Need to Know for Nov. 13

Conference of Catholic Bishops, Pittsburgh rally, Medal of Freedom and Stan Lee

Pope Francis waving from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, Dec. 25, 2015. (Franco Origlia/Getty Images)

Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore

The Vatican has told the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to delay voting on measures to hold bishops accountable for failing to protect children from sexual abuse, the president of the conference said in a surprise announcement Nov. 12. In announcing the decision to his fellow bishops, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo said he was disappointed by the Vatican’s interference, which he said he learned of on Nov. 11, according to CNN. “At the insistence of the Holy See, we will not be voting on the two action items in our docket regarding the abuse crisis,” said DiNardo. For weeks, the US Catholic bishops have trumpeted a series of reforms they had hoped to make after what one cardinal called the church’s “summer of hell.” Those reforms must be approved by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which gathers the country’s bishops twice a year to debate and adopt new policies. Many bishops gathered in Baltimore through Nov. 14 were surprised and unhappy about the Vatican’s decision, he acknowledged.

Racism in Anne Arundel County schools

Chesapeake High School has seen racist acts targeting African-Americans. These incidents recently spread to Chesapeake Bay Middle School. While Anne Arundel County Public Schools has taken steps to address the issue, black and Jewish students in the area remain the targets of racism and anti-Semitism, according to the Capital Gazette. This includes a message written on a sheet of paper students use to sign in and out of counseling sessions that said, “Kill all blacks,” and a swastika drawn on a toilet seat in a boys’ bathroom. The midterm elections introduced a new crop of politicians to state and local offices, and some of them will be tasked with finding solutions.

A fan holds up a sign to honor the victims of the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue during the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cleveland Browns at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Oct. 28, 2018. (Joe Sargent/Getty Images)

Tom Hanks joins Pittsburgh rally to honor synagogue shooting victims

Actors Tom Hanks and Michael Keaton were among several hundred people who participated in a rally to honor the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. The event, under the banner “Stronger than Hate: A Gathering of Compassion, Unity and Love,” was held Nov. 9 at Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported. It started with a moment of silence for the 11 worshippers killed in the Oct. 27 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood. Hanks was in Pittsburgh researching and filming a movie about the life of Fred Rogers, a native of Squirrel Hill. He was joined on stage by Rogers’ widow, Joanne. Keaton is a native of Pittsburgh. “A visitor will know how great a city this is because Pittsburgh has been tested,” Hanks said. Mayor Bill Peduto in his address noted that the gathering was on the same day as the Kristallnacht pogroms. “We gather here today on the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht: a day in which Jews in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia saw the breaking of glass of businesses, saw the vandalism and the damage done through physical harm — words of anti-Semitism, reflected 80 years ago today, in the first violent acts that would lead to the Holocaust,” he said. The accused synagogue gunman, Robert Bowers, has pleaded not guilty in federal district court and requested a jury trial. The 44 charges against Bowers include 32 punishable by death.—JTA

Also see: Coverage of the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting & Other Recent Mass Shootings

Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients

This year’s Medal of Freedom recipients include Babe Ruth, Elvis Presley, football stars Roger Staubach and Alan Page; the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). The Presidential Medal of Freedom traditionally goes to those individuals whose accomplishments are so towering that they’ve become cultural icons, writes columnist Michael Olesker. It’s the American story – or at least the one we like to imagine as the American story. It’s about overcoming adversity. It’s about starting at the bottom and rising to the top by hard work and willpower and sheer talent.

Read more on the honor from Michael Olesker: A Big Swing for the Babe

Also see: 5 things to know about Miriam Adelson

Stan Lee dies at 95

Stan Lee, who as one of the masterminds behind Marvel Comics created such mega-popular comic book franchises as Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men, died early Nov. 12 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 95. Born Stanley Martin Lieber in 1922, the son of a Romanian-Jewish immigrant father and what he once called a “nice, rather old-fashioned Jewish lady,” Lee drew on themes of his childhood to create a series of memorable pulp heroes whose outsider status in some ways became their superpower. Lee was a pioneer of a comic book industry dominated at its outset by hungry, second-generation Jewish artists and writers, and became one of its most iconic figures. He also lived long enough to see it transformed into a multibillion-dollar multimedia industry that has spawned countless blockbusters based on his characters, including Black Panther, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil and Ant-Man. Lee grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan and attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. In 1939 he was brought in to what would become Marvel — and named its interim editor at age 19 — although it wasn’t until the early 1960s that he and artist Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) teamed up to put their distinctive stamp on the industry then dominated by DC, which published Superman and Batman comics.