Signs Of the Times
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June 17, 2013
The patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Baghdad denounced a recent series of car bombings and shootings in cities in Iraq that left at least 54 people dead and dozens more injured. Patriarch Louis Sako said on May 20 that the current violence is between minority Sunni and majority Shiite Muslims, who also run the Iraq government. Christians are not being directly targeted, he said. “But they are afraid and their exodus continues nevertheless,”...
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June 17, 2013
Immigrants for years have paid far more into Medicare’s coffers than they have drawn out, effectively subsidizing rising health care payments to the aging U.S. population, according to an analysis from Harvard Medical School released on May 29. From 2002 through 2009, immigrants posted a Medicare surplus of $115 billion, while the American-born population logged a deficit of $28 billion in contributions. The Harvard researchers said their analysis offers a...
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June 17, 2013
Even as the Obama administration presses for comprehensive immigration reform, more than a million immigrants have been deported from the United States over the past five years. That wave of deportees has overwhelmed Mexican border cities and strained migrant shelters used to serving people headed north, not south.
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June 17, 2013
The Rev. Andrew M. Greeley, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago and well-known novelist, journalist and sociologist, died on May 29 at his home in Chicago’s John Hancock Center. He was 85 years old. Born in Oak Park, Ill., Father Greeley was ordained a priest for the archdiocese in 1954 and served as assistant pastor of Christ the King Parish from 1954 to 1963 while pursuing postgraduate studies in sociology at the University of Chicago. In later years,...
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June 17, 2013
Finding a solution to the “ongoing scandal” of worldwide hunger should be a top priority, said the Vatican’s representative to the United Nations. Addressing a U.N. General Assembly meeting on sustainable development goals on May 23, Archbishop Francis A.
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June 17, 2013
The U.S. State Department’s annual International Religious Freedom Report noted problems with religious freedom in many of the nations it tracked in previous reports: North Korea, China, Pakistan, Sudan, Nigeria and Vietnam, among others. The list of countries troubled by religious intolerance includes some nations allied with or supported by the United States. The report cited growing religious persecution in Arab Spring countries—Egypt, Tunisia and Libya—...
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June 3-10, 2013
In his strongest remarks yet concerning the world’s economic and financial crises, the pope said, “Money has to serve, not to rule.
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June 3-10, 2013
A year-long truce among El Salvador’s street gangs has resulted in a dramatic reduction in homicides, but it “has not produced the [other] benefits that the…population was expecting,” said Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chávez, auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, reading a statement on behalf of El Salvador’s bishops. “Robbery, extortion and other illegal activities carried out by gang members continue; for this reason, the population does not perceive the benefits of...
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June 3-10, 2013
The number of Catholics in the world and the number of bishops, priests, religious men and seminarians all increased in 2011, while the number of women in religious orders continued to decline, according to Vatican statistics. The number of permanent deacons is showing “strong expansion” globally, but especially in Europe and the Americas, the Vatican press office reported.
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June 3-10, 2013
In Rome on May 9, Sally Hodgdon of the United States, superior of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Chambery, was elected vice president of the International Union of Superiors General, a body that includes 1,900 religious orders of women worldwide. • Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York on May 13 warned Governor Andrew M. Cuomo to prepare for “vociferous” and “rigorous” opposition if he attempts to expand New York abortion-rights.