A ROMANIAN priest was sentenced to 14 years in prison yesterday for causing the death of a nun during an exorcism ritual.
Four nuns were also sentenced in connection with her death...
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One of the nuns - Nicoleta Arcalianu - was sentenced to eight years in prison, and the other three - Adina Cepraga, Elena Otel and Simona Bardanas - each received five-year sentences.
Bucharest - A Romanian nun crucified by a priest and other nuns in an exorcism rite was still alive when she was rescued, but died of an overdose of adrenalin mistakenly administered by a medic, press reports said Saturday.
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The latest development dominated Saturday's press, with the mass circulation Libertatea headlining the story "killed by the doctors."
Cornici was chained to a cross, gagged and deprived of food and water for several days at the remote monastery in June. Authorities had maintained the treatment proved fatal and she was already dead when other nuns called for an ambulance.
But the new autopsy, carried out after the nun's body was exhumed in September, showed that she died after a medic in the ambulance injected her with six doses of adrenalin which over-stimulated her heart, causing it to fail.
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A Romanian nun has died after being bound to a cross, gagged and left alone for three days in a cold room in a convent, Romanian police have said.
Members of the convent in north-west Romania claim Maricica Irina Cornici was possessed and that the crucifixion had been part of an exorcism ritual.
Cornici was found dead on the cross on Wednesday after fellow nuns called an ambulance, according to police.
On Saturday a priest and four nuns were charged in connection with her death.
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Mediafax news agency said Cornici suffered from schizophrenia and the symptoms of her condition caused the priest at the convent and other nuns to believe she was possessed by the devil.
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TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - A religious order wants to give old Christmas trees a new use.
The Sisters of Providence, which operates St. Mary-of-the-Woods College, is looking for donations of Christmas trees that it can recycle into wood chips for mulch and fuel for the school's new biomass boiler.
The college's new biomass boiler runs on alternative energy sources instead of fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. The recycled trees will fuel the boiler, producing the steam that heats the college campus a few miles west of Terre Haute.
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Fifteen years before Sister Karen Klimczak was strangled by an ex-convict on Good Friday, the Buffalo nun wrote a letter of forgiveness to her killer.
She apparently had a premonition, perhaps during her prayers or a dream just before Holy Week in 1991, that her life would one day be taken violently.
“ ‘Dear Brother, I don’t know what the circumstances are that will lead you to hurt me or destroy my physical body,’ ” Sister Jean read.
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“ ‘No, I don’t want it to happen,’ ” she read softly. “ ‘I would much rather enjoy the beauties of this earth, experience the laughter, the fears and the tears of those I love so deeply!’ ”
Sister Jean continued: “ ‘. . . Now my life has changed and you, my brother, were the instrument of that change. I forgive you for what you have done and I will always watch over you, help you in whatever way I can. . . . Continue living always mindful of His Presence, His Love and His Joy as sources of life itself — then my life will have been worth being changed through you.’ ”
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) _ A jury has convicted a parolee of killing a pacifist nun at the halfway house she operated in Buffalo.
Craig Lynch was found guilty late Friday in Erie County Court of manslaughter, burglary and second-degree murder for beating and strangling Sister Karen Klimczak on April 14 in her room at Bissonette House.
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Lynch could face 25 years to life in prison at sentencing March 7. He is in jail without bail.
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Just as 600 people prayed for a miracle that a missing nun who devoted her life to nonviolence would be found alive, authorities made the devastating announcement Monday evening that her body had been recovered and that an ex-convict she tried to help was arrested in her murder.
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Police said Sister Karen Klimczak, 62, who had lived and worked at Bissonette House - a halfway house on 335 Grider St. named for the Rev. A Joseph Bissonette, a priest brutally murdered in the same building in 1987 - was killed by one of the parolees staying there.
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Sister Karen Klimczak was killed for a fake bag of crack, then buried in a deep grave in a crumbling back shed where no one could have found her, police revealed Tuesday.
Detectives who investigated the Good Friday slaying of the pacifist nun said that her alleged killer, Craig M. Lynch, 36, confessed that he was high on crack cocaine and bent on getting more when he went into Sister Karen's room at the Bissonette House halfway house.
His plan was to steal her cell phone and sell it for money to buy crack. But when she walked in, he panicked, then strangled and beat her, authorities said.
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"Godcasting" has already gone wide. Now it's going to the edges.
A community of Carmelite nuns in Indianapolis have started what's believed to be the first podcast from a cloistered community.
Or as some call them, Godcasts.
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Sister Therese said her sisters started the podcast at the suggestion of the Indianapolis ad agency that does pro bono work for them. "We thought we could have a better outreach to young people," she said. "That seems to be the way everybody is going — they have their iPods, and they're pretty mobile."
In the first podcast, several nuns talk about how anyone can be contemplative. She said there are plans to do regular podcasts, as others do, probably once a month.
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Little Barry came into the kitchen where his mother was making dinner. His birthday was coming up and he thought this was a good time to tell his mother what he wanted:
"Mum, I want a bike for my birthday."
Little Barry was a bit of a troublemaker. He had gotten into trouble at school and at home.
Barry's mother asked him if he thought he deserved to get a bike for his birthday.
Little Barry, of course, thought he did.
Barry's mother, being a Christian woman, wanted him to reflect on his behaviour over the last year, and write a letter to God, and tell him why he deserved a bike for his birthday.
Little Barry stomped up the steps to his room and sat down to write God a letter.
LETTER 1:
Dear God,
I have been a very good boy this year and I would like a bike for my birthday. I want a red one.
Your friend, Barry.
Barry knew this wasn't true. He had not been a very good boy this year, so he tore up he letter and started over.
LETTER 2:
Dear God,
This is your friend Barry. I have been a pretty good boy this year, and I would like a red bike for my birthday.
Thank you,
Barry.
Barry knew this wasn't true either. He tore up the letter and started again.
LETTER 3:
Dear God,
I have been an OK boy this year and I would really like a red bike for my birthday.
Your friend,
Barry.
Barry knew he could not send this letter to God either. Barry was very upset. He went downstairs and told his mother he wanted to go to church.
Barry's mother thought her plan had worked because Barry looked very sad.
"Just be home in time for dinner," his mother said.
Barry walked down the street to the church and up to the altar. He looked around to see if anyone was there.
He picked up a statue of the Virgin Mary, He slipped it under his shirt and ran out of the church, down the street, into his house, and up to his room.
He shut the door to his room and sat down with a piece of paper and a pen. Barry began to write his letter to God.
LETTER 4:
I'VE GOT YOUR MUM.
IF YOU WANT TO SEE HER AGAIN,
SEND THE BLOODY BIKE
IRONDALE, Ala. — Twenty-five years ago, Mother Mary Angelica had a vision for Eternal Word Television Network, a channel offering nothing but Roman Catholic programming. She had little more than faith, $200 and a garage to use as a studio.
Now EWTN Global Catholic Network is available in 127 countries and more than 118 million households, and is capping a celebration of its founding in 1981. With viewers from Illinois to India, the satellite channel has grown to include radio and the Internet, and bills itself as the largest religious media network in the world.
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Still based at its original campus in a hilly suburb, EWTN has long had the blessing of the Vatican. And while critics alternately accuse EWTN of being too conservative or too liberal, it prides itself on sticking to the leadership of both Pope John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict XVI.
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Two Dutch nuns, wearing habits and riding bikes, chased a suspected thief through Amsterdam, police said Monday.
On Saturday evening, one of the sisters believed she recognized a man walking past their chapel in southern Amsterdam as a thief who had snatched hundreds of euros in cash from the building two weeks earlier, Amsterdam police spokesman Rob van der Veen said.
She invited him inside for a drink and asked a fellow nun to alert police.
"The nuns then grabbed their bikes and gave chase. They tried to grab him, but he managed to escape into a residential neighborhood and they lost him," Van der Veen said. Police hunted for the man in the neighborhood but could not find him.
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adapted from Sister Helen Prejean's book with the same title. It's actually one of my favorite movies of all times. I salute Sister Helen Prejean for her efforts to abolish the death penalty in America. You probably know that Sister Helen is from New Orleans. She's currently in Baton Rouge as reported by The Gainesville Sun:
Hurricane Katrina forced Sister Helen Prejean and about 60 other nuns to flee their New Orleans Mother House last week and relocate indefinitely to Baton Rouge.
But the catastrophe had an effect on something else to which the woman who has come to be known as "the Death-Penalty Nun" has devoted her life.
"Katrina put a moratorium on the death penalty in Louisiana for at least three years," Prejean, 66, said before her talk Wednesday night at Holy Faith Catholic Church in Gainesville.
She said court buildings in New Orleans were so badly damaged that judges, among other things, won't be reviewing death-penalty cases anytime soon. In effect, Katrina partly did in a day what Prejean has been working more than 20 years to accomplish - abolish the death penalty in the United States.
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I haven't read the book yet. But, I intend to read it. I believe in her message, and I hope she succeeds in convincing our politicians to abolish the death penalty.
"I felt something super special, something very special for me when I received the host," said Dominguez, a performer for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Her tears were for her mother and her family who could not share her spiritual moment deep inside Reliant Stadium.
"Always I saw the pictures of my mom making First Communion, and I wanted to do it, too," Dominguez said.
But like circus performers around the world, Dominguez lives on the road and works long hours on weekends, leaving little time for church services or religious instruction.
That's why Sisters Dorothy Fabritze and Bernard Overkamp live on the road and work diligently to bring the touch of God to the "Greatest Show on Earth."
But the two Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus do more than spread the word of God. They're also part of the circus: Sister Fabritze opens and closes the curtains during the two-hour shows; Sister Overkamp tends to the performers' wardrobes.
When they're not on circus duty, they spend hours teaching religious-instruction classes for Catholics and non-Catholics, as well as counseling and listening to the problems and joys of the circus workers.
"Our theory is that we need to be the living, breathing presence of Jesus Christ among these people all the time," said Sister Fabritze, 57. That means the sister act trucks across the nation hauling a trailer they call home. They converted one bedroom into a small chapel, and they sleep on bunk beds in the other.
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BERLIN (Reuters) - Two German nuns took the law into their own hands and recovered a picture of the Virgin Mary stolen from their Franciscan hospital, police said Tuesday.
The engraving vanished Saturday and Sisters Georgia and Isabella decided not to leave the case just to the police.
"The two nuns took a car and scoured the local area on Sunday morning," said a police spokesman. "They got lucky and found the picture at a flea market."
"When the seller asked for 500 euros they said they would have to ring to get someone to bring the money. Instead they called the police," he said.
The seller is being investigated for handling stolen goods.
