May 31, 2023

His Excellency, Bishop Joseph C. Bambera, announces the following appointments. 

Effective June 30, 2023:

Reverend Stephen Amponsah Asomah, from Parochial Vicar, Our Lady of the Snows Parish, Clarks Summit, to ministry in the Diocese of Sunyani, Ghana.

Reverend Mariusz Beczek, O.S.J., from Pastor, Annunciation Parish, Hazleton, to ministry with the Oblates of St. Joseph.

Reverend Ryan P. Glenn, from Parochial Vicar, St. Matthew Parish, East Stroudsburg, to Pastor, Christ the King Parish, Archbald.

Reverend Victor Leon, O.S.J. from Parochial Vicar, Annunciation Parish, Hazleton, to ministry with the Oblates of St. Joseph.

Reverend Kevin M. Miller, from Pastor, St. Brigid Parish, Friendsville, and Most Holy Trinity Parish, Susquehanna, to Pastor, Annunciation Parish, Hazleton.

Reverend Neftali Feliz Sena, from Parochial Vicar, Queen of Heaven Parish, Hazleton, and Most Precious Blood Parish, Hazleton, to Parochial Vicar, Annunciation Parish, Hazleton.

Reverend Rawel Toppo, to Administrator pro tem, St. Patrick Parish, White Haven.  Father Toppo will continue to serve as Parochial Vicar, Immaculate Conception Parish, Freeland, and Good Shepherd Parish, Drums.

Reverend Seth D. Wasnock, from Administrator pro tem, Christ the King Parish, Archbald.  Father Wasnock will continue to serve as Pastor, St. Rose of Lima Parish, Carbondale, and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish, Carbondale. 

Effective July 11, 2023: 

Reverend David P. Cappelloni, to Pastor, St. Mary of Mt. Carmel Parish, Dunmore.  Father Cappelloni will continue to serve as Pastor, Saints Anthony and Rocco Parish, Dunmore.

Reverend John A. Doris, from Pastor, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish, Dunmore, to Pastor Emeritus, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish, Dunmore.

Reverend Paul McDonnell, O.S.J., from Sacramental Minister, Our Lady of the Eucharist Parish, Pittston, to Pastor, Divine Mercy Parish, Scranton.

Reverend Patrick J. McLaughlin, from Pastor, Immaculate Conception Parish, Scranton, to Pastor Emeritus, Immaculate Conception Parish, Scranton.

Reverend Francis L. Pauselli, from Pastor, Divine Mercy Parish, Scranton, to Pastor Emeritus, Divine Mercy Parish, Scranton.

Reverend Jeffrey D. Tudgay, J.V., V.E., J.C.L., to Pastor, Immaculate Conception Parish, Scranton.  Father Tudgay will continue to serve as Pastor, St. Peter’s Cathedral, Scranton.                                      

Effective September 1, 2023: 

Reverend James J. Paisley, from Pastor, St. Therese Parish, Shavertown, and St. Francis Cabrini Parish, Carverton, to Pastor, St. Ann Basilica Parish, Scranton.

Very Reverend Richard Burke, C.P., from Pastor, St. Ann’s Basilica Parish, Scranton.  Father Burke will continue to serve as Rector, St. Ann’s Passionist Monastery, Scranton.

 

Community invited to Catholic Youth Center Thursday evening for #NEPAGives Rally
24-hour Swim Endurance Challenge to raise money for CYC Aquatics Center 

WILKES-BARRE – As the Wyoming Valley Catholic Youth Center celebrates 75 years of steadfast service to children and young people, the community is being invited to support its mission and innovative programming.

“The Wyoming Valley Catholic Youth Center means so much to the youth of our community. We offer many different programs from our daycare program to our basketball and swim programs and even our drop-in program for young people who are involved in the mental health system. This is a home away from home for those children,” Mark Soprano, Executive Director of the Wyoming Valley Catholic Youth Center, said. “We are the largest daycare provider in Luzerne County. We offer 24-hour daycare for children of working families.”

In conjunction with #NEPAGives Day 2023, the CYC will open its doors to the community from 6-9 p.m. on Thursday, June 1, 2023, for free food, drinks and fun. Father Jim Paisley, pastor of St. Therese Parish and St. Frances Cabrini Parish, will perform several songs and entertain those in attendance. No reservations are needed. Anyone is welcome to attend to learn more about the CYC or its programs or hear about the 27 other Diocesan causes that are part of #NEPAGives Day 2023, including our Catholic schools and service programs.

“We are about to embark on a new project to develop an infant and toddler outdoor play area. We have a courtyard on the side of our current building. We want to remove some large trees and put in new sidewalks and play equipment for the little ones to crawl and play around outside,” Soprano added.

Also, in celebration of #NEPAGives Day 2023, a group of 13 open-water marathon swimmers will be in the CYC pool as part of a 24-hour Swim Endurance Challenge. The swimmers plan to swim one mile, every hour on the hour, for 24 hours, to raise money for the CYC Aquatics Center.

“I’ve been a life-long resident and I’ve done all my training at the CYC pool to swim triathlons to open marathon swims,” organizer Mary Stella explained. “There are a lot of people that use this pool from children learning to swim to adults that are maintaining their fitness. It’s a great facility for the whole community and we need to keep it maintained.”

One mile is 1,760 yards but a swimmer mile is 1,650 yards – which is roughly 66 lengths of the pool.

“It is a real endurance test,” swimmer Stephen Rouch of Kingston, added. “I’m worried about missing my sleep but for others it is going to be having tired arms. Either way, it’ll be fun no matter what!”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – While the release of the working document for the Synod of Bishops on synodality is expected sometime in early June, Pope Francis tried to respond to some of the questions and concerns about the synod process that already have been raised.

Pope Francis speaks to members of the Italian bishops’ conference and diocesan leaders involved in Italy’s national synod process May 25, 2023, in the Vatican audience hall. The pope addressed questions and concerns members of the group submitted about his notion of fostering a “synodal church.” (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Meeting at the Vatican May 25 with members of the Italian bishops’ conference and the people they chose to coordinate work for an Italian synod, the pope gave a succinct description of what he means by a “synodal church”:

“Every baptized person is called to actively participate in the life and in the mission of the church, starting from the specifics of one’s own vocation, in relationship with others and with the charisms given by the Spirit for the good of all. We need Christian communities in which space is enlarged, where everyone can feel at home, where pastoral structures and means foster not the creation of small groups, but the joy of being and feeling co-responsible.”

Evangelization is at stake, he said. “A church weighed down by structures, bureaucracy and formalism will struggle to walk in history at the pace of the Spirit, meeting the men and women of our time.”

“The great enemy of this process,” he said, “is fear.”

Pope Francis said that as he entered the Vatican audience hall for the meeting, someone — using an Argentinian phrase that is not very polite, nor is its translation in Italian, he said — told him that the whole synod process is creating a mess.

“Think about the apostles on the morning of Pentecost,” the pope said. If the synod is “a blank,” he said to laughter, “Pentecost morning was even worse. It was worse. Total disorder. And who provoked that mess? The Holy Spirit. He’s good at creating disorder to move people. But the same Spirit also provoked harmony.”

“Don’t be afraid when there is disorder provoked by the Spirit,” Pope Francis said. One need fear “only when it is provoked by our selfishness or the spirit of evil.”

Speaking just a few days before Pentecost, the pope urged everyone, but especially the fearful, to pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who opens people to listen to others, who makes dialogue fruitful, enlightens discernment and guides choices and decisions.

Pope Francis told the bishops and representatives that he would try to respond to their questions about “the priorities for the church in relation to society, about how to overcome resistance and concerns, on the involvement of priests and lay people, and on the experiences of marginalization.”

Church unity and shared responsibility are essential, he said. An “always lurking” temptation is to rely on “a few ‘qualified actors’ who carry out pastoral activity” while the rest of the faithful stand by and watch.

“Sometimes one gets the impression that religious communities, chanceries and parishes are still too self-referential,” Pope Francis said.

“There seems to creep in, somewhat covertly, a kind of “defensive neoclericalism’ – clericalism is a perversion,” he said. It is “generated by a fearful attitude, by complaints that the world does not understand us anymore, that young people are lost and by a need to reiterate and make one’s influence felt.”

Obviously, the pope said, a “synodal church,” one where all are welcome, where all share the mission and contribute their prayer, time and talents will have an impact on those the Catholic Church still believes have been chosen by God and given special gifts to lead and to discern.

“We must ask the Holy Spirit to make us understand and experience how to be ordained ministers and how to exercise ministry in this time and in this church: never without the Other with a capital ‘O,’ but also never without others with whom we share the journey.”

“This applies to the bishops, whose ministry cannot do without that of priests and deacons” and to priests and deacons who must work with each other and the faithful, the pope said. “But this is also true for the entire community of the baptized, in which each one walks with other brothers and sisters in the school of the one Gospel and in the light of the Spirit.”

Promoting co-responsibility in the church, he said, is not simply a matter of finding a new way to “distribute power.”

Rather, he said, it means learning how to recognize the gifts of each person, particularly those “who still struggle to see their presence recognized in the church, those who do not have a voice, those whose voices are drowned out or even silenced or ignored, those who feel inadequate perhaps because they have difficult or complex life paths (and) are sometimes almost ‘excommunicated’ a priori.”

Part of the goal of synodality, he said, is to “let God’s heart shine through – a heart open to all and for all.”

Pope Francis said those already active in the church need to remember the parable of the wedding feast from Matthew 22. “When none of the invited guests show up, what does that gentleman say? ‘Go to the crossroads and call everyone.’ Everyone: sick, healthy, righteous, sinners, everyone, everyone.”

“We should ask ourselves how much space we make and how much we really listen in our communities to the voices of young people, women, the poor, those who are disappointed, those who have been hurt in life and are angry with the church,” the pope said. “As long as their presence remains sporadic in ecclesial life overall, the church will not be synodal, it will be a church of the few.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Christians should pray on Pentecost that the Holy Spirit would give them the courage and strength to share the Gospel, Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis gives his blessing at the end of his weekly general audience May 24, 2023, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

“No matter how difficult the situation may be – and indeed, at times it may seem there is no room for the Gospel message – we must not give up and we must not forsake pursuing what is essential in our Christian life, namely evangelization,” the pope said May 24, the Wednesday before Pentecost.

Using the example of St. Andrew Kim Taegon, the 19th-century Korean martyr, Pope Francis continued his weekly general audience talks about the “zeal” to evangelize.

With thousands of visitors and pilgrims – including bands, flag twirlers and dancers – gathered in a sunny St. Peter’s Square, the pope introduced his talk about St. Andrew by pointing out how Christianity was introduced to Korea 200 years before St. Andrew by laypeople who had heard the Gospel proclaimed in China and then shared it when they returned home.

“Baptized laypeople were the ones who spread the faith. There were no priests,” the pope said. “Would we be able to do something like that?”

Ordained in 1844, St. Andrew Kim Taegon was the first Korean-born priest and ministered at a time of anti-Christian persecution.

Pope Francis told the story of how when the saint was still a seminarian, he was sent to welcome missionaries who snuck into the country from abroad. After walking far through the snow, “he fell to the ground exhausted, risking unconsciousness and freezing. At that point, he suddenly heard a voice, ‘Get up, walk!'”

“This experience of the great Korean witness makes us understand a very important aspect of apostolic zeal: namely, the courage to get back up when one falls,” the pope said.

“Each one of us might think, ‘But how can I evangelize,'” he said. Following the example of the “greats” of evangelization history, each Christian can find a way to witness to the Gospel — “talk about Jesus” — in his or her family, among friends and in one’s local community.

“Let us prepare to receive the Holy Spirit this coming Pentecost, asking for that grace, apostolic grace and courage, the grace to evangelize, to always carry forward the message of Jesus.”

 

Martha Callahan is serving as secretary and ‘ex-officio’ member.

 

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Paul J. Bradley of Kalamazoo, Michigan, and has appointed as his successor Msgr. Edward M. Lohse, vicar general and moderator of the curia for the Diocese of Erie, Pennsylvania.

Bishop Bradley, 77, has headed the Kalamazoo Diocese since 2009. Bishop-designate Lohse, 61, also is pastor of St. Julia Parish in Erie. He was ordained a priest for the Erie Diocese in 1989 and named a monsignor in 2015.

The changes were publicized in Washington May 23 by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

Bishop-designate Lohse will be ordained and installed at the Cathedral of St. Augustine in Kalamazoo July 25. He will become the fifth bishop of Kalamazoo.

“With thanksgiving to our loving God and with deep gratitude to our Holy Father, Pope Francis, our diocese’s wait for our new shepherd has yielded a wonderful gift” in the appointment of the Erie priest as the southwest Michigan diocese’s new shepherd, Bishop Bradley said in a statement. “We welcome him with open arms and hearts filled with joy. May he walk with us, teaching us and leading us in the ways of hope-filled disciples of our risen Lord.”

Bishop Bradley turned 75 Oct. 18, 2020, and submitted his resignation to the pope as required by canon law. Until his successor’s ordination, he will continue as apostolic administrator.

“As a diocese, we rejoice at this honor for one of our fine priests,” Erie Bishop Lawrence T. Persico. “It is a testament to the clergy of the Diocese of Erie. Although it is difficult to lose one of our priests, who has served with great faith, wisdom and hope, we rejoice with the church of Kalamazoo on their new shepherd.”

The nine-county Diocese of Kalamazoo is in southwest Michigan. It covers just over 5,300 square miles and has a Catholic population of about 77,800 Catholics out of a total population of 966,198.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis will visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Fátima during his trip to Portugal for World Youth Day 2023, the Vatican said.

In a statement May 22, Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, confirmed that the pope will travel to Lisbon Aug. 2-6 and will visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Fátima Aug. 5.

Pope Francis celebrates the canonization Mass of Sts. Francisco and Jacinta Marto, two of the three Fatima seers, at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, May 13, 2017. The Vatican announced the pope will return to Fatima Aug. 5 while in Portugal for World Youth Day 2023. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Pope Francis, who repeatedly has said he intended to be in Lisbon for World Youth Day, had not spoken publicly about also going to Fátima in August. In October 2022, he publicly registered to attend World Youth Day as a pilgrim with the help of two Portuguese university students after praying the Angelus from the window of the papal apartments overlooking St. Peter’s Square.

The Marian shrine at Fátima is connected to Pope Francis’ public prayer appeals for an end the war in Ukraine. In March 2022, just over one month after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the pope consecrated both countries to Mary’s immaculate heart, praying before a statue of Our Lady of Fátima in St. Peter’s Basilica. Before her death, Sister Lúcia dos Santos, one of the three Portuguese children who claimed to see apparitions of Our Lady of Fátima in 1917, had said Mary requested that Russia be consecrated to her immaculate heart by a reigning pope to bring peace to the world.

Previous popes had consecrated Russia to Mary’s immaculate heart in various forms but had never mentioned the country by name as Pope Francis did in 2022.

In 2017, Pope Francis celebrated Mass at the shrine to mark 100 years since the apparitions of Our Lady of Fátima as part of a quick trip to Portugal that lasted just over 24 hours. He canonized Francisco Marto and Jacinta Marto, the cousins of Sister dos Santos, who also saw Mary at Fátima. Francisco in 1919 at the age of 10, while Jacinta succumbed to her illness in 1920 at the age of 9. Sister dos Santos died in 2005 at the age of 97.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis has asked Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna to lead a mission “to help ease tensions in the conflict in Ukraine,” the Vatican press office said.

Pope Francis greets Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, president of the Italian bishops’ conference, during a meeting with representatives of most of Italy’s 227 dioceses and their programs to encourage the financial support of church activities during an audience in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican Feb. 16, 2023. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

The appointment of the cardinal, who is president of the Italian bishops’ conference and a longtime member of the Sant’Egidio Community, was confirmed May 20 by Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office.

While Bruni said “the timing of such a mission and its modalities are currently being studied,” he said Pope Francis has never lost hope that some kind of dialogue could “initiate paths of peace.”

By referring to Cardinal Zuppi’s task as a “mission,” Bruni appeared to affirm that it was the same peace mission Pope Francis was referring to April 30 when he told reporters returning to Rome with him from Budapest, Hungary, that he had a plan underway.

Spokesmen for the Ukrainian and Russian governments denied knowing anything about the pope’s plan, although Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, insisted they had been informed.

Pope Francis met May 13 at the Vatican with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who tweeted that he asked the pope “to condemn Russian crimes in Ukraine. Because there can be no equality between the victim and the aggressor.” The Ukrainian leader also said he reiterated his insistence on a “just peace” that involves Russia leaving all the Ukrainian territory it occupies.

Il Sismografo, an Italian blog that closely follows the Vatican, had reported May 18 that Zelenskyy and President Vladimir Putin of Russia “each agreed to talks with the Holy Father’s two special envoys to discuss and achieve a truce.”

The blog had said there were “preliminary agreements” from the Vatican, Kyiv and Moscow that Cardinal Zuppi would go to Ukraine and Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, the Russian-speaking prefect of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches, would serve as papal envoy to Moscow. However, the archbishop’s office May 19 denied that he was involved.

Cardinal Zuppi, 67, has been involved with the lay Community of Sant’Egidio for almost 50 years. The community serves the poor, the elderly and has served as a mediator and hosted several formal peace talks, including the talks that in 1992 led to the end of the civil war in Mozambique. Cardinal Zuppi, a parish priest at the time, was involved in the negotiations.

At the Sant’Egidio Community’s annual religions for peace meeting in October, Russia’s war on Ukraine was the key focus.

Cardinal Zuppi told the gathering that “without dialogue only weapons remain.”

However, “dialogue by no means treats all motives as equal, it does not avoid the question of responsibility, and it never confuses the aggressor and the victim,” he said. Stopping the exponential spiral of war is possible only by recognizing the truth.

(OSV News) – After traveling the United States for 10 months during 1831-32, French diplomat and political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville declared in his classic work “Democracy in America” that “there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.”

A woman prays the rosary during Eucharistic adoration following the opening Mass of the National Prayer Vigil for Life Jan. 19, 2023, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. Public Religion Research Institute data released May 16 shows Americans are becoming increasingly less likely to be religiously affiliated. (OSV News photo/Bob Roller)

But almost 200 years later, a new report from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) titled “Religion and Congregations in a Time of Social and Political Upheaval” casts a shadow of doubt on the fervor of Americans, only 16% of whom reported to PRRI that religion is the most important thing in their lives.

In PRRI’s study, those with no religious affiliation represented 27% of the population. Likewise a majority of Americans either seldom (28%) or never (29%) attend religious services; and more than one-third (37%) of those who exited a religion identified themselves as “former” Catholics.

“One of the meta trends in the American religious landscape over the last 20 — even 30 — years has been the precipitous decline in religious affiliation and a decline in other indications of religiosity,” said David Campbell, the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. While there is some debate about underlying reasons, “research that I and others have done has demonstrated that America does seem to be secularizing in a way that it had not previously,” Campbell explained.

For context, Campbell said almost since “the beginning of public opinion polling – going back many, many decades up until roughly 1990 – no more than 5% of Americans ever said they had no religious affiliation. And then in the last 30 or so years, you’ve seen this dramatic rise in religious non-affiliation that’s now been accompanied by other indications that people are less and less religious.”

“The piece of folks not affiliating or identifying with particular religious traditions or churches – that’s been going on for decades,” agreed Jesuit Father Thomas Gaunt, executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), a research center at Georgetown University that conducts social scientific studies for and about the Catholic Church.

Father Gaunt noted, however, a distinction between institutional membership and belief. “These are people who believe in God,” he said. “They just don’t necessarily believe in institutional churches.”

“Fifty years ago, it would just be unusual for someone to say they didn’t belong to any church body. The social mores have changed — and so that’s not as startling or as unacceptable socially,” said Father Gaunt. “It may be those who said, ‘Oh, yeah — I’m a Catholic,’ or ‘I’m a Baptist,’ 40 years ago didn’t really mean that, but today they feel more comfortable acknowledging that.” This phenomenon – known as social desirability bias – can skew poll data.

Within the Catholic Church in the U.S., Father Gaunt noted “explosive” growth in the South and West of the country, primarily due to relocation; immigration also has had an impact.

“When you’re in the Northeast and Midwest and you’re looking at an empty church, that’s just kind of hard to comprehend – but that is the reality in so many places,” he said, noting that the Archdiocese of Atlanta added a million Catholics to its membership rolls over the last 30 years.

Weekly Mass attendance also has, Father Gaunt reported, almost returned to pre-COVID levels.

“I think there is a paradox here,” said John Carr, founder of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University. Carr served for over 20 years as director of the Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, where he directed public policy and advocacy efforts on domestic and international issues.

“There is no doubt that the place of faith in American life has declined – in the lives of individuals, and in our society as a whole,” Carr observed. “But two things can be true at once. One is that there is a decline. Two, there is also a hunger for meaning; for belonging; for a moral vocabulary.”

That hunger, Carr noted, is accompanied by “great skepticism about the integrity and the trustworthiness of religious institutions.”

Among the leading reasons for switching a religious tradition or denomination reported to PRRI were 56% saying they stopped believing in the religion’s teachings; 30% were turned off by negative teachings or treatment of LGBTQ+ people; 29% said their family growing up was not that religious; 27% were disillusioned by scandals involving leaders in their former religion; and 18% pointed to a traumatic event in their lives.

With at least 17% of PRRI poll respondents who switched affiliations replying their church was too focused on politics, Carr said perceived political bias is also an issue that can’t be overlooked.

“The misuse of religion for partisan purposes does great damage,” Carr said. “I think our faith has profound implications for public life. But we have to begin with people’s faith. Not their politics.”

 

On Sunday, May 14, 2023, the Saints Francis & Clare Progressive Catholic Community reopened the former Saint Mary of Czestochowa Church building in Moosic for worship. The Diocese of Scranton sold the church property in September 2014 during a previous parish consolidation process.

In response to questions that have been received, we wish to remind the faithful that the Progressive Catholic Church is neither affiliated with the Diocese of Scranton nor in communion with the universal Catholic Church.

The faithful of the Diocese of Scranton should not attend Masses nor receive the sacraments provided by the Progressive Catholic Church community. Particularly regarding the sacraments of Confession and Marriage, these celebrations would not only be illicit, but also invalid.

Faithfully yours in Christ,

†Joseph C. Bambera
Most Reverend Joseph C. Bambera, D.D., J.C.L.
Bishop of Scranton

 

Mr. James Thomas Tracy, formerly an incardinated priest of the Diocese of Scranton, has been removed from the clerical state effective April 5, 2023.

Mr. Tracy’s involuntary dismissal from the clerical state was a disciplinary response resulting from a canonical process executed in the Diocese of Scranton. Authorized and reviewed by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Clergy, the dismissal was personally decided and executed by the Holy Father, Pope Francis.

Because Mr. Tracy has been removed from the clerical state, he is forbidden to function as a priest in the Catholic Church and should no longer present himself as a priest. Catholics should not, under any circumstance, approach Mr. Tracy for the celebration of any sacrament or for any priestly ministry.

Mr. Tracy lives privately and is no longer affiliated with the Diocese of Scranton in any official capacity.