The Catholic Weekly 29 March 2020

14 29, March, 2020 W orld catholicweekly.com.au Sister’s call: learn the McCarrick lesson ONCE THE Vatican releas- es the McCarrick report, the church must listen to the reaction to it in a “spirit of humility” and must seek to “make reparation, learn and keep moving forward in a new way,” said a leading US woman religious. Sister Carol Zinn, a Sister of St Joseph who is executive director of the US Leader- ship Conference of Women Religious, said she hopes that as Catholics react to the report, “the church would take a listening stance rath- er than a defensive one,” to acknowledge it and recog- nise that “the institutional church, cannot govern itself the way it has governed it- self before.” In 2019, the Vatican an- nounced that Pope Francis, at the conclusion of a pro- cess conducted by the Con- gregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, imposed on The- odore McCarrick the penal- ty of his dismissal from the clerical state, prohibiting him from functioning in any type of priestly ministry. McCarrick, who was the archbishop of Washington from 2000 to 2006 and earli- er was a priest and auxiliary bishop in New York and the bishop of Metuchen and the archbishop of Newark in New Jersey, was found to have engaged in “sins against the Sixth Com- mandment with minors and adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.” - CNS A CATHOLIC diocese in Chi- na’s Shaanxi province has do- nated thousands of facemasks to communities in the Vatican and Italy to help themfight the coronavirus. Ucanews.com reported Xi’an Diocese has donated 24,000 disposable medical masks to the Vatican and re- ligious communities and di- oceses in Italy such as Milan and Bologna. “When mainland China The legend spreads China returns mask favour Fellowchurchmen opposed his canonisation, but St Romero’s influence is growing THE CHURCH in El Salva- dor is observing a jubilee year to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1980 assassination of St Oscar Romero, while oth- er churches in the world and throughout Latin America are holding their own commem- orations. In the Bible, 40 years is a generational measurement of time: For example, God casts the Israelites into the desert for that long, “until the whole generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord had disappeared.” (Nm 32:13). St Romero’s 40 years appear to take on similar proportions. When St Romero’s can- onisation cause seemed at a standstill, Salvadoran Car- dinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez would say he was not going to be beatified until the gen- eration of his contemporar- ies had passed away, so that his legacy could be assessed dispassionately, without the fanaticism of his detractors or most ardent followers. After 40 years, so much has changed that it seems an ep- ochal shift has taken place. The change is particularly stunning in El Salvador. St Romero’s biggest detrac- tors there are gone. The Sal- vadoran death squad leader, Roberto D’Aubuisson, reput- ed to have ordered the killing, died of cancer in 1992. The Salvadoran political landscape has been made over dramatically. For the first 10 years follow- ing the archbishop’s death, the Salvadoran government did not allow public com- memorations of him. Later governments, run by D’Aubuisson’s party, tried to relegate then-Archbishop Romero to oblivion. Official- dom refused to celebrate him, while Salvadoran presidents visited D’Aubuisson’s grave every year. After decades of hostile treatment, in 2005, Salvador- an President Tony Saca, who ¾ ¾ Carlos Colorado Father Thomas Law Kwok Fai celebrates Mass following the coro- navirus outbreak in Hong Kong. PHOTO: CNS/TYRONE SIU, REUTERS had been an altar server for Archbishop Romero, called on Pope Benedict to hasten the Salvadoran’s canonisa- tion. His successor, President Mauricio Funes, made the archbishop a standard-bearer for the first leftist postwar gov- ernment. St Romero’s death occurred in a Cold War context, but one of the adversaries in that his- toric rivalry - the Soviet Union - has disappeared from the scene. Even US leaders have come around, a process that culminated with US Presi- dent Barack Obama visiting St Romero’s tomb in 2011, a move that would have seemed unthinkable when the arch- bishop was killed. At the 40th anniversary of the saint’s death, El Salvador itself is barely recognisable. A new party, formed in the postwar climate and led by a millennial president, is now in office. There also was a genera- tional shift toward St Romero within the Catholic Church, which cleared his path to sainthood. Colombian Cardi- nal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, an ardent opponent of the arch- bishop’s canonisation, died in 2008. Another staunch oppo- nent, Cardinal Dario Castril- lon Hoyos - also Colombian - died in 2018, just months before the archbishop’s can- onisation. Even though Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI initi- ated and advanced St. Rome- ro’s canonisation, the election of a Latin American pope signalled a paradigm shift in the process. Pope Francis, who saw the sainthood cause across the finish line, was keenly familiar with St Rome- ro and seemed very sympa- thetic to his cause. The Salvadoran bishops’ conference has also been re- shaped. During St Romero’s time, all but one of his fellow bishops opposed him. When St John Paul first visited in 1983, one bishop infamously told the pope that Archbishop Romero was responsible for the civil war dead because he had fanned the flames of class conflict. By the time of his beatification, a long parade of bishops from the region donned vestments reflecting the archbishop’s episcopal seal and replicas of his mitre for the occasion. St Romero has not, howev- er, pulled off a clean sweep. Even though four martyrs from his time and in his mold are due to be beatified, there are limits to the makeover surrounding the saint’s lega- cy. In the days following his canonisation, there were some calls for St Romero to be declared a “doctor of the church,” a title accorded to certain saints based on the impact of their teaching. Cur- rent San Salvador Archbishop Jose Luis Escobar Alas pitched the idea at an audience with Pope Francis the day after the saint’s canonisation. The Vat- ican has discreetly responded that the time is not yet ripe for such a recognition, which re- quires a finding that a saint’s influence is broadly accepted throughout the church. Forty years after his assas- sination, Archbishop Romero has clearly gone from persona non grata to a vaunted mod- el of holiness for the faithful. That would seem to constitute a generational shift of bibli- cal proportions. St Romero has not, however, seeped so deeply into the church’s bloodstream that his teach- ings are known and accepted by everyone. That miracle is pending. - CNS ¾ ¾ Mark Zimmermann experienced the epidemic, the Holy See and the Italian church group helped by send- ing medical masks. We have now effectively contained the virus, but Italy is now suffer- ing. It is our turn to help them,” Father Chen Ruixue of Xi’an told ucanews.com . The coronavirus, he said, “is the public enemy of humanity. Only when all people work to- gether to fight the disease can we overcome the pandemic.” The virus was first reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December, slowly spreading across the globe. In China, the “people’s economic life is returning to normal” as the infections have come down, Father Chen said. As of 19 March, China had reported 81,139 COVID-19 cases with 3,253 deaths. How- ever, the number of newly di- agnosed cases on 18 March was only 34, all of which were overseas cases. The death toll also came down on that day, with only eight fatalities. After China, Italy has be- come the worst-affected country, with infections in the past few weeks, killing nearly 3,000 people. Father Chen saidhewas told the masks the Vatican receives in a donation would be distrib- uted to “the needy people on the streets, which is admirable and an urgency.” - CNS Even though Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI initiated and advanced St. Romero’s canonization, the election of a Latin American pope signaled a para- digm shift in the process.” St Oscar Romero in 1979 in the town of Arcatao, El Salvador. PHOTO: CNS PHOTO/OCTAVIO DURAN Now Mr McCarrick