St. Mary's Church

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 19, 2024 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Antonio is denying recent accusations that it misused federal taxpayer funds by paying for migrants’ airfare.

This comes after two South Texas members of Congress, Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat, and Rep. Monica de la Cruz, a Republican, accused the San Antonio Catholic relief group of an inappropriate use of funds made available to it by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Jose Antonio Fernandez, CEO of Catholic Charities San Antonio, confirmed to CNA that the group did indeed help migrants with air travel from San Antonio to other locations in the United States, but he claimed that this was a licit use of funds under FEMA’s rules.

Cuellar said in an interview with Border Report that the nonprofit group’s practice of buying airfare for migrants has made San Antonio a destination for many migrants looking to travel to other parts of the U.S. He said that funding he helped secure for Catholic Charities of San Antonio was intended for humanitarian relief, not to purchase airfare for migrants.

“From the very beginning I said it would only be used for food and shelter, maybe transportation inside a city but not to be sending them [across the country],” Cuellar said. “The family or somebody should pay for that, not the taxpayer.”  

De la Cruz, meanwhile, told Border Report that the San Antonio Catholic Charities’ use of funds is “just simply unacceptable.”

“They misused funds and sent these illegal immigrants where their preferred destination was with taxpayers’ hard-earned money,” she said.

Fernandez responded to these allegations by telling CNA that “we have never misused the funding because the funding was given to us to provide transportation.”

According to Fernandez, the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP) FEMA grant given to Catholic Charities of San Antonio “clearly stated that you could provide transportation.” 

“The funds were given to us to provide food, clothing, all these activities, including transportation,” he said.

“It’s not my interpretation, it is a fact; many companies in the U.S. provide transportation because it is allowed,” he said. “If you contact FEMA, they will tell you that, yes, you are actually allowed to provide transportation.”

CNA reached out to FEMA about its regulations but did not immediately receive a response. 

Fernandez clarified that Catholic Charities of San Antonio is not currently paying for migrants’ air travel and has not been doing so since the end of 2023. 

He said that the group stopped purchasing air travel for two reasons: 1) Limited funding necessitated budget cuts, and 2) instead of receiving EFSP FEMA funding the group is now receiving funding under the Shelter and Services Program, which limits transportation spending to 5% of the grant.

He said that under these limitations San Antonio Catholic Charities would not have been able to offer travel services to all who were seeking it.

“It was a huge amount of money spent, I don’t know exactly the amount, but we just couldn’t afford [it],” Fernandez said, adding: “Hopefully people can find a way and we can try to help them.”

This, Fernandez said, has presented its own challenge with more migrants amassing in San Antonio. In 2023 alone, Fernandez said that San Antonio Catholic Charities helped well over 250,000 migrants with food, shelter, and other services.

“Now we’re seeing a lot more people staying in San Antonio because they don’t have the funds to go someplace else,” he said. “We feed them, we clothe them, we provide them with counseling services, with financial assistance to the people staying in San Antonio, legal services, shelter services. We try to provide them with all these wraparound services to help mind, body, and spirit.”

Tony Wen, a representative for Cuellar, declined to comment further on the matter but did clarify that the congressman “never said they were misusing funds” and that particular verbiage was only used by de la Cruz. 

Despite this, Wen said that Cuellar still stands by his comments about the intended use of federal funds.

A proponent of funding for humanitarian relief at the border, Cuellar recently helped advance an appropriations bill that granted San Antonio Catholic Charities and other border relief groups hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds.

Catholic Charities of San Antonio alone received $10,877,226 from the appropriations bill. Ten other Catholic relief groups at or near the southern border also received federal funding from the same appropriations bill, totaling tens of millions of dollars.

Cuellar and several other lawmakers issued a statement after securing the funding in which they praised Catholic Charities of San Antonio and other similar groups as a “lifeline” in the face of the “historic number of people being displaced from Latin America.”

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 19, 2024 / 15:30 pm (CNA).

President Joe Biden’s Department of Education issued new regulations on Friday, April 19, that prohibit discrimination based on a person’s “gender identity.”

The new rules, which will go into effect on Aug. 1, redefine the prohibition on sex discrimination for schools and education programs that receive federal funding — including K-12 schools and colleges and universities. Under the new interpretation of the Title IX protections, those rules now apply to any form of discrimination that is based on a person’s self-purported “gender identity.”

According to the executive summary of the Title IX revision, the changes are meant to “clarify that sex discrimination includes discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

The summary further states that, except in certain situations, education institutions receiving federal funding cannot carry out “different treatment or separation on the basis of sex,” which includes a prohibition on any policy or practice that “prevents a person from participating in an education program or activity consistent with their gender identity.”

The new Title IX rules, however, do not have any direct rules related to transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports. About two dozen states have restricted participation in high school and college women’s sports to only biological women. It’s unclear whether these rules would violate the new interpretation of violations based on sex discrimination.

It’s also unclear how these rules would affect state laws that restrict bathroom and locker room access to a person based on his or her biological sex rather than gender identity or whether it would jeopardize free speech in relation to the use of a person’s preferred gender pronouns when those pronouns do not align with the person’s biological sex. The new rules did not clearly explain how the new definition would apply to such situations.

Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Rachel Rouleau expressed concerns that the Biden administration’s new definition of sex discrimination would negatively impact the rights of girls and women in education institutions.

“The Biden administration’s radical redefinition of sex turns back the clock on equal opportunity for women, threatens student safety and privacy, and undermines fairness in women’s sports,” Rouleau said in a statement on Friday. 

“It is a slap in the face to women and girls who have fought long and hard for equal opportunities,” she added. “The administration continues to ignore biological reality, science, and common sense, and women are suffering as a result. The administration’s new regulation will have devastating consequences on the future of women’s sports, student privacy, and parental rights.”

Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former senior counsel at the United States Department of Education, said in a statement that Title IX is being “manipulated” by “gender activists and woke politicos” through these actions. 

“Under the new rule, girls and women will no longer have any sex-separated bathrooms, locker rooms, housing accommodations, or other educational programs,” Perry said. “Women’s sports are likely endangered too. Any education institution, including many private schools that receive even nominal federal funding, will be affected by this rule.”

Perry suggested that federal lawmakers should challenge the department’s actions “by clearly defining men and women” in legislation.

When Congress first added Title IX’s sex discrimination provisions into federal law in the 1970s, the goal was to give girls and women equal access to education. The law itself does not make reference to “gender identity.”

Other changes included in the administration’s rules related to Title IX include the prohibition on discriminating against a girl or a woman based on her being pregnant, her choosing to have an abortion, or her recovery from pregnancy. The revision also changes the process by which sexual assault allegations are handled.

CNA Staff, Apr 19, 2024 / 12:30 pm (CNA).

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating what it says have been multiple threats made against houses of worship, religious schools, and other institutions — including Catholic ones — in Pennsylvania. 

Pennsylvania local media had reported on the alleged threats made earlier in the week. An FBI spokesman told CNA on Thursday that the bureau “is aware of a number of threats made against multiple faith communities, houses of worship, and schools in Western Pennsylvania recently.”

Investigators have “no information at this time to indicate a specific and credible threat against any faith community, religious institution, or educational facility,” the bureau said.

Agents “continue to work with our law enforcement and community partners to mitigate any threat investigations when information comes to our attention,” the spokesman said.

Diocese increases security at schools amid threats

Wendell Hissrich, the director of safety and security at the Diocese of Pittsburgh in the western part of the state, told CNA that the diocese has increased security at several area schools in response to the threats. 

Hissrich, who served in the FBI for 25 years and previously worked as the safety director for the city of Pittsburgh, said that earlier in the week a diocesan elementary school had received “two simultaneous emails” that were “concerning in nature” via a contact form on the school’s website. 

“The staff notified the authorities and our officers,” Hissrich said. The diocese recently launched a new security protocol that includes armed officers being placed in diocesan schools.

“When the local authorities arrived, they indicated there was a similar incident at another school — not a Catholic school — south of ours,” Hissrich said. He spoke with the FBI who told him threats had been made “to not only the schools but other houses of worship.”

“We increased our security throughout all our diocesan schools” as a result, Hissrich said. 

The security director praised the diocese’s team of officers, who were hired last year and whom the diocese recently began to place in schools.

“The officers we have are all retired from local law enforcement or state police, with in excess of 20 years experience for each of them,” Hissrich said. “We’re very fortunate to have those officers.”

Hissrich said the threat against the school was “not specific” and ultimately “not credible,” though he said that “this time of year, there’s usually an upswing in threats.” 

“We’re prepared for that and we’re still prepared for it,” he said. 

Jewish institutions have also been targeted by threats this month. The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh said in a statement last week that “several Jewish organizations throughout Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh,” had been “targeted with hoax bomb threats.”

The federation said it had launched a “Virtual Block Watch Program” that would allow citizens to “provide residential or business video surveillance footage to help prevent, deter, and possibly solve crimes.”

Hissrich confirmed that Jewish institutions in the area are being targeted.

“Our Jewish friends are receiving a lot of threats, especially with what’s happening in Israel,” he said.

The FBI, meanwhile, said it urged residents to “remain vigilant and to promptly report any suspicious individuals or activities to law enforcement immediately.”

Boston, Mass., Apr 19, 2024 / 11:50 am (CNA).

Mary Jane Rein decided to leave her job as executive director of the Holocaust studies center at the secular Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in hopes of finding a “warmer welcome” at a nearby Catholic university in the same city. 

Rein, who is Jewish, announced that she was resigning in an April Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Why I’m leaving Clark University,” following an incident at an event in which students from Clark heckled her as she attempted to introduce the evening’s speaker, an Israeli military reservist. 

“There is no joy in working on behalf of those students who would, with the support of university leadership, try to silence me in public rather than engage with me civilly,” she wrote. “I can’t invest my time and efforts to advance an institution that lacks the strength of character to protect diverse points of view.”

Clark University has since issued a statement to the media denying any wrongdoing.

But Rein has already moved on to her new role at the Augustinian-run Assumption University in Worcester to launch the Center for Civic Friendship, an institution with a stated mission to be a national resource on “civic friendship, its possibilities and boundaries, and what makes it harder or easier to achieve,” the center’s website says.

Assumption is led by Greg Weiner, the first Jewish president of a Catholic university in the United States.

“To my surprise as both a scholar and a Jew, I feel a warmer welcome and more commonality of purpose at a Catholic institution than at Clark, a secular one,” Rein wrote in her op-ed.

“I find common cause with Assumption and have chosen to align myself with its mission to pursue truth in the company of friends. Its commitment to a style of learning that acknowledges and respects different opinions gives me hope that universities can lead us toward a better future,” she wrote.

Rein’s departure follows 20 years with the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, an undergraduate and Ph.D. program studying the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and other mass atrocities.

Her parents’ extended families were victims of the Holocaust, Rein wrote in the piece. 

CNA reached out to Rein for comment but did not receive a response.

What happened at Clark?

On March 13, Rein, a self-proclaimed Zionist, helped host a pro-Israel lecture at nearby Worcester State University, along with one of Worcester State’s history professors and the advocacy organization Jewish Federation of Central Massachusetts.

The lecturer was a man named Shahar Peled, a soldier of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) who was to speak about his experience as a first responder after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on innocents in Israel by Hamas, Rein wrote in her op-ed.

The event was attended by protesters who “repeatedly” interrupted the lecture, stood up and made statements, rang their cellphones, and even pulled a fire alarm, forcing the evacuation of everyone from the auditorium, according to Rein.

Students are shown in a video of the event online yelling at the speaker, calling the IDF “terrorists” and the soldier a “genocide supporter,” while an alarm is heard going off and police are shown directing people to leave the event.

Rein also said that she was heckled at the talk by “a trio” of Clark University Ph.D. students from the Strassler Center who attended the lecture and whom she is familiar with.

When Rein was being introduced so that she could introduce the soldier, one of the Ph.D. students “shouted,” demanding that Rein’s university title not be used, according to her op-ed.

Rein wrote that the same student spoke at a question and answer session after the talk and accused Israel of committing genocide in its military response in Gaza. The three students then approached Rein after the event, demanded that she resign from her position at Clark and threatened to have her “investigated,” Rein wrote. 

A “senior administrator” at Clark then “admonished” Rein the next day, directing her not to use her university affiliation with events not sponsored by Clark, calling it “highly problematic,” Rein continued.

Rein, who said she never mentioned her title, wrote that she asked the administrator if the university would hold others at Clark to the same standard. 

The administrator replied that while faculty members drawing on their “research and expertise” may “speak freely,” an “administrator in an executive position like yours running a center” would create “confusion” if her title was used, according to Rein.

“I suspected I was being asked to censor myself on the basis of my Jewish identity and support for Israel, as I inferred there would be professional consequences if I presented that disfavored view,” she wrote.

In a statement to the Worcester Business Journal, Clark denied allegations of admonishing Rein. 

“Ms. Rein was not admonished,” the statement said. “As a non-faculty administrator of the Strassler Center, Ms. Rein was provided guidance after the event about appropriately clarifying when participation in future activities is in a professional or personal capacity.”

“This is important because it avoids confusion by making clear when an administrator is representing the university. We would provide this guidance to any administrator at Clark University regardless of religion, identity, or political views,” the university wrote.

The school also said that if the interruption had occurred on Clark’s campus, “we would have intervened and handled the disruption consistent with our community standards and policies articulated in our Student Code of Conduct.”

“As specified in our Code of Conduct Clark students are responsible for their behavior outside the university’s confines. However, the university may invoke disciplinary action when notified of violations of federal, state, and local laws,” the statement said.

Catholic universities a haven for Jewish students

“I am ready to sign on to a different cause, one rooted in respect, honest inquiry, and the free exchange of ideas in the context of civic friendship. I will be joining Assumption University, where I will help launch the new Center for Civic Friendship,” she wrote.

Her departure to a Catholic university comes as a number of Catholic universities have sought to make themselves more hospitable to Jewish students amid the war between Israel and Hamas since the Oct. 7 attack on innocents in Israel.

Since the war began there have been several reported instances of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses across the nation that have resulted in the harassment of Jewish students. Many reports have indicated that Jewish students feel unsafe on campus.

Last October, a coalition of over 100 institutions called Universities United Against Terrorism denounced the Oct. 7 attacks, adding that they “stand with Israel, with the Palestinians who suffer under Hamas’ cruel rule in Gaza and with all people of moral conscience.”

Many of those institutions are Catholic, including Assumption University, Catholic University, Franciscan University of Steubenville, University of Notre Dame, Mercyhurst University, and Salve Regina University, among others.

All of the schools in the coalition vowed to offer Jewish students an “expedited” transfer process, Stephen Hildebrand, Franciscan University’s then-vice president for campus affairs told The Times of Israel last November. Hildebrand said that several Jewish students had reached out to the school at the time with interest in transferring.

However, a school spokesman told CNA Thursday that ultimately none ended up doing so but the offer still stands.

“It just seemed so obvious, the right thing to do,” Hildebrand told the outlet. “To make our Jewish brethren aware if they need help that we are here as a safe haven.”

“We are doing this because of our Catholic faith, not in spite of it,” he said.

El Gobierno de Giorgia Meloni ha aprobado que los voluntarios de asociaciones provida tengan acceso a centros abortivos para garantizar asistencia a las madres que desean abortar a sus hijos no nacidos.

El Papa Francisco recibió este jueves en el Vaticano a Estela de Carlotto, presidenta de la asociación argentina Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo.

Cada 19 de abril, la Iglesia Católica celebra a San Expedito, militar romano que vivió entre los siglos III y IV. Antes de su conversión fue comandante de la legión romana “Fulminata XII”, grupo de élite que estaba bajo las órdenes directas del emperador Diocleciano.

Mons. Domingo Díaz Martínez, Arzobispo de Tulancingo en el estado mexicano de Hidalgo, se deslindó de la asociación civil Ciudad de los Niños, y acusó a sus administradores de tener como “finalidad única” la de “lucrar con la fe”.

El Papa Francisco recibió en audiencia a los alumnos y profesores de la red nacional de “Escuelas para la Paz”, a quienes aseguró que están llamados “a ser protagonistas y no espectadores del futuro”.

La Oficina de Prensa del Vaticano y la Conferencia Episcopal Ecuatoriana informaron que el Papa Francisco nombró al P. Ramiro Alejandro Herrera Herrera como nuevo Obispo Auxiliar de Portoviejo.