(PHOTOS BY JOSE LUIS AGUIRRE/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)
Ash Wednesday at St. Mary’s Cathedral A woman praying, a young boy and a babe in arms are pictured during the March 9 service celebrated by Archbishop George Niederauer. Lent is like baptism, Marianist Brother John Samaha writes (Page 14). And Lent is a time to exercise what St. Augustine calls “holy desire,” Salesian Father Jose Lucero, parochial vicar of Corpus Christi Parish in San Francisco, said in his Ash Wednesday homily (Page 15).
Japan’s agony unfolds as world rushes to help
Catholic san Francisco
If the scale of the devastation in Japan is to too much to take in, consider scenes from a hospital in the small town of Ishimaki on Japan’s northeast coast. Every inch of floor space is covered with the more than 1,000 sick and injured brought in during the disaster’s first three days, Patrick Fuller said in a report for the International Red Cross March 14. “The trauma is evident, written on the pale faces of many who have seen loved ones swept to their death,” he wrote. The elderly have been hit hardest, with many shivering uncontrollably under blankets.
Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper
How to help, Page 6 “They are suffering from hypothermia having been stranded in their homes without water or electricity,” Fuller wrote. “At night, the town is plunged into darkness and it is bitterly cold. The night sky is penetrated by the searchlights of civil defense helicopters, which continue the around-the-clock search for stranded households.” He said mobile medical teams venture out daily with medicine and food and return with accounts of the enormity of the disaster. “In some areas, the tsunami destroyed everything in its path,” Fuller wrote. “The teams no longer venture northeast of the town as they know there were no survivors.” Many of the injured were burned when fuel from sinking fishing boats ignited debris washing inland by the tidal surge. Others are at risk of pneumonia from having inhaled quantities of seawater. “In the coming days, search and rescue efforts will turn toward the retrieval of dead bodies, which litter the devastated coastline,” Fuller wrote. Japanese media reported that 2,000 bodies have been washed up on the shores of Miyagi prefecture in Japan’s northeast, Radio Australia News said JAPAN’S AGONY, page 5
Catholic lawyers take aim at death penalty abolish the death penalty but I think there are enough people who can be persuaded on this issue that we A group of Catholic lawyers in California is formcould turn it around and succeed,” said Uelmen, a ing to rally fellow Catholics to oppose the death pencriminal law and evidence specialist. “It is going to alty, saying it is morally wrong under church teaching take a lot of work.” and the system that administers it is dysfunctional Uelmen has helped create the Catholic lawyers’ and wasteful. website, www.ccladp.org, on which Catholic lawyers The plan is to establish groups of Catholic lawyers can join the effort. It also contains information on in each of the state’s 58 counties and dispatch membiblical references to the death penalty, what popes bers to speak at parishes, retreats and have said, what the Catechism of the anywhere Catholics congregate to ask Catholic Church says and the teachings them to join in a campaign to change of the U.S. and California bishops. California law that permits capital punThe church teaches that each perishment. In the short term, the lawyers son is created in God’s image and that plan to pressure district attorneys not killing is wrong. The U.S. bishops, in to seek the death penalty. a 1999 statement, also said the death The mobilizing of Catholic lawyers penalty perpetuates a cycle of violence is one of the first steps toward launchand promotes “a sense of vengeance ing a ballot initiative, perhaps in a few in our culture.” In 2010, the California years, to repeal the death penalty in Catholic Conference said life without California, death penalty opponents the possibility of parole is an alternative Gerald Uelmen say. The law that authorizes the penalty that protects society. came via initiative, and it can only be amended or Uelmen, a Catholic, from Saratoga, is honing that repealed by initiative. message for his statewide volunteers and also makAlthough polling shows that support for the death ing a case that administering the death penalty is penalty among Catholics has declined in recent years, prohibitively expensive, costing California taxpayers those still supportive form an obstacle to abolition, $137 million a year when the state is mired in debt. said Gerald Uelmen, professor of law at Santa Clara Moreover, he said, the promises prosecutors make University and chairman of the advisory committee to the families of murdered victims – that they will for the group he has co-founded, California Catholic secure justice with executions – are “delusional.” Lawyers Against the Death Penalty (CCLADP). He added, “The idea that you are doing this for the “We are not going to get a unanimous vote to CATHOLIC LAWYERS, page 8
By George Raine
INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION St. Mary’s cancer center . . . . 3 Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Laity and church reform . . . 13 Scripture reflection . . . . . . . 14 Father Rolheiser . . . . . . . . . 15
Official: Report clouds church response to abuse ~ Page 9 ~ March 18, 2011
Sunday Mass in a Kenyan village ~ Page 11 ~
High school drama roundup ~ Page 18 ~
ONE DOLLAR
Datebook of events . . . . . . . 17 Classified ads . . . . . . . . . . . 19
www.catholic-sf.org VOLUME 13
•
No. 10