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March 25Mother Dolores Hart, O.S.B. From the Movies to the Monastery

From the day he showed up at a convent with a few leftover fish beneath his arm to the days when he rummaged through grocery store Dumpsters in search of produce and baked goods, Barney Welch believed.   He believed he could help feed the poor. He believed his charity would prosper even when he was no longer able to work at it 18 hours a day. He believed it would find a permanent home even as it bounced between temporary ones.  "I've always believed in divine providence," Welch said. "And I've never been disappointed."The charity Welch started a quarter-century ago...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, JUNE 1, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The convent of the Chaldean Sisters of the Sacred Heart was robbed and occupied by terrorists, reported www.AsiaNews.it. The two women religious living in the Angel Raphael convent told AsiaNews that a group of terrorists broke into the convent while they were away Thursday. Upon the women's return they found everything had been stolen and the convent taken over for military operations. The convent is in the largely Christian Dora quarter of Baghdad, where an anti-Christian campaign of persecution continues. AsiaNews cited anonymous sources who said that Shiite militants are behind the attack. Chaldean...

 At 30 years old, Sister Danielle Gonzalez is the youngest of 19 nuns at the community of Mary Help of Christians Academy in North Haledon. No lightning-bolt moment brought Danielle Gonzalez to the convent at St. Joseph's Provincial Center, just a gentle and consistent call that only she could hear.  Gonzalez, 30, who grew up in Pequannock, was a senior at the College of New Jersey who enjoyed wearing Jones New York suits by day and dancing at clubs with friends by night. She earned a black belt in karate before the idea of becoming a nun ever entered...

Rome, Jul. 11, 2006 (CNA) - The Diocese of Osnabrück in Germany has announced it is building a convent on the site of the Nazi concentration camp of Esterwegen, where four religious sisters of the Franciscans of Münster will take up residence to serve those visiting the camp. The Kath.net news agency reported that the construction of the convent will entail demolishing the old building that housed the offices of the Nazi officials who ran the camp.  The land where the camp is located belongs to the municipality of Emsland, which has granted approval for the construction. The Franciscan sisters...

A Romanian nun has died after being bound to a cross, gagged and left alone for three days in a cold room in a convent, Romanian police have said. Members of the convent in north-west Romania claim Maricica Irina Cornici was possessed and that the crucifixion had been part of an exorcism ritual. Father Daniel Cornici was found dead on the cross on Wednesday after fellow nuns called an ambulance, according to police. On Saturday a priest and four nuns were charged in connection with her death. Orphan Police say the 23-year-old nun, who was denied food and drink throughout...

Two Convents Attacked In Bihar BETTIAH (ICNS) -- Unidentified assailants have attacked two convents in Bihar seriously injuring nuns in apparent robbery attempts. An elderly nun was hospitalized with serious head injuries after a gang of 15 men attacked the Notre Dame convent at Raxual in Bihar on the midnight of June 9. The convent comes under the diocese of Bettiah. In another incident, Sisters of Charity of Nazareth convent at Sokho in Bhagalpur diocese was attacked a week ago. More details of the attack on this rural convent were not available. Notre Dame Sister Manjula in her late 60s...

Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, OSP     The early years of Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, the foundress of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, have been delineated more by oral tradition than by anything else. Elizabeth was born in the 1780s, a native of the Caribbean where havoc was constantly being created by both weather and the will of man. Her country of birth is not documented but oral tradition says she was born in Haiti and moved with her family to Santiago, Cuba.  She received an excellent education and in the early 1800s Elizabeth left Cuba and settled in the United States. By 1813, Providence directed her to Baltimore, Maryland where a...

The Associated Press CONCORDIA -- Twenty years ago a group of Roman Catholic nuns risked jail, community outrage and the wrath of their own government by declaring their home a sanctuary for those fleeing Guatemala's civil war. Over two years, the Sisters of St. Joseph housed about 40 people -- mostly poor Mayan Indians -- at Manna House of Prayer in Concordia. The people eventually moved on, one family going to Chicago, others to Salina and some eventually went back to Guatemala. One elderly woman died and is buried in a nearby cemetery. The towns of Concordia and Salina...

Alexandria, Va. -- Once upon a lifetime ago, Shelly Pennefather was the sweetest of shooting stars, an All-American at Villanova and the 1987 national player of the year. Since 1991, she has lived here, in the Poor Clare Monastery, at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in a very modest middle-class neighborhood. Pennefather has taken her vows and the name Sister Rose Marie of the Queen of Angels. She renounced her worldly life, including a six-figure salary as a professional basketball star in Japan, to answer her true calling: To serve God as a cloistered Poor Clare nun.

JOHN PAUL II HAS ENDANGERED THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH IN CUBA "Castro...bought the blessings of the Pope,...and a Church decoration that in fact represented a Papal Bull condoning all his crimes against humanity". By Jesús J. Chao* Houston Columnist La Nueva Cuba March 15, 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On March of 1938, Adolf Hitler annexed Austria to Germany. When the Austrian cardinal, Innitzer, publicly welcomed Hitler and urged Austrians to vote for the Anschluss, the prelate was summoned to Rome and made to sign a retraction. John Paul II’s policies towards Fidel Castro are in stark contrast with the unequivocal positions...