WASHINGTON (CNS) -- It took a couple of days for Jesuit Father Flavio Bravo to venture out and survey the devastation of Hurricane Maria, with its torrential rain and winds of 155 miles per hour, inflicted for hours on the island of Puerto Rico.
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The latest version of a Republican measure in the Senate to repeal the Affordable Care Act must be amended to protect poor and vulnerable Americans, said the chairmen of four U.S. bishops' committees.
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The title of the 1969 film comedy "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" sparked an ongoing series of parodies that continues to this day. The latest version: If it's Congress, this must be health care.
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Authorities say it may take months for electricity to fully return to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria pummeled the island and its infrastructure as it made landfall Sept. 20. When the hurricane hit the island with winds of up to 155 miles per hour, it tore out cables, roofs from homes and buildings, uprooted palm trees and even bent a cross anchored to a cement post at the entrance of a Jesuit school.
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In the aftermath of two earthquakes in the span of two weeks in Mexico church-based relief agencies have been on the ground providing food, shelter and repairs. The magnitude 7.1 quake that hit near Mexico City Sept. 19 killed more than 230 people and injured more than 2,000 in the crumbling wreckage. The earthquake was just on the heels of the magnitude 8.1 earthquake Sept. 7 off the coast of south-eastern Mexico that killed at least 90 people and destroyed thousands of homes.
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors believe they have done important work over the past three years, but, because there is so much more to be done, they presented Pope Francis with a list of suggestions, including changing the way confidentiality is imposed during church investigations of child sexual abuse.
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BRAINTREE -- The Archdiocese of Boston's Opioid Task Force is offering a series of four free webinars specifically geared towards Catholic school parents, guardians, and teachers and designed to help them formulate their response to the opioid epidemic.
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SOUTH END -- Police officers, firefighters, EMTs, corrections officers, and other first responders from across the Archdiocese of Boston will be honored Oct. 1 during the annual Mass for Public Safety Personnel and Families, held this year at St. Theresa of Avila Church in West Roxbury.
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DANVERS -- Three noted regional chefs competed in a one-of-a-kind cook-off in Danvers, Sept. 14, in support of Catholic Charities North's Friends Feeding Families campaign and the new Catholic Charities Food Pantry in Lynn.
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WATERTOWN -- On Sept. 15 and Sept. 16, the CatholicTV Network held its 26th Telethon, raising over $300,000 from generous viewers in the United States and abroad. This year's telethon was hosted by Bishop Robert Reed, Jay Fadden, and Kevin Nelson, and featured acts by talented performers, including singers from St. Bridget's Parish in Maynard; comedy duo Nun and Nunner; and renowned musicians Eric Genuis and Stephanie Scogna.
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BRAINTREE -- When in 1996, Father Richard Bradford, rector of the Episcopalian Parish of All Saints in Ashmont, left the Episcopal Church, several dozen parishioners left with him. It wasn't that they had lost their faith; just that they had discovered another one, Catholicism, and it spoke to them.
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BRAINTREE -- Four Boston College students studying overseas were injured in an acid attack, Sept. 17, in Marseille, France. BC juniors Courtney Siverling, Charlotte Kaufman, Michelle Krug, and Kelsey Kosten were at a train station in Marseille when a woman sprayed them with an acidic solution. The students were taken to the hospital, where they were treated for burns and released later that day.
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During 2017 and 2018, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston and associates will gather for chapter weekends in September, October, February, and March. A special theme is selected each time the sisters prepare for a general chapter. The theme for the 2017-2018 chapter is "Impelled by God's inclusive Love."
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This week I have been in Rome for meetings of the C9 Council of Cardinals advising the Holy Father on the reform of the Roman Curia and for activities of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
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Oklahoma City, Okla. (CNA/EWTN News) -- When Father Stanley Rother, a missionary priest from Okarche, Oklahoma, was killed by rebels in Guatemala, his body was transferred back to the United States to be buried by his family.
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis has endorsed an approach of "zero tolerance" toward all members of the church guilty of sexually abusing minors or vulnerable adults. Having listened to abuse survivors and having made what he described as a mistake in approving a more lenient set of sanctions against an Italian priest abuser, the pope said he has decided whoever has been proven guilty of abuse has no right to an appeal, and he will never grant a papal pardon.
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MEXICO CITY (CNS) -- A Catholic bishop and a Caritas worker in Mexico said the situation was extremely serious after the Sept. 19 earthquake, and much aid would be needed. "The situation is complicated, because the first earthquake (Sept. 7) had already affected thousands of people in Chiapas and Oaxaca," Alberto Arciniega, head of communications for Caritas Mexico, told Catholic News Service Sept. 20. "The church is continuing to assist those dioceses, but with what happened yesterday, the emergency situation is being re-evaluated to get a more exact assessment of the aid that is needed."
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MEXICO CITY (CNS) -- Mexican church leaders offered prayers and urged generosity after an earthquake struck the national capital and its environs, claiming more than 240 lives -- including at least 20 children trapped in a collapsed school.
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Vatican City, Sep 19, 2017 CNA/EWTN News.- In a letter Tuesday to the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Pope Francis reflected on the role of their foundress, St. Frances Cabrini, explaining how her example is a fitting guide for the challenges of migration we face today.
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Menlo Park, Calif., Sep 19, 2017 CNA/EWTN News.- People need to learn how to argue better on the internet, especially about religion, Catholic media personality and Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron said in remarks at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters.
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Washington D.C., Sep 19, 2017 CNA.- Have compassion and empathy: especially for those dealing with struggles which are different than yours. This is the message Dan Mattson hopes all believers will take from his book, which encourages a new sense of compassion for those who have same-sex attractions.
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- As search and rescue operations continued in central Mexico, where more than 200 people died after a strong earthquake Sept. 19, Pope Francis offered his prayers for the victims.
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NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar (CNS) -- Faced with a powerful military keen to have martial law declared in Rakhine state, which nearly half a million people fled in three weeks, Myanmar's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, avoided any mention of ethnic cleansing of Muslim Rohingya while broadly condemning human rights violations in her first major address on the issue.
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- How Protestants regarded Martin Luther has evolved as the Reformation he engendered has likewise evolved, according to German Catholic theologian Father Peter Neuner. "To us Luther is not only a historic person, but also a product of interested memory," Father Neuner said in a Sept. 15 address delivered on his behalf at during Georgetown University's conference on "1517-2017: Lutherans and Catholics, Then and Now."
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BRAINTREE -- The Archdiocese of Boston's Opioid Task Force is offering a series of four free webinars specifically geared for Catholic school parents, guardians, and teachers designed to help them formulate their response to the opioid epidemic.
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Vatican City, Sep 19, 2017 CNA/EWTN News.- On Tuesday Pope Francis issued a new motu proprio changing the legal status of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, making it a theological institute charged with studying marriage and the family from a scientific perspective.
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Brussels, Belgium, Sep 17, 2017 Church Pop.- Br. René Stockman says it clearly: the path to euthanasia is not viable for a Catholic hospital. After a board of trustees decision to allow euthanasia in Belgian hospitals sponsored by the Brothers of Charity, the community’s general superior spoke with CNA about the issues at stake, and the possibility that the Brothers of Charity might discontinue sponsoring hospitals if things do not change.
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Vatican City, Sep 18, 2017 CNA/EWTN News.- In a letter to Japanese bishops, Pope Francis urges his brother prelates to use the example of their country's martyrs as an inspiration to continue their mission of evangelization amid modern-day challenges.
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Vatican City, Sep 18, 2017 CNA/EWTN News.- Nearly four years after the Pope established his Council of Cardinal advisers to help him in the task of reforming the Roman Curia, one member of the group said their work is wrapping up, and that it could take only a few more meetings to finish what they set out to do.
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ST. LOUIS (CNS) -- Archbishop Robert J. Carlson of St. Louis called for peace following a not guilty verdict in the trial of former St. Louis Police Officer Jason Stockley. Stockley, who is white, was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death in 2011 of Anthony Lamar Smith, an African-American. St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson issued the ruling after Stockley waived his right to a jury trial.
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ARLINGTON, Va. (CNS) -- When Francis "FX" Giaccio began his lawn-mowing business in May, the 11-year-old saw beyond the possibility of making enough money to buy a Lego set or a new phone. He saw an opportunity.
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MOSCOW (CNS) -- Catholics across Russia are celebrating the centenary of the 1917 apparitions of Mary to shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal. According to one of the children, Sister Lucia Dos Santos, Mary asked for a special consecration of Russia to prevent the country from disseminating its "errors throughout the world," a phrase now-retired Pope Benedict XVI interpreted as referring to communism.
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MOSCOW (CNS) -- A few blocks from Moscow's Lubyanka Building, which for decades served as the headquarters of the Soviet Union's KGB security agency, the Russian Orthodox patriarch recently consecrated a church memorializing those martyred during communism's reign.
Read moreVATICAN CITY (CNS) -- To better prepare priests and pastoral workers to help meet the challenges families face today, Pope Francis is strengthening the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family and changing its name to the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and Family.
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A U.S. bishop vigorously defended Jesuit Father James Martin when a prominent U.S. seminary canceled an invitation it had extended to the well-known author, who was to speak about Jesus at an October event, after fringe groups unhappy with the priest's recent book about the church and the gay community mounted a series of attacks.
Read moreBOSTON (CNS) -- Boston College said Sept. 18 that four of its university students studying abroad who were victims of an acid attack a day earlier in Marseille, France, were doing well. The female students, all juniors, plan to remain in Europe for their studies and offered forgiveness to the woman who sprayed them with an acid solution outside of the Saint-Charles train station in Marseille, according to a statement posted on the university's website.
Read moreWASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Washington-based Judicial Crisis Network Sept. 15 launched a 10-day digital ad campaign objecting to a U.S. Democratic senator grilling a Catholic judicial nominee Sept. 6 about what impact her faith would have on her interpretation of the law.
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MANILA, Philippines (CNS) -- A senior Philippine priest taken hostage by Islamic State-inspired militants in the southern city of Marawi has been freed after almost four months of captivity. Father Teresito Soganub, vicar general of the Prelature of Marawi, told a news conference in Manila that he was doing as well as could be expected following his ordeal, reported ucanews.com.
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KEY WEST, Fla. (CNS) -- Robert Wright, principal of the Basilica School of St. Mary Star of the Sea in Key West, reluctantly left town before Hurricane Irma made its historic landfall, knowing it wouldn't be easy getting back to Florida's southernmost tip later on.
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Washington D.C., Sep 16, 2017 CNA/EWTN News.- Fr. James Martin, S.J., an editor at America magazine, has been disinvited from speaking at the Theological College, a seminary affiliated with the Catholic University of America, following pressure from online-based groups.
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Washington D.C., Sep 15, 2017 CNA/EWTN News.- What happens when Vatican City State diplomats commit crimes? The recent recall of a Vatican diplomat from the U.S. Nunciature in Washington, following suspicions of child pornography possession brings together both the workings of the criminal justice system at the Vatican and international diplomatic law.
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Detroit, Mich., Sep 15, 2017 CNA/EWTN News.- A Michigan mother with a lethal form of brain cancer who declined treatment in order to save her unborn child has died, a few days after her sixth child was born.
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PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. (CNS) -- The nation watched in sadness and outrage at the deaths of eight elderly people in Hollywood without air conditioning and electricity following the historic passing of Hurricane Irma.
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