Scenes from 1st Anniversary Greenhouse Raising

Tree with Chefs Yasue and Alena
Zoe places sprouted spud on potato tower
Gratitude circle
Tree chats with St. Paulus members Ana, Pastor Solberg, and Pam (who was married 24 years ago at St. Paulus Church!)
Rev. Griff, Rabbi Bauer, Rev. Megan, Pastor Solberg
Ricardo and Amanda perform
Constructing toolshed
Constructing greenhouse
Planting spuds and building greenhouse
Freshly painted signs Sign painters
Rev. Megan says labyrinth walk is good for soul and soles
Jonathan shows how to plant seeds Griff thanks everyone at closing

Syria's Christians 'caught in the crossfire'

The situation for Syria's Christians is worsening amid anti-regime protests, Open Doors USA has warned.

Despite international outcry over the brutality of the crackdown on the uprising, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has ignored calls to step down.

In an interview with US TV channel ABC News this week, he denied issuing orders to kill his own people and questioned the credibility of the UN and its latest report putting the number of people killed since the outbreak of protests at 4,000.

Open Doors said Christians in the country are afraid of what might happen to them in the future, especially if radical Muslims gain power.

The organisation’s President, Dr Carl Moeller, fears Christians may soon have to think about leaving Syria.

"Christians inside Syria are caught in the crossfire as they are in many other Middle Eastern countries," he said.

"Until the protests started against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, the Christian community enjoyed some protection. Now they are afraid of the future. Will they have to flee their country like Iraqi Christians have done over the last several years? Please lift them up in your prayers."

There are around 1.5 million Christians in Syria, including 100,000 Christian refugees who fled from Iraq because of violence and persecution there.

One Open Doors field worker, who cannot be named for security reasons, described a situation of increasing hardship for Syrians, with food levels down, fuel supplies running low, and daily electricity cuts.

The field worker reports that radical Muslims and criminals are “taking advantage” of the lawlessness.

"In the city of Homs, for example, the Sunni Muslims gained power on the streets when the government pulled out its troops for a few days. Some of the radical elements in this group have raided several churches. They robbed the churches of their most valuable things.”

Some Christians have already reported violent acts against them and fear they are a sign of more violence to come.

The field worker said that some radical Muslim taxi drivers have spoken of their intention to harm any woman using their taxi who is not veiled.

"These women, mostly less orthodox Muslims and Christians, are being kidnapped, raped or even killed," said the field worker.

 

"Some months ago two Christian women were kidnapped. One managed to jump out of the driving car, but the other was taken. That woman remains missing. This didn't happen in a remote area of the country but in the capital of Damascus. For women the situation is unsafe now. People still go on with their daily routine, but with more caution."

Church should fear sin of members more than persecution, pope says

The church should fear the sin of its own members more than hatred against Christians, Pope Benedict XVI said.

While the church has suffered from persecution throughout its history, it "is supported by the light and strength of God" and will always end up victorious, he said.

Overcoming trials and outside threats shows how the Christian community "is the presence, the guarantee of God's love against all ideologies of hatred and selfishness," he said on the feast of the Immaculate Conception Dec. 8.

"The only danger the church can and should fear is the sin of her members," the pope said.

Pope Benedict marked the feast day by making an afternoon visit to a statue of Mary erected near the Spanish Steps.

He went from the Vatican to the heart of Rome's tourist and shopping district to pay homage to Mary by praying before the statue, which commemorates Pope Pius IX's proclamation in 1854 that Mary, by special divine favor, was without sin from the moment she was conceived.

The pope offered a large basket of white roses, which was then set at the foot of the column topped by the statue. He also greeted and blessed the infirm and their caregivers.

He told the crowds gathered for the event that Mary is "free from every stain of sin (and) the church is holy, but at the same time is marked by our sins."

For that reason, Christians often turn to Mary for help and encouragement in living a truly Christian life, he said.

She also gives hope, "which we really need, especially at this very difficult time for Italy, Europe and different parts of the world."

"Mary helps us see that there is a light beyond the blanket of fog that seems to envelop reality," he said.

Earlier in the day, the pope led the Angelus prayer with those gathered in St. Peter's Square.

Before the prayer, the pope said that, like Mary, "we, too, are given the 'fullness of grace' that we must let shine in our lives."

God "has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him," the pope said, citing St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians.

"In her sinless perfection, Mary is a great sign of hope for the church and for the world, a sign of the marvels that God's grace can accomplish in us, his human creatures," the pope said.

He asked that during the days of Advent, people prepare to welcome Mary's son into their lives and hearts.

Blessed John Paul II’s relics to visit Colombia

The bishops of Columbia announced that relics of Blessed John Paul II will arrive in the capital city of Bogota for a two-day visit in January. 

The relics are intended to be “an offering of spiritual reparation for the victims of violence and kidnapping,” said Bishop Juan Vicente Cordoba of Fontibon, secretary for the bishops' conference, on Dec. 5.

Pope Benedict XVI decided to send the relics to Colombia as gesture of his closeness and solidarity, the bishop added.

Blessed John Paul II's relics will arrive on Jan. 20 at the Cathedral of Bogota for veneration and later that evening, will be taken to the local Cristovision Catholic television network. On Jan. 21, the relics will arrive at the parish of Mary Queen of Heaven.

Bishop Cordoba Villota noted that the relics are “a symbol of the blood of all Colombians that cry out for the liberation of the kidnapped, the return of their lands and peace.”

Family members of kidnap victims and victims of the violence in Colombia were present at the Dec. 5 announcement. 

Paraguayan bishop urges lawmakers to strengthen families

Bishop Adalberto Martinez of San Pedro, Paraguay is encouraging lawmakers to strengthen the family as a means of combating poverty in the country.

“If the future of humanity and of Paraguay is built on and from the families, the bonds of this small but fundamental cell of society must be strengthened. We must remove the obstacles that weaken and impoverish it,” Bishop Martinez said Dec. 6 at the Basilica of Our Lady of Caacupe.

He warned against proposed laws that “attack the family and human life” and said legislators should respect the values of Christians, “who make up the majority of the Paraguayan nation.”

The bishop also called attention to spouses who abandon their families. “It has become increasingly more apparent that poverty in our country has a feminine face.  Women are sacrificing greatly to raise their children alone because of the irresponsibility of fathers,” he said.

Bishop Martinez also noted that the breakdown of the family leads many young people to fall into crime and live on the street.

He urged the government to ensure the well-being of the family and to promote policies that prevent domestic violence.

Root your lives in God, LA archbishop tells 25,000 'Guadalupanos'

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez celebrated a procession and Mass for nearly 25,000 devotees of Our Lady of Guadalupe Dec. 4, urging them to follow the Virgin Mary's example by grounding their lives in God.

“We need to promise that we will always nourish our roots – through our prayers and devotions, through all our efforts to lead a good life and to help others and make our neighborhoods and communities strong, through our love for our family and our love for our Church,” Archbishop Gomez said in his homily at East Los Angeles College Stadium. 

He told the crowd, which had traveled in procession along Cesar Chavez Avenue to the stadium, that the miraculous image of the Virgin was part of God's plan for North America and the world.

“God has a plan of love for the world, and God has a plan of love for each one of our lives,” he said. “That is why Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary 2,000 years ago. And that is why he sent his mother to the Hill of Tepeyac in December 1531.”

He offered the life of St. Juan Diego, the indigenous Mexican farmer who encountered Mary and received her miraculous image, as an example for holiness today.

“He was just an ordinary, humble man carrying out his daily duties,” the archbishop said of the saint. “He was not powerful or influential in the world.”

“Yet God had some great plans for his life that he did not know about. And St. Juan Diego became the first great evangelist in the New World.”

The Mexican-born archbishop spoke of the Virgin Mary's role in his own life, during his early years.

“I remember every summer we would make a 600-mile trip from Monterrey to visit my grandparents in Mexico City,” he recalled. “And every time we went, we would all make a pilgrimage together as a family to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

He also mentioned his father's own pilgrimages to the local shrine in Monterrey.

“All the men would do that on the Virgin’s feast day. They would go company by company, factory by factory, and they would walk for miles to the shrine to show their love for Our Lady.”

Sunday's procession and Mass gave parish groups an opportunity to show devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe through traditional mariachi music, native dances, hymns, and poems in her honor. The archbishop encouraged them to show this same love for Christ and his mother in their everyday lives.

“God wants us to live our faith in natural ways, in our ordinary lives, beginning with the people who are closest to us,” he reflected.

“He wants us to share our faith heart to heart – with a sincere smile, a truthful conversation, really listening to somebody, offering words of encouragement, doing little things to make life better for the people around us.”

Archbishop Gomez suggested that these small efforts were part of God's plan, as much as any visible miracle.

“Through these little acts of love, we spread the love of God,” he said. “We share with others the truth that we know – that we are all children of our dear Mother Guadalupe who always cares for us.”

He urged the devotees of Our Lady of Guadalupe to preserve their traditions, while always opening their lives to God's grace.

“We need to always try to nourish and grow from our roots, through the grace that we receive in the sacraments of the Church. And we need to promise to always try to bear good fruits for Jesus in our lives.”

“This,” he declared, “is what it means to be Guadalupanos!”

Pope's US appointees stress urgency of New Evangelization

Catholics must rediscover their religious identity and mission, according to two new American appointees to the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization.

“In a certain sense we don't have an option,” said Curtis Martin, founder and president of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS). He was named as a consultant for the council on Dec. 7, along with Sacred Heart Major Seminary Professor Dr. Ralph Martin.

“If we continue to do what we've been doing the last 40 years, we're on a course for self-destruction,” Curtis Martin said. “The good news is that the Church has within herself the mechanisms for healing – first and foremost, through the grace of God; but secondly, through a rediscovery of the Church's identity.”

Both men will advise the council that exists to re-awaken Christian faith in areas where it once thrived but has now declined. 

They are among the 15 new consultants announced by the Holy See Dec. 7, a group that includes six laypersons and nine clergy.

When it comes to evangelism, the FOCUS founder – who also teaches at Denver's Augustine Institute –  told CNA that the Church has both a problem and an opportunity. 

“Many Catholics suffer from a 'Catholic identity crisis,'” he said. “We don't understand what evangelization is, or how to do it.”

“We are told by the Church, that the Church exists in order to evangelize,” he noted. “So there is an opportunity to rediscover the meaning and purpose of being Catholic, and that will bring about a renewal of Catholic faith and Catholic culture.”

Dr. Ralph Martin, who serves as president of Renewal Ministries, alongside teaching at Sacred Heart, says Catholics must not entrust the spread of the Gospel solely to priests or to a professional class of experts. 

“The main thing is awakening each Catholic to the fact that, just by virtue of them being baptized, they're called to participate in the mission of Christ,” he told CNA. “That mission is primarily focused on bringing people to himself – saving them from hell, saving them for heaven.”

“It involves awakening the baptismal identity of the average Catholic, because the priest can't possibly carry out the New Evangelization all by himself. It has to be priests and people working together, having a mentality in the parish: 'We're a missionary center. We're an evangelization center.'”

“The fields are ripe for harvest all around us,” Ralph Martin said. 

“That means taking advantage of every contact we have with people, to look for opportunities to draw them towards faith.”

Both of the new papal appointees stressed the difference between Catholic missionary work, and the efforts of other Christian groups – whose energy and zeal cannot make up for the fullness of truth and sacramental life. 

“Catholic evangelization is drawing people not only to Christ, but to his body the Church,” said Ralph Martin.

“As a Catholic, you can't evangelize someone without being concerned about them coming to Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist – the full Christian sacramental initiation.”

Curtis Martin described the Church's communal dimension as a vital principle, waiting to be rediscovered.

“We, as Catholics, by the grace of God, have Jesus Christ as our eldest brother,” he explained. 

“His Father becomes our father. His mother becomes our mother. And we are grafted into the life of the Church, whose members are brothers and sisters.”

With this sense of life, he said, believers can begin the task of re-Christianizing Europe and North America.

“There were generations before Christ that didn't know him—but we are a generation that has walked away, or slipped away, or been drawn away from him. And we have to acknowledge that,” he noted.

Nevertheless, divine grace—“the same energy that made Europe, or any Christian culture, what it was”—remains accessible to the faithful.

“If we turn again, in fidelity to the energy of Christ—the energy of truth, and of compelling charity—those forces that transformed the world once will transform it again,” Curtis Martin predicted.

Dundalk victim wants cardinal apology

A DUNDALK man abused by the paedophile priest Brendan Smyth says he still wants a public apology from Cardinal Sean Brady, one of three priests informed about the abuse in 1975.

Brendan Boland last week settled a 14-year court battle with the Archdiocese of Armagh and, despite being offered a private face-to-face meeting with the All-ireland primate, the 50-year-old says he wants the apology to be made in public.

He said: 'I will always hope for Cardinal Brady to make a public apology because to me that would be him coming forward and letting people know that he really cares, that he is really willing to change things in the way the Catholic Church operates.'

In an interview, Mr Boland revealed how he spoke to a trusted priest about the abuse he suffered at Smyth's hands, and how the legal battle with the Church affected his life. 

A PUBLIC apology from the man who, 36 years ago, witnessed the statement a 14-year-old boy made when sworn to secrecy over abuse allegations regarding a paedophile cleric who went on to continue his depraved abuse of children - that's what the Dundalk man who successfully sued the Archdiocese of Armagh wants.

Brendan Boland, whose 14-year battle with the Archdiocese came to an undisclosed settlement last week, wants to hear the All-ireland Primate apologise in public for his ordeal.

The 50-year-old Dundalk man has turned down the offer of a faceto-face private meeting with Cardinal Brady in the hope that he might make a public apology - a move the Cardinal's spokesperson has described as being 'counterproductive'.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Cardinal said his offer to meet Mr Boland and make a personal apology still stands.

But Mr Boland said: 'I can't see how it would be counterproductive for them. At least the public would see that they are changing things. Just to give an apology to me is not showing that they are willing to accept responsibility. I will always hope for an apology in public by Cardinal Brady. The end of the (legal) battle seems that it's another chapter closed. I hope to get on with my life and start to rebuild it again. I will always hope that Cardinal Brady will make a public apology and let people know that he really cares and is really willing to change things in the way the Catholic Church operates in these circumstances'.

A spokesperson for the church reiterated the public apology by Cardinal Brady on St. Patrick's Day last year to those who felt let down by his actions.

Dealing with tribal violence just part of Kenyan bishop's daily tasks

Bishop Anthony Ireri Mukobo's day, week and month were about to take a turn from whatever he had scheduled.

An outbreak of violence the previous night in a rural part of his Apostolic Vicariate of Isiolo, in central Kenya, soon overrode much of his normal activity of overseeing the Catholic Church in a nearly 10,000-square-mile region.

As he welcomed visitors to his office, he periodically received updates about violent attacks between tribes in the region. He said he expected to visit the tribal areas to help calm his people and would be issuing a statement calling for peace.

Within a two-week period, more than 20 people were killed and more than 60 houses burned in tribal violence that led thousands of people to flee from their isolated villages and herding camps to seek shelter in churches and other places that offered more security.

As Bishop Mukobo explained, trying to bring peace to the people of central Kenya is a regular part of the church's work. Every social service or development program includes training in conflict resolution, he said.

"My job here is not just to build up the diocese, but solving problems," he said.

Tom Oywa, the Isiolo-based project officer for the U.S. bishops' Catholic Relief Services, told Catholic News Service that such flare-ups are a regular occurrence in a region where settling disputes with violence is a centuries-old tradition. Oywa said intertribal attacks often occur at the start of the rainy seasons, when herdsmen move their grazing animals closer to home, after weeks of a nomadic quest for grasslands miles away.

When herds are moved across land owned by other tribes, animals occasionally get stolen, leading to sometimes-lethal retaliation, Oywa explained. During those periods, it can become dangerous for CRS staffers who belong to the tribes involved to even travel into the region, he said.

One Turkana man, Gabriel Ilikwel, who served as a volunteer translator for the U.S. visitors, reported in November that his father-in-law, more than 80 years old, was among those killed.

"We have had a very difficult time during the period of conflict," Ilikwel said in an email. "More than 7,050 persons were displaced. In fact, I had to host more than 75 women, men and children in my small compound with very little to provide in terms of food and shelter."

"At least the situation is a little better now, but there is still fear and people are traumatized," he added.

In early November Oywa told CNS that Bishop Mukobo's staff had sponsored three conflict-resolution meetings. Oywa had previously proposed to local leaders that they start a fund that could serve as a kind of insurance program for livestock owners, he said. The fund would reimburse owners who lose animals to poachers as a way of tamping down tensions that lead to violence.

Isiolo has been Bishop Mukobo's home since early 2006, when he was named to fill the vacancy created when Bishop Luigi Locati was murdered. Two priests of the diocese were arrested in that killing, which at the time was reported to be related to the priests' displeasure with some of Bishop Locati's management decisions.

Bishop Mukobo, a Consolata missionary, is Kenyan. He has worked in Puerto Rico and Colombia, returning to Kenya to train other missionaries. He was appointed an auxiliary bishop of Nairobi in 1999.

His vicariate has just 12 parishes and 23 priests to serve 35,600 Catholics in its large territory. But numbers alone don't cover the breadth of what Bishop Mukobo sees as the church's function. Beyond the usual ecclesial functions, the Isiolo Vicariate opens its schools and social services to all. Though Kenya is majority Christian and Catholics make up the largest denomination, the majority of the people around Isiolo are Muslim.

Few mosques provide services such as food assistance and medical care, the bishop said.

"And what they do provide is segregated, only for Muslims," he said. "We provide for everyone.

"A sick person is a sick person," he added.

One of the bishop's proudest accomplishments was the opening of a maternity hospital, which provides a full range of women's health care. With a main focus on preventing deaths from childbirth complications, the hospital relies on community health workers to teach women the early signs that they are about to go into labor, giving them the hours or days necessary to travel to the hospital in time.

There's a main hospital in Isiolo and a mobile clinic, both supported by assistance from CRS and the English and Welsh bishops' Catholic Agency for Overseas Development.

"These are areas of work where we are dealing with the needs of individuals: food, water, sanitation, health care, peacebuilding," Bishop Mukobo said. "That is evangelization. I don't have to shout at you."

Shocked paedophile not stopped

SHOCKED by the revelation that child abuser Brendan Smyth continued to prey on children long after the Catholic Church officially became aware of his activities, Brendan Boland was hit with a wave of guilt that, as a 14-yearold boy, he hadn't done enough to stop his reign of terror.

In 1997, he realised that Cardinal Sean Brady was the one who witnessed a document that swore the teen to secrecy.

Mr Boland and his father had been given assurances, after the trauma of the inquisition into the abuse he suffered, that Smyth would be sorted out and dealt with.

When the Dundalk man found out Smyth had been free to abuse dozens of other children, he decided on a High Court action in 1997.

For 14 years, the Church authorities insisted that Mr Boland provide them with proof.

He said: ' They wanted proof of everything. We didn't know where the oath was, where the minutes of the Friary meeting were, but they insisted on proof.

'It was only in 2010, through legal discovery, that the documents came to light. I believe they thought that I would go away, fade into the background and say nothing - but I didn't. It has been a bruising encounter but I had the determination to see it through to the end. I had to go to see psychiatrists three or four times. The Church wasn't happy with one of them and then I had to go and see one of theirs. It extended the agony and misery for me'.

The entire episode - from the abuse to the legal battle - has taken its toll on Mr Boland.

He said: ' In the intervening years, it had a big impact on me. I wouldn't let my children join the altar boys or school tours where there was a male head teacher. I feel that I have deprived them of a lot of things like that in their lives'.

Church confirms pope to visit Cuba in spring

Pope Benedict XVI will visit Communist-run Cuba this spring, a senior Roman Catholic Church official said Thursday, the first trip by a pontiff since John Paul II's historic tour in 1998.

The exact date of the trip, which coincides with the 400th anniversary of Cuba's patron saint, will be announced in Rome early next week, according to Monsignor Jose Felix Perez, executive secretary of the Cuban Bishops Conference.

"It will be a moment for energizing the faith in Cuba. It will give strength and vigor to the faith in Cuba," he said. "The visit should be one of peace and reconciliation."

Cuba's church has played an increasingly important role in Cuba in recent years, helping negotiate the release of political prisoners in 2009 and 2010, and even consulting with President Raul Castro and his advisers on free-market changes he is pushing to save the island's economy from ruin.

Vatican officials have said that the pope also is considering a visit to Mexico, and the Dec. 12 date for announcing the schedule for his trip coincides with celebrations of Mexico's patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Benedict, 84, has limited his travels mostly to Europe, both to spare him from long trips and to focus his efforts on a continent where Christianity has fallen by the wayside. 

He did visit Brazil in 2007 and has said he hopes to return in 2013 for World Youth Day, the church's youth festival. 

And he has a trip to Benin coming up later this month, the second to Africa in his six-year-pontificate.

Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, as Fidel Castro increasingly embraced Marxism and the Soviet Union, anti-clerical actions increased: Authorities discouraged Christmas celebrations, closed religious schools in 1962 and barred Communist Party membership to people of religious belief.

But relations began easing after the Cold War. Cuba removed references to atheism from the constitution in the 1990s and allowed believers of all faiths to join the party.

Then came John Paul's visit in 1998, when Castro shed his trademark olive-green fatigues for a business suit and tie and to greet the pope personally at the airport.

The pontiff celebrated a mass at a packed Revolution Square, calling for "Cuba to open to the world, and the world to open to Cuba."

Nothing so groundbreaking is expected of the Benedict visit, but it will nonetheless be a historic moment.

Perez said the pope would meet with members of President Raul Castro's government, and may discuss the economic reforms that have already made it much easier for Cubans to do things like go into business for themselves, take out loans and buy and sell their homes and cars.

"What will be the content of their conversations? It's difficult to foresee. ... The changes that are already under way, which are perhaps too timid in my personal opinion, that is a matter that will probably appear." Perez said. "But it's not the purpose of the Holy Father's visit."

Perez said Benedict's primary motivation is to make a pilgrimage in honor of the Virgin of Caridad del Cobre, the patron of Cuba. A relic of the virgin has making its way around the island this year.

Benedict "has a special affection toward the Church and people of Cuba for the social conditions in our country," Perez said.

Cardinal Jaime Ortega, head of the Cuban church, played a key role in helping broker the deal to free the last of 75 opposition activists, intellectuals and social commentators who were imprisoned in a 2003 crackdown on dissent.

The last were released earlier this year. 

Many went into exile in Spain with their families.

Inquiry urged into sex abuse claim

The Government is facing calls for an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse against the former Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid.

Senior garda are investigating two complaints made against the senior cleric, who was the head of the Catholic Church in the capital between 1940-1972. He died a year later.

The Church in Dublin has refused to confirm an Irish Times report that Dr McQuaid was the subject of two complaints made by two men who alleged they were assaulted when they were young boys.

Support group One In Four said if true, the allegations show the sexual abuse of children extended to the very highest levels in the Irish Catholic Church.

Director Maeve Lewis said: "Dr McQuaid was Archbishop of Dublin for over 30 years and was at that time possibly the most powerful, influential and feared man in Ireland. If Archbishop McQuaid was, as is alleged, a sex offender himself, then it is no wonder that the secrecy and cover-ups which have characterised the Church's handling of sexual abuse was so entrenched."

The Murphy Commission revealed it received an allegation about a cleric in 2009 as it finalised its damning report into decades of clerical abuse by paedophile priests in Dublin. 

Hundreds of crimes against defenceless children from the 1960s to the 1990s went unreported, it said.

The three-year inquiry by Judge Yvonne Murphy revealed Catholic hierarchy was granted police immunity while four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs.

However, a supplementary report published on the commission's website in July - the same day as the damaging Cloyne report - revealed new information about a cleric had been received in June/July 2009 as it completed its work.

Ms Lewis called on Children's Minister Frances Fitzgerald to establish a sworn statutory inquiry. 

"It is the only way to establish the truth of the matter," added Ms Lewis. "If Dr McQuaid is innocent of the allegations then it will be an opportunity to restore his good name."

New bishop appointed for Armidale

Wagga Wagga priest Father Michael Kennedy has been appointed Bishop of Armidale, following the resignation of Bishop Luc Matthys who has reached the age limit, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said in a statement.

Fr Michael Kennedy was ordained for the Diocese of Wagga, in NSW, in the late 1990s and is currently the Vicar Forane (Dean) of the Murrumbidgee Deanery. He is also currently the Parish Priest of Leeton in New South Wales.

Bishop Gerard Hanna of Wagga Wagga expressed his support for the news that one of his senior priests had been appointed and wished him every success in his new ministry.

"We congratulate him on his appointment. He has over the last 13 years shown a very balanced approach to his pastoral ministry in the Diocese and I believe that he is well suited in his new role of leadership as the Bishop of the Diocese of Armidale", said Bishop Hanna.

Fr Michael expressed both surprise and joy when receiving the appointment and hopes that he will be a true shepherd to the people of Armidale.

"I am both honoured and humbled to have been chosen to be a successor of the Apostles as the bishop of Armidale. It is my hope to be a true shepherd and teacher for the people of Armidale so that, together, we may grow in faith and build up the Body of Christ. I begin by asking the faithful of the Armidale Diocese to pray for me, and by assuring them of my heartfelt prayers for them", said Fr. Michael.

Accuser lied, says former priest on abuse charges

A former priest accused of sexually abusing three people has accused one of his alleged victims of telling lies about him in court. 

James Martin Donaghy (53) told a Belfast Crown Court jury that while he initially liked Fr Patrick McCafferty, the priest has since “vilified me since 2001” by alleging “the most outrageous things about me”.

He also claimed that Fr McCafferty committed perjury whilst under oath, telling the court: “He has told lies about me.”

Asked by prosecuting QC Ken McMahon what Fr McCafferty's motivation would be to come to court to lie, Donaghy said he was “not going to speculate”.

The lawyer replied: “I have to suggest that the reason he gave the account that he did is that these events happened.”

Donaghy was giving evidence on his own behalf for the second day, maintaining his innocence of the 26 charges laid against him.

Donaghy, from Lady Wallace Drive in Lisburn, denies the alleged sexual abuse and indecent assault of three males between June 1983 and December 2000. 

They are Fr Patrick McCafferty, Mr James Doherty and a man now aged 29 who was an altar boy and trainee priest at the time of the alleged abuse.

Fr McCafferty alleged that while at a seminary, Donaghy took his trousers down to expose the trainee priest’s genitals. He also claims that the night before Donaghy's ordination, the defendant got into bed beside him naked and sexually assaulted him.

Yesterday Donaghy claimed he had “never seen any part of Patrick McCafferty's private parts” and that the night before he became priest, he stayed in a convent in Lisburn in a separate room from Fr McCafferty, declaring: “Patrick McCafferty was never my lover.”

James Doherty alleges he was abused in St Michael's Parochial House in Finaghy the night before a funeral when a naked Donaghy got into bed beside him. He also claims two of the other three assaults occurred in the Parochial House of Corpus Christi where the accused had moved.

Donaghy, however, claimed that Mr Doherty had “never” stayed at any parochial house where he was resident.

The trial continues.

HSE appeals decision on removal of statue

THE HSE South has appealed a decision by Killarney Town Council refusing permission to remove a 1930s Christian statue from the roof of the town’s community hospital.

The health executive has paid fees of €4,500 to lodge the appeal with An Bord Pleanála against the council decision. 

It has also engaged leading heritage and planning consultants in its bid to overturn the town council decision.

The sudden removal of the large red and white statue of Christ from over the central front door of the hospital in March 2010 provoked furore locally and has already been before An Bord Pleanála by way of referral.

The bishop of Kerry, the Killarney Soroptimists and others have publicly questioned health and safety reasons put forward by the HSE. At one stage there was a threat of a march on the hospital.

Initially, the council planners said no planning permission was needed, but after the matter was referred to An Bord Pleanála by then mayor of Killarney, Donal Grady, the HSE was forced to apply to the council.

Last month it refused the HSE’s application for retention permission to remove the statue. Planning consultant McCutcheon Mulcahy, who lodged the appeal on behalf of the HSE, stated that the statue was removed “primarily” for health and safety reasons.

“While there is no report stating that there was a significant risk, it was considered prudent, on the basis of a history of subsidence and structural repairs carried out to the building, to remove the statue,” according to the planning consultants.

Research attached to the appeal, carried out by Cork-based heritage consultant John Cronin and associates, points out that the hospital is not a protected structure and states the statue was probably not part of the hospital’s original design.

When it first opened in 1939 the hospital was run by the Sisters of Mercy and it was they who donated the statue, Cronins states. 

Placing the statue to one side “in a prominent location is wholly appropriate as a physical reminder of the religious order’s long involvement in the running of this critical local health facility”, the consultant says.

McQuaid's actions aimed at avoiding scandal - without concern for young

ABUSE COMPLAINTS: The Murphy report was clear in its assessment of the role of the former archbishop of Dublin.

THE MURPHY report is unequivocal on Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, archbishop of Dublin from 1940 to 1972.

While the report, published in 2009, makes no reference to sex abuse complaints against the late archbishop himself, it pulls no punches when it comes to his handling of the issue in general.

“The claim that bishops and senior church officials were on ‘a learning curve’ about child sexual abuse rings hollow when it is clear that cases were dealt with by Archbishop McQuaid in the 1950s and 1960s and that, although the majority of complaints emerged from 1995 onwards, many of the complaints described in this report first came to the attention of the Archdiocese in the 1970s and 1980s.”

It said that: “For many years offenders were neither prosecuted nor made accountable within the Church. Archbishop McQuaid was well aware of the canon law requirements and even set the processes in motion, but did not complete them.”

Of the archbishops of Dublin it said “not one of them reported his knowledge of child sexual abuse to the gardaí throughout the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s”.

Of Archbishop McQuaid it said: “It is clear that his dealings with Fr Edmondus in 1960 were aimed at the avoidance of scandal and showed no concern for the welfare of children.”

Fr Edmondus was the pseudonym used in the Murphy report for Fr Paul McGennis, who abused Marie Collins in 1960 when she was a patient at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, in Dublin. He was a chaplain there. The archbishop was chairman of its board.

In June 1997 McGennis pleaded guilty to his abuse of Ms Collins and was sentenced to 18 months. Days later he received a nine-month concurrent sentence for his 1976 abuse of a girl aged nine in Wicklow.

The Murphy report found that Archbishop McQuaid “made a comprehensive handwritten record of his dealings with Fr Edmondus in 1960”. It stated: “The handing over of the Fr Edmondus case to Archbishop McQuaid by Commissioner Costigan was totally inappropriate.”

In August 1960, “Archbishop McQuaid was informed that a security officer at a photographic film company in the UK had referred colour film sent to them for developing by Fr Edmondus to Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard referred the matter to the Commissioner of the Gardaí,” who referred it to Archbishop McQuaid, who noted of his meeting with Costigan the latter indicated the film involved 26 explicit transparencies of “two small girls, aged 10 or 11 years”.

The archbishop met Fr McGennis the next day and the priest admitted taking the photographs, motivated by his curiosity about female anatomy, he said. Archbishop McQuaid noted: “I would get [a doctor] a good Catholic to instruct him and thus end his wonderment.”

He concluded there was “not an objective and subjective crime of the type envisaged in the 1922 instruction and consequently that there was no need to refer the matter to the Holy Office in Rome”.

The Murphy report said Archbishop McQuaid’s conclusion that Fr Edmondus’s actions arose from a “wonderment” about the female anatomy was “risible”. 

It said: “The apparent cancellation by Archbishop McQuaid of his original plan to pursue the priest through the procedures of canon law was a disaster. It established a pattern of not holding abusers accountable which lasted for decades.”

On July 29th last, McGennis, now 81, was given a six-year sentence, with the final four years suspended, at the Circuit Criminal Court for the abuse of a young girl in Dublin between 1980 and 1984, beginning when she was 11.

Imposing character: Archbishop held post for 30 years

BORN IN 1895 in Cavan, John Charles McQuaid was named archbishop of Dublin and primate of Ireland on November 11th, 1940, and consecrated in December of the same year, a position in which he would remain for more than 30 years.

An imposing character in Irish history, he had ties to Eamon de Valera, first as a colleague in Blackrock College in Dublin and latterly in their correspondence prior to the writing of the Constitution. De Valera was taoiseach when McQuaid became archbishop.

In 1951 McQuaid opposed the mother-and-child scheme proposed by minister for health Noel Browne to provide free maternity healthcare, and was central to its being withdrawn.

He had a distrust of Trinity College Dublin and was responsible for the extension of a ban on Catholics attending the institution without permission from the Catholic Church.

He was heavily involved in charitable work and school building, and was outspoken in his criticism of communism. He was also a friend of the poet Patrick Kavanagh.

He resigned as archbishop of Dublin on January 4th, 1972, and died just over a year later, on April 7th, 1973.

Archbishop McQuaid subject of child sex abuse complaints

TWO CHILD sex abuse complaints against former Catholic archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid, as well as a separate “concern”, were brought to the attention of the Murphy commission, which investigated the handling of clerical child sex abuse complaints in the Dublin archdiocese.

One complaint alleges abuse of a 12-year-old boy by Archbishop McQuaid in 1961.

The complaints and concern were addressed in a “Supplementary Report to the Dublin Archdiocese Investigation”, published on the commission’s website on July 13th, the day it published the Cloyne report.

Archbishop McQuaid is not identified by name in the supplementary report but is described as a cleric who “has been dead for many years”. 

He retired in 1972 and died in 1973.

The Irish Times has established that the cleric referred to in the report is Archbishop McQuaid.

The Murphy commission report into the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in the Dublin archdiocese was published in November 2009. 

The supplementary report records that in June/July 2009, as the commission was completing its main report, it received information which would have “brought another cleric” within its remit. 

It was concerned that this may have been withheld deliberately and felt this required investigation.

The complaint concerned an adult who, in January 2003, complained to the Eastern Health Board that he had been abused by Archbishop McQuaid, and was not made known to the commission when the Health Service Executive discovered documents relating to it.

In May 2009 this complaint was made known to Phil Garland, then director of child protection in Dublin’s archdiocese. He informed Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and the commission was “immediately informed”, the report says. The HSE subsequently supplied relevant documentation to the commission.

The archdiocese then organised a further trawl of its files and found a letter “which showed that there was an awareness among a number of people in the archdiocese that there had been a concern expressed about this cleric in 1999”, the report states. The “cleric” is Archbishop McQuaid.

This letter was passed to the commission, in July 2009, by which time its report was almost complete.

After an investigation into the HSE’s failure to hand over the 2003 documentation in discovery, the commission was “satisfied that this was due to human error”.

It also examined the awareness within the Dublin archdiocese of a “concern” about Archbishop McQuaid. It found the archdiocese had no knowledge of the source of the concern, or its details.

Then in 2010, after the commission’s report had been published, Archbishop Martin told it he had received another abuse complaint against Archbishop McQuaid.

The supplementary report said “Archbishop Martin was under no obligation to give the commission this information”. 

It was now a matter for the archdiocese “to investigate all complaints against this cleric,” it said. The 2010 complaint is the subject of a civil action against the archdiocese.

Responding to questions from The Irish Times , the archdiocese said it treated information regarding abuse in a confidential manner, “out of respect to all involved”. 

Matters which were the subject of the supplementary report were now under investigation by the Garda, it said.

A HSE spokeswoman said it would be inappropriate to comment further than what was already in the supplementary report.

RTÉ board to consider Prime Time reviews

THE results of two reports into the controversial RTÉ Prime Time Investigates programme which defamed Fr Kevin Reynolds are due to be considered by the RTÉ Authority next week.

The RTÉ board is to meet on December 15 when it will hold a "full discussion" on both an internal review and an independent investigation conducted by Press Ombudsman John Horgan.

RTÉ was forced to pay a six-figure sum, believed to be well in excess of €1m, as a result of the programme on May 23, which falsely accused Fr Reynolds, the parish priest of Ahascragh, Co Galway, of raping a teenage girl, while working as a missionary in Kenya, and fathering her child.

However, any decision on the future of key personnel at the centre of the controversy is likely to be deferred until completion of a separate probe by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

The managing director of RTÉ news and current affairs, Ed Mulhall, and the editor of Prime Time, Ken O’Shea, voluntarily stepped aside pending the outcome of the various inquiries.

Reporter Aoife Kavanagh and the programme’s executive producer, Brian Páircéir, will not be involved in any on-air programming for the same duration.

The report by Prof Horgan is limited to examining RTÉ’s editorial procedures to prevent a similar defamation in the future.

It will not make any findings in relation to any individuals but instead will make general recommendations about the station’s internal controls.

RTÉ’s own review is confined to the origination, preparation and broadcast of the programme, but will not examine the station’s handling of the case following the broadcast, which has also been heavily criticised.

The BAI has confirmed it can impose a fine of up to €250,000 on RTÉ as a result of the Mission to Prey documentary.

BAI chief executive Michael O’Keeffe said the organisation had the power under the Broadcasting Act 2009 to impose a financial sanction on any broadcaster which it had deemed was in breach of the legislation governing broadcast rules and codes.

The BAI’s compliance committee is due to appoint an investigating officer, likely to be a senior counsel, by the end of this week after an instruction issued by Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte to investigate the programme. 

The BAI can also decide to prosecute an alleged breach before the district or circuit court.

The BAI is scheduled to complete its inquiry within two months.