Catholic sisters save over 300 children from deadly tsunami in Samoa

Appia, Somoa, Oct 7, 2009 / (CNA)

An Australian sister and her colleagues at a Samoan primary school saved the lives of 320 school children when she quickly moved them to higher ground after an earthquake triggered a tsunami warning.

The Queensland-born Sister Doris Barbero, a Salesian, was teaching at St. Joseph’s Primary School on the edge of the sea in a village in southwest Western Samoa. The school is sponsored by Catholic Mission in Australia.

On Sept. 29 Sr. Doris, two other sisters and 11 lay staff felt the violent rumbling of the earthquake. According to the Archdiocese of Sydney, she said her first reaction was relief that all the children and the school had come through unhurt.

Then came strong aftershocks and the tsunami warning.

"We realized we had a very short time to get the children away from the school and the sea and up to higher ground to the hills behind us," Sister Doris said in a phone conversation with the Archdiocese of Sydney.

Sr. Doris and the staff scrambled up the hills with the children, who ranged in age from four to fifteen years old.

The older children helped the younger ones, who were very frightened.

The group remained huddled in the hills until the following day, the Archdiocese of Sydney reports. Although they escaped, many did not know the fate of their families and some still have relatives missing.

Sr. Doris now wants to raise funds to build a secure tsunami shelter high in the hills behind the school with emergency supplies in the event of a future tsunami.

Samoa-born Catholic priests Fr. Paulino and Tui Kolio and Father Tie Tie celebrated a special evening Mass at St. Therese Church in Sydney last Friday for the grieving and distraught families of victims killed or missing in the wake of the tsunami.

The two priests, both based at St. Therese parish, are migrant chaplains with the Archdiocese of Sydney who serve the local Samoan community.

Pope: Christ is the true medicine for spiritual ills

Patron saint of pharmacists teaches us about God's medicine, Pope says

Vatican City, Oct 7, 2009 / (CNA)

During his Wednesday general audience, held for 40,000 people in St. Peter's Square, Pope Benedict XVI focused his catechesis on St. John Leonardi, the patron saint of pharmacists. This Italian saint, the Pope taught, can show us that God's medicine, his son Jesus, “is the measure of all things.”

St. John Leonardi, Pope Benedict recalled, was born in the Italian town of Diecimo in the year 1541. He studied pharmacology but abandoned it to focus on theology and was later ordained a priest.

Together with Monsignor Juan Vives and the Jesuit Martin de Funes he helped to found the Pontifical Urban College of Propaganda Fide, in which countless priests have been formed. Throughout his religious life, John Leonardi never lost his passion for pharmacology, convinced that "God's medicine, which is Jesus Christ Who was crucified and rose again, is the measure of all things," the Pope said.

The saint was also involved in advising a group of young people who in 1574 founded the Congregation of the Priests of the Blessed Virgin Reformed, later known as the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God.

"The resplendent figure of this saint invites all Christians, first and foremost priests, to strive constantly towards the 'highest measure of Christian life,' which is sanctity," the Pope said. "Indeed, it is only from faithfulness to Christ that authentic ecclesial renewal can arise.

“In those years,” Benedict XVI recalled, “in the cultural and social passage from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, the premises of contemporary culture began to be outlined, characterized by an unwarranted fracture between faith and reason which, among the negative effects it has produced, marginalized God and created the illusion of a possible complete autonomy of man, who chooses to live 'as if God did not exist.'”

"This is the crisis of modern thought which I have frequently had occasion to highlight and which often leads to forms of relativism," the Holy Father added. "John Leonardi understood what the true medicine for these spiritual ills was and he summarized it in the expression: 'Christ above all.'”

St. John Leonardi was also well-aware of how Jesus' parable of the weeds and wheat applied to the Church, Pope Benedict explained. He was “not scandalized by her human weaknesses and, in order to counteract the weeds, he chose to become good wheat; that is, he chose to love Christ in the Church and to contribute to making her a more transparent sign of Him."

"Conquered by Christ like St Paul, he pointed to and continues to hold up the Christocentric ideal for which we must give up all our personal interests," the Pontiff said. "Next to the face of Christ his eyes are fixed on the maternal face of Mary, who became the patron of his order."

"The example of this fascinating man of God,” Pope Benedict concluded, “is a model, a call to all priests and all Christians to live their vocation with enthusiasm."

Later, in his greeting to Italian-speaking pilgrims, Benedict XVI noted that today the Church honors Our Lady of the Rosary. He expounded: “To you, dear young people, I recommend praying the Rosary so that it may help you to do the will of God and to find safe refuge in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Dear sick people, experience the comfort of our heavenly Mother so that you may confront moments of trial. For you, dear newlyweds, the recitation of this prayer constitutes a daily commitment of your family so that it may grow, thanks to the intercession of Mary, in unity and in fidelity to the Gospel.”

African cardinal says anti-retroviral drugs better than condoms at fighting AIDS

Vatican City, Oct 7, 2009 /(CNA).

The Archbishop of Cape Coast, Ghana has said that resources intended to fight HIV/AIDS should be directed towards anti-retroviral drugs instead of condoms, explaining that prophylactics vary in quality and give the poor a “false sense of security” which facilitates the spread of the disease.

Speaking at a press conference, Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson said that if resources presently put into condom production instead subsidized anti-retroviral drugs, “I think we would be happier, in Africa, for the availability of the retroviral drugs then.”

“The ordinary use of condoms, just as a stop of AIDS, is not the given, appreciable resort in our case,” said the cardinal, who is the relator-general or secretary general of the current Synod of Bishops for Africa.

“We are talking about a product of a factory and there are different qualities. There are condoms which arrive in Ghana where in the heat they burst during sex and when that is the case, then it gives the poor a false sense of security which rather facilitates the spread of HIV/AIDS,” he added, according to the Catholic Information Service for Africa (CISA).

Cardinal Turkson called for abstinence and fidelity, saying they are the key to fighting the epidemic. He also said those who are infected should refrain from sexual relations.

The Ghanaian cardinal's comments mirror the findings of AIDS experts on how to combat the spread of the disease in Africa.