Addenda - News Briefs - Brief Article

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 14, 2001 by Gill Donovan

A RESOLUTION passed in August by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, opposing the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation and forced labor, was entered into the Congressional Record Nov. 29 by Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-NJ. According to the Conference of Women Religious, it is the first time a resolution from a national group of religious has been entered into the record. Smith praised the work of advocacy groups on the issue, but criticized the government's slow implementation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, signed into law last year with his sponsorship.

FR. JOSEPH S. VASQUEZ, a Mexican-American, has been appointed auxiliary bishop of Galveston-Houston. The appointment of Vasquez, 44, makes him an auxiliary to Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston, who ordained Vasquez in 1984. At the time of his appointment, Vasquez was pastor of St. Joseph Church in San Angelo. Vasquez completed theological studies at the Gregorian University in Rome where he was also a seminarian at the North American College.

DAME CICELY SAUNDERS, an English physician who founded the modern hospice movement, was honored by the Conrad H. Hilton Foundation at a luncheon in New York Nov. 30. The foundation gave her its annual $1 million Humanitarian Prize for St. Christopher's Hospice, an institution she established in London in 1967 and made the center of the growing movement. Conrad Hilton, a Catholic, left the bulk of his estate to the foundation and in his will charged it with following "a divine law that obliges you and me to relieve the suffering, the distressed and the destitute."

NOTRE DAME COLLEGE in Manchester, N.H., has announced that it will cease operations May 31. After trustees met with Fr. Anthony De Conciliis, the school's president, to consider possible options, they decided that declining enrollment and funding problems would force them to close the Catholic liberal arts college founded by Sisters of the Holy Cross 51 years ago. Current enrollment is about 1,100 students.

CHESTNUT HILL COLLEGE, a Sisters of St. Joseph Catholic women's college founded in Philadelphia in 1924, has announced it will admit men to its undergraduate program beginning in the fall of 2003. The action was in response to a survey funded by the Teagle Foundation and conducted by Miller Cook Associates of Roanoke, Va., which found that only 3 percent of today's high school girls would consider a single-sex college. It also noted the decline in the number of women's colleges in the United States -- from 298 in 1960 to 65 today, 19 of which are Catholic colleges. Chestnut Hill has about 1,800 students.

A NEWLY ORDAINED PRIEST, Fr. Michael Tran Van Thin, has been named pastor of Phinh Ho Parish, a remote mountain parish in Vietnam's Flung Hoa diocese that has been without a pastor for 40 years. Two-thirds of the diocese's 40 parishes are without priests, said Michel Le Van Hong, a deacon. Fr. Francois Nguyen Van Thai of remote Nhan Nghia Parish said the diocese has given "priority to the pastoral needs of Catholics in remote areas" by sending new priests to parishes in mountainous and midland provinces.

Briefs, gathered from news services, correspondents and staff, are compiled and edited by Gill Donovan.