c. 2006 Religion News Service
John Paul II’s Road to Sainthood Reaches Marker With `Miracle’ Healing
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The leading advocate for John Paul II’s sainthood has identified the mysterious recovery of a French nun from Parkinson’s disease as the potential miracle that could advance the late pope’s candidacy.
In an interview with Italian state radio on Sunday (Jan. 29), Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the “postulator” or lead advocate of John Paul’s cause, said he has focused his investigation on the case of a French nun who “had been cured of a sickness, a sickness that became very visible in the final phase of John Paul’s life.”
In his final years, John Paul struggled publicly with a debilitating case of Parkinson’s that caused him to lose muscular control and slur his speech.
Oder declined to name the nun, but identified her as a health care worker in a maternity ward at a French hospital.
Oder described the nun as someone “who had dedicated her life to the care of newborns” and prayed to John Paul to intercede “in a situation that had rendered her unable to perform” her job.
“She was healed from the illness,” he said.
John Paul has been on the fast track to sainthood ever since May when Pope Benedict XVI lifted the five-year waiting period that traditionally must pass before the Vatican reviews a candidate.
John Paul needs one miracle to reach beatification, the last step before sainthood, and a second miracle to reach canonization _ the process by which the Vatican “declares” someone a saint. Inexplicable medical healings are the most common form of modern miracles accepted by the Vatican.
Oder, who has been officially guiding the sainthood campaign since it formally began in late June, indicated that the French nun’s case was chosen from a wide field of testimony that the Vatican has received by e-mail.
The Diocese of Rome has launched a Web site where faithful can deposit testimony and prayer for John Paul’s sainthood at http://www.vicariatusurbis.org/Beatificazione.
_ Stacy Meichtry
German Lawyer Denied Passport to Iran Conference Questioning Holocaust
(RNS) German officials have suspended a lawyer’s passport to prevent him from traveling to Iran to attend a proposed conference questioning whether the Holocaust ever happened.
Horst Mahler is a former attorney for the National Democratic Party of Germany, a fringe party that political analysts accuse of having neo-Nazi tendencies. He surrendered his passport Saturday (Jan. 28), according to Radio Berlin-Brandenburg.
The decision was made by the German state of Brandenburg. Interior Minister Eike Lancelle told the Berliner Zeitung that Mahler was “a fanatic anti-Semite.”
German passport laws allow passports to be revoked if an individual’s travel could damage national security or hurt the nation’s vital interests. In this case, Brandenburg authorities say they hope to keep Mahler from damaging Germany’s reputation abroad.
No date has been set for the conference in Tehran, but German authorities say it would strengthen an international network of Holocaust revisionists and that, given recent remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacking Israel, Mahler’s presence would have been especially explosive.
A Berlin court has already sentenced Mahler to nine months incarceration for making inciting statements. The sentence, rendered in a verdict last year, has yet to start. An earlier court decision stripped Mahler of his license to practice law, also for making inciting statements. Mahler was also blocked in July from traveling to Poland to lecture about the “Lies of Auschwitz.”
The latest decision appeared to have general public support in Germany.
_ Niels Sorrells
Liberal Catholic Bishop Who Said He Was Abused Announces Retirement
(RNS) Auxiliary bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Catholic diocese of Detroit has announced his resignation.
Gumbleton’s resignation conforms to a church law requiring bishops to request permission to resign at the age of 75. Upon turning 75 last year, he petitioned to remain in office. In a statement to his parishioners at St. Leo’s Church made on Thursday (Jan. 26), Gumbleton said that when his request was refused, he “decided to end the discussion.”
Gumbleton was the youngest American priest to become a bishop when he was appointed by Pope Paul VI in 1968. He is the longest-serving Catholic bishop in the United States and is known for his pacifist causes and ministry to gays and lesbians.
On Jan. 10, Gumbleton said a priest “inappropriately touched” him when he was a teenager 60 years ago. That admission made the bishop the highest-ranking clergyman to publicly state he had been sexually abused by a priest.
Gumbleton is a vocal supporter of legislation under consideration by the Ohio House of Representatives to open a yearlong window in the statute of limitations on sexual abuse by clergy. The bill was passed unanimously by the Senate.
Detroit Archdiocese spokesman Ned McGrath said Gumbleton gave up most of the administrative aspects of his position in 1993. McGrath said Gumbleton will meet with Detroit Cardinal Adam Maida to discuss his future duties.
Under Gumbleton’s leadership, St. Leo’s attracted many parishioners drawn to his pacifist perspective. Gumbleton’s homilies are available from a Web site called the Peace Pulpit.
Gumbleton’s resignation is unlikely to hinder his activism. According to the Rev. Thomas Reese, a scholar of Catholicism in the United States, Gumbleton’s resignation “will make him even freer than he was before to travel, to speak and to write.”
In his statement, Gumbleton said: “I will continue to exercise my ordained ministry as bishop as long as I am physically capable of doing so. This means that I will continue to teach, preach, celebrate sacraments and carry on my work for justice and peace wherever I am called to do so.”
_ Anne Pessala
In Church, Jesse Jackson Launches Drive to Return People to New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS (RNS) The Rev. Jesse Jackson says a coalition of black city and state leaders will mount a public initiative for housing and jobs aimed at bringing home every displaced New Orleanian who wants to return.
Jackson kicked off the drive Sunday (Jan. 29) from the pulpit of New Hope Baptist Church in New Orleans’ Central City neighborhood. He called on church members suffering because of Hurricane Katrina to demand rapid access to jobs and housing so they can rebuild their shattered communities.
“You have the right to return,” Jackson told a standing-room-only crowd of 300 or so, including about 70 church members who were bused in from Houston.
He urged the congregation to join a mass public march across the Crescent City Connection on April 1. For many, the bridge has become a symbol of injustice after people trying to escape the growing chaos at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on Aug. 31 by crossing to Gretna on the far bank of the Mississippi River were turned back by police. Gretna officials said that city had no facilities to accept any more fleeing families.
Jackson also announced that his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition has set up a local office and named state Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, its statewide coordinator.
Jackson’s latest effort to bring back displaced New Orleans residents will be his second since the Aug. 29 hurricane. In October, his coalition organized a caravan of five buses that were supposed to be filled with 200 displaced New Orleanians, but instead were filled with adventure seekers and homeless people from cities across the Midwest and South.
Only 14 passengers in the group were New Orleans residents.
During Sunday’s service, Jackson preached off the opening verses of Psalm 137, which expresses exiled Israelites’ longing for Jerusalem.
Within that theme he was broadly critical of the Bush administration, which he said not only botched the hurricane relief effort, but let the nation’s infrastructure fall into disrepair while pursuing war in Iraq.
Jackson urged congregants to maintain hope, but not to settle for permanent displacement, unfair insurance compensation and lack of jobs. He urged them “not to take $50,000 and let them close down the Lower 9th.”
_ Bruce Nolan
Coach’s Wife and Daughter Choose Medical Relief to Africa Over Super Bowl
(RNS) The wife and daughter of Seattle Seahawks Head Coach Mike Holmgren have decided to skip Super Bowl XL in Detroit for something they consider more important _ a faith-based humanitarian trip to Africa.
Kathy Holmgren and daughter Calla are scheduled to leave Thursday (Feb. 2) on a 17-day medical training mission with Northwest Medical Teams _ a relief group based in Portland, Ore. _ to the northwest region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A nurse and obstetrician, respectively, the two will join six other physicians with experience as missionaries.
During the three days it takes to reach the region, the team will travel over marginal roads that narrow to near non-existence, wade through streams and cross rough-hewn and often improvised bridges.
While much of the world tunes into the Super Bowl, the team will begin training the staff of a hospital operated by the Evangelical Covenant Church, the denomination to which the Holmgrens belong.
The hospital is the only facility for 300,000 people in the region, and the staff often must use rudimentary equipment to treat 2,500 patients a month. More than 3.9 million Congolese have died since 1998, most from preventable disease, according to the British medical journal The Lancet.
Kathy Holmgren spent 10 months in the region during 1970 but gave up her dream of being a Covenant medical missionary to marry. Last October, Mike Holmgren’s birthday present to his wife was the trip back to the country she loves.
The family did not consider the two women might miss the Super Bowl.
“I don’t think we paid much attention to the date,” Kathy said. “We are so superstitious that we don’t think or plan for it ahead of time.
“As the possibility of our being in the game became a reality, we decided to continue with our plans. The actual game makes me so nervous, so I don’t watch anyway, and we feel like this trip is important.”
Still, Kathy Holmgren will be waiting for a phone call on Sunday. The group will carry a satellite phone so they can learn who wins the game.
Kathy Holmgren and all four of her daughters graduated from North Park University in Chicago, which is operated by the denomination. The family largely funded the school’s $4 million Holmgren Athletic Complex, where teams play football, soccer, baseball and softball.
_ Stan Friedman
Quote of the Day: former U.S. Ambassador Robert A. Seiple
(RNS) “For faith to be authentic, it must be freely embraced. … In a post-9/11 world where individuals die for their faith while others kill in the name of their religion, America’s founding principle of religious liberty takes on even greater prominence.”
_ Robert A. Seiple, the nation’s first ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, who was recently named president of the Council for America’s First Freedom in Richmond, Va.
MO/RB END RNS
