Sister Janice Thome, OP (Dominican Sisters of Peace)
Consecrated life: Serving a ‘wider group
of people in a greater variety of ways’
Sister Janice Thome, OP, serves with the Dominican Sisters Ministry of Presence and Teen Parent Educator-Parents as Teachers.
SKR: Why did you enter the religious life?
Sister Janice Thome, OP: I entered religious life because of the attraction it held as a very different lifestyle. There was a curiosity as to how the Sisters I knew could be happy in such a life. There was a sense that God might be calling me to this life and I had to try it out in order to know if it fit for me.
SKR: Why did you chose your particular congregation?
Sister Janice: I was taught by Dominican Sisters in grade school at St. Peter, Schulte. I had cousins who were members of the religious communities in Wichita. I had visited them at their motherhouses. In eighth grade the seven girls in our class went to Great Bend for a vocation day. The lightness and openness of the motherhouse impressed me. My seventh and eighth grade teacher, Sister Rosalia, was a happy woman, as were my cousins. I wanted to be that kind of a person if I was a religious.
'I find God in suffering': The gripping life and death of Kayla Mueller
By Elise Harris and Alan Holdren
Madrid, Spain, May 1, 2015 / 04:02 am (CNA/EWTN News) - Kayla Mueller, the young human rights activist who was killed earlier this year while being held hostage by ISIS, was a woman of faith with a heart full of compassion toward those who suffered, her parents say. Now, they intend to carry on her legacy of service to others.
“Some people find God in Church, some people find God in nature, some people find God in love, I find God in suffering,” Kayla’s mother, Marsha Mueller told CNA April 18, reciting a phrase of her daughter.
“I’ve known for some time what my life's work is: using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.”
The Mueller’s shared their daughter’s story during an April 17-20 conference entitled “#We Are Nazarenes” in Madrid, Spain.
The title of the conference took it’s inspiration from the Arabic letter “nun,” which ISIS militants branded on the houses of Christians in Mosul, Iraq last summer to indicate which ones belonged to the “Nazarenes.”
The Islamic State – also known as ISIS – has taken over parts of Iraq and Syria in recent months. The militant terror group has established a caliphate and carried out mass persecutions of minority populations, primarily Christians and Yazidis.
Kayla Mueller, who came from Prescott, Ariz. and was 26 at the time of her death, was taken captive by ISIS militants in August 2013 while leaving a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, Syria.
She had been working to help Syrian refugees along the Turkish border with international aid agency Support to Life, and had gone to the hospital to help for a day. Kayla and some of her colleagues were then abducted while being taken to a bus to return back to Turkey.
On Feb. 6, 2015, ISIS released a photo of a damaged building, naming Kayla and claiming that she had been killed in a Jordanian airstrike in Raqqa, Syria.
Her family confirmed her death Feb. 10, saying that ISIS had sent them proof in an email. The email held three photos of her body, bruised on the face and dressed in a black hijab – a veil that covers the head and chest.
Kayla’s parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, recounted how their daughter had always been affected by the suffering of others, and that “her heart always broke when she saw suffering.”
From the time she was young Kayla had gotten involved with several volunteer organizations in her hometown, including youth camp.
She was good at speaking, so she got involved with different international groups, and had even been invited to go to Washington D.C. to meet with people as part of the leadership of the groups, Marsha recalled.
After starting her college career in environmental studies, Marsha explained that Kayla felt she wasn’t supposed to stay in school, but wanted to get her degree. She then changed her degree to political science with a minor in international relations and graduated in two and a half years.
Just two months after her graduation in Dec. 2009, Kayla traveled to India to work in an orphanage. When the weather got too hot, she went to the country’s northern border, where she worked with Tibetan refugees and taught them English.
She later went on to work in Israel, Palestine and France, where she studied for a year so she could learn French with the intention of doing mission work in Africa.
Carl Mueller, Kayla’s father, said that she truly shared in the suffering of those that she worked with. British philosopher and writer Bertrand Russell’s declaration that he had an “unbearable pity” for the suffering of mankind described how his daughter was.
That phrase, he said, “explains Kayla in as few words as you can possibly use. She truly suffered when she saw other people suffering and she had to help, she just had to help.”
In one letter Kayla wrote to her father while she was in India, she recounted how she had come home and was so angry about something that had happened that she was shaking.
What she managed to write down at the time was a shock even for herself when she read it later, Carl noted, recalling her words: “I find God in the suffering eyes reflected in mine. If this is how you are revealed to me this is how I will always seek you.”
Mr. Mueller said that after he received Kayla’s letter he wrote the phrase on a bookmark for her to carry with her in her travels, but she refused to take it. The bookmark now hangs on a wall in the Mueller home, alongside the various other gifts Kayla sent to her parents from abroad.
Kayla’s mother recalled how dedicated she was to alleviating and comforting the suffering of others, and said that her former declaration that “as long as I live I won’t let this suffering be normal,” is evidence of her determination.
“She looked at all people. Kayla was not narrow or selective. She had a real gift to learn from everyone, and she reached out to people that were different to learn from them,” Marsha said.
Despite how deeply she shared in others’ suffering, Kayla was always “fun-loving and joyful,” her mother explained, noting that she was always touched by how people with so little “still had so much.”
Kayla’s decision to travel to Syria rather than Africa, as she had originally planned, was the result of a chance encounter with a Syrian man while returning home from Palestine.
While on a layover in Egypt, Kayla met the man, who was not living in Syria but was visiting on holiday, and told him about the work she did.
Although he couldn’t understand why she would dedicate her life to others rather than looking out for herself, the man was touched by “Kayla’s love for people,” Marsha said.
The two of them kept in touch through skype and email, and once the Syrian crisis broke out the man went back to help his people because of Kayla’s influence, she recalled. He kept Kayla informed of the situation, and because of that she decided to travel to the Turkish border to work with Syrian refugees.
While on the border, Kayla worked with women whose husbands had either been killed, captured or were fighting with the Syrian Army.
Together with a few other colleagues Kayla helped to found an organization called “Dignity” in Arabic, where the women sold homemade baby clothes in order to raise money for their families.
Carl recalled how in one talk Kayla gave in their hometown, she explained that one of the women had asked her “Where is the world?”
“And Kayla, having no answer, said all she could do was sit and cry with them. That’s what she did, she comforted those people and she wanted to be where the suffering was the worst.”
Marsha said the last time they saw Kayla was at the end of May to the beginning of June, 2013 when she had come home for a 10 day visit, just two months before her abduction.
At the end of the visit, Marsha recalled how she sat on the couch with Kayla and held her hand, telling her “Kayla I just don’t want you to go this time, I want you to stay.”
Although the topic of conversation quickly changed, Marsha said that the next morning Kayla came out with a clay hand she had made and let dry in her room, saying “Mom, you’ll always have my hand.”
The expression became the inspiration and namesake for the Mueller’s nonprofit organization “Kayla’s hands,” which they founded after her death in order to honor her and continue her work in serving others.
After Kayla was abducted, her parents received ransom demands from ISIS, including requests for extremely large sums of money and the release or exchange of other prisoners.
The militants had even threatened them, saying Kayla would be killed if they spoke out, “so that’s why no one heard anything for 18 months,” Carl noted, and revealed that not even the rest of their family knew about the abduction for several months.
Marsha said that Kayla had always stayed in close contact with them through letters and skype, and that once they found out Kayla had been taken, she continued to write her daughter, and has 10 full notebooks of her correspondence detailing what was going on at home and “the miracles” they saw happening.
Faith has kept them going throughout the stress of the process, the Mueller’s said. "I don’t think we could have done it without faith.”
After the tension placed on them personally as well as their marriage in the face of making life or death decisions regarding their daughter, their relationship has been changed “forever,” Carl said, “but we have one thing, and that’s our faith. And it keeps bringing us back together and making us strong.”
Kayla’s message to the world, they explained, is that “one person can make a difference…one person with extraordinary faith, extraordinary compassion and extraordinary courage can make a difference, and Kayla has.”
They said that while they are just normal people, their daughter, whom they called “Special K” from the time she was little, was in fact the special one, and they want to continue her legacy.
The couple also made an appeal to the international community to make a greater effort in fighting against ISIS, saying that “If world had gotten together in 2013 when this group really formed, a lot of these kids would be alive, a lot of these families wouldn’t have their homes destroyed.”
“So there was a lot not done; people just kind of kept thinking it would go away,” Marsha said.
Her husband echoed her thoughts, saying that the world needs to band together and “bring this to a stop. It’s not the United States, we can’t police the world…it’s got to be all the countries and they’ve all got to do brave things.”
Sister Janice Grochowsky, CSJ (Congregation of St. Joseph)
‘Never cease to be amazed at God’s
initiative and action in your life’
Sister Janice Grochowsky, CSJ, is Chancellor and Director of the Tribunal for the Diocese of Dodge City.
SKR: Why did you enter the religious life?
Sister Janice Grochowsky, CSJ: The identifiable starting point is a “religious experience” I had in April 1986. The presence of Jesus seemed almost tangible. Over the course of several months, I began to have a sneaking suspicion that God was calling me to religious life. Eventually, I yielded to God’s invitation.
SKR: Why did you choose your particular congregation?
Sister Janice: I had contact with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Wichita attending St. Mary School in Newton. As a young adult I came to know a Sister Adorer of the Blood of Christ, but by my mid-20s I had established a deeper relationship with the Sisters of St. Joseph.
Is Oklahoma's use of lethal injection cruel and unusual?
By Kate Veik
Washington D.C., May 2, 2015 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News) - The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a case challenging the use of the lethal injection in the United States, following a number of botched executions.
Lawyers for three death-row inmates in Oklahoma argued that the state’s three-drug protocol for executions violates constitutional bans on cruel and unusual punishment. The protocol includes the potentially unreliable sedative midazolam.
Midazolam was used in the controversial execution of Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett in 2014. Lockett’s execution took more than forty minutes. Although he was sedated, Lockett’s body writhed and he breathed heavily during the execution. Lockett eventually died of a heart attack.
Midazolam was also used in two other prolonged executions last year in Ohio and Arizona in which prisoners appeared to suffer.
Justice Elena Kagan asked Oklahoma officials May 29 during the arguments in Glossip v. Gross how they could justify using midazolam, which has not been proven to protect inmates from feeling the effects of the potassium chloride, which she described as “being burned alive from the inside.”
“So suppose that we said, we’re going to burn you at the stake, but before we do, we’re going to use an anesthetic of completely unknown properties and unknown effects,” Kagan said. “Maybe you won’t feel it; maybe you will. We just can’t tell. And you think that would be okay?”
Justice Samuel Alito countered that Oklahoma and other states have been forced to use midazolam because opponents of the death penalty have pressured drug companies to not produce or sell more reliable sedatives.
“Let’s be honest about what’s going on here,” Alito said. “Executions can be carried out painlessly … is it appropriate for the judiciary to countenance what amounts to a guerilla war against the death penalty?”
The Supreme Court last took up the issue of lethal injection in 2008. In that case, Baze v. Reese, the court ruled that the standard three-drug protocol did not violate constitutional bans on cruel and unusual punishment. However, the court clarified that the first drug in any protocol must prevent inmates from experiencing the intense pain cause by the second and third drugs. The standard protocol approved in 2008 included sodium thiopental rather than midazolam.
Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City reaffirmed his opposition to the death penalty in comments to CNA May 1.
“We don't end the cycle of violence by committing more violence," Archbishop Coakley said. “In all of these crimes, we lost a life, and the death penalty only serves to further devalue human dignity. When available, we should choose other non-lethal ways to ensure justice and protect society.”
When the court announced plans in January to re-examine lethal injection protocol, Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston prayed that “the court's review of these protocols will lead to the recognition that institutionalized practices of violence against any person erode reverence for the sanctity of every human life.”
“Capital punishment must end,” said Cardinal O'Malley, who is also the head of the U.S. bishops' pro-life activities committee.
Archbishop Thomas Wenski, who leads the U.S. bishops' committee on domestic justice said the execution at the center of Glossip and Gross reveals “how the use of the death penalty devalues human life and diminishes respect for human dignity.”
Pope Francis has also called for the abolishment of all forms of the death penalty.
There are several possible outcomes to Glossip v. Gross. The court could send the case back to the district court for re-evaluation, or issue a ban on midazolam or clearer guidelines for lethal injection.
The Supreme Court had already issued, on Jan. 28, a stay of execution for the plaintiffs in the case, pending its final outcome.
In light of the controversy over the use of midazolam, several states are revisiting other methods of execution, including the electric chair, firing squad, or gas chamber. In March, Utah adopted a law legalizing a five-person firing squad as the official back-up method of execution for the state, should it be unable to obtain the three drugs necessary for lethal injection.
Sister Janice Friess, ASC (Adorers of the Blood of Christ)
‘My personal joy is bringing Christ to those I serve’
Sister Janice Friess, ASC, is Pastoral Chaplain at Via Christi, St. Francis, Wichita. She is a religious vocation from St. Aloysius, Ransom.
SKR: Why did your enter religious life?
Sister Janice Friess, ASC: I grew up on a farm near Ransom, Kansas. Our town did not have a Catholic school, so each summer our parish would have a two-week vacation/summer school. Three different religious communities came at different times to teach religion to the school children. The orders were: Sisters of St. Joseph, Wichita; Dominican Sisters, Great Bend; and Precious Blood Sisters, Wichita. I was very intrigued by their joyfulness, and by the fact that they seemed to me to know everything. I remember telling my mother that I wanted to be a Sister when I grew up.
SKR: Why did you choose your particular congregation?
Sister Angela Erevia, MCDP (Missionary Catechists of Divine Providence)
Greatest challenge: ‘bridging the cultural divide’
Sister Angela Erevia, MCDP, is Director of Hispanic Ministry for the Diocese of Dodge City.
SKR: Why did you enter the religious life?
Sister Angela Erevia, MCDP: I entered religious life at a very early age of my childhood. My mom and dad were my idols and models of charity. They inspired me by the way they helped other people in need. At the age of 14 years, I did not have very lofty ideas of religious life. I only saw it as a way to serve others. My appreciation for religious life has grown through the years of service to the Church. I take every opportunity to invite young people to consider God’s call to the priesthood and religious life.
How do you remain in Jesus? Do what he did, Pope says
By Elise Harris
Vatican City, May 3, 2015 / 11:45 am (CNA/EWTN News) - On Sunday Pope Francis paid a visit to a parish on the southern outskirts of Rome, where he told parishioners that in order to be a good Christian they must always be attached to Jesus, who gives life.
“To remain in Jesus, and this is the hardest of all, means to do what Jesus did. To have the same attitude as Jesus,” the Pope told parishioners at Mary Queen of Peace in Ostia Lido, in the south of the diocese of Rome, May 3.
“When we expel others, for example, when we gossip, we don’t remain in Jesus. Jesus never did this. When we are liars, we don’t remain in Jesus. He never did it. When we cheat others with these dirty affairs, which are the work of everyone, we find ourselves dead. We don’t remain in Jesus,” he said.
To remain in Jesus, Francis explained, means “to do the same that he did. To do good, to help others, to pray to the Father, to care for the sick, to help the poor, the have the joy of the Holy Spirit.”
“A good question for us Christians to ask ourselves is this: do I remain in Jesus? Or am I far away from Jesus? Am I close to the vine that gives me life? Or am I dead?”
The Pope arrived to Mary Queen of Peace at 4 p.m., where he met with groups of the parish, including the elderly and sick, children and youth, and spouses who have had children baptized during the year.
After meeting with the various groups, Francis heard the confession of some of the parishioners before celebrating Mass at 6 p.m.
In his homily he drew inspiration from the day’s Gospel reading from John chapter 15, in which Jesus tells his disciples the parable of the vines and the branches.
The main message Jesus is giving his disciples in the parable is something he repeated to them often, above all in the Last Supper: “remain in me.”
“And the Christian life is this remaining in Jesus. This is the Christian life. To remain in Jesus. And Jesus, to explain well what he wanted to say, uses this beautiful image of the vine,” he said.
Each branch that detaches itself from the vine or is not united to it can’t bear fruit, and is tossed outside into the fire, Francis noted. It takes a lot of branches to make this fire, he said, so the ones that get tossed “are very, very useful, but not to bear fruit.”
While we are all sinners, we are able to bear fruit to the extent that we are united to Jesus like the branches are to the vine, the Pope said, explaining that the Lord also has to prune us so that we can give more.
“If we detach ourselves from him, if we don’t remain in him, we are Christians in word only, but not in life. We are dead Christians, because we don’t give fruit like the branches attached to the vine,” Francis cautioned.
He also warned against “other branches” which Jesus refers to in another passage, saying that they are the “hypocrites” who pretend to be a disciple of Jesus, but who “do the opposite.”
These people might even go to Mass every Sunday, but they live “like pagans,” he said, and explained that remaining in Jesus means to have the desire to receive both forgiveness and pruning from him.
Pope Francis also pointed to the sacraments as a key means of strengthening our union with Jesus, who always invites to remain in him and forgives us when we sin “because he is merciful.”
What Jesus wants from us are these two things, he said: “that we remain in him, and that we are not hypocrites. And with this the Christian life goes forward.”
In turn, Jesus promises to give us whatever we ask for, Francis said, indicating how Jesus tells his disciples in the passage that “if you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done.”
“What a strength in prayer! Ask whatever you want…this is the omnipotent prayer.”
This omnipotence of prayer comes from remaining in Jesus and from being united to him as the branches to the vine, he concluded, and prayed that all would have the grace to remain in Christ.
Father Efiri Matthias Selemobri, MSP (Missionaries of St. Paul)
‘I think God willed it that I be a missionary priest’
Father Efiri Matthias Selemobri, M.S.P., a native of Nigeria, is Parochial Vicar at St. Mary Parish in Garden City.
SKR: Why did you enter the religious life , rather than becoming a diocesan priest?
Father Efiri Matthias Selemobri, M.S.P.: I think God willed it that I be a missionary priest rather than diocesan. The thought of sharing Jesus with many more, rather than (the people) where I was born, was very attractive.
SKR: Why did you chose your particular congregation?
Father Matthias: At the time, early 1980s, my missionary society (the Missionary Society of St. Paul) was the only one I knew existed other than the diocesan priesthood.
Huff Post editor: 'Why doesn't the Left advocate for persecuted Christians?'
By Andrea Gagliarducci
Rome, Italy, Apr 28, 2015 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News) - Lucia Annunziata, a journalist who directs and edits the Italian edition of The Huffington Post, has accused the political left in Western nations of remaining silent before ongoing massacres of Christians, which she called the “most horrible of the crimes perpetrated against the weakest.”
The self-proclaimed atheist also complained that young journalists are not proposing to The Huffington Post stories relating the situation of persecuted Christians.
“I ask myself where is the Left, with a capital L, the social party wide as it is because of its history and principles, because it is outside of the cages of daily life, and loves itself because it is attached to its own sense of justice,” Annunziata wrote in an op-ed published earlier this month.
This wide party, she continued, has remained silent “in front of the most terrible of crimes against the weakest … the massacres of Christians whose blood is shed in many parts of the world.”
“Why have I not received any petition to sign, though I receive many of varied kinds? Why has no-one promoted, if not a public protest, a sit-in, or a meeting? I hear no slogans for persecuted Christians, nor do I get documents or petitions on the issue,” Annunziata complained.
She lamented that “television is elsewhere, but that neither are young or ambitious journalists pushing The Huffington Post to give voice to these newly weak and helpless.”
Noting the situation of the political left in Italy, Annunziata noted it has “taken up a huge number of causes,” listing women's issues, youth unemployment, gay marriage, institutional reform, internet freedoms, innovation, poverty, austerity, the Islamic State, war, and the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and Tunisia's Bardo Museum.
However, she added, “with few exceptions, never does the Left express pain or horror for the men and women who die because of their faith.”
Annunziata called death the “final violation of the most important right of personal freedom,” and noted that Christianity is the faith of most Italians as well as serving as “the basis of the definition of the history and culture” of Europe.
She underscored that she is not Catholic, but “atheistic, and willing to remain so,” and has not been a cheerleader for Pope Francis.
Yet as a journalist, she emphasized that “the news is the loneliness of this very popular Pope, who has been for months the sole voice to denounce the massacre of the faithful, and is presently the only head of state capable of pointing the finger against the immobility of Western countries over these massacres” against Christians – unlike what happened after the massacre at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
According to Annunziata, the reason for Western countrys' silence in front of the massacres of Christians is “the fear that defending Christians means activating other mines in the already tough struggle, thus giving the ‘green light’ to a reaction and finally legitimizing” the claims of Rightist political parties which are “already fanning the flames of racism and of the clash of civilizations” for their own interests.
“Respect for human rights is the first sacrificial victim of the reason of state,” and this is why “the Left, as the political party that always claimed the strength and conviction to engage in the defense of the weakest” should take some stance, since this party has “a great deal of clout in Western countries.”
Annunziata proposes that “governments draft a plan to put thousands of refugees in safety” – providing them shelter, schools, and healthcare facilities, but also providing “citizenship to all the families willing to flee their countries,” with peculiar attention to “all the young people willing to come to Europe to study or work.”
This effort may be compared to that put into action by Western countries for thousands of Jewish victims of Nazism following the Second World War.
“This is not much, but it is a beginning, and also an effective message of moral strength and solidarity to oppose the violence of ISIS,” Annunziata concluded.
Sister Rose Mary Stein, OP, named ‘Woman of the Year’
By David Myers
Southwest Kansas Register
Sister Rose Mary Stein, OP, pastoral minister for adult education/formation at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe, has been named “Woman of the Year” by the Dodge City Area Women’s Chamber of Commerce.
She is being recognized for her devotion to empowering women’s gifts and leadership, and for her efforts in helping those in need during numerous mission trips to locations such as Greensburg, New Orleans, American Indian reservations, Africa, and others.
Sister Rose Mary will receive a trophy at the Dodge City Area Chamber of Commerce awards banquet Feb. 20. at 6 p.m. (Reservations are required to attend).