c. 2006 Religion News Service
Loyola Cuts Programs After Katrina Devastated Campus, Budget
NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Loyola University’s board of trustees has approved a major restructuring plan in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, cutting a host of degree programs and 17 faculty positions as it prepares for lower enrollment next fall.
The trustees unanimously adopted the plan, “Pathways Toward Our Second Century,” after a private two-hour meeting Friday (May 19) at the Catholic university’s campus.
Although the trustees made some changes in the original plan’s consolidation of schools, the list of proposed cuts in programs and faculty slots was approved as first presented in April.
Loyola’s leaders predict a drop in enrollment due to the fear that the Katrina disaster has tainted New Orleans as a dangerous place to send sons and daughters.
“It’s about recruiting new students,” said the Rev. Kevin Wildes, Loyola’s president. “These days it’s not just the student you’re recruiting, you’re recruiting their family as well. It’s the mother in Boston who when her child says, `I want to go to school in New Orleans,’ says, `Absolutely not.”’
The cuts, shifts and changes aren’t only about the bottom line, Wildes said.
“It is also about strengthening the institution so we can continue to attract students,” Wildes said. “It strengthens us by saying we’re committed to offering a first-rate undergraduate liberal-arts education. This is a way for us to focus what we do.”
Loyola has done away with the entire education department, broadcast journalism, computer science and a master’s program in communications, and suspended a dozen programs for two years.
Students already majoring in the dropped programs may finish their degrees, Wildes said, and courses in those subjects will likely still be offered.
The Jesuit university will consist of five newly established colleges and several schools within those colleges. City College, which serves adults and part-time students, is scrapped.
The School of Law is now the College of Law, while many name changes actually reflect different configurations of disciplines. The College of Social Science now will house the departments of counseling, criminal justice, human and organizational development, sociology and political science, along with the schools of nursing and mass communications.
Loyola, which has 4,000 students and a $125 million operating budget, expects a $10 million deficit for the fiscal year ending July 31. The campus suffered more than $5 million in storm damage.
The dozen programs now suspended may reappear someday at Loyola.
After two years, the school will take a second look at the viability of majors and minors in physics, German, Japanese, Russian, music theory, music composition, piano pedagogy, and human and organizational development. Among graduate programs, three music programs were suspended along with religious studies.
_ Gwen Filosa
Salvation Army Cited in N.J. Immigration Fraud Case
NEWARK, N.J. (RNS) A half-dozen illegal immigrants are suing the Salvation Army, saying two trusted ministers at two New Jersey churches bilked them out of thousands of dollars in a scheme to get them green cards.
The suit, filed Friday (May 19) in state Superior Court, charges that Enoc Tilo Sotelo, a pastor, and Jorge Sancho, an officer, took $4,000 cash from each member, promising they had been “chosen by God” to be sponsored by the Christian social services organization for legal permanent residency in the United States.
An accomplice of the defendants then helped them file applications under a law that grants green cards to foreigners with extraordinary abilities, such as professional athletes and scientists, with full knowledge the five women and one man were not eligible, the suit charges.
The six immigrants never received green cards.
The plaintiffs, all from Latin America, are seeking class action status for the lawsuit, alleging they represent possibly hundreds more people who were defrauded.
Tricia Pellegrini, a spokeswoman for the Salvation Army’s New Jersey division, said officials could not comment on the suit because they had not seen it.
“Unless something was served, we would have no idea how to respond,” she said.
Pellegrini confirmed that Sotelo, an ordained pastor, was fired in April. Sancho, whom she identified as an officer in the Salvation Army, also no longer works for the organization, she said.
Sotelo and Sancho could not be reached for comment.
Both Salvation Army locations cater to Latino immigrant communities, offering Spanish-language services, English-language classes and other community programs.
The suit, filed by attorney Gilberto Garcia, charges the Salvation Army had knowledge of the alleged scheme and “failed to exercise reasonable care,” despite having received complaints about it.
Plaintiff Adriana Saldias, a 53-year-old health care worker who has lived in the United States for 11 years, said she paid Sancho out of desperation to legalize her status so she can she return to Chile and visit her sick mother.
“I had much faith, and I believed this was a very prestigious church and this pastor had the best intentions,” Saldias said in a telephone interview. “I feel defrauded because I was hoping I was going to get my permanent residency so I can go see my mother. My dream is to see my mother before she dies.”
_ Brian Donohue and Nyier Abdou
Gunman Kills Four Family Members at La. Church
BATON ROUGE, La. (RNS) Four members of an extended family attending a church service Sunday (May 21) were killed by a 25-year-old man who then abducted and murdered his wife, later telling emergency police operators she had committed suicide, police said.
A couple of hours after the church shooting, Anthony Devon Bell was apprehended by police at a nearby apartment complex, holding one of his three children, whom he had also forced from the service. The body of his wife, Erica Bell, was found in a car at the complex.
By the end of the day, Bell was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree kidnapping and one count of attempted first-degree murder, in connection with the shooting of the church’s pastor.
Claudia Brown, who founded the 50-member church The Ministry of Jesus Christ and was its pastor, was in critical condition at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge, police said. She was Erica Bell’s mother.
The shooting spree tore a huge hole in a sprawling Baton Rouge family, as every victim was related. Leonard Howard, 78, and Gloria Howard, 72, were Erica Bell’s grandparents. Doloris McGrew, 68, was her great-aunt and Darlene Mills, 47, was a cousin.
“Everybody was good people. That is what they did, they went there every Sunday,” said Charolye Green, McGrew’s daughter.
While police said they did not have a motive for the crime, relatives said the Bells had been having marital difficulties.
Anthony Bell interrupted the church service about 10 a.m., shooting the five people with a handgun, according to a police affidavit. Three of the victims died at the scene, while Mills died at a nearby hospital, said Sgt. Charles Armstrong, a spokesman for the police department.
According to police, Anthony Bell forced Erica Bell, 24, and their three children to leave the church with him in a car. Bell dropped the two older children off at a relative’s house and the couple’s 8-month-old infant remained with them, police said.
About 12:20 p.m., Bell is believed to have fatally shot his wife in the head. He was later found in the parking lot of an apartment complex after he called 911, saying that Erica Bell had committed suicide, according to the affidavit. None of the children was harmed.
Officers found the woman dead and Bell holding the baby, Baton Rouge Police Chief Jeff LeDuff said. Bell was arrested without incident.
“We have a man who just couldn’t deal with life. He determined this morning to alter the course of his life and others’,” said LeDuff, standing outside the church. “He walked into a church and started shooting people.”
Relatives said the full gospel church in a nonresidential section of Baton Rouge was largely a family institution, with roughly 50 members. The church, which shares a small warehouse-style building with a guitar shop, is marked by a sign proclaiming “A family that prays together, stays together.”
_ Laura Maggi
Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue, Joins Catholic Church
(RNS) Randall Terry, the anti-abortion activist who founded and directed Operation Rescue, left his evangelical roots to join the Catholic Church just days before Easter.
Now president of the Society for Truth and Justice and a state Senate candidate in Florida, Terry, 46, told the National Catholic Register that his conversion began when he became friends with Catholic clergy.
“They told me that the farther you go in Reformation theology, the more you end up in Catholicism and liturgy,” Terry told the newspaper, a conservative independent weekly.
Terry ran Operation Rescue, a group that frequently blocked entrances to abortion clinics, from 1987 until the mid-1990s. He told the newspaper that a string of lawsuits by abortion-rights organizations led him to file for bankruptcy in 1998. He also divorced and remarried.
In 2005, Terry thrust himself into the high-profile Terry Schiavo situation, siding with Schiavo’s parents as they conducted an unsuccessful fight to keep their brain-damaged daughter alive.
Terry said he had always been impressed by his Catholic friends’ devotion to fighting abortion.
“I would look at my evangelical friends, who would come and go from the pro-life movement. They would proclaim undying devotion for pro-life activism and then later disappear. Then I would look at my Roman Catholic friends who would never swerve. That had a tremendous magnetism for me,” Terry said.
After overcoming the “hurdles” of papal infallibility, Marian dogma and purgatory, Terry was confirmed in the Catholic faith during Holy Week at a church in Binghamton, N.Y.
Terry, a Republican who ran for Congress in New York in 1998, said he hopes his evangelical and Catholic ties will be an asset in his political career.
“My wife says that I am bilingual _ I can speak both languages,” Terry said.
_ Daniel Burke
Quote of the Day: Falun Gong Activist Wenyi Wang
(RNS) “In China, human beings, especially Falun Gong practitioners, are nothing more than a livestock to be dissected out and sold for parts.”
_ Wenyi Wang, journalist for the Falun Gong newspaper The Epoch Times, describing allegations that Falun Gong practitioners are killed and their organs are sold by Chinese officials. Wang was arrested April 20 when she vocally protested Chinese President Hu Jintao during a White House ceremony. She was later charged in federal court with harassing a foreign official.
KRE/PH END RNS
