IN THIS ISSUE ...

Visitor Stories:

• Sister’s vows continue Lieser lineage in religious life

• Parishioners sent from parishes in Freeport, St. Rosa and New Munich build a house, and good will, in Mexico

• U.S. Delegation visits Mexico; Mexican ‘mini-delegation’ (bishop) returns favor

• EDITORIAL: Neither brush abuse aside nor tar with a broad brush

• Tabby, or not tabby?
Return of the prodigal

• Picturing a partnership: Homa Bay and St. Cloud

FAITH ALIVE



Picturing a partnership:
Homa Bay and
St. Cloud
(see photos below)


Above, from left, retired Bishop Colin Davis, Homa Bay Bishop Philip Anyolo, Archbishop Alain Lebeaupin, apostolic nuncio of Kenya, and Bishop Kinney visit during a break in the delegates’ day.

Delegate Ed Janski, a member of Immaculate Conception Parish in Rice, checks out a corn crib at a school in the Homa Bay Diocese.


Bishop Kinney waters a tree planted to symbolize the growth of St. John’s Seminary in Rakwaro, Kenya on its 50th jubilee.



Patients, above, are cared for at a Kenyan hospital.

A detail from a poster touting an HIV/AIDS conference sponsored by the diocese.

Sister’s vows continue Lieser lineage in religious life

Parishioners sent from parishes in Freeport, St. Rosa and New Munich build a house, and good will, in Mexico

by Joseph Young
Visitor Interim Editor
FREEPORT-NEW MUNICH-ST. ROSA — Franciscan Sister Anita Jennissen calls it “the house the tri-parish built.” Members of a delegation to Mexico sent from parishes in New Munich, St. Rosa, and Freeport call it “all in a week’s work. Pablo and Tomasa and their family now call it “home.”

A 13-member delegation supported by the clustered parishes of Sacred Heart in Freeport, St. Rose of Lima in St. Rosa, and Immaculate Conception in New Munich spent from June 26 to July 6 at their sister parish, San Rafael Mission in the town of San Rafael, about 50 miles south of Monterrey in northeast Mexico.

The builders, standing from left, are: Joe Wiechman, Agnes Job, Ben Ettle, Laura Hoeschen, Katie Wiechman, Benedictine Father Roger Klassen, Deacon Rick Scherping, Philip Wiechman, Ed Overman, Elizabeth Hull, Isabella Schmidt, and Jerry and Amy Wilwerding. Seated at the center is Orascio, a builder from the San Rafael area. (Photo courtesy of Sister Anita Jennissen)	Tomasa and Pablo and five of their seven children stand proudly in front of the new home constructed mainly by 13 members of a delegation sent from parishes in New Munich, Freeport and St. Rosa. Pablo, a part-time worker, would never have been able to build such a house by himself. (Photo courtesy of Sister Anita Jennissen. OSF)

Last summer, said Sister Anita, “a delegation of 11 from the three parishes helped with the building of one of the rural community chapels. This year, they built a house for Tomasa and Pablo and their five children who still live at home — all who had been living in what could hardly be called a house.”
Sister Anita is one of five Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls who serve as missionaries from their base in the city of Saltillo in the state of Coahuila which is in the Diocese of Linares.

Also serving there are Franciscan Sisters Patricia Forster, Rose Mae Rausch, Colette Toenies and Janice Wiechman — all who hail from, or not too far from, the tri-parish community in St. Rosa, New Munich and Freeport.

U.S. Delegation visits Mexico; Mexican
‘mini-delegation’ (bishop) returns favor

by Sophie Schottler
Visitor Staff Writer
LITTLE FALLS — In an effort to testify to the work Franciscan sisters are doing in his diocese in Mexico, Bishop Ramon Calderon Batres came to visit the Franciscan sisters of Little Falls from Aug. 13 to 18.

In an Aug. 14 interview with the Visitor, Bishop Calderon said that his reasons for making the trip were threefold.

First, he came to know the tri-parish congregation that has shared a 10-year commitment of service and support with his own diocese, the Diocese of Linares, Mexico. Thus, he wanted to connect with the leadership of the cluster of three parishes in Freeport, New Munich and St. Rosa which work so closely with the leadership of parishes in Linares.

Second, Bishop Calderon wanted to meet the three parishes that sent two delegations to the Linares diocese (see adjoining story). He wanted to acknowledge return the gesture of fellowship that the delegation, led by Father Roger Klassen, brought to his diocese.

“Connecting with them is wonderful,” Bishop Calderon said. “It’s a gift because relationships are important for Franciscans.”

The word “pedophile” slouched back into the collective U.S. cultural consciousness with the Aug. 16 arrest of John Mark Karr for the Dec. 26, 1996, murder of 6-year-old beauty pageant contestant JonBenet Ramsey.

The word had last been seen creeping around in 2002 during the clergy sexual abuse scandal which the U.S. bishops promptly addressed with their Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, and subsequent implementation of that charter.

The scandal and its aftermath revealed numerous victims of clergy abuse. Men and women who had been abused as children and adolescents stepped forward, often demonstrating great courage, honesty and forgiveness.

But there were other victims, too, including the overwhelmingly vast majority of priests who have never and will never abuse others. Still, many members of the media and the public, including some people in parish pews, painted all priests with a broad brush of suspicion.

Only 4.3 percent of 94,694 priests were accused of abuse of minors that happened between 1960 and 2002, according to a comprehensive study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA).

Tabby, or not tabby?
Return of the prodigal

by Joseph Young
Visitor Interim Editor

It was three hours past midnight on the morning of July 26. The Visitor staff had just finished preparing the July 27 edition of the newspaper for publication. I bicycled home from the office, unlocked my front door and began opening it.

A flurry of whiskers and fur scurried past my feet, then disappeared into the predawn darkness. On other occasions, I had been able, (with a shoe-and-shin “save” like a hockey goal tender) to deflect my wanderlustful tabby house cat back into the not-so-great indoors. But fatigue had made my feet unfleet while my cat was, well, as quick as a cat.

The cat did linger with tentative paws on the porch for a fleeting second while a fleeting second thought presumably flitted through her feline head before it fled. Then, like a cat-burglar in the night, she was gone.

I have been the “adoptive caretaker” of my parents’ cat for about a year, since it became apparent my brother, sister and I didn’t have the resources and support to keep my mother in her own home instead of in a nursing home. My father, who died three years ago, had named the cat Nuisance, also known as “Nuisie,” or “Nuise” for short.

Picturing a partnership: Homa Bay and St. Cloud

The delegation from the St. Cloud Diocese visits the grave site of Mill Hill Father John Kaiser, a son of the central Minnesota Diocese. A close-up of the grave, left, gives a brief history of the priest’s life. Father Kaiser was murdered after serving 36 years as a missioner in Kenya. His words and actions spoke boldly against injustices Kenyan people endured at the hands of the Kenyan government.

Deacon Peter VanderWeyst (fifth from left), St. Cloud Bishop John Kinney (directly under the cross), and Father Bill Vos (fourth from right) mingle with the 12 bishops of the Sudanese Episcopal Conference in Juba, Sudan. (Photo courtesy of the St. Cloud Diocesan Mission Office)

The city of Homa Bay, Kenya, and its diocese border Lake Victoria. Washing laundry and catching fish are two pursuits Kenyans are commonly involved in on the great lake. (Photos courtesy of the St. Cloud Diocesan Mission Office)

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