; July 20-21, Emmitsburg, Md.; Aug. 5-6, Milwaukee; Aug. 10-11, Trenton, N.J.; Aug. 24-25, San Francisco; Sept. 7-8, Oklahoma City; Sept. 22-23, Boston; Sept. 29-30, Seattle; Oct. 4-5, Alexandria, La.; Oct. 18-19, Albany, N.Y.; Oct. 26-27, Honolulu; Oct. 28-29, San Antonio; and Nov. 4-5, Orlando, Fla. Further details about the seminars is available at www. fdlc.org, and registration for the workshops (limited to priests and diocesan leaders) is at www.usccb.org/romanmissal.

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Catholic San Francisco

March 5, 2010

Operation Rice Bowl . . .

■ Continued from cover and sent to CRS this year earmarked for Haiti relief.

Hupf, who has helped with ORB at Notre Dame school for the last three years, said, “The students become more aware of others and their needs and are enthusiastic about helping those in need. They develop understanding and compassion.”

In addition to the collection boxes, Operation Rice Bowl materials include a Lenten Calendar that includes daily reflections for the season, introductions to individuals benefiting from the work of CRS and ORB, as well as home recipes from countries including Bolivia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and Ethiopia, that locations are encouraged to use for soup suppers and other Lenten events. The packet also includes a Parish Community Guide with relevant bulletin announcements, prayers of the faithful, and homily notes. Resources are also available online and include Stations of the Cross.

An Educators Guide has lesson plans for grades 1-12 related to Catholic Social Teaching.

Operation Rice Bowl is implemented at Church of the Assumption in Tomales through the parish Religious Education Program. Patti Parks, parish secretary and Religious Education Coordinator, spreads the word about Operation Rice Bowl through the program’s 200 students.

Talking to classmates about Operation Rice Bowl are Ecole Notre Dame des Victoires students, Rebecca Harvey, religion commissioner, at the podium, and, from left, Samantha Wilcox, Nicholas Lee, Julia De la Cruz, Tristan Arostegui, Frankie Falzon, Emily Seeley.

“We open the campaign the week before Lent as the students understand about repenting so they do not mind giving up a candy bar or soda or something else they enjoy for the Rice Bowl,” Parks told Catholic San Francisco. “I think the most important thing about Operation Rice Bowl is that students understand that for a little effort and sacrifice they can feed families and that is a good feeling.”

Assumption Religious Education teacher, Gloria Mercado, is in her second year of helping coordinate the ORB effort.

Mercado explained her role in Religious education as “teaching children to follow Jesus’ rules” adding “Operation Rice Bowl helps the children know more about hunger around the world.”

Joe Hastings of Catholic Relief Services, Seattle helps oversee the national ORB project. “Promoting ORB keeps me fairly busy from November to February, helping dioceses get the orders, materials, and information they need to then engage parishes and schools,” Hastings said.

Hastings also coordinates speaking engagements that take the front-line story of hunger to ORB’s participating locations.

Thomas Awiapo, a one-time beneficiary and now employee of CRS, is scheduled to speak March 5, at St. Ignatius College Preparatory and Junipero Serra High School, and on March 6 at a Food Fast at St. Peter Parish Pacifica sponsored by the Office of Religious Education and Youth Ministry of the Archdiocese.

Hastings explained that ORB is not so much a fundraising program or a `collection’ but an education program, the reason so many educational materials are published for it.

“Personally, participating in ORB has given fasting a stronger, contemporary meaning, as something I do for God who is present in the poor of the world,” Hastings said. “I see and taste the ORB recipes as the meals of the future, the kind of meals we are all called to be eating by the realities of both world hunger and our environment.”

The CRS Operation Rice Bowl site offers many resources and suggestions.

Visit http://orb.crs.org

Operation Rice Bowl Prayer

Also participating in Operation Rice Bowl Operation Rice Bowl participating locations in the Archdiocese of San Francisco include St, Catherine of Siena Parish, Burlingame; St. Raymond Parish, Menlo Park; Good Shepherd Parish, and St. Peter Parish and Religious Education Program, Pacifica; St. Charles Parish, San Carlos; Mater Dolorosa Parish and St. Veronica Parish, South San Francisco; Notre Dames Des Victoires Parish, School and Religious Education Program, St. Michael Korean Parish, Church of the Epiphany Parish, St. Monica Parish, Holy Name of Jesus Parish, St. Brendan Parish, St. Stephen Parish, St. Peter and Rice bowls for personal Paul Parish, St. Thomas the Apostle School, San donations are supplied by Francisco; St. Timothy Parish, St. Bartholomew Catholic Relief Services.

Parish, St. Matthew Parish and School, San Mateo, St. Dunstan School, Millbrae; St. Isabella Parish and St. Raphael Parish, San Rafael; St. Rita Parish, Fairfax; St. Patrick Parish, Larkspur; Our Lady of Loretto Parish, Novato, Church of the Assumption of Mary Religious Education Program, Tomales; St. Ignatius College Preparatory, San Francisco and Junipero Serra High School, San Mateo.

God of all people, Hear us as we join in prayer with our brothers and sisters in need.

Bless our Lenten fasting, learning, and giving.

May your generous love for your people be our guide as we reach out to all who live with hunger and poverty. Amen.

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Catholic San Francisco

March 5, 2010

By Tom Tracy PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CNS) – On her second medical mission to Haiti since the Jan. 12 earthquake, Patty Skoglund, a disaster response expert with Scripps Health in San Diego, sees an evolution in medical treatment taking place.

“It went from a completely surgical focus to a chroniccare focus,” said Skoglund, whose team saw 200 patients at St. Francis de Sales Hospital on Monday in the center of the most devastated part of the Haitian capital. The hospital has been caring for 65 patients – about half its normal number – at any given time, under tents and tarps.

Three U.S. bishops – Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of San Antonio and Auxiliary Bishop Guy Sansaricq of Brooklyn, N.Y. – visited the hospital March 2 as part of a three-day visit to assess the rebuilding needs of the Catholic Church in Haiti.

Skoglund said the Scripps Health team treated patients with malaria, malnutrition, dehydration, infections and tetanus. The team, the third sent to Haiti, also saw patients with stress-related complications such as ulcers, stomach illnesses and high blood pressure.

“It is earthquake-related in reference to lack of care available right now,” Skoglund said. “The first team we came with was surgical-focused and we did about 20 surgeries a day.

Today they are doing about five to six cases a day.”

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US medical teams in Haiti refocus medical care on chronic illnesses Medical Center in San Diego, who arrived The team also treated a few people with in Port-au-Prince Feb. 28 for the second broken bones and serious lacerations. There time since the earthquake, said he was also were follow-up repair procedures stempleased to learn the hospital now had semiming from original surgeries, routine checkpermanent outdoor tent facilities, regular ups and dressings that needed changing. patient meals made possible by CRS, Working in seven-day shifts, the rotatportable showers and toilets. ing medical teams from California have marveled at the quiet resilience of the “The pharmacy is also better stocked and Haitian people. Haiti is the first internationnow has a computerized inventory,” he said. al response Scripps has been involved with “The challenge is to be able to get commitat the invitation of Archbishop Bernardito ments from the different volunteer groups Auza, the papal nuncio in Haiti, and in conand find out how to collaborate and work nection with Catholic Relief Services. together to effect efficient and sustained “I think the doctors were surprised at patient care, because while the acute phase the volume and the type of medicine they is winding down, the semi-acute phase and were seeing and in the cultural difference chronic illnesses phase is starting, along with in the patient response,” Skoglund said. getting back to everyday emergencies” A patient is checked by “The Haitians are more stoic and their pain He said he was alarmed, however, that tolerance is much higher than what we see three patients recently died of tetanus, a premedical team member at in the U.S.” ventable infectious disease which enters the St. Francis de Sales Hospital Because of the limited number of body through open wounds. It’s a situation in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, hospitals and trained health professionthat underscores the dire need for tetanus March 1, seven weeks after als, the demand for routine care is great. vaccinations in Haiti, he explained. the massive earthquake Complicating the situation is the recent “Half of the children here are not immuleft more than 200,000 dead heavy rains and flooding, leading to more nized, and only a third of people had access and the capital in ruins. cases of malaria. to medical care before the earthquake,” At St. Francis de Sales, the U.S. Agency he said. for International Development erected several surgical suites.

“The most important thing is sustainability because once Still, Skoglund said she is concerned about medical teams Haiti is out of the news there is always fatigue,” Gamboa working outdoors. added. “We must concentrate on the fact that the medical care Dr. Edgar Gamboa, chief of surgery at El Centro Regional needs to be supported on a long-term basis.”

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Catholic San Francisco

7

(PHOTO CREDIT: KYOSHI)

Construction begins for new St. Mary’s Chinese School and Center

Steel arrives at the Chinatown site of the new St. Mary Chinese School and Center in San Francisco. The Transamerica Pyramid is at right.

Construction of the new St. Mary Chinese School in San Francisco began to take solid form in February with the arrival of a large steel shipment and the raising of columns and beams. St. Mary’s Chinese School and Center has started the final phase of building its new schools and Center at the corner of Jackson and Kearny Street (site of the old International Hotel) in the heart of Chinatown.

Paulist Father Daniel McCotter of St. Mary’s Chinese Mission said, “The community, alumni, business, foundations and the Archdiocese of San Francisco have been heavily involved in raising over 17 million dollars for this complex of classrooms (K-8), science lab, gymnasium, library, courtyard garden, play yard and ample space for language school and a center for low to moderate immigrants in need of social and spiritual guidance.”

He added, “With 10 million dollars needed to complete the final phase, we are working tirelessly with our new Development Office and Committee, under the leadership of Katherine King, Development Director. The completion of construction is scheduled for January 2011. Ongoing construction can be seen

via webcam at www.stmaryschinese.org.

With the new school structure at 836 Kearney St. scheduled to open in 2011, St. Mary’s will continue a nearly centurylong tradition of Catholic school teaching in the Chinese community, and renew the Church’s presence among children, parents and seniors in the nearby senior housing complex. The new building will house the Chinese language school and the Chinese Catholic grammar school.

When completed, the new St. Mary’s Chinese School and Center will have nearly 50,000 square feet of space. The project has been one requiring patience and dedication on the part of backers. In Phase I of the long-term project, the archdiocese financed a 150-space underground parking garage, while the St. Mary’s capital fund paid for the foundation and first floor of the school and center. Phase II is the completed 105-unit senior housing complex built with federal and local housing funds. Phase III, now underway, completes the project with the remaining four floors of the school and center.

For more information, visit www. stmaryschinese.org and click on Capital Campaign.

Sacred Heart Sister Diana Wall professes final vows Sister Diana C. Wall, RSCJ, professed final vows with the Religious of the Sacred Heart Jan. 31 in ceremonies at the congregation’s motherhouse, Villa Lante, in Rome. She had first met the Sacred Heart Sisters as a student at their Convent of the Sacred Heart Schools in San Francisco.

Sister Diana entered the Sacred Heart Sisters in 1997 and made first vows in 2001. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing and a certificate in Public Health Nursing from the University of San Francisco in 1986, and a graduate degree in business from Golden Gate University. Her professional experience

since that time has included healthcare for the elderly, property management and fundraising.

Just recently returned from a year of service in Uganda, Sister Diana will next go to Haiti to help in healthcare efforts there, through the Society of the Sacred Heart – an international congregation that has been working with the Haitian people in Port au Prince and Verrettes.

“The vocation I have chosen allows me to be there for others, and the tragedy in Haiti gave me a moment of clarity that I could help with the humanitarian efforts there, specifically in the service of nursing which is greatly needed at this time,”

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Sister Diana’s father, Charles Allen Wall, is a longtime member of San Francisco’s St. Cecilia Parish in San Francisco where Sister Diana attended elementary school. Her five siblings who live in San Francisco and the East Bay include Charles Wall and wife Susan, Elizabeth Wall Hanson and husband Mark, Catherine Wall Brooks and husband Stephen, Duke Wall and wife Susan, and David Wall and wife Robin.

The couples all attended the profession ceremony in Rome, as did the youngest of Sister Diana’s nieces and nephews: Tommy, a student at Bellarmine High School, and Bobby, Catherine and Lily

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Catholic San Francisco

March 5, 2010

St. Elizabeth School . . .

■ Continued from cover Current enrollment at the K-8 school is 132 and was expected to fall to 120 next year, she wrote.

That continued erosion and the resulting loss of revenue would have put St. Elizabeth more than 100 students below the 225 benchmark for a K-8 school’s long-term financial health. St. Elizabeth last came close to that level five years ago, when it enrolled 217.

“The efforts of many over the past four years have not resulted in the changes hoped for or expected,” Huntington wrote. “We are at the point where the financial resources have been depleted.”

St. Elizabeth will be the fourth K-8 parochial school to close in the archdiocese in the last 10 years. The previous closures were St. Paul of the Shipwreck and St. Emydius in San Francisco and Mater Dolorosa in Daly City.

Huntington said there are no plans for additional closures.

To assist families in continuing their Catholic school education, the archdiocese held a meeting at St. Elizabeth’s Cantwell Hall last Tuesday to offer parents the opportunity to register at other Catholic schools. Parents who were not able to attend may register their children at other schools after March 2.

“All students wishing to remain in a Catholic school for next year will be given this opportunity,” Huntington wrote. “Schools will make accommodations when and where possible.”

Huntington said that closing the school “is similar to the death of a loved one.”

“The school and parish community will be in a state of mourning and grieving for many months,” she wrote. “It is heartbreaking and sad, hard to comprehend and understand.

Yet 60 years of educating students in our Catholic faith need to be celebrated. I encourage you to do just that over the next few months.”

“I sincerely wish that things had been different, that we would have been able to turn the school around, but that has not happened,” she wrote.

St. Elizabeth formed a task force in 2008 to turn around

the trend. Pushing for a 180 enrollment goal in Sept. 2009 and 270 by 2015, and hoping to recruit widely among Catholic families in the southern end of San Francisco, the task force worked with Archbishop George H. Neiderauer, the Alliance Consultative Board, Father Suan and Principal Dabdoub.

Despite the efforts of the task force, operating costs continued to exceed income from tuition, fees, fundraising, parish contributions, archdiocesan subsidies, tuition assistance and funds raised through the Alliance of Mission District Schools. Expenses outpaced income during each of the past four years, resulting in a growing debt.

In May 2006, the school secured a $92,875 zero-interest loan from the archdiocese to cover teachers’ pensions, medical insurance, property insurance and other costs for the 2006 fiscal year.

The school’s debt includes not only the full loan amount but also $190,000 in subsidies in the last three years.

“The resources of the parish and the archdiocese to subsidize St. Elizabeth School have been exhausted,” Huntington wrote.

In a Feb. 10 note to the school community, the St. Elizabeth administration noted the enrollment challenge.

“Last year we worked extremely hard to increase our enrollment,” the note said. “I thank each family who stayed with us and those new families who joined our school community. All of us know that our school is a special place with a lot of heart.

“As we look forward to the 2010-2011 school year, enrollment continues to be our challenge. We need everyone on board to spread the ‘good news’ about St. Elizabeth School, the school with ‘heart.’”

Huntington said St. Elizabeth faced a combination of changing demographics and the economy.

“They just weren’t able to get families to come into the school in sufficient numbers,” she said. “I don’t think there was anything that wasn’t tried. They made a concerted effort to boost the enrollment.”

According to a history of the school on the St. Elizabeth website, Father Arthur J. Cantwell became pastor of St. Elizabeth in 1942. Under his leadership, the parish transformed the dream of a school into a reality. Parishioners helped with a bazaar, social events and fund drives. On Dec. 11, 1949, St. Elizabeth School and Convent, at a cost of a

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half-million dollars, was dedicated in a ceremony conducted

by Archbishop John J. Mitty.

The school was visualized as an ideal combination of school, auditorium, parish hall and cafeteria. Today, its extensive plant includes nine classrooms, three resource rooms, a computer lab, a library, administrative offices, a faculty room, an auditorium and stage, a special education room, an extended care area, parish and school kitchens and a gym.

In the archdiocese, and nationally, St. Elizabeth is far from alone in facing daunting financial and enrollment challenges.

A decline in the number of U.S. Catholic schools reflects a demographic shift of where Catholics live more than a decline in the demand for Catholic education, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate in Washington, D.C., concluded in a 2006 survey.

CARA researchers linked the closure of 339 Catholic schools in the five years before the survey to the dynamic that “Catholic people move, schools don’t.”

The closure of two Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St. Paul, announced last month, illustrated the trend. School officials cited low enrollment and rising debt. One school faced a dramatic change in neighborhood demographics, with a resulting drop in enrollment and donations and a rise in financial need.

In the Archdiocese of San Francisco, a 2009 consultant’s draft report for the Department of Catholic Schools put it this way: “A great concern for all schools is the declining presence of the middle class, heretofore the ‘backbone’ of the Catholic School.”

K-12 enrollment in in the archdiocesan schools was 25,186 in September, down 1,836 from five years earlier.

K-8 enrollment in Catholic elementary schools within the Archdiocese of San Francisco fell by 361 students from September 2008 to September 2009, a drop of more than 2 percent in the midst of a severe recession. Nonetheless, this percentage drop in the number of students was less than that seen in other northern California dioceses. A number of other archdiocesan K-8 schools have enrollment below 200, but many have resources that St. Elizabeth lacks.

“Because a school is under 200 doesn’t mean it’s vulnerable to close,” Huntington said. “There are a whole bunch of other factors that contributed to St. Elizabeth that aren’t factors at other schools.

“Why would you close a school that was able to manage on its own?”

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Catholic San Francisco

March 5, 2010

9

Ricci is model for dialogue, mission in globalized world, speakers say

(CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING)

ROME (CNS) – Italian Father Matteo Ricci, the 16th-century Jesuit known for his positive relations with the Chinese, is a model for dialogue and evangelization in the 21st-century globalized society, said speakers at a conference in Rome.

Father Ricci’s experience and writings remind people “that there are basic similarities in all human beings, in human nature: hope, suffering, questioning the meaning of life. We all share those whether we are Westerners or Chinese,” said Jesuit Father Augustine Tsang Hing-to.

Father Tsang was born in mainland China to a Catholic family, “but I escaped by swimming to Hong Kong – four hours to Hong Kong, at night – and then went to the States.”

The priest, who now teaches at Fu Jen Catholic University of Taiwan, spoke to Catholic News Service March 1 before speaking the next day at a conference marking the 400th anniversary of Father Ricci’s death.

Father Ricci, who was born in 1552 and arrived in China at the age of 30, delved into studies of the Chinese language, culture and Confucianism. His respect for the Chinese gradually paved the way for his dialogue with China’s government and cultural leaders.

At the same time, “he was very frank and strict, explicit and direct on the goodness of the Christian faith,” Father Tsang said, and “he did not hesitate to point out the defects of Taoism and Buddhism.”

While Father Ricci found great fault with what he understood about Taoism and Buddhism, he believed that Confucianism in its purest form was a philosophy open to Christianity. After his death, missionaries developed the so-called “Chinese rites” – Confucian-based social rituals involving ancestor veneration and offerings to the

(CNS PHOTO/NA NCY WIECHEC)

By Cindy Wooden

Left, Jesuit Father Augustine Tsang Hing- to lectures on Father Matteo Ricci during a conference on the 16th-century Jesuit in Rome March 2. Father Tsang said Father Ricci, known for his missionary work in China, is a model for dialogue and evengelization in the 21st-century globalized society. Right, an illustration depicts Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci in traditional Chinese clothing.

emperor – which allowed Chinese converts to preserve elements of their heritage while being Catholic.

Centuries of controversy ensued and although the rites developed after Father Ricci’s death, he was so strongly identified with that disputed form of inculturation that his sainthood cause was not opened until the 1980s.

Father Tsang said it was unfortunate that the controversy led some to question Father Ricci’s holiness.

It is true, he said, that Father Ricci “was very friendly with the Chinese, respecting the Chinese culture, but in terms of the faith, he was very unabashedly Catholic.”

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In his speech at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University March 2, Father Tsang said Father Ricci was not so “narrow-minded as to regard non-Christian cultures or religions as nothing good; indeed, he saw quite a lot of compatibility between early Confucianism and Christianity,” and recognized that Confucian teachings could be seen as preparing the Chinese to receive the Gospel.

Father Ricci’s respect for the Chinese and his commitment to sharing the Gospel with them offer the still-relevant lesson that Christians cannot claim God is at work only among Christians, but at the same time they

cannot claim that all religions are equally valid paths to salvation, Father Tsang said.

Father Tsang said the Chinese today need the Gospel just as much as they did in Father Ricci’s age.

The country is enjoying economic prosperity, but “there are grave, hidden problems,” including the repression of human rights, a growing divide between rich and poor, widespread use of abortion and “alarming pollution.”

Father Ricci “did not befriend the Chinese and stop there. He intended to bring them the much greater blessing – the knowledge of Jesus Christ,” he said.

Italian Bishop Claudio Giuliodori of Macerata, where Father Ricci was born, said the Jesuit is still a model for dialogue and evangelization because “he entered into the Chinese culture without losing himself and in a way that allowed him to introduce themes from the Gospel into the culture.”

His relationship with the Chinese “took place in the context of dialogue, with respect, but without forgetting that his mission was to bring the Gospel,” the bishop said.

Roberto Sani, rector of the University of Macerata, said Father Ricci’s example could help people today deal with hopes and fears about their increasing contacts with people of other cultures and religions.

Just as the global expeditions of the 1500s gave Europeans a sense of an expanding world filled with previously unknown cultures, globalization today is challenging people to recognize their common humanity and share their knowledge and beliefs, Sani said.

“Ricci is a model for young people today.

He was strong in his faith and culture, but able to establish a real dialogue with the Chinese,” he said. “He is a model of a Christianity that does not close itself within four walls, but goes out into the world.”

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Catholic San Francisco

NEWS

March 5, 2010

in brief

WASHINGTON – Researchers are working on an indepth study of Catholic parish life in the United States.

The study is being conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, based at Georgetown University in Washington, on behalf of the Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership Project. “This research will provide the U.S. church with the most comprehensive and accurate picture of parish life” since a Notre Dame study of parishes was conducted in the 1980s, said Mercy Sister Mary Bendyna, CARA’s executive director and senior research associate.

“Among other things,” she said the study will “examine the new models and new structures for parish ministry that are emerging as parishes are reorganized and the people they serve are more diverse.” The first phase of the research – currently under way – involves a series of surveys that have been sent to representative samples of Catholic parishes in the United States. The initial surveys will be followed by an in-depth study of parish leaders and parishioners at approximately 60 parishes, including a sample of 35 parishes that reflects the diversity of geographic region, demography, and size of U.S. parishes. The study also will examine parishes that do not have pastors because of a lack of priests as well as multicultural parishes and parishes using multiple-parish ministry.

(CNS PHOTO/JASON REED, REUTERS)

Researchers begin study of parishes in America

Ulster Volunteer Force is party to a cease-fire agreement, it claimed responsibility for the murder of 381 Catholics during a violent campaign against the minority Catholic community that began in 1965 and ended with the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement. Stewart has turned government witness and is testifying at the trial. The court was told that Stewart, 35, became Catholic after receiving spiritual advice from Redemptorist priests at Clonard Monastery.

dent of the pontifical council, and by Sheik Mohammed Abd al-Aziz Wasil, president of al-Azhar’s permanent committee for dialogue with the monotheistic religions. The meeting’s final statement said greater attention must be paid to the fact that manipulating religion or religious beliefs for political or other interests can lead to violence.

Kenyan president tells Catholics that abortion will remain illegal

Pope offers prayers for Iraq, asks protection of minorities

Same-sex marriage law prompts changes in employee benefits WASHINGTON – Catholic Charities of the Washington Archdiocese has told staff members that a new same-sex marriage law in the District of Columbia has forced the agency to make changes to its health care coverage for spouses of employees. “I am writing to you to inform you of an important change to our group health care benefit plan that will take effect on March 2, 2010, due to a change in the law of the District of Columbia,” said Edward J. Orzechowski, the agency’s president and CEO, in a March 1 letter to staff.

He was referring to a new law allowing same-sex marriage.

The district was to begin issuing marriage licenses for samesex couples March 3. Although employees whose spouses currently are covered under the health plan would retain that coverage, the spouses of new employees will not be covered and current employees seeking to add a spouse will not be able to do so. The new marriage law “has a requirement that if you provide spousal benefits to employees, then you must provide those spousal benefits to same-sex couples,” Orzechowski said in a March 2 interview with the Catholic Standard, Washington’s archdiocesan newspaper.

British Loyalist who fought Catholics embraces Catholicism DUBLIN, Ireland – A member of a banned Loyalist paramilitary organization that waged a 30-year campaign of violence against Northern Ireland’s Catholics has become a Catholic. The revelation that Ian Stewart, a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force, is Catholic came in Belfast Crown Court Feb. 26 during the trial of nine men charged with murdering a fellow Loyalist paramilitary member. While the

(CNS PHOTO/REUTERS)

MD bishops oppose recognizing same-sex unions from other states ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Maryland’s Catholic bishops took “strong exception” to a Feb. 24 opinion by Maryland’s attorney general stating that state agencies should recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. “We trust our legislature and the people of Maryland will also object, and will act accordingly to counteract this opinion,” said a joint statement released Feb. 24 signed by Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien of Baltimore, Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington and Bishop W. Francis Malooly of Wilmington, Del., whose dioceses all include parts of Maryland. The statement was released by the Maryland Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the state’s bishops, based in Annapolis. Attorney General Douglas Gansler issued the opinion on same-sex marriage in response to a legislator’s request he look into a question some say in unclear in state law. Maryland is one of 41 states with a statute that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman. Measures to allow same-sex marriages in Maryland have failed, although the state’s lawmakers have extended some benefits to same-sex couples. Although it will not change state law, Gansler’s opinion can guide Maryland officials. The attorney general’s office, for example, can defend a state agency in court for recognizing a same-sex marriage from another state.

Iraqi Christians take part in a demonstration calling for peace and security in Mosul, Iraq, Feb. 28.

More than 1,000 people took part in the march condemning violence against the minority believers after seven Christians had been murdered in Mosul in a 10-day period.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Benedict XVI said that during his weeklong Lenten retreat he frequently prayed for all the victims of violence in Iraq, especially members of the country’s Christian minority. “I learned with deep sadness of the recent killings of Christians in Mosul and I followed with deep concern the other episodes of violence perpetrated in the martyred Iraqi land, harming defenseless people of different religions,” the pope said Feb. 28, the day after his retreat ended.

Speaking after reciting the Angelus with visitors gathered in St. Peter’s Square, including a group of Iraqi refugees, the pope told Iraqi Christians, “Do not tire of being a leaven of good for the country to which you have fully belonged for centuries.” As Iraq prepared for legislative elections March 7 and continued attempting to consolidate peace and democracy, the pope called on civil authorities “to make every effort to give security to the population and, particularly, to the most vulnerable religious minorities.” The pope also asked the international community to help Iraq build “a future of reconciliation and justice.” As the pope spoke, Catholic and Orthodox Christians in Mosul and the surrounding province marched for peace and government protection in northern Iraq.

Religious attacks by media must be rejected, say officials VATICAN CITY – Anti-religious commentary distributed by media outlets can create tensions and incite violence and therefore must be rejected, said Vatican and Muslim representatives. Attacking religion in the mass media especially via satellite television channels must be opposed considering “the dangerous effect” that these broadcasts can have on social cohesion and on peace between religious communities, said a statement issued after the annual meeting of officials from the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and from al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. The Vatican released a copy of the statement to journalists March 2. The Feb. 23-24 meeting in Cairo focused on the role religions can play in either causing or preventing religious violence. The al-Azhar meeting was chaired by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, presi-

Jesuit Father Francis Haig gives a blessing at the burial of his brother, Alexander M. Haig Jr., former U.S. secretary of state and retired fourstar general, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., March 2.

Haig, a Catholic, died Feb. 20 at age 85. At a memorial Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, Haig was eulogized by notables including Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State.

NAKURU, Kenya – Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki assured the Catholic Church that abortion will remain illegal despite contrary statements by members of the country’s parliament drafting a new constitution. Addressing the congregation in Christ the King Cathedral Feb. 26 during the installation of Bishop Maurice Muhatia Makumba of Nakuru, the president said he opposed efforts to legalize abortion and would not support any draft of the constitution that included language legalizing the procedure. The proposed constitution will be subject to a nationwide referendum in June. Cardinal John Njue of Nairobi, who celebrated the installation Mass, told Kibaki that the church will reject the constitution if it would allow abortion to be legalized. “It is wrong for the constitution to abandon fundamental moral values which were respected by our culture and promoted by the Christian faith,” Cardinal Njue told the gathering, which included former President Daniel Moi.

Bishops in Japan ask world leaders to work for end of nuclear weapons TOKYO – Bishops from Hiroshima and Nagasaki called on world leaders to work toward the total abolition of nuclear weapons. In an open letter to U.S. President Barack Obama and the Japanese government Feb. 26, the bishops said it was time to take the “courageous step,” reported the Asian church news agency UCA News. “Nuclear weapons deprived over 100,000 people of their lives in an instant at the end of the previous world war. And bomb survivors continue to suffer physically and spiritually even now,” wrote Archbishop Joseph Mitsuaki Takami of Nagasaki and Bishop Joseph Atsumi Misue of Hiroshima. “We ... demand that the president of the United States, the Japanese government and the leaders of other countries make utmost efforts to abolish nuclear weapons,” they said. The bishops described it as “sad and foolish to abuse the progress that humanity has made in the fields of science and technology, in order to destroy lives as massively and swiftly as possible, and to earn more profit by producing weapons.”

They said there are more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world and it was essential to reduce the number.

Sudan archbishop says April election can begin transformation NAIROBI, Kenya – With the approach of Sudan’s first multiparty elections in 24 years, Archbishop Paolino Lukudu Loro of Juba, Sudan, appealed to voters to learn as much as possible about the candidates before casting their votes. In a Feb. 21 pastoral letter, Archbishop Loro said the April 11 elections for the nation’s president and local officials can mark the beginning of Sudan’s political transformation. “The church has the moral obligation to guide this important process,” the archbishop wrote in the letter, titled “The Genuine Voice of the People Is the Voice of God.” The campaign ends April 9, five days after Easter, and Archbishop Loro said Sudanese can take the opportunity during Lent to restore their relationship with God while hearing from candidates about their goals for the future of the country. “God wants us to repent from the many sins we have committed against him and ourselves, especially in southern Sudan: tribes against tribes, killings, abductions, robbery, corruption and so forth,” he said. “We must atone for these sins by prayers and good deeds.” Archbishop Loro acknowledged that for 60 percent of the population in southern Sudan, where his archdiocese is located, the prospect of a voting will be a new experience, and he called for widespread participation in balloting. He expressed hope that the peace that was maintained during voter registration will carry through the election.

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Aid workers in Santiago, Chile sort donations of clothing for victims March 1 after a major earthquake struck the South American country’s central coast early Feb. 27.

Chilean earthquake. . .

■ Continued from cover Meanwhile, buckled and cracked highways complicated aid distribution.

“Roads are passable, but dangerous,” Father Alfaro said.

The national government is sending aid to the region by ship to bypass the buckled roads, damaged bridges and crowds of people who swarm vehicles arriving in urban areas, he said.

Between 30 and 40 churches and chapels in the Linares Diocese were badly damaged or destroyed, along with two orphanages as a result of the massive Feb. 27 earthquake.

In coastal villages, churches that remain standing have been turned into makeshift morgues.

The official death toll is nearly 730, with 542 of the confirmed deaths in the Maule region. But “many people are still missing,” Father Alfaro said. “There are many bodies that have not been identified.”

The last weekend in February marked the end of summer vacation for students, and many families were spending a few final days on the coast, camping on the beach or visiting small resort and fishing villages.

The earthquake, which struck at 3:34 a.m., triggered a

(CNS PHOTO/JOSE LUIS SAAVEDRA, REUTERS)

Chileans inspect debris after a tsunami in Dichato, Chile. The wave was generated by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake Feb 27 that devastated a large portion of central Chile. The temblor, one of the biggest in centuries, reportedly killed nearly 800 people and destroyed or badly damaged 500,000 homes.

tidal wave that was more than 30 feet high in places and which swept more than a mile inland. While some people reached high ground, others were washed away. Cars were left piled on top of houses, Father Alfaro said.

While church leaders mourned the deaths, they also called for solidarity and condemned the looting of stores and businesses.

Archbishop Ricardo Ezzati Andrello of Concepcion called the pillaging a “second earthquake.” Bishop Alejandro Goic Karmelic of nearby Rancagua, president of the Chilean bishops’ conference, said it “strikes our conscience” and “raises questions for us about deeply held values.”

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet imposed a curfew in Concepcion and sent military troops to stem the looting.

Curfew hours were extended to noon March 2.

President-elect Sebastian Pinera, who was to take office March 11, faces the task of reconstruction, which he estimated could cost between $15 billion and $30 billion. Up to 500,000 houses were badly damaged or destroyed.

In a statement issued March 1, Bishop Goic said the church was “praying for the eternal rest” of those who had died and asking “the God of life for consolation and hope” for their families.

“We join in prayer with those who are anxiously looking for loved ones, and for the many families who have lost everything, the fruit of a lifetime of labor. In Jesus Christ,

we trust that the most battered families and communities can rise again, spiritually and materially, with the support and solidarity of the entire country and the international community,” he said.

“We love this country, which has recovered from earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions and floods, a people that has risen in peace from death and violence so many times in its history,” he said. “At a time of understandable desperation, we call for calm and solidarity, and intense family and community prayer.”

In the United States, Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, offered prayers for earthquake victims in a March 1 letter to Bishop Goic.

“I write to assure you of my prayers and those of my brother bishops in the United States for all who have been affected by this tragedy,” Cardinal George wrote. “I assure you also of our prayers for the church and for our brother bishops of Chile.”

He told Bishop Goic that Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishop’s international relief and development agency, “stands ready to be of assistance to you and your Caritas groups as they work to alleviate the suffering caused by the earthquake.”

Donations to CRS can made through its Web site at www. crs.org/chile/maule-quake.cfm.

(PHOTOS BY FRANCIS DA SILVA/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)

(CNS PHOTO/MARCO FREDES, REUTERS)

Caritas helping earthquake victims in Chile

St. Agnes celebrates pastor’s installation

After reading the installation proclamation, Archbishop Niederauer joined the congregation in celebratory applause. With the archbishop are Acolyte Ian Cammall and Father John Talesfore.

At St. Agnes Church in San Francisco Feb. 28, participants join in an entrance procession for a Mass marking the installation of Jesuit Father Raymond Allender as pastor by San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer. Those present in the congregation included Father Allender’s mother, Genie Allender, an alumni of the former St. Agnes parish school. Parish confirmation candidates, who will be confirmed by the archbishop on April 11, helped serve at the reception.

Left, Father Allender in the entrance procession.

Father Allender with his mother, Genie Allender.

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Catholic San Francisco

March 5, 2010

Archbishop’s Journal

Lent calls us to listen, to see and to respond Today we celebrate The following homily was delivered by Archbishop is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to him.”

What does this story mean for us? How are you and I the installation of Fr. George H. Niederauer at St. Agnes Church in San Francisco Feb. 28, 2010, marking the installation of called to respond to Jesus as Lord in this gospel moment? Ray Allender as the You and I are called to “see things.” We are meant to be a fourteenth pastor of Jesuit Father Ray Allender as Pastor.

“You’re seeing things!” When we say that to people, we people of vision, a people with a vision of Jesus Christ and St. Agnes Church. usually mean they’re seeing something imaginary, something how to follow him. The Father calls us to “listen to him” Father Allender is your that is not really there. But “You’re seeing things!” is not in our lives, as Peter, James and John did, and to let our guide and companion always an accusation; it could even be a compliment. A listening to Jesus make differences: now and in our hope as you live out your life in Christ as Catholic police detective, for example, is paid to see things – things of eternal life and glory.

Archbishop If we listen to Jesus in the Gospel and try to see things Christians here in this ordinary people miss, but things that are really there. And the detective makes connections that most of the rest of us differently in the light of his teaching and example, it will parish day by day.

George H. make a difference in the way we live our lives. This listen- The priest is a servantwould miss.

Niederauer We know that two people can look at the same set of facts ing to Jesus and seeing the world in the light of his teaching leader of the people. As and come up with completely different versions or interpre- makes all sorts of differences: in the goals we choose and the pastor, Father Allendar tations of reality. They’ll say to each other, “That’s not the priorities we set, in the way we treat people and talk about shares in the vision of way I see it.” This happens all the time in nature around us. them, in our response to people who need our attention and the kingdom that we hear about today, the call to see things For example an astronomy student looks at a sunset and our help, in our meeting of the crosses and suffering of our differently as followers of Jesus Christ.

That’s a complicated idea: servant-leader (cf. Mt. 20 and interprets it in a way different from that of the ordinary own lives as united with those of our Savior. This season person. You and I may say “What a beautiful sunset!” But of Lent calls us back to this special way of listening and Mk. 10). After all, being a shepherd of people is not like being a shepherd of sheep! Father Allender is your leader, but he the astronomer knows and remembers that the sun does not seeing and responding. leads by serving, as Jesus did. The journey of faith set – rather, the earth moves. you are on is his journey too; he gives you nothing This “seeing things” differently happens for in the Christian life that he doesn’t need as well. us who believe in Jesus Christ and the teachings The Father calls us to “listen to him” in our On any Saturday, for example, Father Allender of his Church: e.g., our belief about the bread can go from a funeral to a baptism to a wedding to and wine on this altar at Mass. The readings for lives, as Peter, James and John did, and to let the Saturday evening Mass. It may be his second the Second Sunday in Lent tell us about people or third funeral that week, perhaps the seventh or who “saw things” which God showed them in a our listening to Jesus make differences: now eighth of the month, but it is the only time that a special way, in a vision – Abraham, in the first wife will bury her husband and children will bury reading (Genesis 15:5-12), and then the Apostles and in our hope of eternal life and glory. their father, so he has to be as profoundly present Peter and James and John in the gospel (Luke to them as possible. The wedding may be the 9:28B-36). twentieth of the year, but it is the only wedding In the reading from Genesis, Abram, in the St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians (3:17-4:1) contrasts for that bride and groom (we fervently hope so!). Prayer, and Old Testament, was elderly and childless, but God promised him numerous descendants who would live in a land of their disciples who listen to Jesus and see things his way with “the the sense that Jesus Christ is acting through him and living own. At first Abram can’t “see” it, but God makes a covenant enemies of the cross of Christ” whose “god is their belly and in him, gives Father Allender the vision and the strength and with him and seals it with the sacrifice Abram offers – and whose glory is their shame.” Paul describes the worldly and the presence to serve and minister to them. he makes Abram see a special vision of the brazier and the the selfish this way because they are set on the things of this Father Ray needs to lead the saints and the sinners, the world as the ultimate values and goals in their lives. When young and the old, the fervent and the fallen away, the poor torch, as a sign of the promise he makes to Abram.

The Apostles Peter, James and John see Jesus in a new we live that way we illustrate Oscar Wilde’s definition of a and the rich and the in-between, the documented and the way, in glory, as the Son of God – in the moment we call cynic, “a man who knows the price of everything and the undocumented. He will share in their sorrows and their joys. the “Transfiguration.” The three disciples see Jesus speaking value of nothing.”

That is his joy, his challenge and his consolation. Jesus Christ Disciples, Paul says, are called to be “citizens of heaven,” calls you to support Father with your prayers, your love and with Moses and Elijah, who represent the Law of the Old Testament and the Prophets who spoke to the people for God pilgrims in this world who are on a journey, eagerly wait- your encouragement. Each good pastor – and Father Ray ing for the coming of Jesus our Savior, and seeing and Allender is a good pastor – is the best vocation program and prepared them for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus.

The story of this vision is always the gospel reading for using things as means for loving and serving God and one there is. Young men can see the difference he makes daily the Second Sunday in Lent, but today in Luke’s version we another. in the lives of Catholic families and all people, and perhaps Is that merely abstract, symbolic language? Not at all! can hear the call to go and do likewise. are told that Jesus is speaking with Moses and Elijah about his suffering, death and resurrection in Jerusalem, which are We Christians are dual citizens: we vote and pay taxes in This is a good occasion for me as Archbishop to thank fast approaching. Pope Leo the Great said this experience a republic, but our ultimate allegiance is to a king – Christ the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits – for their collaboration strengthened the faith of these three apostles in two ways: the King. The laws of God are much more important than with me in the ministry of pastoral service here at St. Agnes first, it prepared them to endure the sight of Jesus crucified the laws of mankind. For instance, because a government Church, and to thank them on behalf of the Catholics of and dying, sustained by their faith in his glory as Son of legalizes abortion does not make it any the less wrong for the Archdiocese of San Francisco for their ministries here, God. Second, it prepared them for the risen glory of Jesus believers in God as the Author of all life. Jesus has said that especially at the University of San Francisco, at St. Ignatius he is meant to be the Light of our world, and that we are College Preparatory, and St. Ignatius Church. on Easter morning.

Of course, these three men were human, like us. They to see – to interpret – our world in the light of his teaching In our gospel reading, Peter, James and John saw a vision wanted the beautiful vision to go on forever. Peter wanted and that of his Church. of Jesus as divine Savior. Our faith in Jesus Christ means that Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd, who died and rose we share that vision, and our faith demands our sacrifices to build a shelter for that purpose. But the path to resurrection and eternal life still passed through Jerusalem and the for us, and appointed shepherds for his church, his people to overcome sin and to embrace goodness in our lives. St. Cross on Calvary. Jesus has been teaching the apostles that – Peter and the Apostles. They in turn appointed others to Paul says today: “Take as your guide those who follow the truth all along. On this occasion God the Father speaks to succeed them, Pope and the bishops. Bishops appoint priests example we set.” When people look to us, they should not the three apostles, as he did to Abram – in order to confirm as pastors to the people in the various parishes; they are co- be “seeing things” in some weird sense, but we are called to the vision they are seeing, and to identify Jesus, the Master workers with me, and with you, your shepherd here in St. live in such a way that they will see one thing in particular: who is leading them. God says to the three disciples: “This Agnes Parish (the word for shepherd in Latin is “pastor”). a follower of Jesus the Lord.

Views in the news: Bishops, other Catholics urge bipartisan action

By Nancy Frazier O’Brien Catholic News Service WASHINGTON – As Democratic and Republican leaders gathered in Washington for a health care summit convened by President Barack Obama last week, U.S. bishops and other Catholic leaders urged all parties to commit themselves to health care reform that is affordable, accessible and protects the life and dignity of every person.

In a Feb. 24 letter to congressional leadership, the chairmen of three committees of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops asked for “genuine health care reform that will protect the life, dignity, consciences and health of all.”

Similar messages came from the president of Catholic Charities USA and from a coalition of Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish leaders, including many Catholics.

The bishops’ letter, released a day before the summit, reiterated many of the points made in earlier USCCB messages about health care reform, calling for a prohibition on federal funding of abortion, protection of conscience rights and guarantees that immigrants will have access to the reformed health care system.

The letter was signed by Bishops William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., and John C. Wester of Salt Lake City and Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston.

They chair the USCCB committees on Domestic Justice

and Human Development, on Migration and on Pro-Life Activities, respectively.

“It is time to set aside partisan divisions and specialinterest pressures to find ways to enact genuine reform,” the bishops said. “We encourage the administration and Congress to work in a bipartisan manner marked by political courage, vision and leadership.”

But they stressed that any final plan must “respect the consciences of providers, taxpayers, purchasers of insurance and others, not violate them” and said it should be “truly universal and not be denied to those in need because of their condition, age, where they come from or when they arrive here.”

“We will continue to work vigorously to advance true health care reform that ensures affordability and access, keeps long-standing prohibitions on abortion funding, upholds conscience rights, and addresses the health needs of immigrants,” the bishops said.

“Dialogue should continue and no legislation should be finalized until and unless these basic moral criteria are met,” they added.

In a clarification issued late Feb. 26, the USCCB said the Senate health care reform bill – on which Obama’s reform proposal is based – “clearly expands abortion services, despite suggestions by some political leaders to the contrary.”

“While the Senate bill includes some language limiting the direct use of tax credits to subsidize abortion coverage, it still violates long-standing federal precedent on abortion funding in two ways,” said Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the USCCB pro-life secretariat.

“First, the Senate’s abortion language limits only use of tax credits for abortion in qualified health plans, not other funding in the bill,” he said. “Second, the Senate’s language on tax credits still allows subsidies for overall health plans that cover elective abortions. ... The bill requires each American purchasing such a plan to make a separate payment to the insurer every month, solely to pay for other people’s abortions.”

Father Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, said in a Feb. 25 statement that the summit participants must “recognize the implications of inaction” as they seek “a bipartisan pathway to reform our broken health care system.”

In a letter that appeared as a full-page ad in The Hill newspaper Feb. 24, thousands of members and leaders of U.S. faith communities urged Obama and Congress to “complete the task at hand on behalf of the millions who are left out and left behind in our current health care system.”

The letter was signed by more than 4,000 individuals, 58 national religious organizations, more than 80 regional and state faith organizations, and 26 national faith leaders.

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Making a Difference

Winter Olympics: more than medals It’s good to see nations battling it out, aggressively striving for world dominance.

But the battles I’m referring to are not the bloody conflicts fought with bullets, bombs and missiles, but rather the nonviolent competitions waged with skis, skates and bobsleds.

The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, showed a world hungering for peace where countries of all sorts can compete on the sports field instead of on the battlefield.

But the Olympics offer far more than nonviolent national glory.

In his Olympic message to Archbishop J. Michael Miller of Vancouver, Pope Benedict XVI said sports can contribute to “peaceful understanding between peoples and to establishing the new civilization of love.”

Olympic speedskater Joey Cheek showed the world how.

Winner of gold and silver medals at the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, Cheek donated his entire $40,000 medal bonuses to Right to Play.

Founded by Norwegian Olympic champion Johann Olav Koss, Right to Play (www.righttoplay.com) uses sports and play as a way to teach children teamwork, respect, communication, self-esteem and conflict resolution.

Operating in 23 poor and/or embattled countries like Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, the Palestinian territories and Israel, the organization strives to translate the best practices of sport and play

into opportunities to promote development, health and peace.

Cheek is also the co-founder and president of Team Darfur (www.teamdarfur.org), an international coalition of athletes committed to raising awareness of and bringing an end to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan.

Unlike so many business leaders and politicians, Cheek and other like-minded athletes are continuing to selflessly use their skills and position to improve the lives of the poorest of the poor and to promote world peace.

These Olympic humanitarians are showing us, as Pope Benedict suggested, how sports can indeed contribute to “peaceful understanding between peoples and to establishing the new civilization of love.”

This new civilization of love that the pope is urging us to establish will not be realized until we begin seeing each other as belonging to the one human family.

In his 2008 World Day of Peace message titled “The Human Family, a Community of Peace,” the Holy Father wrote that all people are “called to build relationships of solidarity and cooperation among themselves, as befits members of the one human family.”

Every two years the Olympics offer us a wonderful glimpse of the world looking like one human family. While it’s sadly true that even during the Olympics wars and internal conflicts do not cease, nonetheless, as we see nations across the

globe gathering in peace to compete in peace, a joyful hope rises up within us, encouraging us to believe that peace is possible!

And then, suddenly, the games are over. And like a meteor, a bright hope for Tony Magliano world peace is quickly gone and the darkness of war and preparation for war returns.

Why is it that we allow this brief peaceful moment to slip away? Why do we allow the Olympic Games to be simply games when they have the potential to lastingly contribute to peaceful understanding between peoples?

We can keep the peaceful spirit of the Olympics burning in our hearts by following the Christ-like example of Olympians such as Joey Cheek who continue long after the games are over to build a peaceful world based on selfless solidarity with the earth’s poor and war-torn.

The motto of Right to Play should be the motto of the world: “Look after yourself! Look after one another!”

Tony Magliano writes a column on social justice for Catholic News Service.

Twenty Something

Waiting on God’s perfect timing This month brings a milestone for my social circle: for the first time, a childhood friend will become a mother.

As Sara’s belly swells, the rest of us are helping prepare for the baby who will catapult us into our next stage.

It will provide the surest sign we have reached adulthood, which, up to this point, has felt far less established than it once appeared.

At 15, 25 looked like an elixir to every adolescent woe, the perfect mix of freedom and purpose, objectives that now feel farther apart.

We have enjoyed a certain latitude, slipping in and out of majors and dates and jobs. This baby will be the most real and non-refundable commitment we have seen, heartwarming when he sleeps, head-splitting when he shrieks at 1 a.m. and again at 4 a.m.

We decided to help Sara paint the nursery. A trip to Lowe’s forced one of those imperative pre-labor decisions, which our heroine made with ease. That Saturday we cracked open a gallon of sky blue paint named after the first time a baby sleeps through the night: Cloud Nine.

As we turned our blank canvas from beige to blue, we reminisced about the dramas of high school, how impossible it seemed to manage a formal dance: whom to ask, what to wear, where to eat, whom to eat with.

Then talk jumped to good grade schools, and Libby

pointed out, “Ten years ago we never would’ve been having this discussion.”

Indeed, we are largely transformed from our high-school selves, and now, eventual mothers – one, much sooner than the others.

That is the jarring part: Though our friendships are deeper today, growing up does involve some growing apart, and the milestones that once arrived in sync splinter into different tempos.

It is a wonder that adulthoods charted in the same sandbox can diverge so widely. Children’s names determined in the same tree house are privately amended, and the one you gave half of your heart-shaped “best friends” pendant is now shipping a wedding gift from China.

Ten-year-old girlfriends imagine double weddings, betrothed children and joint summer vacations – a neat correspondence of life events. Yet soon the kids who shared a baseball diamond face a million choices that lead to vastly different fields.

It’s hard to not feel behind when you are standing behind an old friend, a bride at the altar. It’s hard not to do your own baby math when next year she calls with her good news. It’s hard to the shake the timeline you once set even when it no longer fits. There is that creeping sense of urgency and absolutes: a timeline, a bottom line, a deadline, a finish line.

But there is no such thing as behind or ahead; we are

each on track with our separate paths. God’s timing is perfect because it is custom-designed.

The Scripture writers had an abiding respect for the proper season and time. The prophet Habakkuk describes Christina God’s plan with patience Capecchi and perspective, two hallmarks of the Lenten journey. “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.”

The blessings that come later are not late; they are right on time and they are sweeter.

Meanwhile, God gives us special synchronicities: husbands who become good friends, college roommates who become godparents, moments when it all circles back, and we see his infinite wisdom a little more clearly.

Christina Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights, Minn.

She can be reached at christina@readchristina.com.

The Catholic Difference

Ralph McInerny and Notre Dame In late February, Professor Marjorie Garber of Harvard came to the University of Notre Dame as the Provost’s Distinguished Lecturer for 2009-2010. Among other engagements, she spoke to a class on “Breaking the Code: Transvestism and Gay Identity,” the subject of chapter six of her book, “Vested Interests: Transvestism and Cultural Anxiety.” Ralph McInerny, an Olympic-class punster who taught at Notre Dame for 54 years before his death on Jan. 29, might have appreciated the sly title of Professor Garber’s book; he almost certainly would have regarded her topic as an example of everything that had gone wrong at the university to which he had dedicated his professional life.

Ralph McInerny was arguably the most distinguished scholar ever to work at Notre Dame. His scholarly publications outstrip those of other Notre Dame philosophers by orders of magnitude – and that’s before we get to his popular fiction, his magazine work, and his encouraging of generations of younger Catholic academics. Yet a university that does not hesitate to boast of its accomplishments as measured by the U.S. News and World Report ratings seemed curiously reticent about celebrating the life and accomplishments of Ralph McInerny. The university Web site posted a nicely written obituary three days after his death, but there was little sense in the university’s official recognition of its loss that a gigantic figure had left the scene.

One cannot help suspect that this has something to do with the fact that Ralph thought Notre Dame had gone off the rails in its

dogged and relentlessly self-promoting attempts to measure itself against what it likes to term “peer schools,” such as Dartmouth and Yale. What Ralph understood, and what the man who brought him to Notre Dame, the legendary Father Theodore Hesburgh, has never seemed to understand, is that that’s the wrong plumb-line by which to measure a Catholic university’s accomplishment. Or indeed any university’s accomplishment, given the intellectual chaos, political correctness, decadence, and madcap trendiness that has afflicted those “peer schools” since the late Sixties.

Ralph McInerny knew, and could demonstrate with acute philosophical rigor, that there are truths built into the world and into us: truths we can know by exercising the arts of reason; truths that, known, lay certain moral obligations on us, personally and in our civic lives. With the rarest of exceptions, they don’t know that, and in fact they deny that, at the “peer schools” to which Notre Dame is addicted to comparing itself. And therein lay the tragedy of Notre Dame and Catholic institutions of higher education of a similar cast of mind, as Ralph saw it: they had sold their intellectual and moral birthright – the true excellence that comes from an immersion in the Great Tradition of western higher learning – for a mess of pottage.

I’ve long thought that all of this had something to do with the misreading of a 1955 essay by Father John Tracy Elis, “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life,” which justifiably criticized the shabby condition of too much of Catholic higher education in the

United States in those days.

Father Hesburgh and others influenced by one reading of Ellis’s critique decided that the thing to do was for Notre Dame to become Harvard, so to speak. Ralph McInerny believed that Notre Dame and other premier Catholic George Weigel universities should play to strength, emphasizing a demanding liberal arts education while bringing the best of the mid-20th century Catholic philosophical, theological and literary renaissance to bear in the U.S. Doing that, Catholic universities would model a form of higher learning that was truth-centered, character-building, and life-inspiring.

There is indeed some of that going on at Our Lady’s University today, thanks to students, younger faculty, and some reform-minded members of the Congregation of the Holy Cross.

Those true reformers lost a happy warrior for their noble cause with the death of Ralph McInerny. Perhaps someday the university’s board and administration will understand that.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

14

Catholic San Francisco

A READING FROM THE BOOK OF EXODUS EX 3:1-8A, 13-15 Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian.

Leading the flock across the desert, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There an angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed.

So Moses decided, “I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned.”

When the Lord saw him coming over to look at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, Moses! Moses!” He answered, “Here I am.” God said, “Come no nearer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your fathers, “he continued, “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. But the Lord said, “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Moses said to God, “But when I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?” God replied, “I am who am.” Then he added, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you.”

God spoke further to Moses, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites: The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.

March 5, 2010

Third Sunday of Lent Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15; Psalm 103:1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 11; I Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9 “This is my name forever; thus am I to be remembered through all generations.”

RESPONSORIAL PSALM PS 103: 1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 11 R. The Lord is kind and merciful.

Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all my being, bless his holy name.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

R. The Lord is kind and merciful.

He pardons all your iniquities, heals all your ills, He redeems your life from destruction, crowns you with kindness and compassion.

R. The Lord is kind and merciful.

The Lord secures justice and the rights of all the oppressed.

He has made known his ways to Moses, and his deeds to the children of Israel.

R. The Lord is kind and merciful.

Merciful and gracious is the Lord, slow to anger and abounding in kindness.

For as the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him.

R. The Lord is kind and merciful.

A READING FROM THE FIRST LETTER OF PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS 1 COR 10:1-6, 10-12 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters that our ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all of them were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. All ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was the Christ. Yet God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert.

These things happened as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil things, as they did. Do not grumble as some of them did, and suffered death by the destroyer. These things happened to them as an example, and they have been written down as a warning to us, upon whom the end of the ages has come.

Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.

A READING FROM THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE LK 13:1-9 Some people told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. Jesus said

E

choing the transformative event of the burning bush, Elizabeth Barrett Browning rhapsodizes: “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; And only he who sees, takes off his shoes; The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.”

In Lent, we may want to examine our consciousness about the “shoes” we have to “take off” if we must stand on the sacred ground of God’s presence. Also, we might explore if are we going about picking “blackberries” from the bush while it is burning mysteriously – and divinely?

Are we missing the obvious signs of the times and the everyday “sacraments” along the journey of our life, which are all crammed with heaven?

Metaphysical poet John Donne, too, regrets that we can miss God’s presence: “I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.”

God’s presence carries the integral dimension of mission. In the burning bush event, it is abundantly clear that God’s revelation of Himself as “I AM who am” is accompanied by His profound concern: “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint…. so I know well what they are suffering.” God is eager to “rescue them” and “lead them out into… a land flowing with milk and honey.” The fruit of God’s mighty deeds would be to liberate those in suffering and restore them to wellbeing and happiness, to peace and freedom.

God sends Moses out to the Israelites

Scripture reflection FATHER CHARLES PUTHOTA

Plucking blackberries?

Now is the time of salvation “Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.”

Exodus 3:5

with the message of liberation and justice.

Later He would send him with Aaron to the Pharaoh to deliver His command: “Let my people go.” Our experience of God’s presence will always come with the mandate

to them in reply, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?

By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did! Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them – do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means!

But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”

And he told them this parable: “There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’ He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.’”

that we are sent out to heal and comfort others.

Faith necessarily means justice. Our spirituality consists in the faith that does justice. God woos us to Himself and makes us totally His, and then He will send us out to create a human family where God’s blessings of peace and justice will become accessible to all of God’s children.

The Christian vision can be summarized as our call to be disciples and apostles of Jesus.

We are called to be disciples who learn to be attuned to the mind and heart of Jesus and then to be sent out as apostles to renew the world. As Christians, we have no option but get involved in social,

economic, and environmental issues as a way of transforming the human family.

These are burning bushes – and issues! It is urgent and critical!

Employing the parable of the fig tree, Jesus inspires us into the Christian imperative of faith and justice; love and service. Having encountered our burning bush, Jesus himself, in whom God’s presence dwells perfectly, we are given the mission to be fruitful. The fig tree has to bring forth fruit. If it cannot fruit now, it will be given some more time. This second chance, this extra grace and time, are God’s generous gifts.

But fruit we must bear without doubt.

We do not have all the time. We have to act now and explore ways of bearing fruit.

Hence the Lenten aura of urgency for us to intervene now without procrastinating. The Galileans murdered by Pilate and those who died in the Siloam tower accident underscore the foreboding sense of the crisis in our life. Now is the season for us to bear fruit. Now is the time of salvation!

Paul warns us against complacency and ingratitude. The Israelites were given the cloud of God’s presence, the sea of baptism, and food and drink. God’s presence and grace filled their lives in the desert, and yet they were not willing to bear fruit. “God was not pleased with most of them.” However, Paul offers us the rock, our spiritual foundation, Jesus himself, in whom we can be secure and bear fruit.

Jesus assures us: “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit…”

(John 15:5).

Our life is not about ourselves. It is about God and the world. It is about discovering our closeness to God through Jesus and doing everything within our power to heal the planet earth. Lent is a period of deeper awareness of God’s presence in Jesus with us. It is also a time of definite decisions. It is the season when our faith will blossom into justice and our love into service.

Father Charles Puthota, Ph.D, is Pastor of St. Veronica Parish in South San Francisco.

March 5, 2010

Catholic San Francisco

15

Spirituality for Life

Lent: Turning inner chaos into a peaceful garden

(CNS PHOTO/NAYEF HASHLAMOUN, REUTERS)

Almost all spiritualities have a special place for deserts, was present inside of Christian spirituality that we, men and wilderness, and other such places where we are unprotected women of faith, were meant to help God finish creation by and in danger from untamed nature, wild beasts, and threat- taming these wilds, exorcizing the bad spirits there, and turnening spirits. This concept has deep roots inside both ancient ing the wilderness into a garden. And so Christianity develreligions and the human psyche itself. oped the idea that men and women armed in a special way In ancient Babylon, with divine light and for example, wild, unculprotection, monks and tivated terrain was seen nuns, could and should as something that was go into these uncultivatunfinished by God and ed places and turn the which still participated unsafe wilderness into in the formless chaos a safe garden. Among and godlessness of preother reasons, this was creation. It was seen why medieval monks both as unfinished and as and nuns often chose a place where dangerous uncultivated places to forces lurked, beasts and start up their monasterdevils. Thus when peoies and convents. ple took possession of This fear of wild, wild, uncultivated land, uncultivated regions it was understood that was also partly behind certain religious rites had the church’s fear of to be performed which, inquiry into and exploin essence, claimed the ration of outer space. land for God, for civiGalileo knew this firstlization, and for safety. hand. The church had For ancient Babylon, a been warning: Stay cultivated garden was away from certain dark a safe and sacred place places. whereas an uncultivated In subtle ways both A Christian worshipper prays in the Church of the Nativity desert was dangerous this concept and its in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. and in some dark way in concomitant fears are opposition to God. still with us. What Similar ideas were present too in other cultures which frightens us today is not untamed geography (which we saw wilderness as a place inhibited by satyrs, centaurs, now see as inviting peace and quiet). Rather for many of trolls, and evil spirits. Myths and folklore abound with these us, the untamed, the wilderness, is now visualized more as a images. Medieval Europe, as seen in our fairytales, added gang-infested area within a city, crack houses, singles’ bars, the idea of “deep and dark forests” to this concept. These strip-clubs, red-light areas. These are understood as lying too were seen as uncultivated, dangerous places, places outside our cultivated lives, split off from the safety of home where bad spirits or evil persons might capture you or as and religion, godless places, dangerous, a wilderness. places within which you might hopelessly lose your way.

But what frightens us still more, are the untamed and Deep, dark forests were not places you were to venture into uncultivated deserts within our own hearts, the unexplored and without proper guidance. dark areas inside of us. Like the ancients, we are frightened of But it was also understood that these wild places were what might lie in hiding there, how vulnerable we might be not meant to lie forever untouched by us and God. The idea if we entered there, what wild beasts and demons might prey

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on us there, and whether a chaotic vortex might not swallow us up should we ever venture there.

We too fear unexplored places; except our fear is not for our physical safety, but for our sanity and our sanctity.

And this fear is not Father without its wisdom. It is Ron Rolheiser wise to not be naïve. For centuries parents told their children frightening fairytales about evil things lurking in dark forests, looking to devour little children or bake them in ovens. These stories were not told to children to give them nightmares but rather warn them not to be naïve about whom or what they met.

Not everyone can be trusted and it is wise, particularly when you are young, vulnerable, and unarmed, to stay together, to stay away from dark places, and to be safe.

Nonetheless our Christian faith invites us to go into those areas, face the wild beasts that dwell there, and turn those dangerous regions into cultivated land, into safe gardens.

After all that is what Jesus did: He went into every dark place, from the singles’ bars of his time into death and hell itself, and took God’s light and grace there. But he wasn’t naïve. He heeded the advice of the old fairytales and didn’t venture there alone. He entered those underworlds with his hand safely inside his Father’s, not walking alone.

Faith is meant to rid us of fear, including fear of the wild beasts and demons that lurk inside the deserts of own minds, hearts, and energies. We are meant to turn those wild, dark areas into safe gardens. But we should heed both our own instincts and the instinct behind the old fairytales: Never venture into the dark woods naively and alone! Make sure you are armed with a sturdy creed and that you are walking hand-in-hand with your Father.

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16

Catholic San Francisco

Books

March 5, 2010

Music TV

RADIO Film

stage

In poetry and prose, authors offer lessons in overcoming losses with healing “THE LOSSES OF OUR LIVES: THE SACRED GIFTS OF RENEWAL IN EVERYDAY LOSS” by Nancy Copeland-Payton. SkyLight Paths (Woodstock, Vt., 2010). 192 pp., $19.99.

“I’LL TRADE MY SORROW: TRADING THE PAIN OF YESTERDAY FOR A JOURNEY THAT FREES YOUR SOUL” by Cynthia Primm. Higher Life (Orlando, Fla., 2009). 84 pp., $12.99.

Reviewed by Nancy L. Roberts Catholic News Service The depth of winter is a fitting time to ponder the mystery of God and the rhythmic natural cycles of life. The shortened days are a gift that reminds us to make the most of the moment, the now, in our transitory earthly existence.

Indeed, our lives are shaped by the twin rhythm of sacred gift and loss, the Rev. Nancy Copeland-Payton writes in her wise and engaging book, “The Losses of Our Lives.” From our earliest days, we experience “sadness and grief” right alongside “life’s joy and goodness,” she writes.

Over the course of a lifetime, such losses may include the ebbing of friendships we treasure, the loss of our faith in God, the demise of our dreams for ourselves and our children, the decline of our physical health, and of course, the irrevocable loss of our loved ones through death. In graceful, metaphorical prose, the author illuminates how this paradox of loss and gift, simultaneously so integral to life, is its touchstone.

As the author takes us through the landscape of life’s stages, she offers many insights gleaned from her extensive background as a physician, hospital chaplain and Presbyterian minister. She draws from several faith traditions to present moving and practical suggestions for becoming more attentive to the rhythm of sacred gift and loss.

These include guided meditation, which helps us contemplate Scripture in a deeply personal way; the sand mandala,

a Tibetan Buddhist tradition that helps “remind us of the transitory nature of all material things”; and the ancient spiritual practice of walking a labyrinth as a metaphorical means to experience gift and loss in one’s life.

Another spiritual practice, the early Christians’ “lectio divina” (sacred reading) will be familiar to many. CopelandPayton explains that this ancient Christian monastic tradition invites us to “listen carefully ... with the ear of your heart,” as St. Benedict put it. By slowly contemplating a scriptural passage, turning it over and over in our hearts, we reach a prayerful understanding of its meaning. This can give us profound insights about the seamlessness of gift and loss in our lives.

Enriched by many examples culled from her own life as well as others’, the author ultimately demonstrates how everyday, less consequential losses can help prepare us for the inevitable ones that loom large.

In “I’ll Trade My Sorrow,” a slim but powerful collection of poems, Cynthia Primm tells the story of her ultimately triumphant journey through family dysfunction, pain and sorrow. Growing up in a household with an alcoholic mother and an “emotionally distant” father prone to outbursts of violence, she experienced more trauma in her first few years than many experience in a lifetime.

At an early age, she found comfort in writing poems about her struggle to rise from the vale of low self-esteem and sorrow which had buried her. Over a 30-year period, she continued to write through her process of healing and growth and the result is this compilation.

Little Children’s Aid Junior Auxiliary Presents

Immaculée Ilibagiza Rwandan Genocide Survivor

St. Ignatius Church San Francisco April 16, 2010 “Immaculée’s story represents the realities that are faced by our most vulnerable neighbors,” notes Jeff Bialik, Executive Director of Catholic Charities CYO. “By hearing her story, we may all learn how the power of forgiveness and compassion builds a community of hope and understanding.” Even on a personal level, writes Rick Warren, best-selling author of The Purpose Driven Life, “Immaculée’s story can lead you to the place of healing, restoration and peace.”

Friday, April 16, 2010 St. Ignatius Church San Francisco 10:30 a.m.

Ticket Sales @ www.littlechildrensaid.com Multi-Media Presentation $45 Pre Event Book Signing & Premium Seating $30 General Seating $10 Student All proceeds go to local charities Catholic Charities CYO (CCCYO) will also be presenting the 2010 Loaves & Fishes award for Faith in Action to Immaculée Ilibagiza, Friday, April 16, 2010. Event information can be found at http://www.cccyo.org/loavesandfishes

Primm’s poems, including the earliest ones written in the late 1970s when she was a young teenager, are graceful and without self-pity. The volume’s first section presents eight from this period.

Especially poignant is “A Token of Your Love,” which begins: “Don’t let my wings be broken When all my words have not Been spoken.

I’m searching for a token Of your love.”

Subsequent sections are presented chronologically, each with a short introduction followed by a grouping of poems. Here Primm describes her struggles as a 15-year-old whose father one day summarily dispatched her from her home with only a trash bag to contain her belongings. For a time she lived with her high school principal and an ex-boyfriend’s mother, eventually finding refuge with her aunt and her cousin. Poems with such titles as “I Am the Lonely One,” “Nobody’s Child” and “No Sail or Rudder” evoke the turmoil of her life at this time.

Eventually, Primm tells us, she came to understand how little she loved herself during her difficult childhood and young adult years. She went on to earn a college degree, work successfully as a human resources leader, marry and raise three children.

Over the last 20 years, helped by counseling and her continued crafting of poetry, she has worked through the remnants of long-held painful memories to reach a joyful realm of self-acceptance. In the last section, her poem titled “The Path” reflects the tenacity of the faith that sustains her: “Father, Abba, Savior, Friend – you are so gracious as my guide let not my feet ever leave this path Where I can travel By your side.”

“I’ll Trade My Sorrow” is a small treasure that will inspire readers who seek healing and self-discovery. At the end, one feels gratitude to Primm for her courage to share her inner life in this way.

Nancy Roberts directs the journalism program at the State University of New York at Albany and is the author of “Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker.”

Highlights of EWTN television programs Notes on special programming on the EWTN television network include the following: “Military Orders and The Crusades,” is a new series that explores the history of the military-religious orders of the Catholic Church when the existence of Medieval Europe was threatened on all sides; Sundays at 2:30 p.m. and Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m.

“NFP: Embracing the Marital Gift” features Catholic Evangelist Damon Owens discussing the principal methods, theology, science and proper use of Natural Family Planning; Fridays at 7:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 11 p.m.

“The Faithful Traveler” takes viewers to Catholic Shrines around the U.S., as Diana von Ghlan reviews the life of the saint associated with each shrine; Sundays at 2 p.m. and Thursdays at 10 a.m.

“Fatima Our Hope,” is a documentary that examines the Fatima apparitions, their history and the impact they have had on the world, March 10 at 7 p.m. and March 13 at 2 a.m.

“St. Patrick of Ireland” features narration from the words of St. Patrick’s Confessions and focuses on the saint’s powerful spirituality and his influence on Irish culture & life. The telecast includes traditional Irish music and pictures of Irish landscapes. It airs March 17 at 12 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.

EWTN is carried 24 hours a day, seven days a week on Comcast Channel 229, AT&T Channel 562, Astound Channel 80, San Bruno Cable Channel 143, DISH Satellite Channel 261 and Direct TV Channel 370. Comcast airs EWTN on Channel 70 in Half Moon Bay and on Channel 74 in southern San Mateo County.

Visit www.ewtn.com for more information.

Catholic San Francisco

March 5, 2010

Lenten Opportunities Wednesdays through March 24, noon – 1 p.m.: The St. Thomas More Society offers study sessions of Parables found in the Gospels. The talks take place at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, Room 6, across from Hecker Hall. Jesus often instructed his disciples by parables stories. Don Carroll, a former President of the St. Thomas More Society will open the parables for us. Membership in the St. Thomas More Society is not necessary.

Admission is free. Visit www.stthomasmore-sf.org Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m.: Christian Meditation, as taught by Benedictine Father John Main at St. Dominic’s Catholic Church, 2390 Bush St. (Siena Room). More information at: www.christianmeditation.us” Tuesdays, soup supper at 6:15 p.m. and talks at 7 p.m.: St. Rita Parish Lenten Lecture Series in the parish hall, 100 Marinda Dr. at Sir Francis Drake Blvd. in Fairfax.

Call (415) 456-4815 for details. March 16, Stockton Bishop Stephen Blaire will speak on “Magisterium as the Servant of God’s Word.”

Fridays, 6 p.m.: Soup Supper followed by Stations of the Cross at Mater Dolorosa Church, Willow Ave. off Grand in South San Francisco. This is a family event with children’s reflections for each station. Call (650) 583-4131.

Daily through March 28, 8 a.m. – 8 p.m.: “40 Days for Life,” a campaign of fasting and prayer to end abortion durin at Planned Parenthood, 815 Eddy St., San Francisco. (between Van Ness & Franklin). A peaceful prayerful presence will be there every day. Call (415) 668-9800 or visit www.40daysforlife.com/sanfrancisco Daily through March 28, 7 a.m. – 7 p.m.: A “40 Days for Life” prayer vigil will be at Planned Parenthood, 2211 Palm Ave, San Mateo. Sign up at www.40daysforlife.com/ sanmateo or by calling (650) 572-1468.

Nuova Porziuncola chapel, Vallejo at Columbus in San Francisco - March 9, 7 p.m.: Vespers. March 18, 7 p.m.: Stations of the Cross, rosary.

March 9, 7 p.m.: Serrin Foster of Feminists for Life speaks at St. Mary College in Moraga in the school’s Soda Center – Claeys Lounge. Foster and FFL are “dedicated to empowering women by increasing resources and support for women experiencing crisis pregnancies,” said Maria Sitzmann, and organizer of the talk.

Call (415) 572-9830. Visit www.feministsforlife.org March 9, 7:30 p.m.: Lenten Scripture talk at St. Emydius Church, Ashton at Demontfort St. in San Francisco with Franciscan Father Michael Guinan, professor at Berkeley’s Franciscan School of Theology.

Topics include Unity and Diversity and Polarities and Tensions in Christian Spirituality. Call (415) 587-7066.

Suggested donation is $10.

TV/Radio Fridays at 9 a.m.: The Archbishop’s Hour on Immaculate Heart Radio, KSFB - 1260 AM, San Francisco. Enjoy news, conversation and in-depth look at local and larger Church. Program is rerun Fridays and Mondays at 9 p.m. and Sundays at 11 a.m. - e-mail info@sfarchdiocese.org with comments and questions about faith. 1260 AM also offers daily Mass, rosary and talk on the faith. Visit www.ihradio.org Sunday, 6 a.m., KOFY Channel 20/Cable 13 and KTSF Channel 26/Cable 8: TV Mass with Msgr. Harry Schlitt presiding.

Sunday, 7 a.m.: TV Mass on The Filipino Channel (TFC) (Channel 241 on Comcast and Channel 2060 on Direct TV. Saturday, 4 p.m.: Religious programming in Cantonese over KVTO 1400 AM, co-sponsored by the Chinese Ministry and Chinese Young Adults of the Archdiocese.

1st Sunday, 5 a.m., CBS Channel 5: “Mosaic,” featuring conversations on current Catholic issues.

3rd Sunday, 5:30 a.m., KRON Channel 4: “For Heaven’s Sake,” featuring conversations about Catholic spirituality.

EWTN Catholic Television: Comcast Channel 229, AT&T Channel 562, Astound Channel 80, San Bruno Cable Channel 143, DISH Satellite Channel 261, Direct TV Channel 370. For programming details, visit www. ewtn.com

Datebook

March 7, 7:30 p.m.: The University of Notre Dame Glee Club sings a cappella in concert at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Geary Blvd. at Gough in San Francisco. The 66-member chorus will sing a broad range of music from Medieval to contemporary times including an arrangement of Ave Maria by Franz Biebl, plus Tonight from Broadway’s West Side Story and the ever-touching Shenandoah, and Danny Boy. The school’s glee club spans 88 years and has in recent times performed in 20 U.S. states as well as abroad. The evening also features the Golden Gate Boys Choir and Bellringers. A suggested donation of $10 will be collected at the door. Visit http://gleeclub.nd.edu

St. Mary’s Cathedral Gough and Geary Blvd. in San Francisco. Call (415) 567-2020 Stations of the Cross, Fridays at 12:40 p.m. in the Cathedral, following the 12:10 Mass.

Lecture Series, “Penitence: The Call for Us to Change, The Call for Us to be Transformed by Christ,” 10:15 – 10:45am in the Msgr. Bowe Room.

March 14: True and Perfect Joy: Penitence in the Wrings of St. Francis of Assisi March 21: Surprised by Love: Penitence in the Poetry of Dante Alighieri

Vocations March 14: The Sisters of Nazareth invite young women seriously considering religious life to a Discerners Retreat at Nazareth House, 245 Albion Way in San Rafael. Contact Sister Fintan at vocations@nazarethhousela.org or call (310) 216-8170.

Reunions March 7, 12:15 p.m.: All Class Reunion of Notre Dame des Victoires High School and Elementary School begins with Mass in NDV Church, 566 Bush between Stockton and Grant in San Francisco. Tours and refreshments follow the liturgy. Call (415) 421-0069 or e-mail alumni@ndvsf.org.

March, 7, 10 a.m.: Breakfast reunion of class of ’60 Notre Dames des Victoires High School. Contact Mary Escalle at mescalle21@yahoo.com.

March 27, noon – 4 p.m.: St. John Ursuline High School, class of ’73. The event is a potluck affair at the Oakland home of a classmate. Contact Darlene Dinius Solem at (916) 681-0249.

April 10, 10:30 a.m.: Annual Mass and Luncheon for SF Chapter of Notre Dame de Namur Alumnae begins at Mission Dolores Basilica followed by festivities at the Spanish Cultural Center, 2850 Alemany Blvd. in San Francisco. Honorees include Golden Belles of 1950 and classes of 1940, ’50, ’70, ’80. Call Katie O’Leary at (415) 282-6588.

Holy Cross Cemetery 1500 Old Mission Rd. in Colma, (650) 756-2060 March 6, 11 a.m.: First Saturday Mass in All Saints Mausoleum.

Special Liturgies March 13, 9 a.m.: St. Patrick’s Day Mass preceding St. Patrick’s Day Parade at St. Patrick Church, 5th and Mission St in San Francisco.

San Francisco Auxiliary Bishop William J. Justice will preside. Events sponsored by the United Irish Societies of San Francisco on days leading up to the Mass can be seen at www.stpatricksdayparade. com Third Tuesdays, 7:30 p.m.: Manifest Mysteries Rosary Prayer – Examine how the mysteries of the rosary are manifested in daily life using short film and the Dominican Rosary prayer. 7:30 - 8:30 pm at Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose, Motherhouse Chapel, 43326 Mission Blvd. (off Mission Tierra), Fremont. Call Sister Beth Quire, at (510) 449-7554 or visit our website at www.msjdominicans.org for more information.

Food & Fun March 6, 9 a.m. – 2 p.m.: Annual Rummage Sale at Church of the Visitacion Parish Hall, 701 Sunnydale Ave. at Rutland in San Francisco. Choose among clothes, furniture, books, jewelry and w New

17

Items Booth. Call (415) 494-5517 for more information. Muni buses 8, 9, 56, as well as the T line will get you there.

March 6, 6:30 p.m.: St. Patrick’s Corn Beef and Cabbage Dinner at St. Philip Parish Hall, Diamond at Elizabeth St. in San Francisco. Tickets are $25 per person/10 years and under $10 for chicken nuggets and hot dogs. Proceeds benefit the parish, this year celebrating its 100th anniversary. Call Margaret McAuliffe at (415) 334-7212 or the parish at (415) 282-0141.

March 6 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. and March 7, 9 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.: Flea Market at St. Elizabeth Church, Goettingen and Wayland St. several blocks off Silver in San Francisco. Choose from household items, collectibles, china, crystal, jewelry and more. Call (415) 344-0506.

March 11, noon: Serra Club of San Francisco’s Almost St. Patrick’s Day Lunch at Italian American Club, 25 Russia St. off Mission. Guest speaker is Jeffrey Burns, Ph. D., archivist for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Lunch tickets are $20 per person.

Non-members welcome. Contact Paul Crudo at (415) 566-8224 or e-mail pecrudodds@aol.com March 13: “South Seas Sunset,” Mercy High School, Burlingame’s Annual Auction and Dinner, an enchanting evening featuring fabulous food, exotic entertainment and an alluring auction at Kohl Mansion. Guest emcee is Channel 2 news reporter Sal Castaneda. Tickets are $70 per person. Contact the Mercy Advancement Department for ticket/ auction information at (650) 762-1190 or visit www. mercyhsb.com. Proceeds help fund Mercy scholarships, athletics and general operations.

March 13, 6 p.m.: St Matthews School - St Paddy’s Dinner - One Notre Dame Ave in San Mateo.

Tickets are $15 and include corned beef and cabbage or chicken dinner. Beverages available for purchase. Contact Charlie Jadallah for reservations at (650) 628-6948 or email charliejad@yahoo.com March 13, 6 p.m.: All-you-can-eat St. Luke Crab (or chicken) Feed at Parish Center, 1111 Beach Park Blvd. in Foster City. Raffle and dancing follow.

Tickets are $40 per person. Call (650) 345-6660.

March 14, noon-4 p.m.: Annual St. Patrick’s Day Barbecue at the Dance Palace, 5th and B St. in Point Reyes Station. Proceeds benefit Sacred Heart Parish in Olema and St. Mary Magdalene in Bolinas.

Menu includes chicken, pasta, salads, treats and Irish Coffee. Adult tickets $18 each/children $7.50 each. Contact Debbie Rocca at (415) 663-8433. No reservations required.

March 17, noon: Spaghetti and meatball lunch at Immaculate Conception Chapel, Folsom off Cesar Chavez/Army St. in San Francisco. Tickets are $8 per person. The family-style meal includes salad, bread, pasta and homemade meatballs. Beverages are available for purchase. The meal is served in the church hall, beneath the chapel. Call (415) 824-1762.

March 17, 11 a.m.: Hibernian Newman Club’s St. Patrick’s Day Luncheon at the St. Francis Hotel, 335 Powell St. in San Francisco. Keynote speaker is Carmen Policy, former president of the San Francisco 49ers. Tickets are $85 per person and include Corned beef and cabbage lunch. No-host beverages. Traditional Irish entertainment also part of the day. Proceeds benefit campus ministry efforts in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Call (415) 3863434. Please make reservation by Wed. March 10.

Datebook is a free listing for parishes, schools and non-profit groups. Please include event name, time, date, place, address and an information phone number.

Listing must reach Catholic San Francisco at least two weeks before the Friday publication date desired. Mail your notice to: Datebook, Catholic San Francisco, One Peter Yorke Way, S.F. 94109, or fax it to (415) 614-5633, or e-mail burket@sfarchdiocese.org.

THE SISTERS OF PERPETUAL ADORATION INVITE YOU TO ATTEND THE SOLEMN NOVENA IN HONOR OF:

GREAT ST. JOSEPH Who are we?

Since 1883, the Young Men’s Institute (YMI) has operated as a fraternal ho arsupporting e w e? its motto of “Pro Deo, Pro Patria” (For God, CatholicWorder For Country). Today, over 2500 members (called brothers) honor this motto by working together on worthwhile programs & activities for our Catholic faith & for our communities.

Besides doing good deeds, YMI brothers and their families enjoy a variety of fun social events (e.g., dinners, tournaments, picnics, etc), as well as membership benefits (e.g., scholarships, death benefits).

Can I Join?

Yes, we are looking for new members to join us. If you are a Catholic adult male, simply email us at ymius@aol.com or call us at 1-650-5887762 orCa 1-800-964-9646.

You can also visit our website for more info n I J oi n? at www.ymiusa.org. We will provide you a brief YMI application form simp ly m a il council. us at Membership to complete and the location of the nearest YMI ius@a ol.c om or ca$4 ll or$5 us d uring [ M- F 9 a m to 5 fees are ym very affordable (about per month) pm] a t 1 -6 5 0- 58 8- 7 76 2 or 1- 8 00 -9 6 4- 96 46 . ur website for mor e info at The YMI . .visit . . . oJoin the Brotherhood! www. ym iusa.or g.

Conducted by

Msgr. Jose A. Rodriguez March 11th – March 19th, 2010 At 3:00 P.M.

Services: Daily Mass – 7:00 A.M. Holy Rosary– 2:30 P.M. Benediction – 3:00 P.M. Novena Mass– 3:05 P.M.

Send petitions to: Monastery of Perpetual Adoration 771 Ashbury Street, San Francisco, CA 94117-4013

18

Catholic San Francisco

March 5, 2010

SERVICE DIRECTORY Plumbing Accounting Marianne Markt, CPA HOLLAND Plumbing Works San Francisco

FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION Visit our website: www.catholic-sf.org Call 415-614-5642 Fax: 415-614-5641 E-mail: penaj@sfarchdiocese.org

Roofing

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mariannemarkt@comcast.net (650) 240-6251

Investment

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ADÁN PLUMBING, HEATING, A/C ◆

Serving all your plumbing needs. ◆ Complete bathroom renovations ◆ Senior, parishioner discounts

Serving the entire S.F. Bay Area www.adanplumbing.com 650.270.7766 Lic# 841835

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➤ Drain-Sewer Cleaning Service ➤ Water Heaters ➤ Gas Pipes ➤ Toilets ➤ Faucets ➤ Garbage Disposals ➤ Copper Repiping ➤ Sewer Replacement ➤ Video Camera & Line locate PROMPT AND UNPARALLELED SERVICE

(650) 557-1263 EMAIL:

bestplumbinginc@comcast.net Member: Better Business Bureau

S anti

Plumbing and Heating 415-661-3707 Michael T. Santi Since 1972 Ca License # 663641 24 Hour Emergency Service

Handy Man Painting, roof repair, fence (repair/ build) demolition, carpenter, gutter (clean/ repair), kitchen/bathroom remodel, decks, welding, landscaping, gardening, hauling, moving, janitorial.

Call (650) 757-1946 Cell (415) 517-5977 NOT A LICENSED CONTRACTOR

Construction Matthew W. Johnson General Contractor • Residential kitchen and bath remodeling • Additions • Free estimates • Safe clean secure worksites Free counter top appliance w/completed proposal Free food processor with kitchen

KEANE CONSTRUCTION ➮ Exterior / Interior Additions ➮ Baths ➮ Foundations, Stairs, Dry Rot ➮ Architect Available ➮ Senior Discount

Call: 415.533.2265

Lic. C-10 (631209) 09

(415) 786-0121 • (415) 586-6748 Maintenance Services

Phone: 415.468.1877 Fax: 415.468.1875

Your Payless Plumbing

DEWITT ELECTRIC Your #1 Choice! For all your electrical needs!

Quickbooks & Bookkeeping

ALL PLUMBING WORK PAT HOLLAND

Electrical

Lic. 407271 LIC. 789093

WOODSMYTH C o n s t r u c t i o n C o.

REMODELS, ADDITIONS, FOUNDATIONS, RETAINING Walls BILL: 650.591.6191 RAY: 415.420.6850

Carpet Cleaning Safe Non-Toxic, No Shampoo, Dry in Hours not Days Commercial & Residential Serving SF & San Mateo Co. St. Charles Parishioner

(650) 593-5959

Painting Painting B I L L H E F F E R O N PAINTING INTERIOR, EXTERIOR S.O.S. PAINTING CO. All Jobs Large and Small Interior-Exterior wallpaper hanging & removal

Call BILL 415.731.8065 • Cell: 415.710.0584

Lic # 526818 Senior Discount

Bonded, Insured – LIC. #819191

415-269-0446 650-738-9295

www.sospainting.net FREE ESTIMATES

painting and remodeling John Holtz

Ca. Lic 391053 General Contractor Since 1980

(650) 355-4926

Painting & Remodeling •Interiors •Exteriors •Kitchens •Baths Contractor inspection reports and pre-purchase consulting

Handyman Maintenance, Repairs, Construction Reliable, Quality Service.

Fair Prices

415.609.0681 Lic.# 842527

Construction CAHALAN CONST. Foundations, Earthquake Dryrot, Termite, Siding, Stucco Additions. Remodels lic# 582766

415.279.1266

MORROW CONTRUCTION Specializing In Wood Fences

(650) 994-6892

10% Discount: Seniors, Parishioners

bheffpainting@sbcglobal.net Member of Better Business Bureau

Notary Breens’ Mobile Notary Services

Certified Signing Agent

Timothy P. Breen Notary Public

PHONE: 415-846-1922 FAX: 415-702-9272

* Member National Notary Association *

Licensed contractors are required by law to list their license numbers in advertisments. The law also state that contractors performing work totaling $500 or more must be state-licensed.

Advertisments appearing in this newspaper without a license number indicate that the contractor is not licensed.

For more info, contact: Contractors State License Board

800.321.2752

Fully Insured

Visit us at catholic-sf.org

Senior Care SUPPLE SENIOR CARE “The most compassionate care in town” 1655 Old Mission Road #3 Colma, SSF, CA 94080

415-573-5141 or 650-993-8036 *Irish owned & operated *Serving from San Francisco to North San Mateo

Homecare for Seniors

by Accredited Caregiver Specialists

$17/hr

SF Bay Area

Free in-home assessment www.accreditedcaregivers.com 650-307-3890

Clinical Gerontologist Healthcare Agency Care Management for the Older Adult Family Consultation –Bereavement Support Kathy Faenzi, MA, Clinical Gerontologist Office: 650.401.6350 Web: www.faenziassociates.com Striving to Achieve Optimum Health & Wellbeing

Counseling Do you want to be more fulfilled in love and work – but find things keep getting in the way?

The Irish Rose

Home Healthcare Agency Specializing in home health aides, attendants and companions.

Serving San Francisco, Marin & the Peninsula.

Contact: 415.447.8463

Home Care

Unhealed wounds can hold you back - even if they are not the “logical” cause of your problems today. You can be the person God intended.

Inner Child Healing Offers a deep spiritual and psychological approach to counseling: ❖ 30 years experience with individuals, couples and groups ❖ Directed, effective and results-oriented ❖ Compassionate and Intuitive ❖ Supports 12-step ❖ Enneagram Personality Transformation ❖ Free Counseling for Iraqi/Afghanistani Vets

QUALITY HOME CARE SERVING THE BAY AREA SINCE 1996 * Attendants * Companions * Hospice * Respite Care Competitive Rates • Screened • Insured • Bonded

Full Payroll Service www.irishhelpathome.com

Tel: 415 759 0520

Lila Caffery, MA, CCHT San Francisco: 415.337.9474 Complimentary phone consultation www.InnerChildHealing.com

lic. 343633

NOTICE TO READERS

FREE ESTIMATES (415) 441-2454 www.garibaldimaintenance.com

When Life Hurts It Helps To Talk • Family • Work • Relationships • Depression • Anxiety • Addictions

Dr. Daniel J. Kugler Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Over 30 years experience • Reasonable Fees

Confidential • Compassionate • Practical (415) 921-1619 • Insurance Accepted 1537 Franklin Street • San Francisco, CA 94109

MARRIAGE COUNSELING DEPRESSION COUNSELING

In Home Care IN YOUR HOME CARE FOR SENIORS Caring compassionate and committed to our client’s well-being and safety.

Specialize in Dementia, Alzheimer, Cancer patients, Hospice and wheelchair cound.

24 hours, 7 days a week • Non-Medical Companion • Personal Hygiene • Medication Reminder • Other Medical Assistance • Errands – Doctor’s App’t • Meal Preparation

• Companionship, Socializing, Outing • Light Housekeeping • Special Needs • Affordable Rates

David Nellis M.A. M.F.T.

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(415) 242-3355

650-834-7227 Cell ebw8bion@yahoo.com

www.counselingforchristians.com

License #39702

Catholic San Francisco

March 5, 2010

19

Catholic San Francisco

classifieds

FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION VISIT US AT WWW.CATHOLIC-SF.ORG or Call: 415-614-5642 Fax: 415-614-5641 Email: penaj@sfarchdiocese.org

PUBLISH A NOVENA Pre-payment required Mastercard or Visa accepted

Cost $26

If you wish to publish a Novena in the Catholic San Francisco You may use the form below or call 415-614-5640 Your prayer will be published in our newspaper

Name Adress Phone MC/VISA # Exp.

Live-In Companion

Room for Rent

Seeking mature, healthy, sincere, honest, single woman for a live-in companion. Free room and private bath.

For more information, please call (415) 921-8337

Master bedroom w/private bath, $650/month plus utilities.

Non-smoking/drinking.

PLEASE CALL (415) 341-5427

San Juan Island Home

Live in the San Juans: â?‘ Prayer to the Blessed Virgin â?‘ Prayer to the Holy Spirit

Select One Prayer: â?‘ St. Jude Novena to SH â?‘ Prayer to St. Jude

Please return form with check or money order for $26 Payable to: Catholic San Francisco Advertising Dept., Catholic San Francisco 1 Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109

Prayer to the Blessed Virgin never known to fail.

Prayer to the Blessed Virgin never known to fail.

Most beautiful flower of Mt. Carmel Blessed Mother of the Son of God, assistme in my need. Help me and show me you are my mother. Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and earth. I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart to help me in this need.

Oh Mary, conceived without sin. Pray for us (3X).

Holy Mary, I place this cause in your hands (3X).

Say prayers 3 days.

M.A.B.

Most beautiful flower of Mt. Carmel Blessed Mother of the Son of God, assistme in my need. Help me and show me you are my mother.

Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and earth. I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart to help me in this need.

Oh Mary, conceived without sin. Pray for us (3X).

Holy Mary, I place this cause in your hands (3X).

Say prayers 3 days.

F.S.

3 bedroom, 2 bath home on Lopez Island on 2.1 acres with 240-degree views of San Juan Channel and the Olympic Mountains.

Master suite features jetted tub, its own deck, and a den.

Home also includes stone firepplace, 2-car garage, sleeping loft, main-floor deck and a pleasant walk to the beach.

Within walking distance of golf course and tiny island airport. Served by ferry from Anacortes, WA – and a walk-on ferry ride to Victoria BC. $549,500.

HELP WANTED

CLASSIFIED RATES PRIVATE PARTY 4 lines for 12.00 Each additional line $2.00 26 spaces per line

PER COLUMN INCH 25 1 time 2 time 20 15 3 time minimum 1 inch $

$

$ $

Add .50¢ per column inch for website listing

Leave a space between words and/or phone numbers

CALL 415-614-5642 FAX 415-614-5641 EMAIL penaj@sfarchdiocese.org

CALL 415-614-5640 FAX 415-614-5641 EMAIL penaj@sfarchdiocese.org

Help Wanted We are looking for full or part time

RNs, LVNs, CNAs, Caregivers In-home care in San Francisco, Marin County, peninsula Nursing care for children in San Francisco schools If you are generous, honest, compassionate, respectful, and want to make a difference, send us your resume:

Call Heather (agent): (425) 350-5508

Visit us at catholic-sf.org For your local & international Catholic news, Datebook, Digital Paper, website listings, advertising information, “Place Classified Ad� Form & more.

Jeannie McCullough Stiles, RN Fax: 415-435-0421 Email: info@sncsllc.com Voice: 415-435-1262

OFFICE SPACE AVAILABLE

Automotive Hilltop Buick Pontiac GMC Truck

I P L B A !

• Extensive invetory means selection • Competitive pricing • Give us your bid • We can offer YOU SAVINGS! • Exceptional customer service • Easy access off I-80 at Hilltop Richmond

J

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.

.

Approximately 2,000 to 10,000 square feet first floor office space available (additional space available if needed) at One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco (between Gough & Franklin), is being offered for lease to a non-profit entity. Space available includes enclosed offices, open work area with several cubicles, large work room, and storage rooms on the lower level of the Archdiocese of San Francisco Chancery / Pastoral Center. We also have mail and copy services available, as well as meeting rooms (based on availability). Reception services available.

Space has access to kitchen area and restroom facilities. Parking spaces negotiable. Ready for immediate occupancy with competitive terms.

Come view the space.

For more information, contact

Katie Haley, (415) 614-5556 email haleyk@sfarchdiocese.org.

20

Catholic San Francisco

March 5, 2010

Travel Directory LAKE TAHOE RENTAL

VACATION RENTAL CONDO IN SOUTH LAKE TAHOE. Sleeps 8, near Heavenly Valley and Casinos.

Call 925-933-1095 See it at RentMyCondo.com#657

2010 HOLY LAND PILGRIMAGES May 22 –June 2

•

September 19 –29

With an Optional Extension to Jordan

JOIN FRANCISCAN FR. MARIO DICICCO

Catholic San Francisco invites you

to join in the following pilgrimages ITALY

Holy Shroud of Turin

April 20 – 30, 2010 Departs San Francisco 11-Day Pilgrimage

Write, call or e-mail for free brochure Fr. Mario DiCicco, O.F.M. 1712 Euclid Avenue, Berkeley, A 94709 (510) 280-4327 • Email: mdicicco@fst.edu

invites you to join us on pilgrimages.

($2,699 after January 10, 2010)

Shroud of Turin

OBERAMMERGAU plus Munich, Salzburg, Vienna & Budapest Sept. 28 – Oct. 8, 2010

We are a wholesale pilgrimage tour company serving group leaders, organizations, churches leaders and travel agents on wholesale basis.

We are dedicated to serving pilgrims, giving the best experience possible on their journeys.

Once you taste our loving service, you’ll never think of going on pilgrimages without Glory Tours. So come and join us, with your family, friends and relatives.

GLORY TOURS runs and operates the tour and offer one free travel for every ten paying pilgrims.

We will meet or beat every legitimate offer in the market.

Please feel free to contact by phone 1-866-352-5952 or e-mail: ruby@glory-tours.com or check www.glory-tours.com

Departs San Francisco 11-Day Pilgrimage

Glory Tours will be happy to serve you For individuals you may join the ff. public tours:

3,999

only $

($4,099 after June 20, 2010)

Fr. Dennis Duvelius, Spiritual Director

Fr. Mario has a PhD in New Testament, has lived in the Holy Land and has 34 years experience in leading pilgrimages to the Holy Land

GLORY TOURS

2,599 per person

only $

Visit: Milan, Turin, Florence, Assisi, Norcia, Rome (papal Audience)

President and Rector, Franciscan School of Theology, Berkeley

Schöenbrunn Palace

Visit: Munich, Neuschwanstein, Oberammergau, Salzburg, Danube River Cruise, Vienna, Budapest

OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY Germany with Rome, Assisi, Florence, Shroud of Turin, Switzerland May 6-17, 2010 (12 days) • Estimated cost of tour: $3,390 land only, Air cost: $850+air taxes TBD

*****************************************************************************

OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY

THE HOLY LAND

GERMANY w/ CZECH REPUBLIC, SWITZERLAND

November 11 – 21, 2010

Berlin, Prague, Munich, Oberammergau, Vaduz, Lucerne, Zurich June 15-26, 2010 (12 days) • Estimated cost of tour: $3,390 Land only, Air cost: $850+air taxes TBD

Departs San Francisco 11-Day Pilgrimage

2,999

*****************************************************************************

only $

OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY

($3,099 after Aug. 3, 2010)

Fr. Tony Stevenson, Spiritual Director Visit: Tel Aviv, Netanya, Caesarea, Nazareth, Mt. Carmel, Jerusalem, Masada, Jericho

GERMANY W/ AUSTRIA, CZECH REPUBLIC, POLAND Nazareth

For a FREE brochure on these pilgrimages contact: Catholic San Francisco (415) 614-5640

Please leave your name, mailing address and your phone number California Registered Seller of Travel Registration Number CST-2037190-40 (Registration as a Seller of Travel does not constitute approval by the State of California)

Salzburg, Prague, Krakow, Divine Mercy-Wadowice, Czestochowa-Warsaw May 28-June 8, 2010 (12 days) • Estimated cost of tour: $3,390 land portion only, Air cost $850+taxes TBD *****************************************************************************

FOLLOW THE FOOTSTEPS OF ST.PAUL JOIN US ON A PILGRAMAGE TOUR TO GREECE & TURKEY

Spiritual Directors: Rev. Fr. Hieu & Fr. Zibi Fraszezak, Pastor, St. Joachim Catholic Church

GREECE, GREEK ISLANDS CRUISE & TURKEY, NOVEMBER 13, 2010 TOUR PRICE $2,990, PORT CHARGES $95 PLUS AIRLINE TAXES $350

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