PEOPLE

The Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement announced that Dana Reynolds of California has been ordained a bishop to serve the Western region of the United States, the first U.S. bishop for the movement. Reynolds was ordained April 9 in a small private ceremony at an ecumenical chapel in Stuttgart, Germany, by bishops of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement. Reynolds, mother of two adult children and a grandmother, shares life with Don, her husband of 40 years.

Mercy Sr. Norita Cooney of Omaha, Neb., was elected March 30 to lead the six-member leadership team of the 900-member West Midwest Community of the Sisters of Mercy, which will be launched July 1, when six Mercy communities stretching from San Francisco to Detroit merge. The merger is part of a global restructuring of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. By 2009, 25 regions in the institute will merge into six geographic communities.

Homeland Security agents at Chicago’s O’Hare airport April 6 refused entry to Irish antiwar activist Damien Moran, and sent him back to Poland, where he currently lives and teaches. The agents detained Moran and questioned him about a 2003 peace protest Moran conducted, in which a U.S. military plane parked at Dublin’s Shannon airport en route to Iraq was damaged. A Dublin Circuit court acquitted Moran of charges from the protest. Moran was to visit his brother in Virginia and then speak at a conference in Omaha, Neb., sponsored by the Global Network Against Weapons in Space.

Thomas Lewis, an artist and Catholic peace activist, died of natural causes at his home in Worcester, Mass., April 4. He was 68. Forty years ago next month, Tom Lewis and eight other Vietnam War protesters broke into the draft board offices in Catonsville, Md., and burned draft records with homemade napalm. Lewis remained active in the peace movement the rest of his life. His last arrest for civil disobedience was in January at the Pentagon.

National Catholic Reporter, April 18, 2008