By Katie Vasquez
It’s a match six years in the making on June 25, 2025: the Scholars vs Collars baseball game at Maimonides Park, home of the Mets AAA team, the Coney Island Brooklyn Cyclones.
The much anticipated game is a fan favorite for Catholic school students in Brooklyn and Queens, who are the center of the Catholic Schools Night celebration during the June 25 Cyclones game.
Currents News is on the field before the bats start swinging.
Principals and priests are taking to the field for Catholic Schools Night at Maimonides Park in Coney Island, celebrating students from across the Diocese of Brooklyn.
Three longtime Catholic school teachers were honored at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs in Queens for decades of dedication and service to generations of students.
One woman is making a difference every day at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Maspeth through her tireless volunteer work — you’ll meet her in this installment of “Pulse of the Parish.”
By Currents News
New York’s Catholic station, NET TV, is premiering a half-hour special, “Meet the Priests”, airing Friday, June 27, 2025, at 7 p.m. EST on Currents News.
The special introduces you to the seven deacons who will become priests in the Diocese of Brooklyn. Learn who they are before they are ordained.
Here are some of the holy men you will meet:
By Currents News
Currents News is taking a break the week of July 4 – but don’t worry, there’s still plenty of great programming from our team coming your way on NET-TV.
A Queens deacon shares how basketball, faith, and community led him to answer God’s call to priesthood in the Diocese of Brooklyn in the latest installment of Meet the Priests.
He will join six other new priests on June 28 at the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph in Brooklyn. NET-TV will be streaming the ordination live, followed by a special edition of Currents News.
As the nation marks three years since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, Catholic leaders reflect on the ongoing state-level battle to protect the unborn in a post-Roe America.
A Long Island woman affectionately known as “Nana” is spreading love by giving to families in need through her nonprofit, Love, Nana.
By Katie Vasquez
In New York you can find baby clothes being carefully packed by Joan Hyland, affectionately known as “Nana,” by her community.
The Long Island resident has seven children, 28 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren and she packs each baby bundle as if it were for her own family. The effort is part of a community service project she started in 2020 called “Love, Nana.”
“I want it to look just perfect there,” she told Currents News. “I try to do that every single day with every single bag.”
Her work with moms began when Hyland’s grandson asked her to help a single mother in need.
“I got some diapers, I bought some things from the store,” she recalled. “When I put it together my husband said to me, ‘Well, it looks like a present. I said, ‘Well, that’s what I wanted it to be, a present.’ So the very next day I started to collect clothes.”
Before she got her storefront in Rockville Centre, Joan turned to Sister Barbara Faber, RSM, at Our Lady of Peace Church in Lynbrook to distribute baby clothes, books, and accessories to young mothers and families in need.
“Some of them are in shelters, some of them are just living on the edge, just having trouble paying the rent, buying food, etc… so any help we can give them, they’re very grateful for,” Sister Faber told Currents News.
Volunteers take in donations, wash, and dry clothes up to 24 months before they are organized into bins and made into bundles.
Hyland and Sister Faber are committed to the work because they know it’s their calling.
“I feel this is a way of really living the charism of Catherine McAuley by bringing mercy to as many people as we can,” said Sister Faber.
“What would God ask of you? I seem to be able to answer that every day, because I know what He wants me to do, and I have no problem following His wishes,” said Hyland.
With the help of Sister Faber, and the organization “Backyard Players and Friends,” Hyland has been able to make several thousand baby bundles.
She would like to expand to a bigger space so she can help even more families in need.
If you would like to help, you can contact “Love, Nana” on their website.
By Katie Vasquez
After five years away Deacon Paulo Salazar is finally back on his home court, playing one of his favorite sports, basketball, near his childhood parish of St. Joan of Arc Church in Jackson Heights, Queens.
Deacon Salazar said that since he first got the call to become a priest at around six or seven years old, he’s had a team of people to assist him in fulfilling his vocation.
“Being on the team, you were always working towards a championship and realizing that we’re all part of in a similar way.. part of God’s plan, and we have to work at this together,” Deacon Salazar told Currents News. “There’s so many people that have been supportive, that have been praying for a priest to come from this community, and I guess it’s just that God happened to tap me on the shoulder.”
But what he never expected was for his studies to take him halfway across the world to Rome, and connect him to the universal church.
“That’s what Rome teaches us, that as much as we are universal, as much as we are many members, we are one in Christ,” said Deacon Salazar.
While in the Eternal City, Deacon Salazar also got an extraordinary coach from one Holy Father: the late Pope Francis.
“He always told us, remember to pray, to get a good night’s sleep and play sports,” the deacon recalled. “For all of us, we really took that to heart.”
Deacon Salazar saw the historic announcement of another pontiff. He was was one of the thousands in St. Peter’s Square when Pope Leo XIV was announced the next successor to St. Peter.
Already he has felt inspired by the first American pontiff, who recently spoke to those studying in Rome.
“He spoke about the love of the priesthood and, the power of the priesthood and how it changes and is able to transform,” Deacon Salazar told Currents News. “[It] transforms other lives, but at the same time allow your priesthood to transform your own life.”
He hopes to carry these lessons with him into the priesthood where he’s focused on the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
“The very fact that you are acting in the person of Christ, you’re able to bring the soul back to life imparting that grace to be healed,” is something Deacon Salazar has thought about many times.
And now that he’s back in the Diocese of Brooklyn, he’s hoping to make a slam dunk in the lives of the faithful.
By Katie Vasquez
Deacon Paulo Salazar has returned to the Diocese of Immigrants after going through formation in the Eternal City.
His experience was shaped by two Holy Fathers.
By Katie Vasquez
A Long Island grandmother got a request to help a single mother struggling to care for her child.
Now, her response to a mom in need has become a New York-based nonprofit that serves families all over the tristate area.
By Currents News
In the Diocese of Brooklyn, a statue of the Holy Family was defaced over the weekend.
The New York Police Department has charged 38-year-old Freddy Genao with a hate crime after he reportedly damaged an image of the Blessed Mother at Holy Family Church in Fresh Meadows, Queens.
Police say that on the evening of June 21 he used a crowbar to break the face of the statue and damage the parish’s two front doors.
The church’s pastor, Father Sean Suckiel, says officers were already in the area while the vandal was committing the crime and arrested him upon arrival.
This is the second time the three sculptures depicting Mary, Joseph, and the Child Jesus were defaced: around the same time last year, the statue of the Son of God was decapitated.