archives

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Washington, D.C.

To rousing applause from more than 600 diocesan and parish-level social ministers, the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering bestowed its Sr. Margaret Cafferty Development of People Award on Feb. 24 to the Florida-based “Coalition of Immokalee Workers.”

The coalition is a movement of Latino, Haitian and Mayan Indian farm workers that led a bitter, but ultimately successful, campaign to force Taco Bell, McDonalds and other fast-food companies to insist that their produce suppliers improve the wages and working conditions of agricultural laborers.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Washington, D.C.

Barak Obama's political good fortune, including surprising strength among white voters, does not represent a "magic wand or a silver bullet that will put an end to 350 years of racial prejudice and dysfunction," said Fr. Bryan Massingale this morning at the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington, D.C.

Massingale, a priest of the Milwaukee archdiocese, a professor of theology at Marquette University and an African-American, acknowledged in a morning address that "something significant is happening" with the Obama phenomenon.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Washington, D.C.

American Catholics are often “politically homeless,” according to the U.S. bishops’ top officer for social action, given that neither of the two major parties fully embrace the church’s social teaching – from opposition to abortion, for example, to support for health care and an end to the war in Iraq.

“We don’t fit with the right or the left, with Democrats or Republicans,” said John Carr, who directs the office for Justice, Peace and Human Development.

Interview with Cardinal Julio Terrazas Sandoval of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia
February 25, 2008

Born in Bolivia, Cardinal Julio Terrazas Sandoval, a Redemptorist, earned a degree in social ministry in France. He has been elected president of the Bolivian bishops’ conference on several occasions, and has also held a number of leadership positions in CELAM, the Latin American Episcopal Conference. Terrazas was an important figure at the recent Fifth General Conference of CELAM in Aparecida, Brazil. Since the 2005 election of populist Evo Morales as Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Terrazas has become one of a growing number of Latin American prelates living under leftist governments which are often congenial to the church on social justice matters, but also at times anti-clerical and occasionally hostile on life issues as well as the public role of the church.