Zen teacher to lead retreat in Durango
Fu Schroeder, an abbess at the San Francisco Zen Center, will lead a retreat called “What is Zazen Anyway?” from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. May 9 at the Durango Dharma Center, 208 East Animas Road (County Road 250).
Simply translated, zazen means seated meditation. The retreat will consist of sitting and walking meditation and a dharma talk with an opportunity for discussion.
The retreat fee is based on a sliding scale from $80 to $40. Scholarships are available.
Having begun Buddhist practice at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1979, Schroeder is currently Abiding Abbess of Green Gulch Farm, a Buddhist practice center and organic farm offering training in Zen meditation and ordinary work.
For scholarship information or to register, visit www.DurangoDharmaCenter.org.
For further questions, call 799-0084 or email tleonard@frontier.net.
Get your spaghetti, meatball dinner on at church
Sacred Heart Parish, 254 East Fifth Ave., will host its 41st annual spaghetti supper from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday.
The cost is $10 for people 12 and older, $5 for children younger than 12 and free for children younger than 6.
The menu will include spaghetti, meatballs, salad, bread, pizzelli cookies and drinks.
Native Americans furious at Vatican decision
VATICAN CITY – The Vatican is mounting a campaign to defend an 18th century Franciscan missionary who will be canonized by Pope Francis in the U.S. against protests from Native Americans who have compared his conversion of natives to genocide.
The Vatican is teaming with the archdiocese of Los Angeles and the main U.S. seminary in Rome to host a daylong celebration May 2 at the North American College to honor the Rev. Junipero Serra, who introduced Christianity to much of California as he marched north with Spanish conquistadors. Francis will celebrate Mass in his honor.
For the church, Serra was a great evangelizer and a model for today’s Hispanics. Many Native Americans, though, say Serra helped wipe out native populations, enslaved converts and spread disease as he brutally imposed Christianity on them. They have staged protests in California, and there is a move to remove his statue from the U.S. Capitol.
Vatican officials defended Serra’s record, saying it shows he worked in defense of Native Americans, often intervening to spare them from the more brutal colonial officials.
The Rev. Vincenzo Criscuolo, a Franciscan at the Vatican’s saint-making office, said it was important to look at Serra as “a man of his time” who, like many others at the time, used corporal punishment as an educational tool.
Herald Staff & Associated Press
