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Virginia man rows to raise awareness, funds for Alzheimer’s caregivers

It wasn’t breaking the world record for rowing distance of which John Musser was the most proud.

Nor was it that he rowed on a rowing machine for 24 hours at his parish, St. Joan of Arc in Yorktown, at the beginning of its recent service week.

Musser felt proudest about raising awareness for Alzheimer’s caregivers and $57,500 for the Alzheimer’s Association. He achieved these feats as part of the Alzheimer’s Association’s ”

CNS/Jennifer Neville, The Catholic Virginian

” fundraising campaign in which people from throughout the world do fundraisers on or near June 20, the summer solstice.

His June 21 fundraiser placed in the top five for the participant division at the national level.

Musser’s father, mother-in-law and three grandparents suffered dementia, and he is now the caregiver for his wife, Robin, 56, who has young onset Alzheimer’s.

Through this difficult chapter in his life, he said, his faith has grown.

“As much as I thought I had this powerful, mature faith, here’s a place where it needed some serious growth,” he said, adding that he realized that part of faith is allowing others the opportunity to be the hands and feet of Christ by assisting him.

The Compassio Row, Latin for “to suffer together,” drew most of its funds through outright donations, but parishioners and friends from across the country paid $100 to row for one hour by him on one of other three machines in the church commons, and many congregated around him for support. He said one of his objectives was to suffer vicariously with Alzheimer’s caregivers.

“We are all in this together whether life is good or bad,” parishioner Peter Romeo, who rowed for an hour with Musser, told The Catholic Virginian, Richmond’s diocesan newspaper. “If someone is hurting or has a need, we respond.

“I think that is part of our great commission — to make disciples of the world … to join in the suffering of others to show that they aren’t in this alone.”

More than 6 million Americans have Alzheimer’s. Eighty-three percent of the help provided to older adults in the United States is from family members, friends or other unpaid caregivers. Of those, nearly half assist adults with dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association website.

“As a husband, you can’t feel worse than watching something slowly kill your wife, and you have to just sit there and try to distract her from it. And you can’t do anything to take it away. And it’s terribly sad to see them lose their independence,” Musser said.

Musser rowed 282,981 meters (175.8 miles), topping the world record by 8,865 meters (5.5 miles) in the lightweight division. He suffered an adverse physical condition due to the intensity of his workout and was in the hospital overnight. Nevertheless, Musser said he is “so glad” he did the row because it allowed him to “take a swing at Alzheimer’s.”

“I’ve got a wife suffering, and I can’t fight this thing. I can’t alter it. I can’t change what she is going through, but I can do something for others,” he said. “I can try to make a difference in the future, and this is my way. It’s my way of staring Alzheimer’s in the face and saying, ‘I’m going to make a difference.'”

His next goal: to be as successful caring for his wife as he was in the row.

— Jennifer Neville

Virgil Dechant, past supreme knight of Knights of Columbus, dies at 89

Virgil Dechant, the longest-serving supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, holding the office from 1977 to 2000, died in his sleep Feb. 15 in his hometown of Leawood, Kansas. He was 89.

“God has called home a good man and one of the Knights’ great leaders,” said Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, who succeeded Dechant in the top post. “Virgil Dechant used to say that his goal was to leave the Knights better than he found it, and in myriad ways, he accomplished that.”

Dechant “leaves a lasting legacy and an excellent example of what it means to be a Knight and a fraternalist,” Anderson added in a statement released Feb. 17. “Nowhere is this more true than in his home state of Kansas, which remains in many ways a model jurisdiction.”

Born Sept. 24, 1930, in Antonino, Kansas, Dechant joined the Knights in 1949 and was a member of LaCrosse (Kansas) Council 2970 and St. Augustine Council 2340 in Liebanthal, Kansas. A successful businessman, Dechant operated a private farm in Kansas and he also owned and operated his own car dealership and farm equipment firm.

Dechant arrived at the Knights’ headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1967 to serve as the supreme secretary for the fraternal order. Ten years later, he was elected supreme knight.

During his tenure in the top post, Dechant “oversaw tremendous growth in the order’s membership as well as in its assets and insurance business,” according to a Knights’ news release about his death. He also opened the organization to greater involvement by the wives and families of its members.

In addition, Dechant forged a close relationship with the Vatican during the pontificate of St. John Paul II, leading the order to sponsor numerous renovation projects — including of the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica — and working with the pope to promote the faith in Eastern Europe, which was then behind the Iron Curtain.

In 1988, when the Knights held their Supreme Convention in Vancouver, British Columbia, President Ronald Reagan in addressing the attendees via videotape singled out Dechant “for the counsel he has given me over the years.” In his wider comments, Reagan commended the organization for its views on the family, work against pornography and help for the disadvantaged.

In 1990, the pope appointed Dechant to the lay board of directors for the Institute for the Works of Religion, commonly known as the Vatican bank.

At the 2003 convention, the then-retired Dechant urged the assembled Knights to take the lead fighting the “new anti-Catholicism.” He also said the Knights understand that lay leadership “is not about the laity seizing control of the church” but rather to work in ” solidarity and cooperation” with bishops and priests.

On April 6, 2005, Dechant escorted President George W. Bush to the funeral of St. John Paul at St. Peter’s Basilica.

Among his honors was his appointment to the Order of Pius IX, the highest papal honor that can be conferred on a Catholic layman who is not a head of state. Dechant also received the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Gregory the Great and was a Knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

In 1998, Dechant received the National Right to Life award along with Sen. Jesse Helms, R-North Carolina, for their staunch support of the right to life and opposition to abortion.

Dechant is survived by his wife, Ann, their four children, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Vincentians play key role in U.N. commission’s focus on world’s homeless

After nearly 75 years, the United Nations has taken a significant step to address global homelessness.

The U.N. Commission for Social Development, at its annual meeting in February, adopted a resolution that calls for world governments to begin to address the housing needs of an estimated 100 million-plus people worldwide who have no home at all.

It was the first resolution specifically addressing homelessness adopted by any body of the U.N. since it was founded in 1945.

The resolution is an important first step toward the goal of reducing global homelessness by 50 percent by 2030, said Vincentian Father Guillermo Campuzano, who chaired the Working Group to End Homelessness, which included representatives of Catholic religious congregations, other faith-based groups and nongovernmental organizations.

He told Catholic News Service March 9 that the resolution will be submitted to the U.N. Economic Social Council for a vote and is expected to go to the General Assembly for approval.

Throughout the commission’s 10-day meeting, which ended Feb. 19, sessions looked at homelessness and its causes, including poverty, social upheaval, war and violence, natural disasters and climate change.

The resolution states that “the dignity of the human person is fundamental” while describing homelessness as a violation of human dignity and “an obstacle to the fulfillment of all human rights.”

Lydia Stazen, executive director of the Institute of Global Homelessness at Vincentian-run DePaul University in Chicago, also was involved in the effort and attended commission sessions.

She said the resolution can shape future U.N. priorities, especially as they relate to the Sustainable Development Goals the world body is addressing through 2030.

Homelessness is “an invisible issue, but one that we believe is really important to address if the other development goals are to be accomplished,” Stazen told CNS.

“We would like to see the U.N. take a leadership role on this issue the way they do around the other SDGs,” Stazen added, meaning the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Institute of Global Homelessness is most concerned for people living on streets, in parks, under bridges or in buildings unfit for habitation as well as people living in temporary accommodations and shelters.

Its best-known effort, an initiative called A Place to Call Home, has been established in 13 cities worldwide, including Chicago and Little Rock, Arkansas. Other cities are in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Croatia, England, India, Scotland, South Africa and Uruguay.

The project works with local experts to assess homelessness and then recommend strategies for community leaders to implement while tracking progress toward the reduction and eventual elimination of street homelessness.

Father Campuzano, who left his four-year U.N. assignment after the commission meeting and now is vice president for mission and ministry at DePaul University, said having a resolution in place will allow governments and NGOs worldwide to begin to measure how many people are homeless. With that information, local programs can be developed to meet the needs of individual communities, he said.

“We’re inviting countries to set different kinds of goals” to address local needs, the Vincentian explained.

The resolution stressed that homelessless is more than a lack of physical housing and is related to poverty, inadequate employment, little or no access to social services and indifference from the wider community.

It also emphasized the importance of developing family-oriented policies while explaining the connection between the breakdown of the family and homelessness.

The Vincentians and other Catholic representatives at the U.N. had pushed the commission to address homelessness in recent years. Father Campuzano and others helped build the working group that reached out to the commission in advocating that its members address homelessness. Commission members agreed in 2019 to focus its 2020 session on the issue.

Father Campuzano said the advocacy by the working group helped commission members understand that homelessness touches on every aspect of the SDGs the U.N. is addressing.

Stazen agreed, explaining that the time to act is long overdue.

“We want the idea that homelessness to be seen as solvable,” she said. “We do know what causes homelessness and what the solutions are. It’s really about building political will to get those right solutions in place.

“We’ve seen success in pockets around the world and we want to take those successes and bring them to more communities around the world.”

Dennis Sadowski

Vietnamese Seminary Candidates

(Vermont Catholic/Cori Fugere Urban)
Father Jon Schnobrich, vocations director for the Diocese of Burlington, poses with three men from Vietnam who are seminary candidates for the Diocese.

Three candidates for the seminary for the Diocese of Burlington from Vietnam arrived in Vermont in May and spent the summer studying English at Boston University –- where they will study for two more semesters -– as they prepare for seminary studies, ordination and service to the Catholic community of Vermont.

Giang Nu, 24, Thang Nguyen, 24, and Luan Tran, 31, answered what they consider to be God’s call to become missionary priests in Vermont.

“I was in the seminary in Vietnam and wanted to become a missionary. I prayed very much,” Nu said.

The three men made their way to Vermont with the help of a Boston Vietnamese Jesuit priest, Father Bao Nguyen, who works to raise funds for Vietnamese religious sisters, seminarians and priests to be trained in the United States.

Funds for their living expenses and education also come from the Vocations Office of the Diocese of Burlington and endowments.

There is a great need for evangelization, outreach and engagement of the culture to share the joy of the Gospel, said Father Jon Schnobrich, vocations director for the Diocese. “These men bring that witness of faith. They are following God’s will for their life.”

The presence of the men from Vietnam “helps us realize there is a universal dimension of the Church,” he continued. “We have a family of faith in all parts of the world.”

Nguyen was in the seminary in Vietnam when he felt a calling from God pushing him to go to the United States “to do His will,” he said.

Tran, also a seminarian in Vietnam, said his bishop asked him to consider becoming a missionary priest. “I’m very happy because I decided to come,” the former lawyer said. “We will do our best.”

The men agree that it was God who brought them here, and all are happy to be here. They stay with host families when not in school and said people have been friendly and welcoming.

Nu, a seminarian in Vietnam, said with a laugh that he wants to see snow in Vermont.

Though they miss family and friends and have found it challenging to learn English, they don’t worry. “Here we have help from the bishop [Burlington Bishop Christopher Coyne], Father Jon and many people,” Tran said. “And God is helping us.”

When Jesus called His disciples, He said, “Come, follow me.” To that, Tran added that God called the three men from Vietnam to “follow me to Vermont.”

While studying at Boston University, they live at St. John Seminary in Brighton.

Considering his call to be a missionary priest, Tran described it as being born in one place and going to another to tell people about God. “The most important thing is you want to bring happiness to everyone. You want to make others happy. My father told me if you want to bring happiness to others, you have to be happy.”

To bring happiness to others, he said, priests celebrate the Mass, pray and listen, and that is what he intends to do.

For Nu, being a missionary priest also includes helping people – especially the poor – and being charitable.

“Being a priest is being a servant,” Nguyen said. “God is in the midst of everyone. I will serve God and everyone.”

Father Schnobrich said it is anticipated that the three men will enter the seminary in the fall of 2018 and be ordained in 2023 and incardinated for service in the Diocese of Burlington.

They have met members of the Vietnamese community in Vermont, now served by a priest from Montreal.

The addition of these men to the ranks of the diocesan priesthood is especially welcome at a time when the Diocese is facing a shortage of clergy and entering a synod to plan for the future.

Their arrival – with the assistance of Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy during the immigration process – “is incredibly hopeful for us,” Father Schnobrich said. “It’s exciting. … We feel incredibly blessed.”

He said he is inspired by the men’s faith and courage and praised their host families for giving them the sense that this is now their home.

“Sometimes my mother and father call me and are sad” because they miss him, Nu said. “I tell them, ‘Don’t worry. The Lord wants me to be here.’”

— Originally published in the Fall 2017 issue of Vermont Catholic magazine.

Vietnamese seminarians

For the vocations director for the Diocese of Burlington, Father James Dodson, “it is a joy to welcome” three seminarians for the Diocese of Burlington from Vietnam. “It is always a great blessing when young men hear and respond to God’s call for their lives with faith, hope, love and a lot of prayerful excitement,” he said.

The new seminarians are Khoa Nguyen, An Dinh and Loc Vo.

They currently are living at St. John Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts, and studying English at Boston University.

The Diocese covers the cost of tuition, room and board and other miscellaneous expenses during their time of formation.

“God-willing, and upon successful completion of their formation, they will be ordained priests of the Diocese of Burlington and serve in Vermont for the rest of their lives,” Father Dodson said.

An was born in 1995 and has one younger sister. He graduated from Lac Hong University with a bachelor’s degree in software engineering in 2018. While in Vietnam, he served in parishes as a catechist, altar server, cantor and volunteer in hospitals and shelters for the less fortunate.

Loc was born in 1994. He is the youngest in his family, which includes four older brothers and three older sisters. He graduated from Hue University in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in literature. While in Vietnam, he was a vocational team leader of a group of Catholic students studying in Hue while serving Mass and teaching catechism.

An and Loc both arrived in the United States on Dec. 29, 2020.

Khoa was born in 1994 and has two younger sisters. He graduated from Medicine and Pharmacy University in Saigon with a bachelor’s degree in medicine in 2017. He worked in a children’s hospital in Vietnam for one year before coming to the United States in 2018 to study English at Holy Apostles Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut.

“There is an abundance of seminarians in Vietnam and a need for more seminarians and priests in the United States,” Father Dodson said. “It is in light of this reality that An, Loc and Khoa discerned God’s call and have come to Vermont as the first step in answering His call.”

The commitment to faith and family in Vietnam is strong, he noted: “The Vietnamese seminarians bring with them this lived experience, which can help to inspire, reignite and recapture a fervor for the faith in our families throughout the Diocese.”

The Diocese already had two seminarians from Vietnam, Luan Tran and Giang Vu; both are in their second year of pre-theology studying at St. Meinrad Seminary in Meinrad, Indiana.

“Please keep An, Loc and Khoa and all our diocesan seminarians in your daily prayers as together we pray for an increase in vocations throughout the Diocese of Burlington,” Father Dodson said.

 

Videos are new component to bishops’ ‘Faithful Citizenship’ guide

A series of long-planned videos that supplement the U.S. bishops’ quadrennial “Faithful Citizenship” document that provides guidance to voters during a presidential election year have been finalized for viewing.

Posted on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website at faithfulcitizenship.org and the USCCB’s YouTube channel at bit.ly/31DHDGN, five videos in four languages explore various aspects of Catholic social teaching while reflecting the teaching of Pope Francis.

The videos are part of the bishops’ effort to broaden their outreach through the document, titled “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility,” Jill Rauh, director of education and outreach in the USCCB’s Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, said.

“The videos intend to help Catholics engage in participation in political life, first and foremost, guided by their faith as opposed to any affiliation with any political party that they have,” Rauh explained to Catholic News Service Feb. 5.

“In addition, the videos invite Catholics to engage with civility and to learn about and advocate on behalf of all of who are vulnerable, from the unborn to immigrants to people who are in poverty, to our common home, to families,” she said.

Four English-language videos of about two minutes in length examine participation in public life, protecting human life and dignity, promoting the common good and loving others. The fifth video is a six-minute compilation of the highlights of the four shorter pieces.

Videos in Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese are slightly longer.

Each video, funded by was produced with young people in mind, Rauh added.

“The (bishops) had a particular interest in creating videos for sharing on social media and engaging with young people,” she said.

Along with images and voices of young people, each piece features one bishop narrating an aspect of Catholic social teaching. Each production closes with a different prayer specifically written for the series.

A letter introducing the document is one of the resources. Approved by the bishops during their fall general assembly in November, the letter reminds Catholics that “we bring the richness of our faith to the public square” and that “faith and reason inform our efforts to affirm both the dignity of the human person and the common good of all.”

Other wide-ranging resources are being made available to parishes, schools, prayer groups and other interested parties through the faithful citizenship web page.

The bishops who appear in the English-language videos include Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, USCCB president, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, Auxiliary Robert E. Barron of Los Angeles and Bishop Shelton J. Fabre of Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana.

The Spanish-language videos feature Archbishop Gomez, Archbishop Nelson J. Perez of Cleveland, who will soon move on to Philadelphia; Bishop Joe S. Vasquez of Austin, Texas; and Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas.

The videos in Tagalog feature Bishop Oscar A. Solis of Salt Lake City, while the videos in Vietnamese feature Auxiliary Bishop Thanh Thai Nguyen of Orange, California.

Scenes showing people feeding the hungry, protecting God’s creation, comforting the elderly, caring for children, migrant people and families, and engaging in civil discussions are prominent in the productions.

“The videos are meant to reflect the teaching of the bishops in ‘Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,'” Rauh explained. “The videos are really trying to make that teaching more accessible.”

In the video about Catholic participation in public life that introduces the series, Archbishop Gomez said, “The church’s participation in shaping the moral character of society is a requirement of our faith. It is a basic part of the mission we have received from Jesus Christ.”

Later in the piece he noted, “We are not aligned with any party, but we shine the light of faith to influence parties to which we may belong as well as to elected officials and thus in our communities.”

The productions, funded by a grant from the Catholic Communication Campaign, also are meant to guide people in public life beyond voting, Rauh said, as they present “a call for ongoing engagement in the public sphere.”

Rauh also is coordinating her department’s outreach for upcoming elections through the Civilize It campaign. Introduced by the USCCB Nov. 3, one year before the 2020 vote, the campaign stresses that respectful dialogue — rather than name-calling and nasty barbs — can occur among people with differing political views.

The idea for Civilize It originated in the Social Action Office of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in 2016. Its success in southwest Ohio caught the attention of the USCCB, which decided that the model, with a few tweaks, would be introduced in parishes nationwide.

— Dennis Sadowski