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PEOPLE & DEATHS
Issue Date:  September 5, 2003

PEOPLE

Catherine Pepinster, 44, has been named editor of The Tablet, the independent English Roman Catholic weekly review founded in 1840. Pepinster, the first woman in the post, is to begin her duties at the start of the new year. Currently executive editor of London’s The Independent on Sunday, she succeeds John Wilkins, who became editor in 1982.

 


Michael Bland, a therapist noted for his groundbreaking work with those who have been sexually abused by Catholic priests, is the winner of the 2003 Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, from which he graduated in 2001. Bland, a therapist at the Center for Psychological Services in Oak Lawn, Ill., also is a member of the National Review Board appointed to assess the U.S. bishops’ response to the sex abuse crisis.

 

Frank J. Macchiarola, president of St. Francis College in Brooklyn, is the newly elected president of the board of directors of the National Pastoral Life Center in New York. He succeeds Msgr. Philip J. Murnion, cofounder and executive director of the center, who had been president of the board since the center’s founding. Murnion died of cancer Aug. 19. A national search is being conducted for a new executive director to succeed Murnion.

 


Patty Furtaw and Janet Troppman both shelved fast-track business careers and potential six-figure salaries for work in St. Mary’s Parish in Charlevoix, Mich. Troppman left an 18-year career as a corporate executive to become principal of the parish’s pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade school. Furtaw, who became the pastoral minister at St. Mary after nine years in finance, said: “Life’s journey takes you where you are supposed to be.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger, actor and California gubernatorial candidate, has donated $1,000 to help with the restoration and renovation of the Cathedral of Christ the King in Superior, Wis. Schwarzenegger, who is Catholic, earned a bachelor of arts degree through the University of Wisconsin-Superior’s extended degree program in 1979, and made several visits to the campus to complete the degree requirements. A diocesan official said Schwarzenegger was among the potential major donors contacted about the cathedral project and that he “generously responded.”

Fr. George Arthur, 35, wears a collar and a badge, celebrating Mass back home in Ghana for hundreds of police officers and their families and checking out crime scenes, making arrests and settling disputes when he’s not in church. Arthur, who recently completed a yearlong clinical pastoral education program with the New Orleans police department, says what would seem to American sensibilities to be an unusual mixture of spiritual and civic responsibilities is an accepted way of life in Ghana.


DEATHS

Jesuit Fr. James Gill
Psychiatrist

Jesuit Fr. James J. Gill, 78, a psychiatrist who established the Christian Institute for the Study of Human Sexuality and founded Human Development magazine, died of cancer July 29 in Scottsdale, Ariz., after a lengthy illness. Gill specialized in treating the emotional problems of men and women religious. He worked from 1969 to 1994 as a psychiatrist with Harvard University Health Services and was associated with the Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn.

Dominican Fr. William Cenkner
Pioneer in interreligious dialogue

Dominican Fr. William Cenkner, 72, an expert in Eastern religions, pioneer in interreligious dialogue and former dean of the religious studies school of The Catholic University of America, died in Miami Aug. 8. Cenkner joined Catholic University in 1969 as an assistant professor in the department of religion and religious education. From 1999 until his retirement in August 2002, he held the university’s Katherine Drexel Chair of Religious Studies.

National Catholic Reporter, September 5, 2003

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