CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) — It is hard for people in Sierra Leone not to lose hope as the death toll rises and worldwide fear grows over the worst Ebola outbreak on record, said the head of Caritas in the Archdiocese of Freetown, Sierra Leone.

“Our situation is desperate,” said Father Peter Konteh, executive director of Caritas.

In a July 30 telephone interview from Freetown, Father Konteh said the mood of the West African country was bleak following the July 29 death of the doctor who had been leading the country’s fight against the highly contagious disease.

The Ebola death of Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, who worked at the Kenema Government Hospital in eastern Sierra Leone, “has left us feeling defenseless,” Father Konteh said, noting that the hospital center Khan ran “is the only place in the country equipped to deal with Ebola.”

Sierra Leone declared a state of emergency July 31 and called in troops to quarantine Ebola patients as the death toll from the outbreak of the virus hit 729 in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Symptoms of the disease, which has no known cure, include vomiting, diarrhea and internal and external bleeding. The fatality rate of the current outbreak is around 60 percent.

Fear among local people that if they go to the hospital “they won’t come out again” is largely fueled by the fact that the bodies of people who die of Ebola in hospitals “are put into bags and buried, and their loved ones don’t see them again; there is no burial ceremony,” Father Konteh said.

Michael Stulman, regional information officer for the U.S. bishops’ Catholic Relief Services, said cultural traditions, including the washing of a body by family members before it is buried, are problematic in fighting the spread of Ebola, because the disease is at its most contagious in its advanced stages.

In a July 31 telephone interview from Freetown, Stulman said dispelling myths that are worsening the crisis forms a large part of the work that Catholic Relief Services is doing in Sierra Leone.

CRS staffers are training elders and traditional leaders to enable them to spread information on how to avoid contracting the virus and “what to do if they feel sick,” said Stulman, who visited Sierra Leone July 24-Aug. 1.

CRS, part of the Caritas network, has been working closely with Sierra Leone’s National Ebola Task Force on awareness-raising campaigns, using radio and other mediums to disseminate critical messages about prevention, transmission and treatment of the disease.

Father Konteh represents the Catholic Church on the task force. He said that at the Caritas office in Freetown, “we give people chlorine to wash their hands with” as well as information leaflets.

“It’s a case of simple hygiene,” he said, noting that an interreligious forum issued a statement to dispel myths “spread by religious fanatics saying it’s a plague and calling on people to come to prayer centers they’ve set up instead of health care facilities.”

CRS also had to clarify the nature of Ebola to people who believe that the hospital deaths are the result of a political plot by anti-government forces, Stulman said.

Father Konteh said government, religious leaders and civil society now recognize that Ebola is a “national catastrophe” and are working together to stop its spread.

Reacting to fear among doctors and nurses of contracting Ebola while at work, the health department has stepped up provision of protective gear for staff at hospitals, he said.

Patients diagnosed with Ebola who are removed from hospitals by their families before they have recovered are cause for great concern, Stulman said, noting that a woman taken home to Freetown from Kenema hospital died in the ambulance on her way back.

“The fastest you can get from here to Kenema hospital by road is two days,” Father Konteh said, noting that Freetown’s hospital does not have the necessary equipment to treat Ebola.

“Our health system is not strong enough to cope with this,” he said.

Sierra Leone’s health system has limited supplies and minimal human resources, Stulman said.

He also said that while many international organizations are leaving Sierra Leone for fear of contracting Ebola and the U.S. Peace Corps is evacuating hundreds of its volunteers in affected countries, CRS has no plans to leave.

“We’re sticking around,” Stulman said, noting that CRS has been working “on the frontlines” in Sierra Leone for more than 50 years and has built strong partnerships with local organizations.

Father Konteh said Ebola has had “ripple effects on all interactions.”

Many people’s livelihoods depend on trading at big market places, “but they are staying away now,” he said.

In eastern Sierra Leone, some schools closed and postponed examinations indefinitely, he said.

— By Bronwen Dachs, Catholic News Service.

JERUSALEM (CNS) — With close to a quarter of a million Palestinians rendered homeless by the continuing and intensifying fighting between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, the Coordinating Catholic Aid Organizations met three times in as many days to organize action to confront the humanitarian crisis.

In addition to the current material needs — food, water, personal hygiene items, medicine and diesel fuel for generators — the Catholic aid associations from the Holy Land, U.S. and Europe are beginning to plan for the psychosocial needs of Gazans at the eventual end to the confrontation.

“We are talking about a massive number of people who will be in need of help, and of at least 200,000 children who will need intervention,” said Sami El-Yousef, regional director of the Jerusalem Office of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association.

CNEWA ran such a program after the Israeli incursion into Gaza in 2012, he said.

In addition, he said, lack of drinking water has become a critical issue with the bombing of Gaza’s only electrical power plant, which has left the area largely without electricity for pumping water and sewage treatment. Diesel fuel is urgently needed for generators while milk for young children is also in short supply, he said.

CNEWA had been supplying the Anglican Al Ahli Arab Hospital with fuel for the generator for intermittent power outages, but after the attack on the power plant in late July, the hospital was left without any fuel and had to shut down all operations, said El-Yousef, who received a phone call from the hospital in the middle of the night. The next day he was able to provide the hospital with funds to purchase more fuel. The hospital needs some 500-600 liters of fuel per day now because the generator is its only source of power, said El-Yousef.

The unsanitary conditions in the streets are also causing illnesses, and El-Yousef said many children are coming to the hospital with cases of malnutrition, diarrhea and fever. The hospital is also treating many of those injured, he said. Other clinics are located in dangerous areas and have been shut down almost from the start of the hostilities, he said.

“It is really desperate,” he said.

Though there are medicines available in Gaza, there is a shortage of medications in the hospitals because people and institutions have used up their credit lines, and cash to purchase them is not available, El-Yousef said. CNEWA has been able to give written financial assurances to the banks, enabling the hospital to make necessary purchases, he said.

“Every day the situation is getting worse and people are reluctant to move outside,” said El-Yousef.

Catholic Relief Services’ country representative in Jerusalem, Matthew McGarry, credited the “heroic” staffers in Gaza for their continued dedication in distributing aid kits to those most in need during lulls in the fighting. Several of the staff members have lost family members, and others are now homeless but have continued to work to provide for others, he said.

“They are a committed, selfless team,” he said. “They are doing God’s work.”

In the last week of July, CRS supplied 500 families with nonfood kits, which included things like cooking sets, cleaning supplies, personal hygiene kits, water storage buckets and solar powered lanterns. Staffers normally would have been able to distribute 500 packages per day but could not because of the precarious situation, McGarry said.

He said CRS was in the process of procuring and distributing another 2,500 such aid packages and was working to get medical relief supplies via the U.S. Agency for International Development.

McGarry said people were desperate, and on July 30 the staff halted distribution when dozens of people who had not been registered came to the distribution point demanding the packages. Their details were taken and CRS will look to see if they fit the CRS criteria: people whose homes have been destroyed and who are not receiving any other assistance, said McGarry.

He said staffers have been able to procure some of the supplies locally, which helps Palestinians, while other supplies came from USAID shipments through the Israeli border, in coordination with Israeli authorities, he said.

“The situation is increasingly desperate and catastrophic,” he said. “The numbers are so huge and the needs so enormous.”

— By Judith Sudilovsky, Catholic News Service. 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis and his international Council of Cardinals continue to study the most effective and efficient way to organize the Roman Curia, a large bureaucracy with a long history of expansions and a few, short-term, attempts at consolidation.

For centuries, popes were assisted in their ministry by the cardinals meeting in consistories; the practical matters were handled by what was called the Apostolic Chancery. But as the church grew and matters became more complicated and more time-sensitive, offices were added. The first was the Sacred Congregation for the Inquisition, a tribunal established in 1542 by Pope Paul III to judge heresy and orthodoxy.

Over the next four decades, a few other offices were added, but an organized Roman Curia came into existence only with Pope Sixtus V in 1588.

Currently the principal offices of the Roman Curia are the Secretariat of State, nine congregations headed by cardinals and 12 pontifical councils led by cardinals or archbishops. The offices share the mission of helping the pope carrying out his ministry “for the good and service of the whole church and of the particular churches,” according to St. John Paul II’s 1988 apostolic constitution “Pastor Bonus” (“The Good Shepherd”).

In a December address to officials from the curial offices, Pope Francis said he knows there are saints among them, but a renewed commitment to service and humility always is necessary.

“When the attitude is no longer one of service to the particular churches and their bishops, the structure of the Curia turns into a ponderous, bureaucratic customs house, constantly inspecting and questioning, hindering the working of the Holy Spirit and the growth of God’s people,” he said.

In a first step toward reorganizing the Curia, Pope Francis created the Secretariat for the Economy in February.

With only a few modifications, the current structure of the Roman Curia was established by St. John Paul with “Pastor Bonus.”

While the apostolic constitution affirms the curial offices are “juridically equal among themselves,” the congregations are entrusted by the pope with more direct jurisdiction over church matters than the pontifical councils have.

Here is a brief history of the current secretariats and congregations, based mainly on historical notes included in the Annuario Pontificio, the Vatican yearbook:

Secretariat of State

• Section for General Affairs
• Section for Relations with States

The current structure of the Secretariat of State — with one section dealing with internal church affairs and the other acting as the Vatican’s foreign ministry — and its role as the coordinating body for the work of the entire Roman Curia was set out in “Pastor Bonus.” The ancient roots of the office go back to the actual secretaries of the popes, including those responsible for corresponding with Vatican nuncios, or ambassadors, around the world.

Secretariat for the Economy

The secretariat answers to the Council for the Economy and exercises authority over all economic and administrative activities within the Holy See and the Vatican City State, including budget making, financial planning, hiring, procurement and the preparation of detailed financial statements.

Congregations

• Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
  The oldest of the congregations, it began as a commission of six cardinals who served as a tribunal for judging suspected cases of heresy and schism. The doctrinal office is charged with promoting and defending the Catholic faith. Until 1968, the pope himself held the title of prefect of the congregation and would appoint a cardinal as secretary or pro-prefect.

• Congregation for Eastern Churches
  Established by Pope Pius IX in 1862 as a section for the affairs of the “Oriental rites” within the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, it became a separate entity in 1917. The congregation is charged with assisting the Eastern Catholic Churches, Eastern Catholic faithful living in predominantly Latin-rite areas and the churches present throughout the Holy Land.

• Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments
  The congregation, which deals with liturgical questions and the celebration of the sacraments, has been the subject of alternating periods of autonomy and consolidation. The Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments was established by Pope Pius X in 1908. The Congregation for Divine Worship was established in 1969 by Pope Paul VI. Pope Paul united the two offices in 1975 and then, in 1984, Pope John Paul made them autonomous. Four years later, with “Pastor Bonus” the two were again joined.

• Congregation for Saints’ Causes
  The office handling the process for investigating sainthood candidates and preparing their canonizations was established by Pope Sixtus V in 1588. At the time, the congregation also dealt with questions of the liturgy and divine worship. According to the Annuario Pontificio, the two offices were one because the sainthood process concludes with the candidate being added to the church’s liturgical calendar. The two sections were made separate congregations by Pope Paul VI in 1969.

• Congregation for Bishops
  The congregation, also set up in 1588, initially was responsible primarily for the creation or amalgamation of dioceses. In 1908, Pope Pius X added to its tasks coordinating the search for new bishops to be named by the pope, oversight of the way bishops governed dioceses and responsibility for setting policies for seminaries. In 1958, Pope Pius XII established the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, placing it under the Congregation for Bishops’ jurisdiction. Pope Paul VI made some slight changes in 1967 and the congregation’s current form was established with “Pastor Bonus.”

• Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples
  The congregation traces its origins back to the commissions of cardinals Pope Pius V and Pope Gregory XIII set up in the late 1500s to coordinate foreign missions, including in India and in newly Protestant parts of northern Europe. In 1599, Pope Clement VIII established the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, but it existed only for a few years. Pope Gregory XV re-established it in 1622. According to “Pastor Bonus,” the congregation promotes evangelization and missionary cooperation around the globe and has special responsibility for bishops, dioceses and developing jurisdictions in Africa, the Far East and parts of the Pacific and Latin America.

• Congregation for Clergy
  Known as the Congregation of the Council until 1967, the office was established in 1564 to promote the correct interpretation and implementation of the decrees of the Council of Trent. Over time, those tasks were assigned to different Vatican offices and, little by little, the congregation was given other responsibilities. “Pastor Bonus” decreed it would promote the spiritual, pastoral and intellectual development of diocesan priests and permanent deacons, oversee priests’ councils and parish councils and the correct administration of church goods. It also was responsible for promoting catechesis, a responsibility Pope Benedict XVI transferred to the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization in early 2013. Pope Benedict also gave the congregation responsibility for overseeing seminary education, a task that had belonged to the Congregation for Catholic Education.

• Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life
  The congregation dealing with religious orders and consecrated men and women was established by Pope Sixtus in 1586 and confirmed two years later in his Roman Curia organization. In 1601, the congregation was expanded to include responsibility for bishops as well, but in 1908 it went back to focusing on religious. The office approves the constitutions of religious orders as well as promoting the holiness of life of individual religious and consecrated virgins.

• Congregation for Catholic Education (and Institutes of Study)
  Pope Benedict slightly altered the congregation’s name in 2013, removing “of Seminaries” from the parentheses when he gave the Congregation for Clergy responsibility for seminary oversight. The congregation is part of the original Roman Curia and was set up in 1588 to coordinate studies at major church-run universities in Rome, Bologna, Paris and Salamanca. In 1967, Pope Paul added an office for Catholic schools to congregation.

— By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Estimates of the number of people around the world who are victims of human trafficking are rising, partly because globalization has made it easier to move people and partly because governments, churches and international organizations are better at recognizing the phenomenon, a U.S. government official said.

Luis CdeBaca, ambassador-at-large in the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, held a digital video conference July 29 with priests and religious, ambassadors accredited to the Holy See and journalists gathered at the office of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

[quote_box_right]Full report[/quote_box_right]The conference and discussion about the U.S. State Department’s 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report took place on the eve of the first U.N. World Day Against Trafficking in Persons.

[quote_box_right]Full article[/quote_box_right]Pope Francis has called human trafficking “a crime against humanity.” Meeting trafficking survivors, religious sisters caring for victims and dozens of senior police officials in April, he called human trafficking “an open wound on the body of contemporary society, a scourge upon the body of Christ.”

Participants at the July conference, sponsored by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See, focused particularly on victims and survivors of trafficking, repeatedly quoting Pope Francis’ exhortations to touch and heal the wounded body of Christ in the person of those exploited and enslaved by others.

Agreeing with John McCarthy, Australia’s ambassador to the Vatican, that Pope Francis has brought the issue of human trafficking back onto the public agenda, CdeBaca said one of Pope Francis’ key contributions has been “not just talking about, but living this notion of touching the flesh of Christ.”

Trafficking ensnares people who are vulnerable economically or socially, he said, but the victims “are not weak. They are often the strongest ones. They are often the ones who are willing to travel for a new and better life,” but are tricked by smugglers.

[pull_quote_center]Ken Hackett, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See and co-host of the conference, said, “Whether it’s child labor in Southeast Asia, organ trafficking in Central America, sex trafficking in the Middle East or Eastern Europe, child soldiers in Africa, or labor exploitation in the United States, trafficking touches virtually every part of our global community.”[/pull_quote_center]

Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and chair of the interreligious Global Freedom Network, described human trafficking as “an accelerator of criminal wealth creation,” pointing to the International Labor Organization’s estimate that organized crime networks reap about $150 billion a year from trafficking in persons, about 80 percent of that from prostitution.

CdeBaca said that whether a country outlaws prostitution, makes it illegal to pay for sex or legalizes and regulates prostitution, every country has a problem with people being trafficked for sex.

In a similar way, he said, traffickers exploit immigration laws, convincing victims of poverty and violence that they are the ones who can get them to safety and a better life.

Comprehensive immigration reform in the United States would help, he said. Helping people in the country illegally gain legal status would bring them “out of the shadows,” removing the fear of deportation that keeps many from denouncing their exploiters.

A well-organized system for matching up U.S. labor needs with people who want to go to the United States to work, bypassing the smugglers, also would help, he said.

Poverty is the driving force behind trafficking, participants said.

“People end up having to use themselves as collateral,” CdeBaca said. “If they had credit cards, if they had the ability to take a loan out on their parents’ house so they could buy a new roof for their parents, they would not have to basically use themselves as the loan.”

— By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service.

[quote_box_left]Related articles:

• A life reclaimed: DIGNITY program transforms women who see selves as ‘throwaway’
• Pope shines spotlight on trafficking[/quote_box_left]

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The only name Pope Francis wants divided Christians to call each other is “brother” or “sister.”

“When one walks in the presence of God, this brotherhood results,” the pope told evangelical and Pentecostal Christians July 28 in Caserta.

The pope himself acknowledged that some people would be shocked by his decision to visit a Pentecostal church; while the Vatican has had an official dialogue with some Pentecostals and evangelicals since the 1970s, by and large, Catholic-Pentecostal relations have not been easy.

For years, “sect” was the nicest thing even Vatican documents had to say about the burgeoning Pentecostal communities in Latin America and Africa. The nicest thing many of those communities have to say about the Catholic Church is even worse.

And even as Pope Francis was preparing his visit to the Pentecostal Church of Reconciliation in Caserta, the Italian Evangelical Alliance and other communities issued a statement sharply critical of Catholic Church teaching and, especially, critical of evangelical communities in Italy and around the world who hope for ecumenical rapprochement with Rome.

The groups said they “maintain as incompatible with the teaching of Scripture a church that believes it is a mediator of salvation” and “a church that has assumed the responsibility of adding dogmas — like the Marian ones — to the faith.”

“Apparent similarities with evangelical spirituality and faith in some sectors of Catholicism are not in themselves a reason for hope in a real change,” said the statement published July 19. The leaders called on evangelicals warming to Rome to exercise “healthy biblical discernment” and focus instead on “bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole world.”

For Pope Francis, as for the popes who preceded him, that is a key point.

“Given the seriousness of the counter-witness of division among Christians, particularly in Asia and Africa, the search for paths to unity becomes all the more urgent,” the pope wrote in his apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel.” “Missionaries on those continents often mention the criticisms, complaints and ridicule to which the scandal of divided Christians gives rise.”

Full unity in faith and the sacraments is the ultimate goal of ecumenism in fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer that his disciples would be one so the world would believe. But using the metaphor of setting out and walking with the Lord, a key image of Christian life for Pope Francis, the movement toward Christian unity is something that happens one step at a time.

For Pope Francis, it is not about waiting for others to catch up with you. It is about everyone continuing to walk with and toward the Lord, supporting and learning from the brothers and sisters God places on the same path. The closer everyone gets to holiness, the closer they will be to one another.

While Pope Francis’ gestures are new, the basic idea of growth in unity being the result of growth in fidelity to Christ is not. During the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in 2012, Pope Benedict XVI said, “The full and visible Christian unity that we long for demands that we let ourselves be transformed and that we conform ourselves ever more perfectly to the image of Christ. The unity we pray for requires an inner conversion that is both common and personal. It is not merely a matter of cordiality or cooperation, it is necessary above all to strengthen our faith in God, in the God of Jesus Christ, who spoke to us and made himself one of us.

“It is necessary to enter into new life in Christ, who is our true and definitive victory; it is necessary to open ourselves to one another, understanding all the elements of unity that God keeps for us and gives us ever anew,” Pope Benedict said.

Pope Francis told the group in Caserta that one thing present among Christians since apostolic times, but definitely not a gift of God, is name-calling.

On the path of Christian life, “when we stop and spend too much time looking at each other, we start a different journey, an ugly one,” the pope said. In the First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul criticizes early Christians who, bragging and promoting rivalry, started saying, “I belong to Paul” or “I belong to Apollos,” rather than “I belong to Jesus.”

The pope said it was like saying, “I am the church, you are a sect.”

“It is not the Holy Spirit who makes division,” Pope Francis told the Pentecostals. “The one who creates divisions is the jealous one, the king of envy, that sower of weeds: Satan!”

“The Holy Spirit creates diversity in the church,” he said. “And this diversity is very rich and very beautiful. But then, the Holy Spirit also brings unity and, in that way, the church is one in its diversity.”

As he did in January when he recorded a video message to a group of U.S. Pentecostals on a pastor’s iPhone, Pope Francis used the Genesis story of Jacob’s sons selling their brother Joseph out of jealousy, only to be united with him again when they set off to Egypt in search of food during a famine.

“Let us try to walk in the presence of God in order to be irreproachable,” the pope said in Caserta. “Let us try to go find the nourishment we need and end up finding our brother.”

—By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service. 

TIFFIN, Ohio (CNS) — One Ohio religious order is hoping its energy-efficient straw-bale house will sprout ideas in the minds of visitors to reduce fossil fuel consumption and even invest in renewable forms of energy for heating and cooling their homes.

The Sisters of St. Francis of Tiffin built the house as a demonstration project to show that by incorporating an alternative design, nontraditional materials and a renewable-energy system, a house — or almost any structure — can be comfortable and good for the environment.

“The mission of the house is to educate people on the benefits of using natural materials, using the passive solar concept and alternative energy,” said Sr. Jane Frances Omler, one of two Sisters of St. Francis, living in the two-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot house.

All of the house’s electricity is supplied by a small wind turbine. Various components and construction techniques reduce the need for heating and cooling:

• 300 straw bales tightly stacked and anchored within 20-inch wide exterior walls
• a natural clay-based plaster coating on interior walls
• long-lasting fiber cement siding
• a 26-inch base of a ultra-lightweight material called millcell, manufactured in Germany from recycled glass
• passive solar design that takes advantage of the warmth of winter sunlight while reducing heating from the sun in summer
• triple pane glass windows, most of which face south

“That passive solar I never quite understood until I lived here for a year,” Sr. Jane told Catholic News Service. “That sun goes right on top of the house in the summer and doesn’t come in. And then as the winter approaches in the fall, the sun goes low and starts finding its way in.

“It’s so beautiful, the shadows, everything. It’s so beautiful to live close to the sun and benefit from what it can give us. When we invented air conditioning and furnaces, we just forgot about the sun,” she added.

A small window built into a living room wall allows visitors to see in fact that the walls are filled with straw.

About $200,000 was invested in the property. The amount includes grants, donations and gifts from corporations and individuals. Construction took about four years from start to finish as the order worked to secure funding in phases.

Sr. Jane and Sr. Janet Hay moved into the house in December 2012. Sr. Jane said the house remained comfortable during the bitterly cold winter of 2013-2014 despite temperatures falling far below zero on several occasions.

Joe Ferut Jr., president of Ferut Architects in Vermilion, Ohio, designed the house. He told CNS that passive solar design has become increasingly popular among homeowners who choose to remodel a house or build from scratch.

[quote_box_right]Green design ideas from Ferut Architects[/quote_box_right]While straw-bale construction is unusual, Ferut, who is Catholic, said he is finding that more people are looking to sustainability and energy efficiency in design as they seek ways to minimize fossil fuel consumption.

Ferut worked with natural building consultant Mark Hoberecht, a chemical engineer at NASA who runs HarvestBuild Associates in nearby Columbia Station, near Cleveland. His firm specializes in the use of natural materials in construction.

He told CNS that building homes using natural materials such as straw is beginning to gain interest in the U.S. after seeing success in Germany.

Sr. Jane has named the house Little Portion Green. She took the name from the small Porziuncola (little portion) church, now within the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in Assisi, Italy, where St. Francis was inspired to start the Franciscan order.

The Tiffin order has long promoted sustainability and care of the environment on its 500-acre campus. The property includes a small organic farm; the Franciscan Earth Literacy Center, which hosts programs on the environment and a summer day camp for children; and a solar panel array that powers the center.

Planting seeds

The inspiration for the house is rooted in Sr. Jane’s 26-year ministry in West Virginia. In 1996 she coordinated the construction of a 400-square-foot chapel in the woods near Spencer, about 50 miles northeast of Charleston. Not satisfied with traditional construction techniques, she looked into alternative building materials and discovered plans for straw-bale buildings.

“I thought let’s do something real different and innovative because a lot of people would be interested in it. Nobody is interested in doing the same old stuff,” she said.

Soon after, Sr. Jane relocated to Mingo County in southwestern West Virginia where she ran educational programs for children at Big Laurel Learning Center. Operated by Catholic women religious, the center is located on a 500-acre trust established to protect the land from development and to provide a place for people to continue to live their Appalachian heritage.

In 1998, the first mountaintop removal coal mining operations began near the land trust.

Mountaintop removal mining involves the clear cutting of trees and the blowing off of the tops of mountains to reach coal seams. While the coal industry maintains that the practice allows easier access to coal to meet the country’s growing electricity needs, critics of such mining point to ill health among nearby residents, damaged homes and polluted air and water sources as being far too costly a price to pay to keep energy costs low.

Sr. Jane educated residents about the dangers of mountaintop removal mining. When Sr. Jane returned to Tiffin, her hometown, in 2006, she continued to help people understand that the coal taken from the mountaintops in such a destructive manner is being used to generate electricity in places like Ohio. She eventually determined that she wanted to live in a house that was not using electricity generated by coal-burning power plants.

Students from Tiffin area schools and their parents regularly visit the straw-bale house as part of the order’s earth literacy programs. Sr. Jane tells them that even if they cannot live in a house that is fully reliant on renewable energy, they can take steps to reduce their consumption of coal-generated electricity by adding insulation to walls and attics and replacing old-style incandescent light bulbs with more efficient LED models.

“I always tell the kids ‘Ask for an LED light for Christmas,'” she said.

— By Dennis Sadowski, Catholic News Service