Honoring mother who died for her unborn baby *Atheists sue priest for praying at World Trade Center Cross

Milan, May 30, 2012: Next month’s International Meeting of Families, attended by the Pope, will offer praise to an immensely heroic young woman who is being considered for beatification.

Who was Maria Cristina Cella Mocellin? A mum who gave up treatment because it could have endangered the life of the child she was carrying. A 90’s mum, who grew up in a parish a few hundred metres away from Milan’s great Parco Nord (North Park), where Benedict XVI will meet families from across the world on 2 and 3 June.

A “lay woman and mother” whose cause for beatification completed its diocesan stage a few days ago and is about to be examined by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome….

…. In 1994, while expecting Riccardo, her third child, a cancer that she had already been ill with when she was 18 came back. At that point she made the difficult choice of putting the baby’s life first. The meaning of that act is revealed in a letter she herself wrote on the 25 September 1995 in the Marostica hospital as she sensed what was about to happen (she died a month later).

She wrote to her son who was only a few months old and is now a teenager. That letter is worth a thousand words.

– vaticaninsider.lastampa.it

Atheists sue priest for praying at World Trade Center Cross

United States, May 30, 2012: A cross that was formed amid the devastation of the 9/11 tragedy – and the priest who prayed in front of it – have provoked anger and court proceedings.

Father Brian Jordan is finally emerging from a nightmare. For months, he had been named as a defendant in a suit brought by atheists who protested him praying before the “Trade Center Cross” after Sept. 11. The atheist group recently dropped their attack against Father Jordan — for now.

But the case continues, and it raises troubling questions about the emerging anti-religious, and specifically anti-Catholic, prejudices in American society, a prejudice only compounded by the Obama administration’s insistence on forcing Catholic institutions to violate their beliefs through the provision of health insurance for contraception services, including abortion-inducing drugs.

From the wreckage of the Twin Towers after the Sept. 11 attack, rescue workers found steel beams fused together in the shape of a cross. Many Christians working at the site in the days and weeks afterward found the object comforting. A Catholic priest, Franciscan Brian Jordan, blessed the cross, and services were performed there. He notes that “I spent many, many months ministering to the rescue workers at Ground Zero. Their spirits were uplifted by remembering that God is still with us, even when unimaginable disaster strikes. And the World Trade Center Cross became a source of inspiration for those workers.”

The cross is now located within the National September 11 Memorial & Museum on government property. That decision spurred a lawsuit by American Atheists, Inc. against the memorial, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the state of New Jersey and other people and entities, including Father Jordan and his parish, the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus. The atheists want the cross removed from the memorial, despite it being an integral part of the history of 9/11 and its importance to many of the rescue workers.

– ncregister.com