You may have first heard about the Keystone XL pipeline right here on the Dating God Podcast‘s first installment of our “Social Justice Report,” during which Br. Steve DeWitt explained why the transnational oil pipeline should be opposed. Today, Catholic New Service published an article about the protest and the same story was the lead story on NPR’s “All Things Considered” program this evening. Among those who have protested and risked arrest for purposes of peaceful civil disobedience are counted two of my Franciscan brothers, associate pastors of St. Camillus Parish in Silver Spring, MD. Read the story below for more information, including the mention of both of them.
Catholics join hundreds in arrests over oil pipeline
By Dennis Sadowski, CNS
WASHINGTON — Maryknoll Father Jim Noonan hopes the five or so hours he spent in jail recently will be noticed by President Barack Obama.
A staff associate in the Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns, Father Noonan, 77, was among 65 people arrested Aug. 20 during the first day of a planned two-week protest to call attention to the environmental dangers he believes are posed by a proposed 1,711-mile pipeline to carry Canadian crude oil to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas.
Through Aug. 30, nearly 600 people had been arrested.
“I wanted to do anything I possibly could to be a voice,” Father Noonan told Catholic News Service three days after his arrest for participating in the first sit-in. “I wanted to ask the president please do not authorize this pipeline because your children and your grandchildren will rue the day that this was authorized.” Read more »
