We Are Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish

Pope Francis on his first day of events in Singapore told national authorities they have a role to play in helping broker an end to global conflicts and praised their commitment to multilateralism and promoting the common good.

Feast date: Sep 12

Blessed Apollinaris was born in Old Castile, Spain where he joined the Franciscan order.  He was sent to Japan to head the Japanese Franciscan mission in 1614, the year that the new Japanese shogun had instituted a nationwide ban on Christianity and declared being a Christian a capital offense.

Friar Apollinaris Franco evangelized covertly until he was arrested in 1617 and thrown into prison in Nagasaki along with other priests and laymen, for five years to await his execution. The conditions in the prison were exceedingly harsh in an attempt to force the prisoners to reject the faith.

Apollinaris ministered to the other prisoners and converted some of the jailers through his example and teaching. On September 12, 1622, he was burned at the stake along with other Franciscans and Jesuits.

CNA Staff, Sep 11, 2024 / 17:25 pm (CNA).

A rampant wildfire on Saturday destroyed The Holy Spirit Catholic Mission in Washoe Valley, Nevada, which held the only Latin Mass in northern Nevada.

Several other homes and structures in the area along U.S. Highway 395 New Washoe were destroyed by the Davis Fire, according to local news reports.

The church, built in 1978, was completely destroyed, along with the tabernacle and almost all of the church’s official documents, though a statue of Mary survived, along with other sacred objects.

Bishop Daniel Mueggenborg of Reno offered his encouragement and support following the fire in a Sept. 8 pastoral letter. Mueggenborg said that he rushed to the mission on Saturday night when he heard that it had been destroyed, as did many parishioners, “in the hopes of recovering the Blessed Sacrament.” 

While first responders prevented access into Washoe Valley due to the dangers of the ongoing fires, he and other community members returned the following morning. 

“Nothing could have prepared us for what we saw when we arrived at the mission,” he wrote. “We were saddened beyond words at the smoldering debris that was once the house of God.”

“As an immediate sign of hope, we saw the undamaged statue of the Blessed Mother standing in watchful attention over the site of the former mission chapel,” Mueggenborg continued. “The Blessed Mother is particularly close to her adopted children in Christ when they suffer affliction and distress.”

Mueggenborg said that the situation developed “so quickly that none of us could have anticipated the magnitude of the devastation which would result.”

The bishop explained that he and some volunteers arrived in the hopes of recovering the Blessed Sacrament but found that the tabernacle had been completely destroyed.

“The heat was so intense that it actually fused metallic pieces together,” he said. “As such, nothing remained of the Blessed Sacrament.”

“Upon arriving at the site, we were all saddened and couldn’t believe when we saw that the entire building had collapsed and there was still smoke on the ground,” Father Arlon Vergara, pastor of the parish, said in a letter shared with CNA. “But what caught my attention was the statue of Mary, with no damage and still immaculately white, standing as if protecting the holy ground.”

The Church also lost its sacramental records, which are necessary for people who seek further sacraments in the Church such as confirmation or marriage. The diocese is working on reconstructing the records and requesting local Catholics to submit any copies of baptism, confirmation, or marriage certificates that they have.

“This unfortunate event taught us a lesson to ensure that our buildings and important documents are more secured,” Vergara said of the records, which had been stored in a safe. “Perhaps all our parishes can adapt to technology of moving our records to digital records. This process can protect our records during extreme and difficult circumstances.”

The parish was also able to salvage a monstrance, two chalices, and a dry seal mark of the mission as well as a holy water container, holy oil container, and some small sacred medals.

“I believe that we can get through all this,” Vergara said. “The structure has been destroyed, but the Church, which is the people, is alive and steadfast in faith and resilient in times of trials and difficulties.”

“We will move forward and will continue to minister to our flock with dedication and commitment to walk with them,” he said.

The parish will celebrate Mass at Bishop Manogue High School for the near future at the invitation of the recently appointed superintendent of Catholic schools for the diocese, Brother Christopher Hall. The high school’s chapel will host the congregation for Sunday worship. The bishop expressed his hope that this “will help your community to preserve its unity as you plan your future.”

Addressing Singapore's authorities, civil society and members of the diplomatic corps, Pope Francis praises Singapore's growth, resilience, and commitment to social justice, urging continued efforts toward inclusivity, environmental sustainability, and the common good.

Read all

 

Quito, Ecuador, Sep 11, 2024 / 16:41 pm (CNA).

Visibly affected and on the verge of tears, Leyden Rovelo spoke about the suffering of tens of thousands of recently arrived immigrant children in the United States during her talk Sept. 9 at the 2024 International Eucharistic Congress in Quito, Ecuador.

Rovelo referenced official reports that indicate that federal agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have failed to account for between 30,000 and 85,000 of these minors.

“They don’t know where our children are,” she said.

The Catholic Church and the migration drama

“The Catholic Church unequivocally recognizes the legitimate authority of sovereign nations to regulate their borders and manage migratory flows,” she said.

However, this position of the Church “does not constitute an endorsement of draconian measures or inhumane practices,” said Rovelo, director of Hispanic Ministry in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri.

“Rather, it underlines the imperative to defend human dignity throughout the process of [immigration] control,” said Rovelo, who is also a member of the Hispanic Advisory Group of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development.

She also referenced a message from the USCCB in 1983 in which the bishops affirmed “that the Hispanic-Latino presence in the American Church is a blessing from God for the Church and for the entire country.”

Rovelo continued her presentation by pointing out that since 1565, when the first Mass was celebrated in St. Augustine, Florida, “we have witnessed how Hispanic immigrants have revitalized parish life throughout the country, many of them in parishes whose population was aging,” although she noted that this “has not been without difficulties or wounds.”

Regarding the tragedies experienced by young Latin American migrants, Rovelo shared the story of a woman she had to assist who told her that her 5-year-old daughter died during the trip to the United States and she doesn’t even remember in which country she had to bury her.

“This delicate balance between national sovereignty and human rights is the basis and approach of the Catholic Church in the face of the dilemma of migration,” she emphasized.

The mystery of God in a time of migration

Rovelo elaborated on the fact that migrants are bearers of the Gospel and of the image of God, created in his image and likeness. Migrants are pilgrims on earth who seek — like everyone else — their final destiny in heaven, she said.

In addition, she asked people to see migrants for their human identity, “restoring our hearts and minds,” and not to see them through political labels, their legal status, or by making value judgments.

“We are all in flight. Migrants on the way home. Just as Christ is the bridge between us and the Father, we are also the bridge between migrants and a better place,” Rovelo said.

Finally, she highlighted the efforts of the American bishops to mitigate the suffering inherent in migration processes, calling on countries of origin to “address the root causes of migration,” while increasingly promoting and strengthening their support services for migrants and refugees.

“The Church has chosen to focus on the intention of ‘rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s and rendering to God what is God’s’ by advocating sustainable development, democratic institutions, and policies that respect human rights and human dignity in the countries of origin,” she commented.

“The Church seeks to create an environment where people can thrive in their countries of origin, thereby reducing the compulsion to undertake dangerous journeys,” Rovelo added.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

CNA Staff, Sep 11, 2024 / 16:11 pm (CNA).

A Christian school on Sept. 3 filed an appeal against Maine for attempting to dodge a U.S. Supreme Court ruling by passing a “poison pill” law that prevents Christian schools from participating in the state’s school choice program. 

First Liberty Institute and Consovoy McCarthy PLLC, on behalf of Crosspoint Church, which operates Bangor Christian Schools, asked the U.S Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to reverse a lower court decision. The decision upheld a Maine law, which the lawsuit calls a “poison pill” that effectively prevents religious schools from participating in the school choice program because of their beliefs. 

Crosspoint Church is a nondenominational Christian church in Bangor that runs Bangor Christian Schools (BCS), a preschool–12 religious school.

Maine’s school choice tuitioning program — the second-oldest school choice program in the nation — allows families in rural districts with no public secondary schools to send their children to a public or private school of their choice. However, families could not use the tuition benefit at religious schools beginning in the 1980s after Maine required schools to be “nonsectarian” to participate in the program. 

This requirement was overturned in the 2022 Supreme Court decision Carson v. Makin, which ruled that it was discriminatory toward religious schools. 

But before the decision, Maine changed the law to require BCS to go against its religious beliefs to participate in the program.

“This ‘poison pill’ is designed to deter religious schools from participating and thus perpetuates the religious discrimination at the heart of the state’s prior sectarian exclusion,” the lawsuit reads. “From the start, Maine’s attorney general and the then-speaker of the House of Representatives admitted this scheme was intentional.”

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey called the Supreme Court decision “disturbing” in a 2022 press release, saying he intended to “ensure that public money is not used to promote discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry.”

“Public education should expose children to a variety of viewpoints, promote tolerance and understanding, and prepare children for life in a diverse society,” Frey noted, saying that the religious private schools protected by the decision were detrimental to a public education. 

“They promote a single religion to the exclusion of all others, refuse to admit gay and transgender children, and openly discriminate in hiring teachers and staff. One school teaches children that the husband is to be the leader of the household,” he added.

The recent appeal notes that “the state did not enforce the sectarian exclusion to exclude all religious schools. Instead, the education commissioner administered the sectarian exclusion to exclude only certain religious schools, depending on their religious beliefs.” 

“Families should be free to choose the educational option that works best for them without the state’s unconstitutional interference,” said Camille Varone, associate counsel for First Liberty Institute, in a Sept. 3 press release.

“Maine excluded religious schools from its school choice program for over 40 years, but the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear that such religious discrimination must end,” she said.

CNA Staff, Sep 11, 2024 / 15:32 pm (CNA).

The Diocese of Buffalo, New York, this week revealed the final list of parish closures and mergers it will undertake in order to address years of shrinking budgets and declining church attendance.

Buffalo Bishop Michael Fisher had announced in May that an estimated 34% of the diocese’s parishes would be merged in a process of “rightsizing and reshaping.”

The bishop said the mergers — part of the diocesan “Road to Renewal” program — were necessitated by a shortage of priests, declining Mass attendance, aging congregations, and financial difficulties brought on by clergy abuse lawsuits.

In a press release this week, the diocese said it would see “a total of 118 worship sites remain open” following the merger review. 

“The diocese currently has a total of 196 worship sites that include 160 parishes and 36 secondary worship sites,” the release said. “Going forward the diocese will see 79 parishes and 39 secondary worship sites remain after the merger/closure process.”

The diocese said in its news release that it had met with its vicariates throughout August and considered several dozen “counter proposals” to its initial merger plan. Those suggestions “resulted in changes to 26 of the 36 families of parishes’ initial recommendations.”

Fisher in his release said the Buffalo Diocese is facing “harsh realities” including “a decline in Church attendance, the decline of those pursuing a life in ordained ministry, [and] the rise of secularism and shift away from the parish as the defining center of Catholic identity.” 

The bishop also cited “the horrendous toll that the sexual abuse scandal by clergy and others has inflicted on parish life and the personal faith of so many; most especially on those who have been forever harmed in body, mind, and spirit.”

The Road to Renewal initiative “has been about reinvigorating Catholic faith, more fully optimizing parish and diocesan resources, and increasing the impact of our varied ministries among the countless who benefit from them across western New York,” the bishop said. 

“The ultimate goal is for all parish families to be and remain vibrant communities of faith, focused on their evangelizing mission and serving the abundant need all around us.”

Father Bryan Zielenieski, the diocesan vicar for renewal and development who is also leading the Road to Renewal program, said the high number of changes to the initial recommendations “reveals the true openness and collaboration in our effort to craft a diocesan roadmap for the foreseeable future.”

The Buffalo Diocese isn’t the only U.S. bishopric undertaking major closure and merger plans to address dwindling Church resources and attendance.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore announced its own merger plan for the city of Baltimore earlier this year, while the Archdiocese of St. Louis has been undergoing a similar process, as has the Archdiocese of Seattle.

Local activists and Catholics have been working recently to save some religious sites in Buffalo, meanwhile, as the merger plan has progressed.

The historic St. Casimir Parish in Buffalo has been struggling to stay open while facing tens of thousands of dollars in bills that threaten to close the nearly-century-old structure. Parishioners and advocates have been working to raise funds to keep the parish open.

The organization Preservation Buffalo Niagara, meanwhile, announced earlier this year that it was launching a “Save Our Sacred Sites” campaign, one aimed at “funding and submitting local landmark applications for churches within the city of Buffalo” that it said are at risk of closure by the Diocese of Buffalo.

Members of the Buffalo Preservation Board voted last week to designate several local parishes as city landmarks. Those designations are currently before the Buffalo City Council.

Madrid, Spain, Sep 11, 2024 / 15:02 pm (CNA).

Despite the strong presence of Buddhism, Catholicism is the religion that is growing the most in Singapore, the last country that Pope Francis will visit on his extensive tour of Asia and Oceania.

The origin of the Catholic Church in Singapore, the Southeast Asian country the Holy Father is currently visiting, is closely linked to the first missionaries who, together with St. Francis Xavier, arrived in Malaysia in the 16th century.

Singapore lies at the tip of Malaysia, an island separated only by a narrow strait.

The missionary saint arrived in Malacca in southwest Malaysia, about 150 miles from Singapore, in 1545 and three years later the territory became a diocese dependent on the Archdiocese of Goa, then a Portuguese colony on India’s west coast, about 2,200 miles away.

Catholicism was banned under the Dutch Calvinist occupation until it was restored in 1819, when Singapore came under the jurisdiction of the British East India Company.

French missionaries built Catholic churches and schools

In 1821, a missionary found a group of 12 Catholics on the island, a number that would grow to 500 within 17 years. Members of the Paris Foreign Missions Society also arrived in those years and founded churches and schools.

French missionary Jean-Marie Beurel was responsible for the construction of Good Shepherd Cathedral, a boys school run by the Brothers of the Christian Schools, and a girls school run by the Sisters of the Child Jesus.

From the beginning, the Catholics of the then-Diocese of Malacca were divided into two jurisdictions due to an old conflict between the Holy See and Portugal that was not resolved until 1886 with the signing of a new concordat.

The Catholics of the Portuguese mission were placed under the authority of the bishop of Macao (then a Portuguese colony), and those of the French mission under that of the apostolic vicar of Ava and Pegu (then Burma).

From 1888, the Portuguese Mission and missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions Society worked together to consolidate the Church’s presence in Singapore.

The Church suffered severe persecution during the Japanese occupation between 1942 and 1945. The Catholic community revived in the postwar 1950s and the Church intensified its work in the educational, health, and social fields.

Cardinal William Goh

In 1972, Singapore was elevated to an archdiocese subject to the Holy See and in 1977, Gregory Yong became its first archbishop. Singapore currently has one cardinal, William Goh, created by Pope Francis during the consistory of 2022.

Following the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 1981, Singapore received a visit from Pope John Paul II on Nov. 20, 1986, as part of his 32nd apostolic journey to Bangladesh, Singapore, Fiji, and New Zealand.

Today, Singapore is considered a secular and pluralistic state and a multiethnic city. Approximately 43% of its more than 5 million inhabitants are Buddhists. About 20% are Christians, 14% are Muslims, and there is also a small percentage of Hindus.

The Catholic Church currently has 176,000 faithful in the country and is considered one of the most dynamic and vital in Southeast Asia.

About 50% of Catholics regularly attend Sunday Mass, and the churches remain full thanks to emigrants, who are an important component of the local Church.

Current growth spurt 

Based on the most recent data from the Singapore Statistics Office, the Holy See reported that Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, is the only religion that is growing.

This vitality is confirmed both by the active presence of the Church in the social sphere and by the large and participatory attendance at liturgies.

In general, the policies of the Singaporean authorities are oriented toward promoting dialogue and cooperation with religions, especially in the educational and social areas.

This coexistence between different religions is also favored by the frequency of mixed marriages in the city-state.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

CNA Staff, Sep 11, 2024 / 14:30 pm (CNA).

A new poll by Pew Research Center shows a slim majority of U.S. Catholics intending to cast their ballot for former president Donald Trump in November, with Trump and Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris in a dead heat among the entire electorate as the election contest enters its final weeks. 

The poll, released Monday, found that “U.S. religious groups that traditionally have leaned Republican are backing former president Donald Trump by wide margins,” while groups that have historically backed Democrats “are mostly supporting Vice President Kamala Harris.”

Among Catholics, 52% said they were backing Trump in the race, compared with 47% who said they favored Harris. 

Trump’s support rose to 61% among white Catholics, while Harris commanded a sizable 65% share of Hispanic Catholics. 

An earlier Pew survey from February found that 42% of Catholics held a favorable view of Trump, compared with 57% with an unfavorable view. 

In contrast to Pew’s findings this week, an EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research survey released last week found Harris leading Trump among Catholic voters overall, with 50% of respondents backing Harris and 42% backing Trump. 

In that survey, the vice president also led Trump among Catholic African American voters 82% to 12%, and Catholic Asian voters 58% to 35%. Trump carried non-Hispanic white Catholic voters by 52% to 42%. 

The EWTN/RealClear poll, conducted Aug. 28–30, surveyed 1,000 Catholics and had a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points. The Pew poll, taken Aug. 26–Sept. 2, surveyed a total of 9,720 voters and recorded a margin of error of about 1.5 percentage points. 

In this week’s Pew survey, meanwhile, Trump saw majorities of support among white Protestants, while large majorities of atheists and agnostics are backing Harris, as are a whopping 86% of Black Protestants.

Overall, this week’s Pew survey found the two candidates in a dead heat, with 49% of respondents backing Trump and 49% supporting Harris. 

Pew said it found consensus among broad religious groups regarding the most prominent issues of the campaign, revealing, for instance, that “at least 6 in 10 registered voters in every religious group say the economy will be very important in their voting decision.” 

And “half or more in almost every religious group say the same about health care, Supreme Court appointments, and foreign policy.”