WASHINGTON (CNS) — The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s devotion to his Catholic faith and his family, and his dedication to serving the law and his country, make him a role model for public servants of all faiths, Washington Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl said in a Feb. 16 interview.

“Justice Scalia spoke of himself as a man devoted to his wife and family, committed to the practice of law and a believing disciple of the Lord. All of that enhanced his ability to carry out his public service on the Supreme Court,” the cardinal told the Catholic Standard, Washington’s archdiocesan newspaper.

[quote_box_center]

Attend the Mass of Christian burial via EWTN

It will air 9 a.m. Arizona time Feb. 20 from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Tune in on EWTN or online.

His son, a priest, will give the homily.

How to donate in his memory.

[/quote_box_center]

“His commitment to family, his dedication to the law and his personal religious faith are all elements that enrich our culture and society. In all of this, he was, for many, a true model.”

Cardinal Wuerl also noted how Scalia, who died Feb. 13, each year faithfully attended the Red Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington. That annual liturgy on the Sunday before the Supreme Court begins its term is celebrated to seek God’s blessing and the guidance of the Holy Spirit on the administration of justice.

“To all who knew Justice Antonin Scalia, it was clear that he was a man of faith,” the cardinal said. “His annual presence at the Red Mass was always his personal testimony to the importance of God and prayer in his life. Invoking the gift of the Holy Spirit was for him a personal act of belief in God’s presence at work in our life and the wisdom of God probing our heart and lending light to our human knowledge.”

The cardinal added, “In conversations with him, it was clear to me that he regularly opened his heart to the Lord.”

Washington’s archbishop said the late Supreme Court justice was also shaped by his Catholic education. Justice Scalia graduated as the valedictorian in his class from two Jesuit schools — Xavier High School in Manhattan, New York, and Georgetown University in Washington, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history before later earning his law degree from Harvard.

“Justice Scalia’s education, putting him in contact with the great Judeo-Christian tradition, included as well an introduction into an understanding of the best of human wisdom,” Cardinal Wuerl said.

One year after being confirmed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, Scalia addressed the John Carroll Society, a group of Catholic professional women and men in the Archdiocese of Washington.

In that 1987 address, Scalia said, “A good government should not impede the religious practices of its people. … Its main function is here, ensuring a safe, just and cooperative society.” Those two different spheres, church and state, are “interdependent but separate,” he said.

Scalia “clearly understood the limits of government in attempting to intrude into the faith life of believers and the limits of any individual faith community in identifying itself with the state,” said Cardinal Wuerl.

Msgr. Peter Vaghi, the longtime chaplain of the John Carroll Society and a friend of Scalia, also praised him as a man of faith and a family man. “His Catholic faith guided his life. He was a family man. He had nine children and 36 grandchildren. He was a man of great integrity, bigger than life. … He was an extraordinary jurist.”

Scalia’s attendance at the annual Red Mass each year underscored the importance of prayer in his life. The justice was an honorary member of the John Carroll Society and received the society’s medal.

The priest, who also is pastor of the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Maryland, said that Scalia’s Italian-American roots “were very much a part of his life.”

“I’m Italian American, and he was the first Italian American to be on the Supreme Court. That was a great source of pride to so many of us who are Italian American,” said Msgr. Vaghi.

The priest also commented on Scalia’s friendship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is Jewish and a liberal. The two were usually were on opposing sides in Supreme Court decisions, but the two justices went to the opera and on vacations together, once even riding an elephant together in India. After Scalia died, Ginsburg issued a statement saying they had been “best buddies.”

“It was representative of the way things used to be in Washington,” Msgr. Vaghi said, noting how in bygone days, members of Congress from opposing parties would debate issues, and then socialize together afterward. “One can differ and disagree on issues, but still respect each other as individuals. We’ve come a long way from that,” the priest said.

— By Mark Zimmermann, Catholic News Service. Zimmermann is editor of the Catholic Standard, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington. 

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (CNS) — Pope Francis urged society to rethink its ideas of locking up inmates and throwing away the key, calling such an approach another symptom of the “throwaway culture” he often decries and “a symptom of a culture that has stopped supporting life, of a society that has abandoned its children.”

Speaking in a prison previously plagued by riots and controlled by drug cartels in a city once considered the “murder capital of the world,” the pope proposed focusing on prevention, reintegration and a system of “social health,” instead of on only on incarceration and insisting that inmates pay for their crimes.

“Celebrating the Jubilee of Mercy with you is recalling the pressing journey that we must undertake in order to break the cycle of violence and crime,” Pope Francis said Feb. 17 at Cereso prison, home to some 3,000 inmates.

“We have already lost many decades thinking and believing that everything will be resolved by isolating, separating, incarcerating, and ridding ourselves of problems, believing that these policies really solve problems,” the pope continued. “We have forgotten to focus on what must truly be our concern: people’s lives; their lives, those of their families, and those who have suffered because of this cycle of violence.”

Pope Francis often includes prison visits in his papal tours, drawing attention to a population on the periphery of the church he is trying to construct. Prison officials in Ciudad Juarez say their facility — once considered the most violent in Latin America — has vastly improved since the horror of its worst year 2010, when 216 murders were committed there and rival gangs, fighting for control of drugs running through Ciudad Juarez, carried out crimes from behind bars.

His trip drew attention to the horrors of Mexico’s oft-maligned prison system, marked by overcrowding, corruption and inmates paying for privileges, protection and basics — everything from toilet paper to proper food. Inmate control inside correctional facilities is common.

The trip follows a brawl — blamed on incarcerated members of rival cartels clashing — in a Monterrey prison a week earlier. Forty-nine inmates died. Pope Francis sent condolences for the tragedy in the Topo Chico prison, where state officials subsequently found luxury cells with king-size beds, bars and even a sauna.

In Ciudad Juarez, the pope proposed prevention, along with reintegration and rehabilitation, which he said, “begins outside, in the streets of the city.”

It also “begins by creating a system which we could call social health, that is, a society which seeks not to cause sickness, polluting relationships in neighborhoods, schools, town squares, the streets, homes and in the whole of the social spectrum … a system of social health that endeavors to promote a culture which acts and seeks to prevent those situations and pathways that end in damaging and impairing the social fabric.”

Pope Francis mentioned the Year of Mercy often in his address to inmates, saying: “Jesus urges us to have mercy that embraces everyone and is found in every corner of the world. There is no place beyond the reach of his mercy, no space or person it cannot touch.”

He called concern for prisoners “a moral imperative for the whole society,” in working to toward an improved “common life.”
[quote_box_center]

Photos: Pope visits Juarez prison

[/quote_box_center]

“It is within a society’s capacity to include the poor, infirm and imprisoned, that we see its ability to heal their wounds and make them builders of a peaceful coexistence,” Pope Francis said. “Social reintegration begins by making sure that all of our children go to school and that their families obtain dignified work by creating public spaces for leisure and recreation, and by fostering civic participation, health services and access to basic services, to name just a few possible measures.”

“Social reintegration begins by making sure that all of our children go to school and that their families obtain dignified work by creating public spaces for leisure and recreation, and by fostering civic participation, health services and access to basic services, to name just a few possible measures.”

Toward the end of the brief meeting, Pope Francis joined the inmates for a moment of silent prayer, telling them that only they knew what they would ask forgiveness for. Several inmates were seen crying as they prayed.

“I tell you from my own wounds, errors and sin,” he said, “that the Lord wants to forgive.”

He ended his talk with the assembled inmates, sitting under sunny skies outside a recently renovated prison chapel, by urging them to no long be “prisoners of the past,” learn to “open the door to the future,” and speak with their loved ones to put an end to “this cycle of violence and exclusion.”

“The one who has suffered the greatest pain, and we could say ‘has experienced hell,’ can become a prophet in society,” he said. “Work so that this society, which uses people and discards them will not go on claiming victims.”

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi said the pope’s remarks were broadcast to 389 other prisons, with a potential 254,000 inmates watching.

— By David Agren, Catholic News Service.

EL PASO, Texas (CNS) — Mexican immigration rates have been down for a while, for a time even reversing.

That reality seems to be absent from political circles and the perception of the general American population. But Diana Martinez is proof of it.

“I am from Chiapas, and just got deported,” Martinez told Catholic News Service in an interview midway on the Paso del Norte border-crossing bridge in the western Texas city of El Paso. “I don’t want to try anymore, just want to go home.”

Although Martinez did not have a specific plan, she was begging for money to afford transportation back to her hometown. “I don’t know how I’ll get there … praying to God is what I can only think of,” said the petite, slender young woman. Asked if she adhered to a certain religion, she said no, answering, “I only believe in God.”

She knew Pope Francis was coming to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, but that seemed to have little value for her situation.

Martinez was brief in telling CNS about the months it took her to make it across Mexico and into the U.S., and about the several times she has been deported.

In the heat of another U.S. election year, immigration has been a theme for candidates, who have promised to fix the situation, but their words on the issue do not seem to reflect the reality being experienced by immigrants like Martinez.

They are the face of a little-mentioned trend originally reported last November by Washington-based Pew Research Center.

The report, titled “More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S.,” has a subtitle that summarizes the whole document: “Net loss of 140,000 between 2009 and 2014; family reunification top reason for leaving.”

Some of the Pew data from the period studied includes:

• One million Mexicans, including U.S.-born children, left the U.S. for Mexico, while an estimated 870,000 Mexicans came to the U.S.
• Sixty-one percent of Mexicans who left the U.S. did so voluntarily; 14 percent of those who left were deported.
• Possible reasons for the decline in Mexican immigration include effects of the U.S. economic recession, resulting in immigrants losing jobs; and a desire to reunite families.
• The number of Mexicans entering the U.S. illegally who were apprehended by authorities fell to 230,000 in 2014, “a level not seen since 1971,” says the report.
• Among adults in Mexico, 48 percent say life is better in the U.S. Thirty-three percent say life in the U.S. and in Mexico is equivalent; that figure is 10 percent higher than it was in 2007.

“This shift in immigration is noteworthy. Since 1965, Mexico has sent more immigrants (16.2 million) to the United States than any other country, in what has been the largest wave of immigration in U.S history,” concluded the report.

— By Wallice J. de la Vega, Catholic News Service.