Catholics call for action

By Gaynor Dumat-Ol Daleno
Pacific Daily News
January 08, 2015

http://www.guampdn.com/article/20150108/NEWS01/150108001/Catholics-call-action

About 50 Catholics gathered for "A Peaceful and Prayerful Walk" organized by Dwayne Santos on Jan. 7. Saying prayers, the group walked from the field across from St. Anthony/St. Victor Catholic Church to the Carmelite Monastery in Tamuning.

A few dozen of the island’s Catholics took their prayers to the streets yesterday afternoon in another attempt to call the Vatican’s attention to a variety of concerns about the current leadership of the island’s Catholic Church.

Holding rosaries, saying prayers, and a few of them carrying statues, they walked several blocks from a vacant lot across from St. Anthony’s church in Tamuning to the Carmelite monastery compound, where visiting representatives of the Vatican were holding private meetings with certain members of the local church community.

Yesterday’s walk was the first of three public prayer events being held this week by certain members of the local Catholic community who have been trying to call the Vatican’s attention — for months — to problems they’ve said have divided the local Catholic Church.

Danny Cabe, one of about 50 people who joined the prayer walk, held a statue of Mother Mary.

He wasn’t taking sides, he said, but he joined the walk with a wish for the leaders and members of the local church community to resolve their differences and co-exist in peace.

Part of the divide within the local church community stems from differences in affiliation; some join the Neocatechumenal Way and others oppose some of the non-traditional practices of the movement, such as holding Mass for Neocatechumenal members only outside the church’s usual Sunday Mass.

In some instances, families have been torn between those who believe in the movement and those who don’t, some island Catholics have said.

One of the organizers of yesterday’s walk, Dwayne Santos, said he hopes the walk will lead to a resolution of the concerns and for the island’s Catholic community to reach a peaceful resolution to the issues that have divided it.

Cabe hopes for the same outcome.

“There’s division. … There’s a lot of things that aren’t as traditional as before,” Cabe said. “I hope for things to be a lot better. My main hope is for peace within our church.”

One of the recent concerns that sparked controversy within the local church community involves a major real estate asset of the Archdiocese of Agana, the former Accion Hotel, which once was worth $57 million and is being used as a seminary and an academic institute for seminarians.

The newly formed Concerned Catholics of Guam recently obtained government land records indicating that the property may no longer be under the full control of the archdiocese. The records show that in 2011, Archbishop Anthony Apuron signed a document that gave the Redemptoris Mater Seminary authorization to have “perpetual use” of the oceanfront property, which was built with about 100 former hotel rooms before the archdiocese bought it more than a decade ago for about $2 million. The seminary is governed by a “board of guarantors,” with four members. Apuron is one of the four, and the remaining three are New Jersey residents affiliated with the leadership of the Neocatechumenal Way.

The document was signed against the advice of the archdiocese’s finance council members and legal counsel at the time, and despite a Vatican representative’s reminder that the archbishop was to heed the council’s decision, documents state.

Inside the monastery, the visitors from the Vatican were holding private meetings yesterday with separate groups.

Some meetings were with Neocatechumenal Way members and at least one meeting was scheduled with certain members of the Concerned Catholics of Guam, nonprofit group, which has criticized Apuron and the Neocatechumenal Way’s alleged influence over the archbishop.

Former members of the archdiocese finance council also are scheduled to meet with the Vatican representatives, who arrived Saturday and will end their visit this weekend.

The prayer walk participants were allowed within the gated monastery’s outdoor area, and briefly in the chapel, but not inside the room where the private meetings were taking place.

Two more public prayer events are being organized while the delegation is here.

At 1:30 p.m. tomorrow, a group of Guam women will lead a prayer vigil at St. Anthony’s Spiritual Center in Tamuning.

Carmen Kasperbauer, Lou Klitzkie, Marilen Artero and Josefina C. Diaz are among those leading the prayer vigil, Artero said.

Santos said he hopes to spark action that will lead to reconciliation.

“The faithful have gathered because they are of the opinion that the local church leadership is off track,” Santos said.

The Vatican visitors include Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai, secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the Vatican office to which some of Guam’s Catholics sent letters over the past several months, seeking an investigation of the various controversies in the local archdiocese.

Archbishop Martin Krebs, the Vatican’s delegate to the Pacific islands, who resides in New Zealand, also is part of the delegation.

Last month, the archdiocesan leadership stated the visit is “meant to foster reconciliation and mutual understanding within the archdiocese.”