The College of Health and Human Development will host M. Daniele Fallin, Sylvia and Harold Halpert Professor in Mental Health and chair of the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, at 4 p.m. via Zoom Webinar on Thursday, May 7, for the next presentation in its Dean’s Lecture Series: Perspectives on the Pandemic. This presentation, “Mental Health and the COVID Pandemic,” will summarize recent findings on the psychological effects of the pandemic, as well as offer some strategies for prevention and intervention as the pandemic, and its after-effects, continue.

Students in Penn State’s Master of Health Administration program are learning first-hand how the skills and competencies they are acquiring in the classroom will be applied in their professional careers. A recent virtual roundtable event provided opportunities for students to learn real-world strategies from health care industry leaders that are being applied in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alexandra Stone and Blake Gillikin will serve as college marshals for spring 2020 commencement.

Student marshals will represent each department for spring 2020 commencement

The 2020 Special Olympics Summer Games, slated for June 11 to 13, are being canceled due to concerns related to coronavirus. The games will shift to virtual events, with details to be announced in the near future.

On the fourth day of NCAA Division III Week on Thursday, April 16, the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference released its All-Sportsmanship teams for winter and spring sports. Between winter and spring sports, a total of nine Penn State Altoona student-athletes were selected as representatives to the teams.

As the tally of conference championships grows and more teams get bids for national playoffs, student-athletes at Penn State Mont Alto have their eyes on a bigger prize: academic success.

Two Mont Alto student-athletes named to the USCAA All-Academic Team; Corrine Custer-Grassmyer recognized as John Fritz Sportsmanship Award Honoree.

Apple's latest iOS 13.5 beta release includes a new Health app feature that allows iPhone and Apple Watch users to automatically send Medical ID information to first responders.

Stoking interest in an expected second season of Apple TV+ original "For All Mankind," Apple on Wednesday shared a virtual tour of the show's fictional Jamestown lunar base.

Apple has reopened all of its operational Apple Stores in Australia, following their closure because of the coronavirus outbreak. Each of the stores has introduced social distancing and temperature checks.

AppleInsider has rounded up the best 16-inch MacBook Pro deals going on right now, with coupon savings knocking up to $450 off every single model. Whether you're in the market for a standard config or looking for a loaded Core i9 model, it pays to check out the cash discounts.

Several European countries, including Switzerland and Germany, are demanding all user data generated by coronavirus contact tracing apps be stored on-device, rather than aggregated on a centralized server.

Instead of a theater release in May, or a digital rental period, Warner Brothers will release their new movie 'Scoob!' on iTunes for a $25 one-time purchase.

It's not exactly surprising that with all of the uncertainty in the world, Apple decided that it couldn't provide useful revenue guidance for its fiscal Q3 ending in June. It is unexpected, however, that Apple felt confident in announcing a silver lining to the pandemic -- it expects to sell more Macs and iPads in the summer of 2020 compared to 2019.

Following in the footsteps of Apple Card, and in the shadow of a rumored debit card solution from Google, Samsung on Thursday announced plans to field a physical debit card product in partnership with finance company SoFi.

Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf in an interview on Thursday said the chipmaker's relationship with Apple has greatly improved since the two companies ended a bitter legal battle over patent licensing and royalties in 2019.

Apple is shifting a substantial portion of its current AirPods production from China to Vietnam, and appears to be considering a release schedule later than previously predicted for an AirPods refresh.

Apple frequently places movies on sale, and this week is no exception. Here's the latest batch of movies that you can get on the cheap for this Mother's Day weekend.

Apple's next release in the AirPods family could be its long-rumored over-ear headphones, a leaker claims, with the larger personal audio accessory tipped to have the name "AirPods Studio."

Mother's Day may be tomorrow, but you can still grab a great deal on Apple hardware with prices starting at just $95. Take advantage of the return of the popular $100 discount on Apple Watch Series 5 styles, plus a new $375 markdown on 16-inch MacBook Pros and flash deals on iPod touch models.

She only came for a week, but impacted lives of several families with children with autism. Isabel Black shares about her experiences in Montenegro.

Can young people be united in faith, irrespective of their ethnic background? The answer is yes!

OM uses a team car to transport teenagers with autism to Montenegro's only special needs school. But a better car is needed to continue.

OMers visit the beachfront cafes for weekly Bible study, seeking to bless the businesses and share God's love all year round.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 7, 2020 / 07:55 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Joseph Binzer, Cincinnati's auxiliary bishop, who was accused in August of failing to act on allegations made against a priest. 

A statement from the Holy See press office May 7 said the pope had accepted the 65-year-old bishop’s resignation but gave no reason for the decision. 

In a statement released by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Archbishop Dennis Schnurr said the pope accepted Binzer’s resignation after conversations between the bishop and the Holy See. 

The archdiocese also included a brief statement from Binzer in which he said he was “deeply sorry for my role in addressing the concerns raised about Father Drew, which has had a negative impact on the trust and faith of the people of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.”  

“In April, having studied this matter since last summer, the Holy See informed me that it agreed with this assessment. As a result, and after much prayer and reflection, I offered my resignation from the Office of Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati,” said Binzer. ”I believe this to be in the best interest of the archdiocese.”

Archbishop Schnurr said that although retired, Binzer will continue to serve in the archdiocese with the title of “Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus.” 

“What exactly that ministry will look like will be determined after discussions between Bishop Binzer, the Priest Personnel Board, and me,” Schnurr said. “In this difficult and unfortunate time, please keep Bishop Binzer and all the people of the archdiocese in your prayers.”

Archbishop Schnurr removed Binzer from his position as head of priest personnel in August, after CNA presented officials with its investigation into claims that Binzer failed to pass on reports that a priest had engaged in inappropriate behavior with teenage boys.

In August last year, Schnurr told CNA that “We obviously made serious mistakes in our handling of this matter, for which we are very sorry.”

While Schnurr’s public comments did not address Binzer’s role directly, senior sources in the archdiocese told CNA in August that Schnurr had “gone nuclear” when he discovered the situation.

“The archbishop was as mad as I have ever seen him. When he was told that Bishop Binzer had withheld information, well, he used words I have never heard him use before,” one senior source told CNA, saying Schnurr called Binzer’s actions a “firestorm” for the archdiocese.

In September, 2019, an archdiocesan spokesperson told CNA that Schnurr had sent a "full report to Rome on the whole case and he is waiting for the Vatican’s response,” and he expected "a full investigation” to be conducted by the Vatican.

Binzer later resigned as a member of the U.S. bishops’ conference committee for the protection of children and young people, on which he represented Region VI.

CNA reported in August last year that Binzer was told in 2013 about allegations concerning a recently suspended priest, Fr. Geoff Drew, and failed to disclose them to Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr and other archdiocesan officials.

While the archdiocesan victims’ assistance coordinator, who reported to Binzer, was aware of the allegation, the information was not made known to the diocesan priest personnel board or Archbishop Schnurr. 

In 2015, similar allegations were again made against Drew. The matter was forwarded to Butler County officials, who determined that the activity was not criminal. Again, Binzer reported neither the complaints nor the investigation to the archbishop or informed the priest personnel board.

Sources in the archdiocesan chancery told CNA in August that Binzer met with Drew twice, was assured by him that he would reform his conduct, and considered this sufficient.

In early 2018, Drew applied for a transfer to St. Ignatius of Loyola Parish in Green Township, which is attached to the largest Catholic school in the archdiocese.

As head of priest personnel, Binzer was in charge of the process that considers requests and proposals for reassignment, in conjunction with the priest personnel board.

Neither the board nor the archbishop were made aware of the multiple complaints against Drew, and the transfer was approved.

The allegations were also reportedly not recorded by Binzer in the priest’s personnel file that would have been available to the archdiocesan personnel board as part of the process.

A month after Drew’s arrival at St. Ignatius, a parishioner at Drew’s former parish resubmitted the 2015 complaints about the priest, but this time it was also brought to the attention of Archbishop Schnurr.

Also in 2018, Binzer received an additional complaint of similarly inappropriate contact by Drew, dating to his time as a high school music teacher, before his ordination as a priest. 

Following a diocesan investigation, Drew was ordered to attend counselling with a psychologist.

On July 23, Drew was removed from ministry, when it emerged that he had sent a series of inappropriate text messages to a 17-year-old. 

Chancery sources told CNA in August that it was only after the recent incident at St. Ignatius that archdiocesan officials discovered that the otherwise undisclosed complaints about Drew had been made to Binzer, and that the auxiliary bishop had failed to report them to other diocesan officials, or raise them during the decision to approve his transfer in 2018.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 7, 2020 / 10:48 am (CNA).- A Catholic nurse said the coronavirus pandemic has presented challenges she has never encountered before—and that a prayer life is critical to get her through her shift.

“If I don’t have my faith in me, I cannot give what I don’t have,” said Maria Arvonio, a registered nurse for almost 40 years and a board member of the National Association of Catholic Nurses. 

As the current night shift supervisor at Virtua Willingboro Medical Center in southern New Jersey—a COVID-19 “hot spot,” she says—Arvonio told CNA she and her colleagues were facing a new kind of disease.

Over the decades she has had experience treating previous diseases including the AIDS epidemic, before which nurses didn’t wear gloves. “I’m still standing—that is God,” she said.

Yet the new coronavirus pandemic is something unprecedented, she admitted. “It’s different in that it appears that no matter what we’re doing, it seems to just multiply,” she said.

As she treats COVID-19 patients, Arvonio told CNA that she leans on her prayer life to lead the team of nurses at the hospital.

“I cannot help those other nurses stand strong, if they look at me and I look afraid. Why would they want us to continue to work? I cannot show fear,” she said.

“I start my job with prayer. Before I even go into the workplace, I’ve already been either doing the rosary with someone, praying ‘Jesus, come and seal me in your most Precious Blood, Blessed Mother help me,’” Arvonio said.

Arvonio was one of several nurses to appear at the White House on Wednesday for National Nurses Day, and told President Trump of her experience treating patients in a COVID-19 “hot zone.” New Jersey has been one of the hardest-hit states by the virus, with nearly 132,000 confirmed cases and more than 8,500 deaths.

Treating the person, and not just the sickness, is part of the mission of nurses, she said at the event. “It’s not just our science, it’s our compassion.”

In an interview with CNA after her White House appearance, Arvonio said she pressed an official close to the President on the need for the administration to push for more access to COVID patients by hospital chaplains.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has reportedly been working on guidelines for restarting religious services as states begin to loosen stay-at-home restrictions. CNA reported that on April 28 and 29, officials from the White House domestic policy council and the CDC had discussed the matter with four Catholic bishops who are resuming public Masses.

New Jersey, Arvonio said, has allowed golf courses and liquor stores to be open, but Catholics do not have public Mass. “That’s a problem,” she said.

The spiritual needs of the COVID-19 patients are just as real as their physical needs, she said. As a board member of the National Association of Catholic Nurses, U.S.A., Arvonio says that organization’s mission is critical now more than ever, to emphasize caring for the spiritual needs of patients. 

In the case of one patient who was heading to hospice, a priest could only talk to her remotely, on Zoom.

“She was in tears, an elderly woman worried to leave on hospice because her priest wasn’t there to give her the last rites. This is wrong! This is our right as a Catholic!” Arvonio said.

For some hospitals, chaplains cannot administer the sacramental anointing because of a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) available for them. Yet, Arvonio said, she has seen staff wearing PPE in situations where it’s not necessary.

“Look at how we’re using our equipment and give it to the essential personnel, which is the priest,” she said. “We need him in the hospital more than ever.”

“We need to start thinking about getting the spiritual care back to these patients. They need their priests, they need their pastor.”

She has started making care packages for patients to provide something tangible in the absence of the sacraments; for one patient she assembled a care bag with holy water, blessed oil, and plastic rosaries. “I said ‘he’s not alone. God always has somebody for every person,” she said.

Washington D.C., May 7, 2020 / 04:30 pm (CNA).- The White House service for the National Day of Prayer on Thursday focused on protection from the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump said Americans will continue to pray for divine assistance as the nation faces “unforeseen and seemingly unbearable hardships.”

Sister Eneyda Martinez of the Poor Sisters of St. Joseph community in Alexandria, Virginia was one of the religious leaders present to lead attendees in prayer.

“Merciful Savior, heal and comfort the sick so that with health restored, they may give you praise. Divine Physician, accompany our caregivers, so that serving you with patience they may heal wisely. And through wisdom, guide our leaders, so that through seeking remedies they may follow your light,” Sister Eneyda Martinez prayed at the service in the White House’s Rose Garden.

The National Day of Prayer was designated by Congress in 1952, and scheduled in 1988 to be observed annually on the first Thursday in the month of May.

In attendance at the White House service were President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, as well as Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence, and Paula White, and other religious leaders from Catholic, Christian, and Mormon churches, and Jewish and Hindu faiths.

The prayer service emphasized prayer for protection from the coronavirus pandemic, as well as prayer for the sick and their families, and health care workers.

“Christ, the Anointed, protect us in body and in spirit, so that free from harm we may be delivered from all affliction,” prayed Sister Eneyda Martinez.

Vice President Pence urged Americans to be “persistent in prayer,” especially for the families of the dead, those sick with the virus, and health care workers, many who have “literally taken the place of loved ones” in being the only close contacts of COVID-19 patients.

On Thursday morning, Trump issued a proclamation, noting the importance of prayer during the pandemic.

“During the past weeks and months, our heads have bowed at places outside of our typical houses of worship, whispering in silent solitude for God to renew our spirit and carry us through unforeseen and seemingly unbearable hardships,” Trump stated.

“Even though we have been unable to gather together in fellowship with our church families, we are still connected through prayer and the calming reassurance that God will lead us through life's many valleys.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control was reportedly drafting guidance for states to reopen public accommodations and religious services, but according to the Associated Press on Thursday, the document was buried by the administration.

That document reportedly advised against churches holding services if they were not in a “community no longer requiring significant mitigation.”

However, if that and other certain conditions were in place, churches should take precautions such as ensuring social distancing, wearing of masks by congregants, and intensifying cleaning of churches, the CDC document reportedly said.

State orders have varied in their restrictions on public gatherings during the pandemic; a Kansas stay-at-home order allowed religious gatherings of 10 or fewer people, while Illinois prohibited all religious gatherings.

After every U.S. diocese stopped public Masses during March, Catholic dioceses have started offering public Masses, beginning with the diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico, with several other dioceses following suit in ensuing days.

Officials from the CDC and the White House spoke with four of the bishops on April 28 and 29 about the resumption of public religious services.

Denver Newsroom, May 7, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- A young Catholic artist has drawn an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary on her parents' driveway bringing religious art to her local community during the quarantine.

The Diocese of Fargo posted on Facebook May 4 an image of Our Lady of Lourdes drawn by Maria Loh, a 17-year old who grew up in Fargo. She said it was an enjoyable experience to share her faith and art with her neighborhood.

“Being able to interact with people when they walked by was very moving in a way because a lot of people have never really seen sidewalk art done like that locally. So being able to share in that kind of experience, it was very, very good,” she told CNA.

Loh has recently been inspired by chalk art and pastels, which, she said, have vibrant and beautiful colors. She has drawn on the sidewalks a few times, including two images of Mary - Madonna of the Lillies and the Pieta by William Adolphe-Bouguereau.

Her most recent chalk drawing was Our Lady of Lourdes by Hector Garrido - an image she had seen as a magnet on her grandparents' refrigerator growing up. The picture has always been an inspiration, she said, noting that she decided to replicate it after Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine in France had temporarily closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I heard that the shrine had been temporarily closed off to the public, and I remember … thinking that's really sad because especially in this time, we’re really looking for healing in more ways than one, like physically and mentally and spiritually,” she said.

“It really felt like people wouldn't be able to go to experience that. So I felt like drawing this image of Our Lady of Lourdes would be a good way to remind people that Our Lady is still with us even if we can’t go to her shrine.”

Loh, the oldest of five, has been involved with art projects and drawing for her entire life. She said, growing up in a Catholic family, she has been inspired by her faith and the religious art in churches.

“I see our faith as so precious... Especially in the form of the Eucharist - the actual body and blood of Christ, I've seen that we are very blessed to have that in our faith. It's something that has impacted a lot of my life growing up,” she said.

While she was working on the piece, Loh said, a majority of passersby did not know who the lady in the image was. She expressed hope that the picture would help remind people of Mary and the beauty of the Church, which, she said, is a powerful attraction to the faith.

“One thing that I hope this kind of art and image will evoke is a desire to come to know who Mary is and how rich our faith is. … All the beautiful art that can be seen in Catholic churches, especially like in Rome, there's almost a transcendental beauty to them that draws people into the faith to come to know things that they've never dreamed of before,” she said.

As Loh finishes her junior year of high school, she expressed the possibility of art school after graduation, but, while she is still uncertain of the future, said art will not be dropped anytime soon.

“I can definitely see [art school] being a possibility. I’ll have to spend some time, especially with God trying to figure out what he wants me to do. But, I don't think art is going out of my life anytime soon,” she said.

CNA Staff, May 8, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- EWTN Global Catholic Network, the world’s largest Catholic media organization, announced Friday that Andrew Walther – an experienced Catholic journalist, media executive, and advocate for persecuted Christians – has been named president and chief operating officer of EWTN News, Inc. The appointment is effective June 1.

Walther began his Catholic media career as a journalist writing for the National Catholic Register two decades ago. Most recently he has served as vice president for communications and strategic planning at the Knights of Columbus.

In his role as president of the news division, Walther will oversee EWTN’s vast news media platforms, which create content in English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese and Italian. Its holdings include Catholic News Agency, the National Catholic Register, the ACI Group, ChurchPop and EWTN’s lineup of television and radio news programming.

“As well as being an accomplished Catholic journalist and media executive, Andrew Walther brings to this role unique expertise in the global Church,” said EWTN Chairman and CEO Michael P. Warsaw.

“His leadership experience with a global Catholic communications and media operation – and his previous work with the National Catholic Register and EWTN News Nightly – gives him the added advantage of already knowing the Catholic media world and many of the people within the EWTN family. We look forward to having him lead and strengthen our news division,” Warsaw said.

Since 2005, Walther has worked in senior roles at the Knights of Columbus. During his tenure at the Knights, Walther helped launch the organization’s modern communications department, overseeing work with Catholic and secular media outlets, the launch of social media channels and video production, and the organization’s global media work, especially in Europe and the Middle East. He was also heavily involved in the organization’s charitable work and disaster relief initiatives.

Walther also organized and led the Knights’ work on behalf of persecuted Christians in the Middle East, traveling to Iraq several times and successfully leading a public effort to have ISIS’ campaign of persecution declared  a genocide by Secretary of State John Kerry.

His advocacy for persecuted Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East helped shape policy in both the Obama and Trump administrations, and he also helped play a role in forging a bipartisan legislative consensus on behalf of persecuted Christians and other victims of ISIS in the Middle East. Walther’s efforts included working with other governments and the UN as well as with Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders to end violence and persecution and bring relief to persecuted Christian communities.

“Andrew Walther has been a good friend and a trusted colleague for many years,” said Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, who is president of the U.S bishop’s conference and a longtime member of EWTN’s board of governors.

“Andrew is one of the Church’s finest strategic thinkers and a highly respected advocate for international religious liberty. All of this will serve him well as head of the world’s largest Catholic news organization. I wish him great success.”

While working closely over the years with many bishops, dioceses and Catholic organizations in North America, Walther also worked closely with the Vatican on several projects under both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

“Mother Angelica created a network dedicated to ‘the advancement of truth’ and Catholic news is a vital part of this mission,” Walther said Friday.

“I look forward to working with the talented and dedicated team of journalists at EWTN News to provide news from a Catholic perspective and to highlight important stories that might otherwise be overlooked.”

In addition to his roles in media and religious freedom advocacy, Walther also oversaw the Knights’ polling and book publishing operations, which included several New York Times bestsellers. Together with his wife, Maureen, he co-authored “The Knights of Columbus: An Illustrated History,” a book released this year.

CNA Staff, May 8, 2020 / 12:30 pm (CNA).- A federal judge in Arkansas on Thursday upheld the state’s requirement that women obtain a negative coronavirus test before having an abortion.

Calling the decision “agonizingly difficult,” Judge Brian Miller for the Eastern District Court of Arkansas said the state’s testing mandate—which applies to all elective surgeries and not just abortions—is “reasonable” during the public health emergency and was not done “with an eye toward limiting abortions.

The judge noted that “it is undisputed that surgical abortions have still taken place.”

The abortion clinic Little Rock Family Planning Services had requested a temporary injunction on the state health department’s requirement that elective surgery patients obtain a negative new coronavirus (COVID-19) test result within 48 hours before the procedure.

Previously, the health department ordered a halt to non-essential surgeries on April 3 to preserve resources for treating COVID-19.

The Little Rock abortion clinic performed abortions while claiming they were offering “essential” procedures, and after the health department ordered them to stop on April 10, the clinic challenged the state in court. The diocese’s Respect Life Office noted that women were traveling to the clinic for abortions from nearby states such as Texas and Louisiana.

The clinic won its case for a temporary restraining order at the district court level, but the Eighth Circuit appeals court subsequently overruled that decision and sided with the state.

The April 3 directive was updated April 24 to allow for some elective surgeries provided certain conditions were met. Elective abortions were included in the “non-essential” surgeries that were allowed to continue on April 24.

These conditions included no overnight stays, no contact with COVID-19 patients in the previous 14 days, and a negative COVID-19 test for patients within 48 hours of the surgery.

According to the clinic, which asked for a temporary injunction, three women were seeking to obtain “dilation and evacuation” abortions but were prevented from meeting the state’s testing requirmenet. One woman said she was unable to get a COVID-19 test; another said the lab could not guarantee she would receive results in 48 hours. The third woman was unable to get an abortion in Texas, and drove to the Little Rock clinic; she was told the results of her test would not be available for several days.

In response, the state’s health department said that four surgical abortions had still been performed at the clinic between April 27 and May 1, with COVID-19 test results having been obtained within 48 hours of the abortions, and thus the directive was not an “undue burden” on women seeking abortion.

In his decision on Thursday, Judge Miller said that the pandemic is a serious threat, noting that at the time of the opinion more than 70,000 people had died in the U.S. from the virus including more than 3,500 people in Arkansas.

He said the case “presents the tug-of-war between individual liberty and the state’s police power to protect the public during the existing, grave health crisis,” and noted that the three women as well as others “are very troubled. There is a strong urge to rule for them because they are extremely sympathetic figures, but that would be unjust.”

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 8, 2020 / 03:10 pm (CNA).- The Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, said that the Church must return to “normal life” after the governor announced plans to ban large gatherings until a COVID-19 vaccine or treatment is available.

Earlier in the week, the state’s Governor JB Pritzker unveiled a five-phase “Restore Illinois” plan that bans gatherings of more than 50 people until a vaccine or treatment is available, or the virus has stopped spreading for a sustained period of time. Health officials have said that a vaccine for the new coronavirus (COVID-19) might not be available for 12 to 18 months. 

Currently, people in the state are allowed to attend religious services of 10 or fewer people, but no gatherings of more than 10 people are permitted until phase 4 of Pritzker’s plan, and the state wouldn’t even be able to “advance” to phase 3 until May 29.

“The Church has certainly done her part in making great sacrifices to slow the spread of this virus,” Andrew Hansen, director of communications for the diocese of Springfield, Illinois, told CNA on Friday.

“That said, the Church must return to her normal life of liturgy and communal worship,” Hansen said, while emphasizing precautions such as social distancing “will likely be the appropriate path longer term for the return to some version of normalcy for the Church.”

Previously, in-person or drive-in religious services were banned in the state. The Thomas More Society filed a lawsuit on behalf of a church in Lena, Ill., on April 30. Later that evening a paragraph was added to the governor’s executive order allowing for people to leave their homes to attend religious services of ten or fewer people, the society’s president Peter Breen told CNA.

The next day, May 1, the archdiocese of Chicago announced it would be resuming public Masses with 10 or fewer people.

According to the “Restore Illinois” plan, there could not be any gathering of between 11 and 50 people in size until phase 4 of the plan—“Revitalization.”

That phase can start only when certain conditions have been met: the positivity rate of COVID tests is at or under 20% and doesn’t rise by more than 10 points over 14 days; hospital admissions don’t increase for 28 days; and hospitals have at least 14% “surge capacity” in ICU beds, medical and surgical beds, and ventilators.

Pitzker clarified in a Wednesday press conference that religious services would be part of this 50-person limit in phase 4, and schools would not be allowed to reopen until then, raising questions of how tuition-dependent Catholic schools might fare in the fall if remote learning is still widely utilized.

The state’s superintendent of education has said that at least some schools might have to begin the new school year with remote learning, or with students attending classes in-person only on certain days.

“So we continue to hope and pray schools will reopen next school year. Certainly, when our schools reopen, new measures and precautions will be in place,” Hansen told CNA.

The president of DePaul University, located in Chicago, announced earlier this week that the university already plans to “minimize our footprint on campus this fall,” and that an announcement of the fall plans could happen by June 15.

Denver Newsroom, May 8, 2020 / 05:29 pm (CNA).- Mother’s Day is going to look different for most families this year, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

For Catholics, some churches are in the process of slowly re-opening public Masses, but the dispensation from the Sunday obligation continues to stand, as the virus has not gone away and a cure or vaccine has yet to be found.

While most Catholics are eager to return to Mass, a small group of Catholics are relieved that they will not be sitting in a public pew this Mother’s Day.

“We actually heard from one woman who said, ‘I kind of feel badly about saying this, but I'm sort of glad that we won't be in the pews this year for Mother's Day,’” Ann Koshute, founder of Springs in the Desert Catholic ministry, told CNA.


“That's something that we hear and that everybody I think on the team has experienced at one point in this journey,” she said - the desire to avoid Mass on Mother’s Day. That’s because Koshute, along with other members of her ministry, have had painful experiences with infertility, and the customary Mother’s Day blessing given to mothers at many parishes that day can bring their grief and sense of loss poignantly to the fore.


“I think that so often people in our own families, our friends, and even our pastors don't really understand the full extent of the pain and the grief or even the full extent of the issue of infertility, of how many couples are really dealing with it,” she said.


The pain of infertility, and the lack of resources available to Catholics on the subject, was why Koshute and her friend, Kimberly Henkel, founded Springs in the Desert, a Catholic ministry to spiritually and emotionally support women and couples experiencing infertility and infant loss. Originally, Henkel and Koshute, who have both experienced infertility, thought they might write a book. But they decided to start with a ministry website and a blog that could bring people together and allow for other women and couples to share their experiences. The group is relatively new, and held its first retreat in Philadelphia in December. They were set to hold a second one this weekend - Mother’s Day weekend - in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, when, well, the pandemic hit.

Now, they’ve moved the retreat online and opened it up to Catholics across the country - and they’ve been overwhelmed by the response.

“We thought that we would be really excited if maybe a couple dozen people found out about it and came. We are over 100 participants now. And it's free and it's going to be available all weekend,” Koshute said. The retreat is trying to address the emotional and spiritual experience of infertility and loss for a broad range of people, Henkel said - from mothers who have miscarried, to women who are past child-bearing years and still grieving the loss of infertility, to women “who feel like their biological clocks are ticking and just haven’t met the right guy.” But now that it's a virtual, pre-recorded, watch-at-your-leisure retreat, it also has the potential to reach a population that is often more reluctant to gather in groups and talk about their experiences of infertility: men. “It's mostly women who are emailing us (about the retreat), although we know that many of their husbands will watch with them. But we've also had a few men email us,” Koshute said.


“One in particular, it just really touched my heart. And he said that he was searching the web for help for his wife on Mother's Day. And I was just so filled with praise and thanksgiving to God for that, for a husband to see that hurt in his wife and to want to find a way to help her,” she added. Men and women typically experience the grief of infertility quite differently, Koshute noted. “For us women, it's so visceral because life is conceived within us and we carry that life. But for a man, it's so different,” she said.

“(Men are) kind of distant from that experience until the child is actually born. And so I think many times men, the grief and the burden that they carry is their wife's. They really carry her sadness and I think feel at a loss because they want to make everything right. They want to fix this, and they want to make her whole. And the mystery of infertility is that it's not that simple. And that's one of the things that makes it so difficult,” she said. Henkel said she experienced her own difficulties in trying to discuss infertility with her husband. Now that they’ve experienced the joy of growing their family through adoption, she said, he is much more open to inviting other men to share their experiences. Henkel said she is hoping that an additional benefit of this retreat being online is that it will facilitate discussions between couples watching the videos together. Both Henkel and Koshute said that while the experience of infertility and loss is painful, and they want to help couples acknowledge and accept that pain, they also want Springs in the Desert to be a positive and supportive experience for couples and women, where they can find hope and redemption even in their suffering. One of the topics they focus on is how all women are called to motherhood in their lives, whether it is spiritual or biological.

“My experience has shown me that my motherhood is really engaged in so many ways that I never considered before,” Koshute said.

“Not just with my godson or with other children in my family, but with women who are older than I who are friends and who might come to me with a difficulty or problem and I can help them,” or by helping family members in need or through charitable works, she added. “That's one of the messages that we try to get across to women and to couples as well, that those kinds of things, what we would maybe refer to as spiritual motherhood, is not illegitimate,” she said.

“It's not second-place. It's a real way of engaging and living out our motherhood. It's also not a replacement for a baby. So it's not as if you go out and volunteer in your community and now you won't have this longing for a child anymore. But we've really found through our own experience and through talking with other women that the more we kind of put ourselves out there and give ourselves to others, the more that we can begin to see that motherhood enacted in us.”

Henkel said she also likes to encourage couples to look at the ways God is calling them to be fruitful in their marriages outside of biological children.

“We really encourage these couples that they are not forgotten, they're not being punished. That God loves them so much and that he has something amazing for them. He's using this to draw them near to him and to allow them to cry out to him and ask for him to guide them, to lead them, to give them his love and show them what fruitfulness he has for them, what place in ministry and mission he has for them.” Henkel and her husband in particular like to share with couples their experience of foster care as one example of where God might be calling them to be fruitful. After a frustrating and expensive experience with some adoption agencies, Henkel and her husband decided to look into giving a home to children through foster care.

“Here is a situation where these children really need families,” she said. “It's hard because there's no guarantee you're going to get to keep this child, so there's a sense of this new greater level of having to learn how to trust God.” “I think that with a couple discerning that fruitfulness, it's also discerning - where is God really calling you? There's so much need in this world. And he wants to use us.”

Couples interested in the Springs in the Desert Mother’s Day weekend retreat can sign up for free online at the Springs in the Desert website. Content will be uploaded and available for anyone who registers, Henkel said, even if they register late. The retreat team will also be hosting a live talk on Sunday, May 10 at 2 p.m. Eastern on the ministry’s Facebook page.

“There's a place for you in Springs of the Desert,” Henkel added. “There's so many women who have reached out to us in Philly. We added several more women to our group, to our team, our official team, women who came to the retreat. One woman had come there and she said she had had a miscarriage, and neither one of us has experienced that. So we said, please join us. We want your voice.”

“We're trying to really bring the voices of many different women to our team so that people will feel there is somebody that is talking they can really relate to. Because there are all of these different situations, but they've got obviously a very similar undercurrent.”

Purifying and culturing cells from the central nervous system (CNS) has proved to be an incredibly powerful tool for dissecting fundamental neuron and glial properties, and especially powerful in understanding neuronal–glial interactions. In a series of detailed protocols, we have provided step-by-step instructions for purifying and culturing specific types of neurons, glia, and vascular cells from the CNS by immunopanning. This article discusses common pitfalls and errors as well as important design considerations for the immunopanning procedure.

SOLIDWORKS Image Quality settings have the biggest impact on file size and system performance. We always assumed that it would have an impact on overall performance also. The effect varies widely across different files, so we decided to do SOLIDWORKS

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Learn how Kirby Downey, a user creator in our community, made a red lightsaber from scratch in honor of the latest Star Wars movie, "The Rise of Skywalker" - designing all the components in SOLIDWORKS before making it come to life!

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eDrawings Pro 2020 now supports choosing your own 360˚ images as your custom environment in VR! This blog post will help walk you through the process of creating a 360˚ equirectangular image in SOLIDWORKS Visualize and adding it to your Virtual Reality scene in eDrawings Pro 2020.

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Have you ever been interested in SOLIDWORKS Simulation but didn’t know where to start? With such a wide variety of design analysis solutions, Simulation can be an intimidating product for someone newer to the SOLIDWORKS suite of products. Well we

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SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic has added many new features this release to make completing electrical design projects easier than ever. The new Project Preview option, accessed from the Project Manager, lets you review a projects’ contents prior to opening it.  This

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Who wants to work harder, using the same outdated methods, when new tools are available? Not me! There might not always be an “easy button” …. but sometimes there is: 3D Interconnect. Since its introduction in SOLIDWORKS 2017, I have

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This SOLIDWORKS tutorial is for a Wooden Canvas Teepee, the tutorial focuses on the use of Circular Patterns of part bodies and the use of 3D sketch for extrusions between guide points, and profile sweeps along a path. This is a fun tutorial that if you follow, you can create you own Teepee model, and apply a range of designs to with decals. The decal swatches seen in the video are available to download in the description below.

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Need for Surface Surface Modelling is a method used to create and represent complex shapes with high curvature controls. Generally, surfaces are used as an alternative where a particular feature is difficult to create using solid modeling. It is helpful

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This is the first blog post regarding the SOLIDWORKS activation error message. I will briefly try to go through the four most common activation error messages when using a standalone license. I will in a later blog post cover the

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This SOLIDWORKS Tutorial for a Insulated ceramic coffee cup focuses on the combine tool, and uses an assembly to create the layout of the final design before saving back into a part, and turned in to a functional coffee cup. Decals for the tutorial are available to download in the description.

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This is a SOLIDWORKS tutorial to create a pot of gold money jar. This tutorial demonstrates a range of modelling tools, but also highlights the use of the centreline sketch tool as a guide for sketches, new planes, and axis for pattern or move features. The decals and coin part for this design are available to download in the tutorials blog description.

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This SOLIDWORKS Tutorial for a Ceramic Cup Plaster Mold walks you through start to finish of the process of creating a model for a plaster mold and a 3 part cup mold. The tutorial focuses on copying bodies and combing them with each other to finish the tutorial with a 3 piece mold. The final ceramic cup is available to download in the description.

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All, As we’ve written before, Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS is committed to helping our customers be the most productive while working from home during this time of social distancing. Right now, it’s not possible to grab a drawing from the plotter or

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Being able to have an overview of changes to designs since initial release is an important aspect to time-efficient engineering. Making use of an automatically updated revision table helps with that.  What version are we using? Who has made these

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For this SOLIDWORKS tutorial, you can follow to create a Goldfish shaped Cat Treat Toy ready for 3D printing. The DXF files for this tutorial are available to download from the blog below. You can also download and 3D print this design yourself as the STL files are also available to download.

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Child Reference State One of my favorite new features in SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional 2020 is the Child Reference State condition in Workflow Transitions. I can’t tell you how many times as a PDM administrator I had wished for a feature

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