“Dreamers” can dream again

adminonDecember 3, 2021January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

Immigrants in the U.S © Julio Cortez

The "Dreamers" can dream again. The U.S. Deportation Court halted Donald Trump's attempt to end deportation protections for some 800.000 beneficiaries of the DACA program to be terminated. The controversy is not over.

Church leaders in the U.S. have welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling to further protect undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children from deportation. The "Dreamers" are "an important part of our Church and our faith community," said the president of the USCCB Catholic Bishops' Conference, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez. "We stand with them."

The Supreme Court on Thursday had voted five to four to reject the White House's attempt to end President Barack Obama's 2012 DACA protection program by decree.

Trump: 'a load with a shotgun'

Chief Judge John Roberts, who voted with the majority, argued in the ruling that President Donald Trump had terminated the program without sufficient justification.

After his second Supreme Court defeat this week, Trump attacked the court head-on via Twitter. He said this "terrible and politically motivated decision" was "a shotgun blast in the face of people who proudly call themselves Republicans or conservatives". Trump had been trying to end the so-called DACA program in various attempts since 2017. This protects immigrants who were deported before their 16. had come to the U.S. at the age of.

Praise from the church

Archbishop Gomez, who had sharply criticized the previous ruling of the Constitutional Court on discrimination protection for sexual minorities in the workplace, applauded the judges. He urged Trump not to make another attempt to deport the "Dreamers," but to "keep the DACA program intact".

The president of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, nevertheless expects further legal challenges. "We will continue to stand with our brothers and sisters," the bishop from the state of California promised.

"Arbitrary, capricious plan by Trump"

The director of the Catholic immigrant legal aid organization CLINIC, Anna Gallagher, also said the ie is far from resolved. "While we are grateful for today's decision not to end DACA," she said. But the argument goes on.

The head of the Catholic Social Justice Lobby Network, Sister Simone Campbell, said the court's decision to "reject President Trump's arbitrary and capricious plan" was the only "just outcome".

Calling the narrow DACA ruling a much-needed reprieve, the head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, evangelical preacher Samuel Rodriguez, said. People have long experienced a legal limbo, they said, even though the U.S. is their "rightful home". Rodriguez had said the prayer for Trump at inauguration ceremonies.

Protecting "Dreamers"

Representatives of other faith communities also reacted with relief to the judge's ruling. This was an "important victory in the fight for all immigrants," said the president of Church World Service, an interdenominational charity, John L. McCullough.

Now it's up to Congress to legislate protections for "Dreamers," demands Evangelical Lutheran Church leader Elizabeth A. Eaton. He said deputies must ensure "that our immigrant neighbors continue to have the opportunity to educate themselves, start a career, raise a family, and go to church without the constant threat of deportation". The chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, Nihad Awad, called it "just great news".

Obama relieved

Former U.S. President Obama also expressed relief, tweeting immediately after the ruling that he was happy for the Dreamers, their families "and for all of us". Chief Justice John Roberts, considered conservative, voted with the four liberal justices to uphold DACA on procedural grounds. Roughly three in four U.S. residents advocated for permanently legalizing the residency of "Dreamers" in a recent Pew Research Center poll conducted immediately before the Supreme Court decision.

The investigation report on abuse at the Regensburg Cathedral Boys' Choir shows frightening figures. For child protection expert Father Hans Zollner, a dark chapter that also affected peers from his home at the time.

Interviewer: The report indicates that more than 500 cathedral priests have experienced physical violence and nearly 70 choirboys have been sexually abused. The number of unreported cases is said to be about 700 in total. You yourself are a native of Regensburg. How did you feel when you heard about the numbers?

Father Hans Zollner (director of the Child Protection Center of the Institute of Psychology of the Gregorian University in Rome): These are staggering numbers. I was born in Regensburg. I know Etterzhausen and Pielenhofen, that is in my neighborhood where I grew up. These were institutions that played a major role in my childhood. We knew how important this choir is and what reputation it has. It's a staggering number, but behind every number there are people. Many people whose lives have been destroyed or very badly wounded, which is very distressing.

Interviewer: Special investigator Ulrich Weber has cited descriptions that could hardly be more drastic: The victims had described the preschools in Etterzhausen and Pielenhofen as "hell," "prison" or "concentration camps". Accordingly, this had nothing more to do with black pedagogy, most of the assaults were – already at that time – mainly punishable by law. How do you explain that no one intervened??

Zollner: That's not explainable for us today, to be honest. The only things we can say today are amptions: That there were people employed and working there who did not have their own emotionality under control at all; who, out of sheer ambition to make the choir a world institution in the musical field, used every means at their disposal; who had a sadistic streak; and that no one looked for years and decades.

I remember myself that in my childhood two of my schoolmates went to the Domspatzen – not to the preschools, but to the Domgymnasium. They also told me that they had been beaten. These things we knew. But today it is inconceivable that nobody did anything to stop it back then. That nothing has been done, even by the parents, some of whom could have known about it, and by the management or the church leadership.

I can also only say that it is certainly also due to the fact that at that time people were not yet thinking about children's rights in the same way and they were certainly not seen as so fundamental. Sensitivity to what happens to young people when they are beaten has developed over the years and decades.

Interviewer: Hopefully, this development has meant that those times are now over. Father Zollner, but how do you avoid similar incidents ever happening again?

Zollner: Whether the times are over I dare to doubt. For our area, for our world region, it is probably already true. Even if I am not quite sure whether this is really the case in all areas of society. I have just come from Myanmar, the former Burma, where I was told that even today parents tell teachers when they bring their children to a boarding school or even to the normal school: "Let your hand slip if our child does not behave properly, because that will educate him or her."

So I think, seen worldwide, the situation is not such that these means, like being beaten with a stick or having to endure humiliation, have been eradicated. Unfortunately, I don't think it's there yet.

What can and must be done is to put the good of human life, human development of young people first. That you also keep in mind what you are doing to these young people when you expose them, when you beat them, when you don't meet them in the way so that they can grow up with all the talents and all the limitations that they will have to experience in themselves and in the world.

But an institution like a school or boarding school can look very closely at the people who work there when they are hired. She can supervise them regularly, tell them what they can and cannot do. She can have people sign what happens if they don't follow these rules of conduct. It is also possible to build buildings like schools and similar institutions already in such a way that no hidden acts can occur, but that everything comes to light, so that no hidden things are going on – neither in physical abuse nor in sexual abuse.

The interview was conducted by Tobias Fricke.

With a signature campaign, an initiative in the diocese of Wurzburg wants to support the priest of the parish community "Holy Cross Bad Bocklet", who was convicted of sexual abuse. Wurzburg Bishop Franz Jung reacts in anger.

He has now distanced himself from the action. In a statement published in Wurzburg on Monday, he called on the organizers and signers to accept the verdict and the suffering of those affected and not to distort facts. The actions counteracted in a "bizarre and scandalous way" the efforts of the diocese of Wurzburg to come to terms with the sexual abuse and caused serious damage to the parish, diocese and church as a whole.

According to the bishop, they showed with dismay that obviously in parts of the inner-church public it had still not arrived that sexual abuse was a crime that could not be tolerated.

Priest will not return

As bishop, he also clarified: "The convicted priest will definitely not return to the parish community 'Holy Cross Bad Bocklet' and has renounced the parishes. All further measures taken by the diocese against the priest will be clarified in the ecclesiastical proceedings."

Jung was reacting to several collections of signatures in the parish community for a pastor. In August 2020, the priest was convicted by the Bad Kissingen district court of two counts of sexual abuse of an altar girl who was twelve years old at the time of the crime.

He received a suspended sentence of one year and four months and a fine of 1.200 euros. Both the clergyman and the public prosecutor's office withdrew their appeal before the Schweinfurt Regional Court after the victim had testified again. The verdict of the district court thus became legally binding.

Diocese had made case public

According to media reports, the parishioners' argument is based on statements by the woman that she did not perceive the acts as abuse. In addition, they refer to alleged statements of the priest. Part, therefore, is calling for the priest's reinstatement because he is innocent, the reports said.

Another part appeals to the bishop to apply extenuating circumstances in the ongoing canonical proceedings. The diocese had made the case public in the spring of 2019 and prohibited the priest from exercising his priestly ministry. This is still valid.

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