'Above all things . . . preserve the Catholic, apostolic faith . . .'

St Stephen of Hungary, c.969 - 15 August 1038.

Today the Church honours St Stephen of Hungary, Szent István in Hungarian, though in the Philippines we celebrate San Roque ( previous post). Read about him here and here.

The Second Reading from the Office of Readings is an extract from a letter of the saint to his son Imre. Here are some quotes.

My dear son, if you would grace the kingly crown, I advise and counsel you above all things to preserve the Catholic, apostolic faith with such care that you may be an example to all the subjects given you by God, and all the clergy can say that you are truly a Christian. But if you fail to do this you may be certain that you cannot be called either a Christina or a son of the Church.

I wonder what he would think of 'Catholic' politicians who cling on to power at all costs, 'Catholic' politicians who promote abortion, with or without the fig leaf of 'I'm personally opposed . . .' I'm sure too that he would add 'or a daughter' to 'or a son' for those who profess not to know the difference between the inclusive and exclusive senses of certain words.

For this reason there is all the greater need for more prudent and evident watchfulness so that the great gift bestowed by the divine mercy on us, unworthy as we are, may not be destroyed and brought to nothing through your apathy, indolence and neglect.

Dear son, the joy of my heart,hope of generations yet to come, I pray you, nay, I command you, at all times, in all things, strengthened by your sense of duty, to be gracious, not only to your fmaily and kinsmen, to princes, noblemen, the rich, your neighbours, your countrymen, but also to strangers and to everyone who approaches you.

St Stephen clearly had a strong sense of everything being gift from God, something I'm becoming more and more conscious of, not only for the individual but for the community and for future generations. Pope Benedict asked the young people at WYD in Sydney what they'd pass on to the next generation. He has also spoken frequently about our need to respect creation itself as a gift from God, to be cared for so that we can hand on life to future generations.

Be patient with everyone, not only with the powerful, but also with the weak and feeble.

He would be very counter-cultural, as we say these days, by his final admonition to Prince Imre: Fly from all temptation to lust as you would from the stench of death.

The reading concludes: These are the virtues which crown a king. Unless he has them, no man is fit to rule here on earth or attain to the kingdom of heaven.

At present we have one 'Catholic' Robert Mugabe, who has brought his country, Zimbabwe, to its knees in an effort to cling on to power when he should be preparing to meet his Maker. Here in the Philippines President Gloria M. Arroyo parades her Catholic piety but under her corruption has become worse than even under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, with no sense of shame whatever. There are signs, say many responsible commentators, that she is trying to cling on to power beyond 2010 when her term ends. We'll see.

St Stephen, King of Hungary and now its patron saint, lived 1000 years ago but we can learn from him - and pray to him for our rulers.

'San Roque has his dog but I have my cat'.

Today, 16 August, is a busy day for many priests in the Philippines, as it is the feast of San Roque or St Roch (Latin: Rochus; Catalan: Roc; Italian: Rocco; French: Roch; Spanish and Portuguese: Roque; German: Rochus). He was reputedly born around 1295 in Montpellier, France and died there, according to tradition, on 16 August 1327. Here in the Philippines he’s usually known by his Spanish name, San Roque, though liturgical books in English here call him ‘St Rock’. But nobody actually calls him that. He's also described in the Missal here as 'Healer'. Many parishes and communities have him as their patron.

You can read more about him here and here .

San Roque is kept quite busy in heaven as he’s the patron saint of dogs and those who love them and also of bachelors, surgeons, tile makers, falsely accused people, invalids and diseased cattle. He’s also invoked against epidemics, knee and skin problems, the plague and pestilence.

Images of San Roque usually show him with a wound above his knee, from the plague, and a dog carrying bread in its mouth. The legend is that when the saint was very ill from the plague in a cave or in a forest, the dog used to bring him bread every day. The owner happened to live in a nearby castle and followed the dog one day. When he found Roque he brought him home and nursed him back to health.

In the Philippines there is always a novena before the feast of the parish or community patron. Sometimes there’s a novena of Masses. On one occasion when I celebrated one of these Masses during the novena for today's saint I was quietly amused by the fact that a black and white cat sat quietly at the altar all through the liturgy. Before giving the final blessing I couldn’t resist saying ‘San Roque has his dog but I have my cat!’

It’s not at all uncommon to see dogs or cats in church here and they rarely cause any disturbance. In one parish where I worked a family dog attended Mass quietly every day with the couple who owned it.

San Roque is unknown in Ireland. If my late Dad had known about him I'm sure he would have had a special devotion to him as he loved animals and was known to his workmates on building/construction sites as 'St Francis', as he fed stray dogs and cats and even robins.

Probably no posts for a week or so

NUESTRA SRA. DEL TRIUNFO DELA CRUZ / OUR LADY OF MT. CARMEL

The image on the wall of the Cotta is believed to be miraculous and has been the object of pilgrimage to the City of Ozamiz. (The feast of Our Lady of the Triumph of the Holy Cross is celebrated in Ozamiz City on 16 July but is separate from the feast of Our Lady of Mt Carmel on the same day. So I don't think that the caption above from the city's website is quite accurate.

I'm leaving tomorrow for Cebu on my wayto Ozamiz City where I'll be giving a short retreat to Columban lay missionaries. I won't be back in Bacolod till 16 August, God willing, and probably won't publish any posts in the meantime.

Death of a dear friend of the Deaf

Please pray for the soul of Mrs Salvacion Valderrama Tinsay of Bacolod City who died peacefully early this morning at her home. She turned 76 on 3 April.

For more than twenty years Tita Salving, as she was widely known, devoted her life to the Deaf. She had worked with the late Columban Father Joseph Coyle who died on 18 December 1991. After his death she not only continued his work with the Deaf but expanded it.

Tita Salving will be buried on Monday 11 August after Mass at 8am in the Carmelite Monastery in Bacolod where her sister, Sister Kathleen, is one of the out-sisters.

You may read more about Salving here.

I had a special post on Salving for her 76th birthday on 3 April. That was the last time I had a real conversation with her. She was well enough to come down for a celebratory breakfast with her family and some close friends. I gave her the Sacrament of the Sick on 31 July. She woke up during the celebration and at the end spoke a few words to some of her family and to me. for quite some time she and her family knew that she was slowly dying but they were all very much at peace with this, trusting in God's loving mercy.

Salving was a latter-day Lydia:

Setting sail therefore from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace, and the following day to Ne-apolis, and from there to Philippi, which is the leading city of the district of Macedonia, and a Roman colony. We remained in this city some days; and on the sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to give heed to what was said by Paul. And when she was baptized, with her household, she besought us, saying, "If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay." And she prevailed upon us (Act 16:11-15).

Many, including myself, who got involved with the Deaf and many Deaf people here in Bacolod and in other places could say of Salving as St Luke says of Lydia, 'She prevailed upon us'. Thanks be to God for that. May she rest in peace.

'A Joy That Dementia Could Not Crush'

I had two recent posts on Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, here and here. My friend Frances Molloy, who founded the Pastoral Care Project, asked me in an email if there was any reference to the spiritual.

Since then I’ve come across a beautiful article on http://www.mercatornet.com/ that does just that, A Joy that Dementia Could Not Crush by Colleen Carroll Campbell of St Louis, Missouri, USA.

The article begins this way:

The frail and elderly have an inherent dignity no disease or disability can erase.

When Ronald Reagan died in 2004 after a decade-long battle with Alzheimer's, pundits across America repeated the conventional wisdom about dementia. The former president was only a "shell" and "shadow" of himself in his later years, they said, and his physical passing was a mere formality, the symbolic loss of a man who had vanished long ago.

Those comments always bothered me, but I never fully understood why until two weeks ago, when I lost my father, Thomas Patrick Carroll Sr, to the same disease.

It ends this way:

A few days before he died, I found Dad sitting in his wheelchair, looking unusually alert. His blue eyes brimmed with tears when he spotted me and his arms opened wide. He smiled and said, simply, "Joy!" It was the last word I recall my father speaking to me, a fitting farewell from a man who lived joy with his every breath, to his very last.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St. Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is http://www.colleen-campbell.com/ .

This is an article about a man filled with faith, hope and love right to the end, a man who was clearly a gentleman of the old school, with a loving respect for others, especially religious sisters:

Even in his last years, after his condition forced my mother to move him to a nursing home, Dad provoked smiles with courtly bows and tips of an imaginary hat to the elderly nuns who stared at him from their wheelchairs. "Great to see you," he'd say, as he sauntered the halls. "You're the best."

Led into a room full of dementia patients, he would find his way to the corner where the most distressed one among them was muttering incoherently. Plopping down next to her, he would whisper, "We're all in God's hands" and stroke her arm until she grew quiet and calm. "I like to take care of people," he would tell me, when he could remember what he had just done.

What a delightful portrait of a person! I remember the Irish-American father of a friend of mine from the Bronx who spent his final days in a nursing home where most of the people were priests and sisters. The old man thought he was in heaven!

Each of us has a dignity and when we recognise that in those who need our assistance we will find ourselves blessed through them. Thomas Patrick Carroll Sr was clearly a blessing, not only to his own family, but to all who knew him, most especially those who were in the nursing home with him.

New Bishop Inspired by Columbans

NEW BISHOP INSPIRED BY COLUMBANS

Yesterday Fr Gerardo A. Alminaza of the Diocese of Bacolod, Philippines, was ordained bishop in San Sebastian Cathedral there. Today he will be installed as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Jaro in St Elizabeth Metropolitan Cathedral there. Bacolod is a suffragan diocese of Jaro, which is located in Iloilo City, an hour to the west by fast sea-craft. The main consecrating bishop was Papal Nuncio Edward Joseph Adams, with Archbishop Angel N. Lagdameo of Jaro, current president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), and Bishop Vicente M. Navarra of Bacolod as principal co-consecrators.

The evening before the episcopal ordination the nuncio blessed Bacolod City’s new Government Center before a dinner for bishops, priests and others hosted by Mayor Evelio R. Leonardia and the city government, a typically Filipino touch in a country where officially there is separation between Church and State.

The new bishop is a ‘product’ of the Columbans, having grown up in San Jose, Sipalay City, which is now part of the Diocese of Kabankalan, separated from Bacolod in 1987, and consisting of what was the main territory in the southern part of the province of Negros Occidental entrusted to the Columbans in 1950. Bishop Alminaza’s parish priest during his high school years in Cabarrus Catholic College, San Jose, was Fr Patrick Hurley, one of the Columban pioneers in Negros and still, at the age of 84, serving in the Chaplaincy of Our Lady of Peace, Biscom Sugar Central, Binalbagan. The late Fr Augustine Rowe was the priest in San Jose when Bishop Gerry was ordained in 1986. The new priest’s only parish assignment was in Kabankalan for a year or so after his ordination working there with Columbans. He has spent the rest of his priesthood in formation work and studying. He was on the staff of the major seminary in Jaro for some years and so is no stranger to his new diocese, where he will be based at the cathedral.

In his thanksgiving remarks in San Sebastian Cathedral before giving his first blessing as bishop to the people, Monsignor Alminaza singled out the Columbans because of the enormous influence they have had on his life. He also acknowledged the presence of the Columbans at the ceremony: Pat O’Donoghue, Regional Director, Terence Bennett, Brian Gore and myself.

Gerardo Alminaza was born on 4 August 1959, the centennial of the death of St John Vianney and was ordained priest on 29 April 1986, nine days before the bicentennial of the birth of the saint who is patron of diocesan clergy, and ordained bishop on his own 49th birthday. It used to be very common for parents in the Philippines to name a child after the saint celebrated on the birthday. However, Felix and Antonia Alimane chose ‘Gerard’, after St Gerard Majella CSsR, the patron of expectant mothers to whom they had prayed that God would give them a child. The future bishop, born after eight years of marriage, was their only child.

Antonia died about five years ago but Felix, now 79, was present in his wheelchair and it was very touching how his son spoke so lovingly of his ‘Tatay’ who has been staying at Sacred Heart Seminary, Bacolod, where Bishop Gerry has been rector for the last three years. Felix will now live in Iloilo, near his son.

Bishop Alminaza also spoke of his involvement with Focolare. Indeed, his episcopal motto, Sicut Christus Vivit, inspired by 1 John 2:6, was given him some years ago as a personal motto by Chiara Lubich, who founded the Focolare movement and who died earlier this year.

In his last year as rector of Sacred Heart Seminary Monsignor Alminaza was one of the driving forces behind the production of Ribok Gikan sa Tagipusoon, based on parts of the late Fr Niall O’Brien’s Revolution From the Heart. Most of the actors in the play, written in Hiligaynon (Ilonggo) by Jovy Miroy, were students at the seminary. The play was shown in a number of places, including the Diocese of Kabankalan. The ‘Negros Nine’ had been falsely accused of the murder of Mayor Pablo Sola of Kabankalan, a friend of Father Niall, on 10 March 1982.

In the early years of his priesthood, Bishop Alminaza was inspired by the involvement with the Deaf of Columban Father Joe Coyle who died in 1991. He learned Sign Language and frequently celebrated Mass in Sign Language both in Bacolod and in Iloilo. He invited interpreters to his ordination Mass so that the Deaf present could fully participate. One of his first Masses in Jaro will be with the Deaf community.

Another typically Filipino touch, at the end of the ordination Mass, was the singing of ‘Happy Birthday’ for the new bishop.


San Sebastian Cathedral, Bacolod City

Singing priests from Ireland

Fathers Eugene O’Hagan (48), his brother Martin O’Hagan (45) and David Delargy (44), parish priests in the Diocese of Down and Connor, Ireland, recently signed a £1,000,000 recording contract with Sony BMG. Their CD will be out later in the year.

As they are busy parish priests it’s not easy for them to coordinate their diaries so that they can record. You can listen to them singing Schubert’s Ave Maria here . You can find their website here. There’s a video of them at the Vatican here with links to others.

H/T to songjane of Royworld Fan .