NATION - NATO conflcit with Yugoslavia

National Catholic Reporter, May 7, 1999 by Matt Kantz

Refugee agency seeks sponsors for Albanians

Two days after the administration announced that 20,000 Kosovar refugees would be admitted to the U.S. mainland, resettlement agencies were actively seeking people who would offer them shelter -- and quickly.

Mark Franken, executive director of Migration and Refugee Services for the U.S. Catholic Conference, said April 23 that many diocesan refugee agencies would immediately start seeking U.S. relatives of Kosovar Albanians who have fled their home country.

"They'll be going to mosques and into Albanian communities around the country, reaching out to prospective sponsors or relatives," Franken said.

He expected that by the first couple days of May, the procedures for moving refugees from host countries to the United States would be in place. A team representing the conference's Migration and Refugee Services, the State Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the International Organization for Migration was preparing to travel to the region within a couple of days, Franken said.

"After that, they should begin coming here in 21 days, at the outside," he said. The United States planned to move about 400 people a day from Macedonia and other countries that have been housing refugees temporarily, in borrowed rooms, tents and sometimes in open fields.

Cleveland Orthodox parish revolts against archbishop

A major Greek Orthodox parish in Cleveland has voted to withhold its monthly contribution to the national church because it is upset with the leadership of Archbishop Spyridon, head of the Greek Orthodox archdiocese of America.

At a special assembly April 25, members of Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral voted 157 to 17, with two abstentions, to withhold its $4,000 monthly contribution to the archdiocese's Stewardship Fund beginning with its May payment. The money will be placed in escrow.

The congregation of about 320 member families is the largest contributor to the fund of the 50 parishes in the denomination's Pittsburgh diocese, said parish council president Richard Warren. The diocese covers all of Pennsylvania except the Philadelphia region, much of Ohio and West Virginia.

The Cleveland parish joins a handful of others around the nation that have moved to withhold all or part of their Stewardship contributions because of opposition to Spyridon's policies, which they characterize as antidemocratic, heavy-handed and financially irresponsible. Others are in Houston; Oakland, Calif.; Rutland, Vt., and Lewiston, Maine.

California Assembly passes assisted suicide bill

Despite the opposition of California's Catholic bishops and the state's Catholic hospitals, a California Assembly committee for the first time April 21 narrowly approved legislation that would legalize physician-assisted suicide in California.

Assemblywoman Dion Aroner's measure, which passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee by one vote, is patterned after the 1997 Oregon law, which allows physicians to prescribe life-ending drags to terminally ill patients.

Under the proposal, a patient 18 or older could be prescribed a fatal, $35 combination of barbiturates if the patient has a terminal disease that two doctors "reasonably determine" will cause death within six months; if the patient makes at least two oral and two written requests for the prescription, passes a mental competency exam if requested by the physician and can self-administer the medication.

Aroner, a Democrat from Berkeley and other proponents of the bill, AB 1592, claim it is fortified with safeguards to ensure that only the patient can request and decide on taking the life-ending medication.

In an April 19 letter of opposition to the Assembly Judiciary Committee, Ned Dolejsi, executive director of the California Catholic Conference, the bishops' public policy arm, contended that Aroner's measure is bad public policy.

Threatened suicide, no matter the age or physical condition of the individual, is "a cry for help which must be heeded, not silenced," he said. "Medication for depression; counseling, adequate comfort care and a compassionate presence will usually meet the needs of the terminally ill person."

Tucson bishop stresses no tolerance of abuse

In a letter to clergy, religious and laity of his diocese, Tucson, Ariz., Bishop Manuel D. Moreno has expressed "great concern and sadness" about allegations that priests who served in a Tucson parish in the 1970s sexually abused children.

The bishop's letter, dated April 14, was in response to news media reports that a civil lawsuit filed in Pima County Superior Court April 12 names as defendants three priests, the diocese and Our Mother of Sorrows Parish and school, among others.

Plaintiffs in the suit were a Tucson couple who claim they have suffered severe emotional harm, distress and "loss of consortium" in their relationship with their son because of the alleged abuse. They allege abuse by Fr. William T. Byrne, former pastor of Our Mother of Sorrows who died in 1991, and by Msgr. Robert C. Trupia, who was in residence at the parish. Trupia and a third priest, whom the couple allege knew about the abuse, no longer minister in the diocese. No court date has been set for the case.