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Prayer Requests:
Please keep the following AOS-USA Members in your prayer:
For the repose of the soul of Fr. James F. Barry, AOS-USA Cruise Ship Priest, who passed suddenly
Fr. Tim Brian - Cruise Ship Priest member, who is facing heart problems.
Fr. Marvin Klemmer - Cruise Ship Priest member facing illness.
Fr. Donald Koch - Cruise Ship Priest member facing illness.
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Join AOS USA Today!
To join AOS USA simply click on the following link:
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Seabourn Cruise Line joins AOS-USA Cruise Ship Priest Program!
Dear Friends,
The summer has been busy but productive. Next week we should be rolling out our new website, which has been a long process, but we believe the site will have much more to offer to each of you.
There's something for everyone, from Port Chaplains to Catholic Mariners, from cruise passengers to Cruise Ship Priests. We are still asking for photos from your ministry onboard, or in your local port, which we can add to the site. Feel free to email those to me.
We also have great news which we reported to our Cruise Ship Priests about two weeks ago. Seabourn Cruise Line has now joined the Cruise Ship Priest Program and will only be utilizing priests from the approved list for their sailings!
We will be placing priests onboard their Easter, Christmas and World Cruises. Last week we completed assigning priests for their Christmas 2012 sailings, as well as their 2013 cruise season.
This is in addition to the work that we have done to assign Celebrity Cruise Lines 70 + cruises for 2013. And of course, Msgr. Michael Harriman and Fr. Dominic Hahn who handle the assignments for Holland America Line, have been busy for the past 2 months or so, tackling the 2013 HAL assignments.
So if we have been quiet on the e-news front these days, it is not for lack of news. Just a lack of time to report on it!
Thanks to those of you who have submitted prayer requests and news items from your local seafarers' centers. We are always happy to report on the good work that you are doing.
Wishing each of you a blessed & relaxing weekend!
Doreen M. Badeaux
Secretary General
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AOS Vatican Bulletin:
Contains Information for AOS World Congress
Dear Friends,
Whether or not you will be attending the AOS World Congress this November, we urge each of you to read the latest bulletin from the AOS Vatican. It is very informative, and contains more information about the World Congress itself, and what to expect.
Apostolatus Maris Bulletin N.112 2012/II
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"And the Band Played On." Titanic hoopla underscored public disconnect with victims of maritime tragedies
Special to the AOS-USA Maritime E-News
by: Michael Rawlins
President - Somali Maritime Foundation
1) Legend has it that the final song played by the orchestra on the Titanic was "Nearer, My God, to Thee."
2) The "Unsinkable Molly Brown " became famous for surviving the Titanic's sinking.
3) The man who built the Titanic said "not even God himself could sink this ship."
Those are just a few of the "fun facts" associated with history's most famous oceangoing tragedy, the sinking of White Star Lines' RMS Titanic from a collision with an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912.
With the media hoopla associated with the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's sinking, the event was promoted in ways designed to tug at our romantic heartstrings rather than remind us that reckless ambition caused the deaths of 1,514 people.
Somehow, loss of life at sea has always been diminished-probably unintentionally-into W. H. Dana-like lore. Maybe that comes from the offshore world being "just over the horizon" in the mind of the general public and more difficult to relate to on a personal level than tragedies on the road or in the sky.
Could you imagine a joyous musical about the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion comparable to the "Watch the Titanic Sink Nightly" review that has played on the Las Vegas Strip for years?
Imagine what would happen to a producer who would dare to put on a Broadway musical about 9/11.
It's easy to reduce a tragedy to a statistic.
Particularly in the maritime world, where individual seamen and offshore workers are often reduced to the generic term of "crew," their lives lumped into the cold language of "P & I risk" and, most glaringly, "supercargo."
Supercargo? That signifies extra persons aboard a vessel or platform beyond the normal billet, a term only slightly less human than "supernumerary."
To quote from the glossary in each book from Retired SEAL Richard Marcinko's best selling Rogue Warrior series: "Navy SEAL = Cannon Fodder."
Several years ago, when a ship ran aground off the Aleutian Islands, the lead of one story focused upon the potential threat to the environment from leaking oil. Only at the end of the story was it reported that six persons had lost their lives.
The victims of the Deepwater Horizon explosion three years ago have not even been given the Titanic nostalgia treatment. In fact, their lives were barely acknowledged in the first place. In today's instant technology age and with society's attention span no longer than a 48 hour news cycle, the event that triggered the ongoing oil disaster seems like an eternity ago. Sadly, but perhaps inevitably, the 11 lives sacrificed in the explosion will be relegated to a footnote in the history books of offshore tragedies. For an oil rig explosion, even though it may have occurred on a vessel in 5,000 feet of water, does not convey the ironic romantic lore of the Titanic sinking, the Edmund Fitzgerald going down "when the winds of November came early" in Lake Superior or the Challenger exploding in space.
To society, the Deepwater Horizon victims seem as faceless and nondescript as any other industrial accident victims. Because their lives were immediately lost in the explosion, no one got to know them outside of their families, friends and co-workers. In perhaps more irony, it's easier for people to identify with the images of pelicans frozen in oil and sea turtles being cleaned because these are ongoing stories.
The Maersk Alabama hijacking put a human face on the lives of seamen for a little while. But even the victims of piracy have once again become statistics of the International Maritime Bureau, at least until the next U.S.-flagged ship is hijacked or perhaps until the movie "Captain Phillips" starring Tom Hanks is released in 2013.
Let not the lives of maritime disasters be forgotten as figures in scripts and stories.
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Carnival Fantasy Donates Bibles to Charleston Port & Seafarers Society
Courtesy:
AOS Charleston Port Chaplain, Fr Bob Higgins
From Fr Bob Higgins comes this story of seafarers extending generosity to other seafarers.
The Carnival Fantasy donated 1055 Bibles to CHAPPS (CHARLESTON PORT & SEAFARERS SOCIETY).
Pictured in the photo above are : Gary Santos, Captain Francesco Lafarina, Subash Javalgi and Fr. Bob Higgins
Kuddos to the Captain and Crew of Carnival Fantasy for this kind and generous act! |
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Somali Pirate who abducted Indians Jailed in US
Courtesy: newstrackindia.com
New Delhi, Aug 23 (IANS) A Somali pirate responsible for negotiating the ransom of Indian seafarers and others has been sentenced in a US court to multiple life sentences for piracy and other crime.
A US embassy statement here Thursday identified the man as Mohammad Saaili Shibin, who negotiated the ransom to free Indian and other seafarers as well the sea vessels S/V Quest and M/V Marida Marguerite.
The sentencing took place in a US federal court Aug 13 after he was found guilty by a jury April 27. The Indian crew members testified they were brutally tortured while being held hostage by pirates.
The statement said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) worked with four Indian seafarers who testified that Shibin was the ransom negotiator for conspirators who pirated the M/V Marida Marguerite.
The German-owned vessel had a crew of 22 men who were held hostage off the coast of Somalia from May to December 2010.
Shibin spoke with the owners of the M/V Marida Marguerite and successfully extracted a ransom payment for the vessel and its crew.
Shibin received about $30,000-50,000 as his share of the ransom payment, the statement said.
Evidence at the trial also showed that Shibin was the one who negotiated on behalf of the pirates during the hijacking of S/V Quest wherein four hostages were shot and killed.
Daniel C. Clegg, the FBI Legal Attache in New Delhi, said: "The global reach of crime-like Somali piracy is transforming the way law enforcement is required to operate in a hyper-connected world.
"Today, criminals try to hide behind national borders often believing they are beyond the reach of the law.
"Shibin's arrest, swift trial and multiple life sentences put international criminals on notice that they will be held accountable for their crimes and cannot hide behind borders."
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Crewtoo: A New Social Network for Seafarers
Headland Media has launched Crewtoo, a new social networking site for seafarers.
Like Facebook and Twitter, Crewtoo invites seafarers to create their own profiles. Seafarers will be able to search for other seafarers by ship, rank or company and post updates to their wall.
The network will provide a platform for online chat and for seafarers to participate in Crewtoo-led polls, games and quizzes. But unlike these other sites, Crewtoo has been designed with seafarers in mind: seafarers do not have constant internet access on board. To keep them up to date with activity on the network, the site allows seafarers to post updates to their Crewtoo page by e-mail from their ship, and to receive a weekly round-up of activity on their page by e-mail.
Headland Media also operates NewsLink, Walport and Crew Media Player. It had polled seafarers on their specific needs for a bespoke network. It started out as an e-mail based community of over 1,700 members with a growth rate of 7 new members per day, and with 10 per cent participating in weekly polls.
Mark Woodhead, MD at Headland Media said: "We believe these seafarers need more attention, more services, and an increased ability to communicate with each other. We have developed Crewtoo to be both 'a club' and 'a service provider' to seafarers, with the internet and e-mail being the key to this."
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| Prayer for Hurricane Season
O God, Master of this passing world, hear the humble voices of your children. The Sea of Galilee obeyed your order and returned to its former quietude; you are still the Master of land and sea. We live in the shadow of a danger over which we have no control. The Gulf, like a provoked and angry giant, can awake from its seeming lethargy, overstep its conventional boundaries, and invade our land and spread chaos and disaster. During this hurricane season, we turn to You, O loving Father. Spare us from past tragedies whose memories are still so vivid and whose wounds seem to refuse to heal with the passing of time. O Virgin, Star of the Sea, Our Beloved Mother, we ask you to plead with your Son in our behalf, so that spared from the calamities common to this area and animated with a true spirit of gratitude, we will walk in the footsteps of your Divine Son to reach the heavenly Jerusalem where a storm-less eternity awaits us.
Amen.
Originally dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Audrey in 1957. - Fr. Al Volpe, Cameron Parish, LA
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Important Upcoming Events for
AOS USA Members
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