c. 2008 Religion News Service
Jury convicts man who says God told him to kill
(RNS) A New Jersey man who claimed God dispatched him to “close the gates of hell” has been convicted of killing and dismembering his grandmother and ex-girlfriend.
In finding Rosario “Russell” Miraglia, 36, guilty of two counts of murder and weapons offenses, the jury of seven women and five men on Sept. 2 rejected a defense claim that Miraglia was on a religious mission when he killed the women on June 8, 2004.
Miraglia, who struggles with a heroin addiction, has insisted he is not insane. He testified he received a message from God to kill his grandmother, Julia Miraglia, 88, and his former girlfriend, Leigh Martinez, 31, in Julia Miraglia’s home in Ocean Township, N.J.
Throughout his nearly month-long trial, his attorney, assistant public defender Joseph Krakora, contended that Miraglia was too sick to recognize his own mental illness. He asked jurors to find Miraglia not guilty by reason of insanity.
Executive Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor Richard Incremona claimed Miraglia killed the women and fabricated the religious motive because they had basically cut him out of their lives. He noted a videotaped confession in which Miraglia said he killed his grandmother when she threatened to call police after finding Martinez’s dismembered body in an upstairs bedroom.
Miraglia sneaked into his grandmother’s house and repeatedly stabbed Martinez, the mother of his young son, before chopping off her head, hands and feet. Stopping his grandmother from leaving the house, Miraglia chopped her head off while she was still alive, authorities said.
“This was a challenging case because of a vigorous defense that was put forth regarding the defendant’s state of mind,” said Luis Valentin, the Monmouth County prosecutor. “We were able to challenge that and persuasively argue that the defendant knew what he was doing when he performed these heinous acts on the two victims.”
Miraglia initially faced the death penalty, but when capital punishment was abolished in New Jersey in December, he became eligible for life in prison without parole. Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 24.
_ Maryann Spoto
Complaint filed against company over anti-Muslim graffiti
(RNS) Mohamed Elharragui felt a mixture of anger and fear when he saw the graffiti on the men’s room wall at the warehouse in North Middleton Township, Pa., where he worked.
In a photo he said he took with his cell phone that morning at the Crown Bolt warehouse, the scrawled words are green against a beige wall: “Kill the Mexicans, kill the Iraqs, kill the Muslums (sic).”
The next day, profane threats ranted not only against Muslims but also against Allah, the Arabic word for God, Elharragui said.
A manager expressed dismay and had the graffiti effaced, but there was no “big meeting to talk to the people,” Elharragui said.
Three weeks ago, he and 17 other workers _ mostly African immigrants and Muslims _ walked out of a workplace they said was biased.
The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission said it has filed a complaint against Crown Bolt on behalf of the workers. The complaint alleges that they were harassed and denied benefits on the basis of ancestry and religion, and that their religious practice was not reasonably accommodated, spokeswoman Shannon Powers said. She provided no details.
Asked about the graffiti, Crown Bolt assistant manager George Fields said, “We covered it up right away.” He then referred other questions to his human resources manager.
A call to that office was returned by Erica Crosling, a spokeswoman for HD Supply in Atlanta, Crown Bolt’s parent company. She would not discuss an “internal personnel matter,” but said, “We do take very seriously any action that does not support our culture of diversity and inclusion.”
The 18 Crown Bolt workers _ many of them immigrants from war-torn Somalia and Sudan _ contacted the local chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Somali Community of Central Pennsylvania, which took the case to the commission.
All but eight of the workers have returned to Crown Bolt, apparently in response to management apologies, said Madina Hasson of the Somali group.
_ Mary Warner
Florida court tosses challenge to religious funding ban
(RNS) Florida’s Supreme Court has tossed out two statewide ballot initiatives aimed at ending a longstanding ban on public funding for religious institutions, drawing praise from church-state watchdogs.
Civil liberties groups had filed suit to remove the amendments headed for the November ballot, which sought to rewrite the state constitution to allow church groups to participate in government programs, and pave the way for school voucher programs.
A lower court had upheld the initiatives in an Aug. 4 decision.
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the Anti-Defamation League, which supported the plaintiff in the case, hailed the ruling.
“Religious liberty and public education are two cornerstones of the American way of life, and these amendments would have badly damaged both of them,” said Americans United’s vice president, Rabbi Merrill Shapiro, in a statement.
“We’re glad the Florida Supreme Court did its duty and put a stop to it.”
If passed, the initiatives would have opened state funding to religious organizations. They also provided a means by which state money could be used for vouchers at private schools _ including religious institutions. Florida law currently prohibits taxpayer-funded vouchers for private school tuition.
Supporters of the initiatives contend that the current constitutional restrictions were originally enacted by Protestants to discriminate against Catholic groups. The Florida Catholic Conference and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami were among the religious organizations that intervened in the suit.
Gary McCaleb, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which provided financial assistance for the case, called the state’s current policy “obnoxious.”
“Floridians should have had the right to vote on the matter, and obviously it’s very sad when advocacy groups step in and silence citizens from voting,” McCaleb said.
_ Tim Murphy
Vatican orders Quebec priest to drop political job
TORONTO (RNS) The Vatican has ordered an outspoken Canadian member of parliament to quit his seat and return to his job as a Roman Catholic priest.
The Rev. Raymond Gravel, a member of the separatist Bloc Quebecois party, blamed his comments on abortion, which he said were “misinterpreted,” but said he had no choice but to follow his original calling.
“My first mission in life is to be a priest, not to be in politics,” he told Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper.
Gravel, 55, is a former prostitute who became a priest in his mid-20s. He was known for working on behalf of the poor and the elderly after being elected to the House of Commons in 2006.
He said he recently received a letter from Cardinals Claudio Hummes and William Levada, the Vatican officials responsible for the church’s clergy and doctrine, instructing him to quit politics. The Vatican included letters and articles _ mostly in English _ condemning Gravel’s stand on issues such as abortion and homosexuality.
Gravel first made national headlines as a priest in 2003, when he attacked the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage. As an member of Parliament, he spoke out against a proposed bill that would have made it a crime to abort a fetus.
“I am against abortion, but I am not in favor of the pro-life campaign that condemns all women who get an abortion,” he said last week.
Gravel’s plight stands in contrast to that of Fernando Lugo, who became the president of Paraguay last month. A former bishop and Catholic priest, Lugo received an unprecedented dispensation to retire from the church, which the Vatican said was “for the good of Paraguay.”
_ Ron Csillag
Survey: Alaskans less religious than most Americans
WASHINGTON (RNS) While Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s staunch evangelical conservatism may appeal to her party’s Christian base, the Alaska governor’s home state ranks among the nation’s least religious.
According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Alaskans are less likely to believe in God, pray, or attend religious services than the national average, and most residents share a libertarian view that the government should be less involved in issues of morality.
Just 37 percent of Alaskans say religion is “very important” in their lives, compared to 56 percent of Americans nationwide. Only 22 percent of the state’s respondents attend religious services at least once a week _ 17 points lower than the national average. Nearly half, 47 percent, of Alaskans say they “seldom” or “never” attend religious services.
Only residents of New Hampshire and Vermont (36 percent each) said religion was less important.
Pew’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, which was released last spring, surveyed 200 Alaskans and more than 35,000 Americans nationwide. Alaska’s results did have a relatively high margin of error of plus or minus 7.5 percentage points, however, due to the small sample size.
The study’s findings place Alaska in line with other states in the Pacific Northwest, including Washington and Oregon, which both boast high numbers of unaffiliated residents.
Mark Silk, a professor of religion in public life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., said the high numbers of unaffiliated Alaskans reflect the region’s “frontier” mentality.
“All of these areas are places with lots of wilderness, and essentially people headed into them not only leaving behind, but wanting to leave behind, prior associations,” said Silk, who co-authored a book about religion and public life in the Northwest.
Evangelical Protestantism is the state’s most popular affiliation, with 26 percent of the population identifying themselves as such. Just 14 percent of Alaskans are Catholic.
Alaskans do agree with the rest of the country when it comes to issues such as abortion and homosexuality, but are less inclined to view them as political causes. Sixty-two percent of Alaskans “worry the government is too involved” in issues of morality, compared to 52 percent of Americans nationwide.
_ Tim Murphy
Pelosi agrees to talk with archbishop on abortion stance
WASHINGTON (RNS) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accepted her hometown archbishop’s invitation to talk about Catholic teachings, but avoided mentioning her recent statements on abortion, which have been condemned by 10 Catholic prelates.
“I welcome the opportunity for our personal conversation to go beyond our earlier most cordial exchange about immigration and the needs of the poor to church teaching on other significant matters,” Pelosi wrote San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer.
A spokesman for Pelosi, D-Calif., said the letter was delivered by hand to Niederauer on Friday (Sept. 5).
That same day, Niederauer said Pelosi’s recent statements on abortion “are in serious conflict with the teachings of the Catholic Church.”
On “Meet the Press” last month, Pelosi said “doctors of the church” disagreed on when life begins, and said abortion “continues to be an issue of controversy” in the Catholic Church.
At least 10 bishops have publicly condemned those remarks, saying the church has believed abortion is wrong since the first century.
“I regret the necessity of addressing these issues in so public a forum,” Niederauer said, “but the widespread consternation among Catholics made it unavoidable.”
Niederauer also said Catholics are not supposed to “pick and choose” which teachings to follow and that moral issues should not be dictated by opinion polls.
The San Francisco prelate added that “many Catholics” have written him about Pelosi’s remarks, “very often” asking him whether the congresswoman should be allowed to receive Communion.
Niederauer noted the disagreement among U.S. Catholic bishops about denying Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, but didn’t state his opinion on the matter.
_ Daniel Burke
Vatican disciplines director of Medjugorje shrine
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican has disciplined one of the promoters of a world-famous Bosnian shrine to the Virgin Mary, while it investigates him on charges of heresy and sexual misdeeds.
The Rev. Tomislav Vlasic has been confined to an Italian monastery and forbidden to make public appearances or hear confessions during the investigation, according to documents posted on the Web site of the Catholic diocese with jurisdiction over the shrine at Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
One of the documents refers to accusations of “heresy and schism, as well as scandalous acts” against the Sixth Commandment, which according to Catholic teaching, forbids adultery and other “sins gravely contrary to chastity.”
The order was issued jointly by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is conducting the investigation, and the Franciscan order to which Vlasic belongs.
Medjugorje has supposedly been the site of more than 40,000 apparitions of the Virgin Mary since 1981, drawing millions of pilgrims to the Herzegovinan town.
However, the Catholic Church has never endorsed the apparitions, and in 1985, the Vatican banned church-sponsored pilgrimages there.
According to a report by Catholic News Service, Vlasic was one of the spiritual advisers to the six persons who claim to have received the visions as children. He left Medjugorje in 1988, following a sex scandal involving a nun, and moved to Italy, where he founded a group that promotes belief in the apparitions.
_ Francis X. Rocca
Former head of abuse review panel blasts Cardinals George, Egan
(RNS) An Illinois Supreme Court justice who chaired a lay review board investigating the Catholic sex abuse scandal blasts the church and prominent cardinals in a new book, accusing them of dishonesty.
Justice Anne M. Burke, who headed the National Review Board for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2002 to 2004, says “bishops got away with concealing crime” and singles out Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.
Burke says she was furious at George’s “casual attitude” and said he “wasn’t honest with me.” Burke also says George, now president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, didn’t tell her he was housing an abusive priest.
“I found the cardinal’s lack of honesty really difficult to deal with,” Burke says in the book by Kerry Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. “How do I go on to trust what he says to me?.. He and his brother bishops have been in denial all along.”
Burke’s comments come in “Being Catholic Now,” a collection of reflections about Catholicism by prominent U.S. Catholics, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly. The book was released Tuesday (Sept. 9).
Burke told the Chicago Tribune that the interview took place more than a year ago and she commends George’s recent actions, including his release of his legal documents and his promise to purge the priesthood of abusers.
In a statement, George said he was “unaware of all the details of his situation” when he allowed a Delaware priest accused of abuse to stay at his residence.
“I stated publicly that there was no priest in ministry in Chicago who had against him a substantiated claim of sexual abuse of a minor,” George said. “That statement was true when I made it and it is true now.”
Burke also criticizes Cardinal Edward Egan of New York in the book, saying he “was offended by” the National Review Board’s “insistence on independence.”
“I think he was also intimidated by the thoughts of fifty former FBI agents doing our questioning,” Burke says.
Egan’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
_ Daniel Burke
Scientology to face court trial in France
PARIS (RNS) The Church of Scientology and seven of its members will be tried for fraud and other allegations in a groundbreaking case that could lead to a ban on the church’s operations in France, legal sources cited by local media say.
The allegations stem back a decade, and were originally leveled by a woman who claims she paid the church more than $28,000 for lessons, books, drugs and an “electrometer,” which church members claim can be used to measure a person’s mental state.
The trial in Paris, which according to reports is likely to take place in 2009, is the first time the church would be judged on charges of swindling. Previous legal charges have been leveled at individuals or against the church (in 2002) for violating individual freedom and information laws.
The Paris area chapter of the church and its president ultimately paid several thousand dollars apiece in the 2002 case.
The church swiftly rebutted the latest allegations, claiming it was being stigmatized.
“The special treatment reserved for the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre raises questions about the equality of the justice system and the presumption of innocence,” it said in a statement.
“We are far from dissolution,” Daniele Gounord, spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology in France, told Paris’ Le Monde newspaper on Tuesday (Sept. 9).
“Based on previous experiences in France and elsewhere things usually finish well,” she said.
Founded half a century ago in the United States, the church that claims prominent members such as Hollywood star Tom Cruise, is viewed with skepticism in a number of European countries.
In Germany, federal and state interior ministers claimed the church was unconstitutional last December, paving the way for possibly banning it in the country.
The church or its individual members have been on trial on four separate occasions in France, starting in 1978. In two of the earliest cases, sentences were ultimately shortened or dropped altogether on appeal.
_ Elizabeth Bryant
Quote of the Week: John C. Stein, former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska
(RNS) “Sarah comes in with all this ideological stuff, and I was like, `Whoa.’ But that got her elected: abortion, gun rights, term limits and the religious born-again thing.”
_ John C. Stein, former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who was defeated by Sarah Palin (now Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential nominee) in 1996. He was quoted by The New York Times.
KRE/RB END RNS
