HHS opens 30-day comment period on conscience protections rule
WASHINGTON (CNS) --- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is accepting comments until April 9 on its move to rescind a Bush administration regulation giving federal protection to the conscience rights of health care providers. The 30-day comment period opened March 10 with publication of the rescission proposal in the print version of the Federal Register. When the Obama administration announced its review of the proposal in late February, Deirdre McQuade, assistant director for policy and communications in the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, encouraged participation in the comment process "by all committed to the sanctity of human life, the freedom of conscience and the ethical integrity of our healing professions." She added in a statement, "Efforts to nullify or weaken any conscience protection will undermine our national heritage of diversity and religious freedom, reduce patients' access to life-affirming health care, and endanger the national consensus required to enact much-needed health care reform."

Orthodox Christian leaders come to LMU for ecumenical dialogue
LOS ANGELES --- The Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Loyola Marymount University will sponsor a symposium March 19 to promote a dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox faiths.

His Eminence, Archbishop Honvan Derderian of the Armenian Orthodox Church and His Grace, Bishop Maxim of the Serbian Orthodox Church will discuss the nature of the basic tenets of the Christian faith in the symposium: "Who Do People Say I Am? True God and True Man: Chalcedon's Christology in a Postmodern World." The two Orthodox leaders will look back to earlier centuries of Christianity to examine who Christ is within the Orthodox and Catholic traditions and what it means to be Christian today in one common faith.

"It is important to explore what divides us and what brought about this division," said Demetrios Liappas, interim director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute. "First there was one Christian Church, then two, then many more."

In its fourth year at LMU, the Huffington Ecumenical Institute strives to promote the unity of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches by providing support for constructive dialogue and encounters between these two faiths. The 7 p.m. symposium will take place at the Roski Center, in University Hall, and it is free and open to the public. For more information and RSVP, call (310) 338-1917.

'Recovery Express' appeals to Congress for help on home foreclosures
WASHINGTON (CNS) --- Come March 26 Jaime Silahua and his family are facing life on the streets. His bank, it turns out, is foreclosing on his home in Antioch, Calif. It didn't matter, Silahua said, that he tried to renegotiate the terms of his loan, citing economic hardship brought on by his teenage son's yearlong treatment for leukemia. The bank turned down his appeal, saying his income fell just below the amount needed to qualify as a hardship case. Silahua, who supports his family by working as a handyman in the community 35 miles east of Oakland, isn't sure yet where he, his wife and three children will be come March 27. But he has pursued lots of options, including making a 3,000-mile bus trip to Washington as a "recovery rider" to take his story to Congress. The trip came courtesy of the "Recovery Express" caravan, which pulled into Washington March 10 for a rally and meetings with members of Congress and White House staffers. Put together by the People Improving Communities Through Organizing Network, the four-day caravan pulled out of Antioch March 6 and stopped in Denver; Kansas City, Mo.; Springfield, Ill.; Chicago; Flint, Mich.; and Camden, N.J., on a whirlwind cross-country trek. At churches along the way more people joined the caravan.

Cardinal named to board promoting canonization of Archbishop Sheen
PEORIA, Ill. --- Cardinal Roger Mahony has been named to the episcopal advisory board for the Cause for Beatification of the Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the Archbishop Fulton John Sheen Foundation announced. Cardinal Mahony joins bishops from around the US in supporting the cause. Archbishop Sheen (1895-1979) was a popular evangelist, radio/TV personality, writer and missionary. In 2002, his cause for beatification and canonization was officially opened by the Diocese of Peoria, Sheen's birthplace. More information is on the Foundation's website, www.archbishopsheencause.org.

Bill giving laity control of parish finances killed in Connecticut
HARTFORD, Conn. (CNS) --- At the request of its proponents, a bill that would have given laypeople financial control of their parishes in Connecticut has been withdrawn and is dead for this legislative session. In a joint statement March 10, the co-chairmen of the Connecticut Legislature's Judiciary Committee, Sen. Andrew J. McDonald of Stamford and Rep. Michael Lawlor of East Haven, announced the cancellation of a scheduled March 11 hearing on the controversial bill. There was no immediate comment on the bill's demise from the Catholic bishops of Connecticut, who had strongly opposed the legislation and urged Catholics to turn out at the hearing in large numbers. "At the request of the proponents who are advocating this legislation, we have decided to cancel the public hearing for tomorrow, table any further consideration of this bill for the duration of this session, and ask the attorney general his opinion regarding the constitutionality of the existing law," said McDonald and Lawlor, both Democrats and Catholics. "It would serve no useful purpose to have a conversation about changing the laws that govern existing Roman Catholic corporations until we know if any of these existing laws are constitutional," they said.

Bishops join call for U.S. to support long-term development in Iraq
WASHINGTON (CNS) --- The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has joined a broad group of religious, justice, and relief and development organizations in calling upon President Barack Obama to assist and protect vulnerable Iraqis and pursue efforts that lead to long-term development in war-torn Iraq. In a March 4 letter to the White House, 44 organizations asked the president to mandate that "civilian agencies take the lead in formulating and implementing an effective humanitarian and development strategy." Stephen Colecchi, director of the U.S. bishops' Office of International Justice and Peace, said the letter's call parallels one aspect of the U.S. bishops' 2006 statement seeking a responsible transition in Iraq and the eventual withdrawal of American military forces from the country. A key to Iraq's development is creating a stable country where all Iraqis are safe and refugees -- both Christian and non-Christian -- can return to their communities, Colecci told Catholic News Service March 9.

Hospitals must 'do no harm' to environment, speakers say at CHA event
WASHINGTON (CNS) --- The health care credo of "first, do no harm" must also be the mantra of hospitals as they assess their effects on global climate change, an environmentalist told Catholic health care professionals at a recent Web-based seminar. Gary Cohen, founder and co-executive director of Health Care Without Harm and executive director of the Environmental Health Fund, addressed participants at 325 sites around the country in the Webinar sponsored by the Catholic Health Association and several Catholic health systems. He was joined by Sister Catherine O'Connor, a member of the Congregation of St. Brigid who is vice president for mission and sponsorship at Covenant Health System in Lexington, Mass. A theologian and a licensed psychologist, she discussed the church teachings that call Catholics and the institutions they lead to "ecological stewardship" of the world around them. Cohen, introduced as "a pioneer in the green health care movement," offered a number of tools and recommendations to help hospitals "understand their ecological footprint."

Cardinal to seek advice from bioethics center on health care proposal
BRAINTREE, Mass. (CNS) --- Boston Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley announced March 6 that he would seek the advice of the National Catholic Bioethics Center on a proposed relationship between Catholic hospitals in his archdiocese and a state-subsidized health program for the poor. Caritas Christi Health Care, the second-largest health care system in New England, announced March 3 that it is considering an agreement that would allow it to be a health care provider for poor and low-income Massachusetts residents enrolled in the Commonwealth Care Program. The proposal has come under fire because the state-run program covers abortions and family planning services. But Caritas officials said their facilities at "all times and in all cases" would abide by the U.S. bishops' ethical directives for health care facilities forbidding abortions and all other procedures that contradict church teaching. "To be perfectly clear, Caritas Christi will never do anything to promote abortions, to direct any patients to providers of abortion or in any way to participate in actions that are contrary to Catholic moral teaching, and anyone who suggests otherwise is doing a great disservice to the Catholic Church," Cardinal O'Malley said in his blog, www.cardinalseansblog.org.

Abortion results in excommunication for mother and doctors in Brazil
VATICAN CITY (CNS) --- A top Vatican official agreed with a Brazilian archbishop's decision to excommunicate the mother of a nine-year-old girl who had been raped by her stepfather and the doctors who aborted the girl's twins. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America said, "It is a sad case, but the real problem is that the conceived twins were innocent people and they had a right to live and should not have been killed." Excommunication against those responsible for the abortion was legitimate, he said in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa, March 7. Doctors at a hospital in Recife, Brazil, performed the abortion March 4 during the girl's fourth month of pregnancy. Abortion in Brazil is illegal except in cases of rape or if the mother's life is in danger. The girl, who weighed a little more than 66 pounds, reportedly had been raped repeatedly by her stepfather from the time she was 6 years old. The 23-year-old stepfather has been arrested and is also accused of raping the girl's 14-year-old handicapped sister.

The Tidings: Upcoming issues and regional sections Upcoming issues and regional sections for The Tidings are as follows: ---March 20: San Gabriel. ---March 27: Our Lady of the Angels. ---April 3: Santa Barbara. ---April 10: San Pedro.