c. 2006 Religion News Service

Abuse Lawyers, SNAP Director Banned from Mexico

(RNS) After suing a powerful Mexican cardinal, three American men known for challenging the Roman Catholic hierarchy over sexual abuse by priests have been banned from traveling to Mexico for five years.

Mexico’s National Immigration Institute announced the ban Oct. 12 on two American lawyers, Jeffrey Anderson and Michael Finnegan, as well as David Clohessy, the national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

The three men were briefly detained in Mexico City on Sept. 20 after announcing a lawsuit against Cardinal Norberto Rivera of Mexico City and Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony for allegedly protecting an abusive priest, Clohessy said.

The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles, but the men traveled to Mexico City “to alert the people of faith and the public and the police that there are crimes of sexual molestation down there and Cardinal Rivera is in the middle of of it,” Anderson said.

But the American men conducted “different activities than those authorized upon their entry to Mexican soil” and neglected “to attend a call from authorities to verify their immigration status,” according to a statement from Mexico’s Immigration Institute.

The Americans entered Mexico with a travel visa and were not authorized to “conduct a professional or lucrative activity in the country,” according to the institute.

Anderson said he will challenge the ban through the Mexican and U.S. state departments.

“I don’t intend to be silenced, it is too important to protect the children in Mexico in peril,” said Anderson. The St. Paul, Minn., attorney is well-known for representing victims of clergy sexual abuse.

Clohessy said, “For me this is a temporary inconvenience. The real injustice here is being done to innocent Mexican children and wounded Mexican victims who need and deserve protection and healing.”

_ Daniel Burke

Pope Names Four Saints, Including Founder of Indiana College

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI has conferred sainthood on four people, including Mother Theodore Guerin, a 19th century French nun who founded a religious community in America.

In the second batch of canonizations of his young papacy, Benedict on Sunday (Oct. 15) also bestowed Roman Catholicism’s highest honor on two Italian educators and a Mexican bishop who struggled against Mexico’s anti-clerical rulers in the 1920s.

Mother Guerin, a member of the Sisters of Providence, was born in 1798 in France and moved to the United States in 1840, taking up service in territory that would later become the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.

A year after her arrival she established the Academy of Saint Mary of the Woods at Terre Haute, a school for women that later became America’s first Catholic women’s liberal arts college. Guerin died in 1856.

“Mother Theodore overcame many challenges and persevered in the work that the Lord has called her to do,” Benedict told thousands of faithful who had gathered within the oval contours of St. Peter’s Square.

A campaign for Guerin’s sainthood was initiated in 1909, paving the way for Guerin’s beatification by the late Pope John Paul II in 1998 _ the last step before sainthood.

Once beatification is performed, one miracle must be attributed to the candidate before the pope can declare the individual a saint. That occurred after an employee of the Sisters of Providence had his eyesight restored after praying for Guerin’s intercession. Pope Benedict XVI approved the miracle last April.

Benedict also canonized Bishop Rafael Guizar Valencia, who cared for the wounded during the Mexican Revolution. Valencia, who died in 1938, was a relative of the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the conservative priestly order the Legionaries of Christ. The Vatican silenced Degollado in May after allegations emerged that he abused young seminarians.

The other new saints included the Rev. Filippo Smaldone, who set up schools for the deaf in southern Italy, and Sister Rosa Venerini, an Italian nun and fierce advocate for the establishment of schools for girls in Italy. She died in 1728. Smaldone died in 1923.

_ Stacy Meichtry

Conservatives Decry Gay Marriage and Secularism at Rally

BOSTON (RNS) Massachusetts governor and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney warned of a growing “religion of secularism” Sunday (Oct. 15) at a Boston rally where speakers denounced same-sex marriage and described a climate of religious freedoms under siege.

Romney made his remarks before about 500 people at Tremont Temple Baptist Church during “Liberty Sunday,” an event organized by the Washington-based Family Research Council. Organizers hoped as many as 79 million people across the country would watch the event via simulcast.

“Massachusetts is the front line on marriage,” Romney said, referring to a 2003 ruling by the state’s highest court that led to legalization of civil marriage for same-sex couples. “But unless we adopt a federal amendment to protect marriage, what is happening here will unquestionably enter every other state. The spreading religion of secularism and its substitute values cannot be allowed to weaken the foundation of family or the faith of our fathers.”

Romney also warned of mounting intolerance in American culture.

“There are some people who would like to establish a single religion for America _ the religion of secularism,” Romney said. “They not only reject traditional religious values, but also the values of the founders. … Their allies are activist judges.”

Massachusetts has become a regular stop for conservative Christian groups, including Focus on the Family, during September and October in recent years. This year’s rally in the run-up to the mid-term elections raised familiar themes of assailed family values. Speakers noted, for instance, that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston stopped providing adoption services earlier this year because state regulations require agencies to consider placing children with gay and lesbian parents.

“We’re on that course for a collision between religious freedom and the homosexual agenda,” FRC President Tony Perkins said at Sunday’s rally.

Supporters of same-sex marriage protested outside the predominantly African-American church, located in the shadow of the State House. With placards in hand, many chanted slogans and sang such songs as “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “We Shall Overcome.” MassEquality.org, a Massachusetts coalition of same-sex marriage supporters, issued a written statement.

“Mitt Romney is teaming up with the most right-wing voices in the country to demonize and belittle loving couples and families who live in the state he purports to govern,” the statement read. “It’s heartless, divisive politics at its worst.”

_ G. Jeffrey MacDonald

Woman Sues Over Different Standards for Cross and Hijab

LONDON (RNS) A Christian employee of British Airways says she is suing the airline for telling her she cannot wear her crucifix while still allowing Muslim and Sikh employees to don their religious scarves and turbans.

Nadia Ewedia, a check-in worker at London’s Heathrow Airport, claims she was told in a letter from the company that showing her cross breached its uniform rules, despite the fact that workers of other faiths were free to continue wearing their religions’ own jewelry, including iron bangles.

“British Airways permits Muslims to wear a headscarf, Sikhs to wear a turban and other faiths religious apparel,” said Ewedia, a seven-year employee of the airline. “Only Christians are forbidden to express their faith.”

British Airways said religious items such as Muslims’ hijabs (headscarves) and Sikhs’ turbans and traditional iron bangles could be worn by its workers “as it is not practical for staff to conceal them beneath their uniforms.”

Ewedia, a Coptic Christian with an Egyptian father and an English mother, said she refused to remove the crucifix or hide it beneath a British Airways scarf. She was sent home and told in a letter that she “failed to comply with a reasonable request.”

“British Airways uniform standards stipulate that adornments of any kind are not to be worn with the uniform,” the letter said. The company put her on unpaid leave pending a disciplinary hearing.

Ewedia said the small cross she wears on a chain around her neck is the symbol of her deeply held Christian beliefs. “I belong to Jesus _ one body, one spirit, one baptism,” she said.

“I have been badly treated,” Ewedia said. “I have been treated harshly by British Airways management.”

The airline’s chief executive, Willie Walsh, upheld the action against Ewedia.

_ Al Webb

Quote of the Day: Marie Roberts, widow of gunman Charles Roberts

(RNS) “Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need. Gifts you’ve given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you.”

_ Marie Roberts, widow of Charles Roberts, who killed five girls in an Amish schoolhouse Oct. 2, in an open letter to Pennsylvania’s Amish community.

KRE/RB END RNS