Free Republic

Once reserved for the dying, the anointing of the sick is now offered to any Catholic who needs healing from a serious illness Mary Ellen Segraves could sense the fear in her ailing mother Ceil's eyes the day after her knee surgery. But when Rev. Yaroslav Mendyuk approached her hospital bed to offer the sacrament of the sick, Segraves saw her mother light up. Following the priest's lead, Ceil Segraves crossed herself with a frail hand taped with tubes and closed her eyes as Mendyuk anointed her forehead and hands with oil and recited the blessing from his prayer book....

Vatican City, Mar. 16, 2006 (CNA) - Today, the Vatican released a letter sent by Pope Benedict XVI to Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, major Archbishop of Lviv of the Ukrainians, recalling the forced fusion of Catholics into the Orthodox Church by the communist Soviet government in 1946. The Pope’s message served to mark what he called "the sad events to which the cathedral of St. George at Leopoli was witness, in March of sixty years ago." In the letter, which was dated February 22nd, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, the Holy Father recalled the infamous March 1946 date,...