c. 2004 Religion News Service
Crystal Cathedral Conductor Kills Himself At Calif. Megachurch
(RNS) The Rev. Robert Schuller has expressed how “deeply saddened” he is by the Friday (Dec. 17) suicide of the orchestra’s conductor at the Crystal Cathedral megachurch.
Johnnie Carl, 57, killed himself in a bathroom at the Garden Grove, Calif., facility after a nine-hour standoff with police, The Associated Press reported. The incident, which began with Carl firing several shots in his office, started on Thursday afternoon and ended with Carl’s death early Friday morning. No one else was injured.
“Johnnie was a beloved member of our church family and close personal friend,” Schuller, 78, senior pastor of the Crystal Cathedral, said in a statement. “He was a creative genius whose beautiful arrangements and superb conducting set new levels of excellence for sacred music.”
Carl, who had struggled with depression, had been on the staff of the cathedral for almost 30 years and was known worldwide as a composer and conductor. He arranged more than 3,500 musical pieces, according to church officials.
The Crystal Cathedral canceled Thursday performances of its “Glory of Christmas” production _ known for its combination of carols, flying angels and live animals _ but announced Friday that the performances would resume that evening.
Schuller was at home when the incident began and came to the command post set up by police. Police were unable to play a message he taped there for Carl.
The ministry includes a 10,000-member congregation and the “Hour of Power” weekly television program, which will celebrate its 35th anniversary in 2005.
Carl arranged music for the program and the church and served as musical director of its Christmas and Easter productions.
His music has been performed by artists such as Celine Dion and John Tesh, the London Symphony and numerous others.
Michael Nason, Schuller’s spokesman, said Carl had talked to him in the past about despondent feelings _ “just a sense of personal pressures, job, and things around him, dealing with people around him.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Pope Establishes Good Samaritan Foundation to Help AIDS Victims
VATICAN CITY (RNS) With a personal donation of $132,000 in seed money, Pope John Paul II has established the Good Samaritan Foundation to help the world’s neediest AIDS victims, the Vatican said Friday (Dec. 17).
Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastorate of Health and head of the new foundation, told a Vatican news conference that the foundation will steer clear of controversy over condoms.
The Catholic Church rejects all forms of artificial birth control and has questioned the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. It contends that only chastity and fidelity provide reliable protection against AIDS.
But Barragan said the debate over condoms was irrelevant because the foundation’s focus will be on treatment of those already suffering from the disease rather than on prevention.
To argue over condoms, he said, “seems like when, during the capture of Constantinople, there was discussion of how many devils could be on the point of a needle.”
“I think that it is one thing to discuss the moral problem of the means and to have the positions that we Catholics have, and another thing to assist the sick. While prophylactics are being discussed, yes or no, every day thousands of people are dying of AIDS,” he said. “That (discussion) doesn’t concern me. What concerns me is that people are dying and we must help them.”
Barragan said that in addition to the initial contribution from the pope, the foundation has already received money from Italy and Mexico.
“This,” said Jose Luis Redrado Marchite, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Pastorate of Health, “is a drop that we hope will become an ocean.”
The Catholic Church currently operates 26.7 percent of the centers assisting HIV/AIDS victims worldwide. It ranks third in assistance behind governments and UN organizations.
Barragan said the foundation will work both with Catholic and non-Catholic aid centers. He said it will avoid duplicating other operations and instead pinpoint its funds to help “the most abandoned.”
_ Peggy Polk
Wal-Mart Goes Toe-to-Toe With Target Over Salvation Army Kettles
(RNS) Discount retailer Wal-Mart, which has already battled Target Stores for market share and Christmas shoppers, has promised $1 million to the Salvation Army after Target said Salvation Army collection kettles were no longer welcome at its stores.
The Wal-Mart and SAM’S CLUB Foundation said it will match donations to the kettles up to $1 million through Christmas Eve. Last year, Wal-Mart stores raised raised $12 million of the $93 million collected in kettles by the Salvation Army.
Commissioner Todd Bassett, national commander of the Salvation Army, said the pledge came “at a time when it was needed the most.”
“The Salvation Army red kettles and the bell ringers are truly a holiday tradition worth keeping,” Wal-Mart’s Betsy Reithemeyer said.
Target officials, in rejecting the kettles that raised $8.9 million last year, said the collections violated a company policy against solicitation of any kind on store premises.
Since the Target announcement, other stores _ including BJ’s Wholesale Club, Books-A-Million, Michaels Stores, Circuit City and AutoZone _ have introduced or expanded the kettle collections.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Vitillo to Leave Bishops’ Conference for Vatican Post in Geneva
WASHINGTON (RNS) The Rev. Bob Vitillo, a New Jersey priest who has overseen anti-poverty efforts for the country’s Roman Catholic bishops, has resigned his position to take a Vatican HIV/AIDS post in Geneva.
Vitillo, 58, has served as executive director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development since 1997. Since it was founded in 1970, CCHD has distributed $270 million in grants to local programs that help poor people lift themselves out of poverty.
In February, Vitillo will become Special Advisor on HIV/AIDS to Caritas Internationalis, the umbrella group that coordinates Catholic social service agencies in some 200 countries.
Vitillo is an expert on the HIV/AIDS pandemic and has traveled around the world during his tenure at CCHD speaking on the issue. In his new post,Vitillo will serve as Caritas’ liaison to the United Nations’ agencies in Geneva.
Before he joined CCHD in 1997, Vitillo was Caritas’ delegate to the United Nations and the World Bank, and from 1986-1989 was Caritas’ chief of service for Europe and North America.
“Our consolation in losing his services is only in knowing that his many talents will be at the service of the wider church,” said Monsignor William Fay, general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Mayors’ Conference Survey: Hunger, Homelessness on Increase
(RNS) Reports of hunger and homelessness continue to increase in the nation’s cities, an annual survey reports.
Requests for emergency food assistance increased by an average of 14 percent over the past year, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors-Sodexho USA Hunger and Homelessness Survey released Tuesday (Dec. 14).
Shelter assistance requests increased by an average of 6 percent over the same time period, the survey found.
“These are not simply statistics,” said Nashville, Tenn., Mayor Bill Purcell, co-chairman of the conference’s Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness, in a statement.
“These are real people, many are families with children, who are hungry and homeless in our cities.”
The survey results are based on reports from 27 cities. Ninety-six percent of those cities reported increases in need for emergency food and 70 percent showed increases in requests for emergency shelter.
Not all requests could be fulfilled, the survey showed. On average, 20 percent of the emergency food assistance requests went unmet in the last year. An average of 23 percent of requests for emergency shelter by homeless people went unmet in the same time period.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, conducted the survey with the assistance of Sodexho USA, a Gaithersburg, Md.-based food and facilities management services company.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Quote of the Day: actress Meryl Streep
(RNS) “I took it as a natural disaster of the first order, an act of God of the magnitude 8.1 on the Richter scale, when I heard Bill Moyers was retiring from `Now’ on PBS after this year. Many people like me have counted on Bill for what often seemed his voice crying in the wilderness _ on behalf of the wilderness _ for decades.”
_ Actress Meryl Streep, introducing journalist Bill Moyers when he accepted the 2004 Global Environment Citizen Award from Harvard Medical School. She was quoted in the Friday (Dec. 17) New York Times.
MO/DH RNS END
