Feature Story: Boston Catholic Response to Earthquake in Haiti
After the devastation of the earthquake in 2010 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016, Haiti took another blow on Aug. 14, this time in the form of a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that claimed the lives of over 1,900 people in the southern part of the world's most impoverished country. But, as in the case of those previous natural disasters, people in Massachusetts and organizations on the ground in Haiti are asking how they can help.
Cardinal Seán O’Malley on Monday took to Twitter to offer prayers for the victims of Saturday’s magnitude 7.2 earthquake that devastated Haiti, killing over 1,200 people and displacing and injuring thousands more. The leader of the Boston Archdiocese also asked his flock to pray for his counterpart in Haiti, Cardinal Chibly Langlois, who was injured in the earthquake, according to a report Monday from the Catholic News Agency.

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The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston is getting a new head of philanthropy next month who hails from the Emerald Isle and who’s raised more than $1 billion for various nonprofits during his stellar professional career, officials said.

In a statement, the archdiocese said Cardinal Seán O’Malley appointed Gavan P. Mooney to assume the role of chief philanthropy officer on Sept. 7.

Parents are pushing back against an Archdiocese of Boston mandate that restricts local Catholic schools from requiring vaccinated students or staff members to wear masks.
Defrocked ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick last week became the highest-ranking Catholic church official to be criminally charged for sexual abuse, for assault and battery on a 16-year-old boy in Wellesley in the 1970s. Meanwhile, in unrelated cases, the archdiocese of Boston settled six lawsuits last week with former leaders accused of assaults across the state ranging from 1966 to 1990. Jim Braude was joined on Greater Boston by attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who has represented hundreds of victims of church abuse to talk about the church’s longstanding problem with sexual abuse in its ranks.

Garabedian said the McCarrick case could represent “a new era” for going after powerful leaders in the church, as more victims keep coming forward.
Summer is a time when many communities -- parishes, religious societies, neighborhoods, or entire cities -- hold events that are staples of their local culture. In areas with deep Catholic immigrant roots, honoring a patron saint is often intertwined with celebrating cultural heritage. But in the age of the coronavirus, communities have had to reconsider whether to hold their annual celebrations.
Catholic seminaries in the Northeast are requiring COVID-19 vaccination for their seminarians before the coming semester begins. At St. John’s Seminary in Boston, vice rector Father Thomas Macdonald said seminarians are “expected” to be vaccinated.
The community of Marshfield came together on Wednesday to honor the life of an 8-year-old boy who died of cancer. Hundreds of people lined the streets as dozens of police cruisers and motorcycles from Marshfield and other communities honored Danny Sheehan with a procession after his wake.
For almost 30 years, Damaris Pimentel frequented the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Jamaica Plain, getting her children baptized there, attending her sister’s wedding. Pimentel’s siblings even went to the K-12 Blessed Sacrament School.

That ended in 2004 when the church closed, and the Archdiocese of Boston sold it to the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation the following year for $6 million. That nonprofit created 80 affordable housing units on the Blessed Sacrament campus — 36 apartments in the Betsaida Gutierrez Cooperative, 16 affordable condos at Creighton St, and with Pine Street Inn, 28 affordable apartments for formerly homeless — but never managed to develop the church.
As some Catholics are seeking a religious exemption to the coronavirus vaccine mandates that are becoming more common in workplaces and even some public venues, priests in the Archdiocese of New York have been advised not to get involved in that process. The article mentions the Cardinal, MC Sullivan, and Boston College.
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