To the Editor:
The John Paul II Medical Research Institute (JP2MRI) in Iowa City is requesting your assistance in supporting a Regenerative Medicine Tax Credit of $1 million annually to help support adult stem cell research in Iowa. This tax credit would apply to private, non-profit organizations such as the JP2MRI in an effort to help the Institute raise private funding to support its mission of finding cures for Iowans by using ethically obtained, non-controversial adult stem cells.
The JP2MRI is developing a program to support medical research in regenerative medicine for patients with chronic diseases that are either refractory to conventional medical therapy or do not have a medical treatment option. The Institute is also focusing on finding cures and offering personalized medicine and treatment for patients with rare diseases and cancer. The Institute has the endorsement from all Catholic bishops, the Iowa and Illinois Knights of Columbus and the Iowa Catholic Conference. The tax credit has received support from the Iowa Biotechnology Association and the Association of Iowa Business and Industry.
The Regenerative Medicine Tax Credit was introduced to the Iowa legislature last year and had uniform support in the Iowa House, Senate and the Governor’s office. Thanks to efforts of Senator Joe Seng of Davenport, the bill made its way through the Senate Ways and Means Subcommittee but did not survive for vote in the Full Ways and Means Committee. We are asking Iowans to contact Senator Joe Bolkcom with personal stories of illness that could benefit from the efforts of the Institute and urge him to support the Regenerative Medicine Tax Credit for this legislative session. Please contact JP2MRI should you have questions or be interested in helping the Institute with your financial support. Thank you for your assistance. Jay Kamath, JD CEO, John Paul II Medical Research Institute Iowa City
A passing received little public notice here. It happened in Guatemala on Oct. 8. Bob Hentzen, a Kansas farm boy who grew up to arrange the flow of over $1 billion to lift up and empower the poor around the world, died unexpectedly at the age of 77.
Hentzen was the founder with his family and a friend of the Christian Foundation for Children and Aging (CFCA). His work may be best known from the preaching of priest friends in parishes around the country who ask people to sponsor a child or elderly person in places such as Guatemala, India, Uganda, Ecuador, Philippines, Bolivia.
Sponsors receive information about, say, their child and make a small money gift monthly that is funneled to a local project serving the community where the child lives. The child may be helped with the cost of a school uniform – often required in other countries – and supplies. The family may receive special help needed to maintain a home, perhaps a sewing machine so the mother has an income. The local project overseeing distribution of this aid is run by local people who monitor the welfare and progress of sponsored persons. They also do the translation required for letters back and forth between U.S. sponsors and their new friends.
In the 32 years since its founding in Bob Hentzen’s home, CFCA has sent more than $1 billion in this way into the lives of the world’s poor and marginalized. The non-profit organization he set up is an amazing network of localized distribution with full financial transparency at the top and oversight shared between the center in Kansas City, Kan., and regions of the world being served. It has one of the highest efficiency ratings of American charitable groups.
When Hentzen died he was living in San Lucas Toliman, Guatemala. In 1996 he walked from Kansas City 8,000 miles with his ever-present guitar to set up a new home in Guatemala. Later, beginning in 2009, he took an 18-month walk through South America into Chile to, as he put it, “meet the poor.” To say to them, “You are not alone.”
Shortly before his death, he and other CFCA leadership agreed on changing its name to Unbound. “Since the very beginning,” he wrote in a last message to sponsors, “(we) have dreamed of freeing God’s people – from hunger, from slavery, from pain…. Unbound is our future.” Frank Wessling
Nadine Gordimer, white South African writer and friend of Nelson Mandela, noticed something that any of us knows immediately to be true: “There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.”
It was certainly true with Mandela, who died this month after leading South Africa out of the race-dividing system known as apartheid imposed by Dutch colonizers. Only someone who committed himself totally and suffered as he had, who sacrificed 27 years of his life to imprisonment for the cause, could carry moral authority powerful enough to lead that divided nation away from death by bitterness and hatred.
Of course Christians recognize this right away. We have a leader who is the icon of reconciliation through sacrifice.
Mandela’s was only the most notable death among public figures this year. There were well known others such as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and lesser knowns such as the Texan Billie Sol Estes, who made millions of dollars in the late 1950s and early ’60s through fraudulent buying and selling of liquid fertilizer. Walt Bellamy, a top pro basketball player in the 1960s and ’70s, also passed on in 2013, as did Frank Lauterbur, football coach at the University of Iowa whose teams from 1971 through 1973 won a total of four games.
3-10 OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Region IX Bishop’s Retreat, Prince of Peace Abbey
12 WASHINGTON — Rededication Mass for renovated church, St. James, 9 a.m.
13 DAVENPORT — Priests’ Personnel Board, St. Vincent Center
14 DAVENPORT — Humility of Mary Convent, Mass
14 DAVENPORT — Presbyteral Council, St. Vincent Center
15 DAVENPORT — Propagation of Faith meeting, St. Vincent Center
16 LONG GROVE — Chancery retreat, St. Ann
16 DAVENPORT — St. Ambrose University Board of Directors reception
17 DAVENPORT — St. Ambrose University, Board of Directors
29 BETTENDORF — All-school Mass, Our Lady of Lourdes, 8:45 a.m.
30 IOWA CITY — Project Andrew dinner, Newman Center, 6 p.m.
31 KEOKUK — Keokuk Catholic School Mass and dedication of building, 10 a.m.
Bishop Martin Amos leads a prayer service in the chapel of the St. Vincent Center at diocesan headquarters in Davenport. The Dec. 10 prayer service was part of a worldwide wave of prayer for greater awareness of hunger and how to stop it.
DAVENPORT — A worldwide wave of prayer swept into the Diocese of Davenport at noon Dec. 10 when Catholics and others paused to pray for greater awareness of hunger and how to stop it.
Bishop Martin Amos led a prayer service in the St. Vincent Center Chapel at diocesan headquarters, Davenport, while Sisters of St. Francis held a prayer service at The Canticle, their motherhouse in Clinton. Some parishes also held prayer services.
“One of the most devastating consequences of poverty is hunger,” Bishop Amos said in his opening remarks. “It could involve a Syrian refugee mother watching the child in her arms die of starvation, or a family in the U.S. struggling to put food on the table. It could be an elderly or disabled person making a choice between medicine and food … Struggling with hunger is inhumane.”
The bishop pointed out ways in which the Catholic Church reaches out to those in need: 9.5 million Americans, annually, turn to one of the 1,400 charitable organizations run by the Church. Through Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the Church’s aid reaches nearly 100 countries throughout the world. At the diocesan level, an ecumenical network of churches supports 24 food pantries. Last year, these pantries served some 103,000 people in the Quad-City area alone, he said. Parishes around the diocese also partner with other churches in their communities to support food pantries. One quarter of the diocese’s annual CRS “Rice Bowl” collection goes toward grants to organizations that operate meal sites or provide similar efforts to combat hunger, he continued.
The bishop quoted Pope Francis, who initiated the wave of prayer: “It is a scandal that there is still hunger and malnutrition in the world.” The Holy Father characterized hunger as “a problem that challenges our personal and social conscience, to achieve a just and lasting solution,” Bishop Amos said.
Kent Ferris, diocesan director of Social Action and Catholic Charities, told the audience that the Farm Bill, presently being debated in Congress, provides an example of where the pope’s concerns come into focus in this country.
The Farm Bill “has significant impacts on hunger both domestically and across the world,” Ferris said. The nation’s Catholic bishops conveyed their and the Holy Father’s concerns in letters to U.S. Senate and House representatives last month. The bishops’ letters included recommendations that “will not eliminate hunger here or abroad, but … will show the world that we care for our own and acknowledge our bond with those in our countries,” Ferris continued.
Among attendees at the Davenport prayer service were Leslie Kilgannon, executive director of Quad Cities Interfaith, and Alison Hart, Southeast Iowa regional director for U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.
“I’m grateful to be here and excited for the wave of prayer. I’m sure non-Catholics are participating as well,” Kilgannon said. “I’m moved by this as a Catholic and in the work we do.”
Sen. Harkin, in a statement, said: “Modest food assistance programs benefit the most vulnerable among us — children, seniors, individuals with disabilities, and low-wage workers to name just a few. For many Iowans, these programs are a lifeline used to put food on the table.
“As a member of the committee debating a new farm bill, I am committed to passing a balanced measure that protects our farmers and rural communities while providing food assistance for needy families in Iowa and around the country.”
During the prayer service at The Canticle, a guest speaker from the Benevolent Society offered information about services provided in Clinton. The Sisters provided a live video stream for people unable to attend the prayer service. To view it, go to: http://www.clintonfranciscans.com/justice-poverty.html.
This stained-glass window depicting the apostle Matthew is one of four new windows that were blessed Dec. 1 at St. Mary Church in Fairfield. All the works of art portray Gospel writers.
FAIRFIELD — Gazing off into the distance, St. Matthew is depicted lost in thought, holding a quill as an angel wraps an arm around his shoulder and points to a book in his lap. Beneath the Evangelist’s foot is a sack of coins symbolizing his former life as a tax collector before he met Christ.
This image in St. Mary Church graces one of four new stained-glass windows depicting the Gospel writers. Installed this fall, the works of art are designed to remind worshippers of the richness and history of Catholicism, according to a brochure created for the Dec. 1 dedication ceremony.
The windows, which replaced plain glass in the church’s north and south walls, were part of the master plan for St. Mary’s when the building was dedicated in January 2010. This year, a committee chaired by parishioner Susan Mosinski underwent a months-long design process for the new windows.
“The mysteries of the rosary were considered as subject matter early on, but Father Stephen Page (then pastor) steered the committee toward the Gospel writers,” said Mark Shafer, a committee member and artist.
Travis Hunt served as the main designer at Bovard Studio in Fairfield, which produced the windows. “It was especially gratifying to work with Travis, a former pupil of mine when I taught art at Fairfield High School,” Shafer said.
Shafer designed the cover of a book that St. John holds in one of the windows. The cover, whose design Hunt adapted, pictures a serpent and chalice reminiscent of a legend in which the Evangelist blessed a cup of poisoned wine.
Another window shows St. Luke grasping an ancient Egyptian-style paintbrush and cradling an icon of Mary, whose image he is said to have painted. St. Mark’s window shows the Gospel writer standing in front of a winged lion representing majesty and power.
The works of art depicting St. John – whom Jesus entrusted with care of the Virgin Mary — and St. Luke were installed on either side of an icon of the Blessed Mother. St. Matthew’s and St. Mark’s windows flank a Byzantine-style icon of Christ.
“The two icon panels’ soft glow of gold leaf and their semi-abstract format create an exotic contrast with the bright, realistic renderings in their stained glass companions,” Shafer said.
The four stained glass windows were painted in the style of windows in the former St. Mary Church, but allow more light to pass through, he said. On the day of installation, “Upon entering the sanctuary, the windows — because they are low to the ground with life-size figures — seemed to reach out and embrace me.”
Fundraisers, parishioner donations and memorial money paid for the windows.
“There is discussion, as funds become available, of replacing the plain glass clerestory windows (high windows) with a simple diamond pattern inside an arch,” Shafer said. “Every third window would tentatively have a Marian symbol.”
