England: the Daughters of Charity 150 years afterOn the 150th anniversary of the Mass celebrated by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman with the Daughters of Charity in the attic of their first house in London on 19 July 1859, Archbishop Metropolitan of Westminster, the Most Rev. Vincent Gerard Nichols, Primate of the Church of England and Wales, concelebrated a Mass with a hundred or so members of the family of St. Vincent de Paul in St. Vincent’s, Carlisle Place, Westminster. In his homily Father Fergus Kelly recalled the difficulties encountered by the Daughters of Charity on their arrival in London in 1859. “At that time – he explained – there was a very strong anti-Catholic, anti-Irish and anti-French prejudice. Only nine years previously there was a great rumpus when the Catholic hierarchy of England and Wales was re-established”. Members of Parliament were very worried by the growing freedom granted to Catholics. So “parliament saw fit in 1851 to pass the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill which forbade any Catholic Bishop to take a title for a diocese already held by the Church of England”. Commenting on the widespread fear at the time that Catholics wanted to assume control of the historic abbey of Westminster, Father Kelly pointed out that on that occasion Cardinal Wiseman gave his assurance that he had no interest in “this splendid monument”. What he really desired, on the other hand, as the cardinal explained, was the “labyrinth of lanes and courts, and alleys and slums, nests of ignorance, vice, depravity and crime” which nestled close to Westminster Abbey: it was inhabited by a “huge and almost countless population, in great measure nominally at least Catholic, haunts of filth, which no sewage committee can reach, dark corners which no lighting board can brighten”. Beginning their apostolate from a small house, the Daughters of Charity promoted over 50 initiatives in the British capital, including schools, hospitals, hostels and orphanages. Their commitment continues in London and throughout the UK to this day. Their main centre, St. Vincent’s in Carlisle Place, continues to offer each year food, clothing, medical treatment, shelter, support and advice to several thousand homeless people and indeed is currently the most important project for the homeless in the whole country. “The first Mother Superior, Sister Marie Chatelaine – concluded Archbishop Nichols – on her arrival suffered hostile shouts and boys throwing stones. When she died, 46 years later, huge crowds turned out to pay homage to her as her coffin passed in an open hearse through the streets to the church”. Spain: abortion, as if man did not exist?”The bill that will still further liberalize abortion forms part of the culture of death and thus represents the greatest opposition to Christian anthropology”, said the Archbishop of Valencia Carlos Osoro, intervening at the summer school at the “Rey Juan Carlos” University at Aranjuez. “The Church – explained the Archbishop – does not mount a political campaign against anyone but proposes the culture of life”. This form of life, proposed by the Church, is no other than the continuation of the message that Jesus left us: “the defence of life, from conception to death”. “Jesus Christ – declared the Archbishop – came into this world to give us the gift of life. Therefore presenting the Christian conception of life is of incredible modernity”. According to Mgr. Osoro, “thinking and living as if God did not exist will sooner or later lead us to live as if man did not exist”. Christian anthropology, continued the archbishop, is discussed in the Pope’s encyclicals, “Deus caritas est” and “Caritas in Veritate”: it is an “anthropology of love”. Assuming love as a foundation is a “pedagogy that confounds all human reasoning and all the logics of this world”, he insisted.Italy: “digital witnesses in 2010″”Digital witnesses for the new media” will be the theme of the second “Media Parabolas” conference on communications that the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI) is planning to hold in Rome from 22 to 24 April 2010, eight years after the first meeting in 2002, a real landmark in the Italian Church’s commitment to the new media world. The meeting will provide a talking shop for professionals of the “innumerable communication resources spread throughout the territory including the enviable Catholic network of our country: Avvenire, Tv-Sat2000, Radio-inBlù, Agenzia-Sir…)”, says Mgr. Domenico Pompili, director of the Social Communications Office of the CEI, according to whom the meeting “will be an opportunity for dialogue and, in a wider framework, for reinforcing our network”. “The FISC (Italian Federation of Catholic Weeklies), an umbrella organization representing 185 diocesan weeklies, approximately a million copies each week, will also commit itself to the success of the meeting and to its active participation as a protagonist”, comments its President, don Giorgio Zucchelli. The overwhelming majority of diocesan magazines now have their own websites; some “are exclusively on-line and many websites collaborate with the radio station of their own diocese. Many Catholic sites also take the daily news flashes of SIR, the press agency that was born within the FISC and is promoted by the CEI.
