Austria: Caritas for the unemployed More integration projects for long term unemployed: this was the request of Wien’s Caritas as put forward past April 16 by its chairman Micheal Landau. In his address for the celebrations of the 15th anniversary of the Caritas restaurant “Inigo”, Landau voiced his hope for a more “committed and differentiated job market policy”. “An extended job market with jobs that are more oriented towards resources, socially recognized and adequately paid even for those who cannot enter for a long term in the traditional job market definitively. Landau underlined the case of the “Inigo” restaurant: a Caritas project to promote job market return of long-term unemployed. The restaurant provided vocational training to over 700 long-term unemployed who also helped to find a job. “About a third of those who took part in the project subsequently found a new job, another third acquired the necessary skills to be returners and only the remaining third need further assistance”, he declared. “Inigo” is one of the seven projects for long-term unemployed organized by the Caritas of the archdiocese offering 265 jobs. “Since 1990 we have had the possibility of involving 3000 people in one of our projects. This commitment will be important also in the future”, Landau pointed out recalling the alarming number (26.726) of long-term unemployed registered in Wien in March. Ireland: “Catholics, don’t avoid mixed schools!” It’s important that when Catholic parents choose a school for their children they won’t prefer those where the majority of students are Irish and white. These words were spoken by the archbishop of Dublin Msgr. Diarmuid Martin in his address on “The role of education in the new Ireland” held the past days that St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, a very old university where Irish priests study. According to Msgr. Martin it’s not a Catholic behaviour to avoid mixed schools. “I hear about parents, including those who define themselves ‘good Catholics’, who decide to avoid diversity”, said the archbishop of Dublin, “while they recognize parents’ right to choose a school they consider the best, the exercise of this right must include concern for the common good”. Msgr. Martin added that the government policy might worsen this behaviour since it does not oblige all schools to share the problem caused by the arrival of thousands of families of immigrants. According to the archbishop of Dublin Catholic schools positively welcomed this challenge. “I wouldn’t be glad to discover that Catholic schools have decided to be less open to diversity than others and if necessary, I’m ready to intervene to ensure that this does not happen”, said Msgr. Martin, who explained that he enacted special policies for school registration so they may reflect the ethnic or religious composition of the areas where they are located. “The amount of racist mail I received after this decision didn’t encourage me”, the archbishop said. Martin defended Catholic schools ssaying he doesn’t believe in a system where there are only public schools. Spain: a bishop against persecution A recently published book records how Msgr. Marcelino Olaechea y Loizaga, first bishop of Pamplona and then of Valencia, “defended thousands of people who had been sentenced to death, orphans and widows, during the religious persecutions of 1936”. The testimony on the bishop who was a Salesian religious died in 1972, as published by the agency Avan, is by historian Vicente Cárcel Ortí, who wrote the book “Caídos, víctimas y mártires” (The fallen, the victims and the martyrs) published by Espasa-Calpe. Msgr. Olaechea, in the period when he was the bishop of Pamplona (1935-1946), wrote letters to Francisco Franco to “save the life of thousands who had been sentenced to death and obtained the commutation of many death sentences, the reduction of sentences and the liberation of detainees in the Fortress of San Cristóbal in Pamplona, Navarra”, claimed Cárcel Ortí in his book, based on research carried out on documents filed in the Vatican’s secret archives. As written in the book, the bishop devoted himself also to the cure of the “war orphans”, as the prelate called the sons of the victims, he worked to find economic resources for a few people and on different occasions intervened before the local authorities to obtain the repealing of sentences”. “He equally defended political prisoners at the end of the Civil War when hundreds of prisoners sent him letters of appreciation”, ensured the historian, who added that Msgr. Olaechea “was one of the prelates who most criticized the political regime”. When the war ended, there weren’t only “executions, repression and purges. There were also pardons, process revisions, condemnation reductions, release from imprisonement and other gestures of pity thanks to the direct intervention of the Church”.
