“…“God did not do that. Faith did not do that. Destiny did not do that,a lot of pain and suffering did that..”
In a press conference New York Governor Andrew Cuomo asserted that God had nothing to do with the dropping number of corona virus cases in New York.
Cuomo, a self-professing Roman Catholic, said that “the number is down because we brought the number down.”
He added, “God did not do that. Faith did not do that. Destiny did not do that,a lot of pain and suffering did that, That’s how it works. It’s math. And if you don’t continue to do that, you’re going to see that number go back up. And that will be a tragedy if that number goes back up.”
Cuomo has long been an opponent of Christian conservatives. Last year, he signed a progressive abortion bill into law that allows for abortions up until the moment of birth. The bill’s passage was celebrated throughout New York City by lighting up several buildings, including One World Trade Center, in pink.
Back in 2014, Cuomo implied that conservatives who support the right to life, are pro-assault weapons, and anti-LGBTQ have “no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”
“God didn’t do it”?
2 Chronicles 7:14
If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Since the announcement, Cano’s information has been scrubbed from the church’s website as parishioners were left to grapple with the news.
LOS ANGELES — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese has removed a priest from a Los Angeles church on suspicion of having inappropriate conduct with multiple female parishioners — one of whom is an underage girl.
Officer Drake Madison tells the Daily News that police are investigating a child annoyance allegation against Father Juan Cano, who served as associate pastor at Our Lady of Grace church in Encino. Cano could not be reached for comment.
The Archdiocese announced his removal at Masses over the weekend.
The Archdiocese says it has a zero tolerance policy for any type of allegation relating to sexual misconduct relating to a child.
Cano 34, who was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, started at Our Lady of Grace in July 2015 with an announcement from the archdiocese about his miraculous life.
“When I was born, I had a tumor in my head which had no cure. … My parents and grandparents prayed to God for a miracle. … As I grew in the faith at the parish via my family’s involvement in the charismatic renewal, Bible study and religious education, I felt very drawn to the Eucharist, both in and outside of mass. In addition, I had daily contact with the parish priests. … It was such things that I know fed my priestly vocation,” Cano said at the time.
“It was surprising because the father was a really good man and he treated us like anybody else. I was surprised,” parishioner Giovanni Rios told ABC 7.
Rios, who has only been attending Our Lady of Grace for five months, said he felt church officials did the right thing in removing Cano.
“They did the right thing. They have to be really responsible, especially when we’re talking about kids,” he said.
The Archdiocese told ABC 7 that it has a zero-tolerance policy for any misconduct involving a child.
Clergy abuse survivors advocate Joelle Casteixquestioned why it took the archdiocese more than a week to inform members of the parish about why Cano was placed on administrative leave on Jan. 19.
“Was there a written notice in the bulletin? No. Did they put a notice in the bulletin at St. James Parish in Redondo Beach where Cano worked before he became a priest? No. In fact, unless you were sitting in church this past Sunday, you would have no idea that you may need to talk to your children, sisters, wives, cousins, or friends about the abuse of power and sexual assault,” Casteix wrote in a blog post.
“But the Archdiocese WAS busy doing something: They were busy erasing Fr. Juan Cano from their websites. They didn’t have time to post a notice that he may have abused someone you love. But they had time to erase him, just like Stalin did to his enemies.”
Since the announcement, Cano’s information has been scrubbed from the church’s website as parishioners were left to grapple with the news.
MILWAUKEE, Wisc. — A Roman Catholic priest in Wisconsin received a standing ovation this past Sunday after announcing during the service that he identifies as a homosexual.
“I am Greg. I am a Roman Catholic priest. And, yes, I am gay!”
declared Gregory Greiten of St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Milwaukee, causing those present to rise to their feet, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The National Catholic Reporter also published an article on Monday in which Greiten outlined how he repressed his feelings for years, and later came to embrace them, while also keeping them hidden from others.
“Over the past year, I came to the realization that I could no longer live the lie of masquerading as a straight man in the priesthood,” he wrote.
Greiten also expressed his view that the Roman Catholic Church should allow priests to be open about their same-sex attraction, while also remaining celibate. He referred to the matter as being “authentic” to one’s true self.
“Today, I stand with these few courageous priests who have taken the risk to come out of the shadows and have chosen to live in truth and authenticity,” Greiten wrote.
“I promise to be my authentically gay self. I will embrace the person that God created me to be,” he stated. “In my priestly life and ministry, I, too, will help you, whether you are gay or straight, bisexual or transgendered, to be your authentic self—to be fully alive living in your image and likeness of God. In reflecting our God-images out into the world, our world will be a brighter, more tolerant place.”
Greiten said that he believed that announcing his homosexual feelings was among the “[f]irst steps in accepting and loving the person God created me to be.”
“I am breaking through the silence and reclaiming my voice—silent words to prophetic words, despairing words to hopeful words, angry words to forgiving words, and sad words to joy-filled words, with the passion of the words attributed to a great woman saint and doctor of the church, St. Catherine of Siena, ‘Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire,’ Greiten said.
Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki has backed Greiten’s decision to come out to his congregation.
“We support Father Greiten in his own, personal journey and telling his story of coming to understand and live with his sexual orientation,” he said in a statement. “As the Church teaches, those with same-sex attraction must be treated with understanding and compassion. As priests who have made a promise to celibacy, we know that every week there are people in our pews who struggle with the question of homosexuality.”
As previously reported, Christians believe that homosexuality, like any other inclination that is contrary to the law of God, is a part of the Adamic sin nature that men are born with, leaving them helpless to change themselves.
The late preacher A.W. Pink once wrote, “Why does the sinner choose a life of sinful indulgence? Because he prefers it. Man chooses that which is according to his nature, and therefore, before he will ever choose or prefer that which is divine or spiritual, a new nature must be imparted to him: in other words, he must be born again.”
Because of this inherent nature, Christ instructed that men must be regenerated by the second birth, outlining in John 3:5-7, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.”
2 Corinthians 5:14-17 also reads, “For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead. And that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again. … Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
A former Roman Catholic priest is due to stand trial this week on charges he beat, raped and strangled to death a Texas beauty queen nearly 60 years ago after hearing her last confession.
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A former Roman Catholic priest is due to stand trial this week on charges he beat, raped and strangled to death a Texas beauty queen nearly 60 years ago after hearing her last confession.
Irene Garza
Lawyers for John Feit, 84, have denied his responsibility for the 1960 murder of Irene Garza, 25, in McAllen, Texas, and said in court filings that he was wrongly accused of “one of the most notorious and heavily publicized crimes in the history of the Rio Grande Valley.”
Irene Garza
Jury selection is scheduled to begin on Tuesday and opening statements are expected on Thursday at a state district court in Hidalgo county in south Texas. The trial is likely to take about two weeks, county officials said on Monday.
Garza, a former Miss South Texas and second-grade school teacher, was last seen giving confession during Holy Week at Sacred Heart Catholic Church on April 16, 1960, according to the Texas Rangers cold case website.
Her body was found five days later in a nearby canal. An autopsy showed that Garza had been raped while comatose and died of suffocation.
Left- Irene Garza who was raped and murdered after giving her last confession to Feit-Right
Feit had initially been considered by authorities to be a suspect in the case but was not indicted. He had been implicated in the assault of another woman in the area a few weeks before Garza’s disappearance, but pleaded no contest to aggravated assault and served no jail time.
Shortly after Garza’s body was found, Feit was ordered by his church superiors to leave McAllen, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Feit
Feit later left the priesthood and moved to Arizona, where he started a family.
Texas Rangers investigating cold cases reported in 2002 that a local priest had told them, shortly after Garza’s body was found, that he had seen scratches on the hands of Feit, who was a visiting priest at Sacred Heart Church at the time.
The local priest, Father Joseph O’Brien, also told investigators that Feit had confessed to the murder, law enforcement officials said. Feit has denied that.
Male pupils should also be free to dress up in a tutu or high heels without attracting any comment or observation, according to anti-bullying rules sent out by the Church yesterday.
(Daily Mail) — Boys as young as five should be able to wear tiaras at school without criticism, teachers in Church of England schools are to be told.
Male pupils should also be free to dress up in a tutu or high heels without attracting any comment or observation, according to anti-bullying rules sent out by the Church yesterday.
The instructions for the CofE’s 4,700 schools said they should not require children to wear uniforms that “create difficulty for trans pupils.” This appears to give official backing to schools that ban skirts to avoid discrimination against transgender children.
Schools are also told they cannot use the Christian faith or Bible teachings to justify behavior that is considered to amount to bullying – for example, identifying a transgender pupil by a sex other than the one they have chosen. The advice contains instructions on how to report bullying, including sample forms on which teachers are encouraged to name the alleged bully and their target, and use tick boxes to describe what happened.
Examples include name-calling, social media trolling, or insulting gestures.
The rules to ‘challenge homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying’ follow initial guidelines published by the Church three years ago which said being gay can be good and pupils should ‘revere and respect all members of the diverse community’.
The official teaching of the CofE, however, remains that gay sex is sinful and that members of the clergy should not be in an active sexual relationship with someone of the same sex. The Church also says marriage must continue to be between a man and a woman.
Conservative Christian activists condemned the new rules yesterday.
Andrea Minichiello Williams of Christian Concern – an evangelical member of the CofE’s parliament, the General Synod – said: ‘These rules are unkind, unloving and lacking in compassion. We are all against bullying, but the Church is using these guidelines to pursue an agenda that runs counter to the Church’s teaching.’
She added: ‘We are getting to the point where if you are not careful the slightest slip from the correct agenda in a Church of England school will get you punished. The anti-bullying agenda is aimed against people who step out of line – the anti-bullies are becoming the bullies.’
The new guidance came as a Christian teacher was suspended from a school in Oxfordshire after accidentally calling a transgender pupil ‘girl’ instead of ‘boy’. Joshua Sutcliffe, 27, faces a disciplinary hearing this week in which he could lose his job, after the parents complained.
Justin Welby said: ‘This guidance helps schools to offer the Christian message of love, joy and celebration of our humanity without exception or exclusion.
The CofE rules say children in nurseries and the primaries that make up the majority of Church schools should be free to follow their own inclinations when they dress. They state: ‘In the early years context and throughout primary school, play should be a hallmark of creative exploration.
‘Pupils need to be able to play with the many cloaks of identity … Children should be at liberty to explore the possibilities of who they might be without judgment or derision. For example, a child may choose the tutu, princess’s tiara and heels and/or the fireman’s helmet, tool belt and superhero cloak without expectation or comment.’
The guidance adds that there can be ‘no justification for this negative behaviour based on the Christian faith or the Bible’. It states that ‘the Church of England’s teaching on human sexuality and a range of Christian views should be taught, as well as a range of perspectives from other faiths and world views’.
The Most Rev Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said: ‘Central to Christian theology is the truth that every single one of us is made in the image of God. Every one of us is loved unconditionally by God. This guidance helps schools to offer the Christian message of love, joy and celebration of our humanity without exception or exclusion.’
Roman Catholic schools are to cut the terms ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from admissions forms to avoid offending step-parents and same-sex couples.
It follows a complaint by a parent against Holy Ghost Roman Catholic Primary School in Wandsworth, south London, after it used ‘mother/guardian’ and ‘father/guardian’ on a form.
The Office of the Schools Adjudicator upheld the complaint, saying the wording might ‘be taken to imply that the school is restricting its definition [of parent]’.
The Catholic Education Service is understood to be preparing a form using ‘the family’ instead.
“The Church is bending with the cultural zeitgeist. The Church is bending with the times and with the pervasiveness of homosexual activism throughout the country and indeed the globe,”
A Roman Catholic Church bishop recently oversaw a mass for the LGBT community and their family members, with an emphasis on both being welcoming and having respectful disagreement.
Auxiliary Bishop John Dolan of the Diocese of San Diego oversaw the mass on Saturday at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church.
The worship service was held in honor of the 20th anniversary of the release of the Catholic Church pastoral document “Always Our Children,” which focused on how to minister to parents with homosexual children.
The San Diego Diocese directed The Christian Post to a copy of Bishop Dolan’s homily, in which he noted that “Always Our Children” received criticism from both liberals and conservatives.
“It was too left-leaning for some; even though the bishops then made it clear that the letter was not breaking any new ground on sexual morality, chastity, and mature sexual development according to Sacred Scripture and Tradition,” said Dolan.
“The document was also too right-leaning for others; especially as the language used in the document regarding homosexuality seemed stilted and even offensive to many in the gay community.”
Dolan went on to note that since the release of the pastoral message, dialogue between the Church and the LGBT community has not always been “fruitful or civil.”
“Ad hominem attacks and lies about those with whom we disagree must always be avoided,” continued Dolan.
“Civil discourse and fruitful dialogue cannot be forfeited by those who uphold the teachings of the Church and/or by those who struggle to incorporate our teachings within their personal lives.”
The Saturday mass was not without its critics, as a small number of Catholics protested outside of the church, with one telling the San Diego Union Tribune that she considered the “Always Our Children” document “flawed.”
“The Church is bending with the cultural zeitgeist. The Church is bending with the times and with the pervasiveness of homosexual activism throughout the country and indeed the globe,”
“And we feel the Church should stand strong as a bulwark against cultural trends. … Our concern today is the Church is becoming too accommodating to homosexuality.”
REUTERS- A man is shown here holding on to a flag representing the LGBT community during the South Asia Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Sports Fest in Kathmandu, Nepal.
In Vatican City, Capella could face consequences in two disciplinary systems: Under church law, he could be defrocked as a priest, and under civil law in the Holy See, which is also an independent nation, he could face criminal penalties.
Monsignor Carlo Alberto Capella has been recalled to the Vatican from his most recent posting in the United States, where he has diplomatic immunity
A Catholic Church official recalled to the Vatican because US investigators suspected him of crimes involving child pornography is a diplomat who has served the church in positions around the globe, including Hong Kong.
The diplomat in question is Monsignor Carlo Alberto Capella. The church and US State Department and Justice Department officials refused to name the suspect on the record, but his identity was reported by the Italian news agency ANSA, then confirmed by The New York Times and The Guardian.
Capella, 50, has had a wide-ranging career in the church that brought him to the United States only this past year. Born in the town of Carpi in Northern Italy, he was ordained as a priest in 1993, pursued a degree in canon law and then entered the Vatican’s corps of diplomats in 2004, according to Associated Press. In that role, he was posted in India and then Hong Kong before another stint at the Vatican.
In 2008, according to a document from the Archdiocese of Milan, Pope Benedict XVI conferred the rank of “Chaplain of His Holiness” on Capella – a recognition of service to the church that bestowed on him the title of Monsignor.
In August, the State Department contacted the Vatican to say that US officials had turned up evidence implicating Capella in a child pornography case. At the Vatican embassy in Washington, Capella was one of four staff members with diplomatic immunity, protecting him from prosecution in America. The embassy on Massachusetts Avenue NW, near the US Vice-President’s residence, also employs about a dozen locally hired staff members, according to people familiar with the embassy’s operations.
The church transferred Capella back to the Vatican and said that it is investigating the case. A State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to remark more frankly about the case, said that the United States had asked the Vatican to waive Capella’s immunity so that he could be prosecuted here. The Vatican refused.
In Vatican City, Capella could face consequences in two disciplinary systems: Under church law, he could be defrocked as a priest, and under civil law in the Holy See, which is also an independent nation, he could face criminal penalties. The city state’s criminal law says people convicted of possessing child pornography face two years in prison and US$12,000 in fines, and those convicted of producing or distributing the images face steeper penalties.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Church official linked to child porn served in HK
The priest, Jozef Wesolowski, was charged with paying boys to perform sexual acts, of downloading and buying pedophile material. He died before a verdict was reached.
VATICAN CITY — A Vatican diplomat working in Washington has been recalled to the Holy See after the U.S. State Department said the priest may have violated child pornography laws, the Vatican said on Friday.
Prosecutors in the Vatican have opened an investigation into the case, which represents a fresh blow to the Roman Catholic Church as it struggles to overcome repeated sex abuse scandals among its clergy.
The State Department notified the Holy See in August “of a possible violation of laws relating to child pornography images by a member of the diplomatic corps of the Holy See to ensure full implementation of its reforms and policies designed to protect minors and provide justice regarding allegations” the spokesman said.
A State Department spokesman said the United States had requested that the man’s diplomatic immunity be waived to open the way for possible prosecution, but the Vatican refused.
The priest, who was not named, has returned to Vatican City and is awaiting the outcome of the Holy See investigation, which could lead to a trial in the tiny city state.
The U.S.-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said possession of child pornography was not a victimless crime because the children involved were being abused.
“(Pope Francis) must bring the diplomat back to the United States in order to adhere to his promises of complying with investigations by civil authorities in cases of child sexual abuse,” SNAP managing director Barbara Dorris said.
Pope Francis has declared zero tolerance over abuse scandals that have beset the Church for decades, but has appeared to struggle to overcome resistance within the Vatican hierarchy.
The State Department spokesman said the pope had promised to “act decisively with regard to cases of sexual abuse” and punish those found guilty of wrongdoing.
“The United States encourages the Holy See to ensure full implementation of its reforms and policies designed to protect minors and provide justice regarding allegations,” the spokesman said.
Two years ago the Vatican put the former papal ambassador to the Dominican Republic on trial for child sex offences, a case that was seen as showing the pope’s determination to clean up the Church.
The priest, Jozef Wesolowski, was charged with paying boys to perform sexual acts, of downloading and buying pedophile material. He died before a verdict was reached.
He was the first high-ranking Catholic official to stand trial in the Vatican on such sex charges and the case was closely watched by victims of priestly abuse, who have accused the Vatican of repeatedly hushing up previous scandals.
Just last month, in the foreword to a new book written by a Swiss man who was raped by a priest when he was 8 years old, Pope Francis said sexual abuse of children by priests was a “monstrosity” and pledged to take action against perpetrators.
[Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Rome and David Alexander in Washington; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg]
VATICAN CITY — A Vatican diplomat working in Washington has been recalled to the Holy See after the U.S. State Department said the priest may have violated child pornography laws, the Vatican said on Friday.
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