You now have the chance to join the Diocese of Brooklyn and celebrate its own Eucharistic Revival at the Louis Armstrong Stadium in Flushing Meadow Park on Saturday, Apr. 20.
Sign up by going to your local parish.
To learn more about the day itself- go to dioceseofbrooklyn.org.
By Katie Vasquez
People of faith across Brooklyn and Queens coming together at Holy Innocents church on March 18th, all to pray for peace in Haiti.
But for parishioners of the Flatbush church, one person was noticeably absent, their pastor, Father Luçon Rigaud, who was stuck in the Caribbean country.
“I was planning to come back to do what I had to do here,” said Father Rigaud, “and two days before it was the the protest with all the gang members activities.”
Days before gangs attacked Haiti’s major prisons and airports, Father Rigaud arrived to bury his father.
“It was a very difficult situation. Even after his funeral, the funeral couldn’t even come to pick his body, you know, from the hospital,” said Father Rigaud.
As he tried to deal with his grief, he was also saddened by his country, which has descended into chaos.
“People were dying right and left for so many reasons, and people were asking for food on the street because technically there was no money to buy anything,” said Father Rigaud.
Father Rigaud’s hometown of Les Cayes is located more than five hours from the capital of Port-Au-Prince and the country’s main airport, but more importantly, he was trapped thousands of miles away from his flock back in Brooklyn.
“Basically I used Zoom to conduct all my staff meetings, all my pastoral meetings with my parishioners,” said Father Rigaud.
Father Rigaud watched the livestream of the mass in Haiti, praying with his parishioners and his bishop.
“He was united with us, he said he would make it a point to watch the livestream, so that he could be praying alongside with us,” said Diocese of Brooklyn Bishop Robert Brennan.
It inspired him as he made his way back to Brooklyn, traveling from Les Cayes to Jacmel, crossing the border with the Dominican Republic at Pedernales and heading to Santo Domingo where he was able to catch a flight to Newark.
The journey, normally a 3 hour flight took 3 days.
“It was a very stressful situation added to the loss of my father,” said Father Rigaud.
Now the Brooklyn pastor is praying God will look after the Caribbean nation.
“My hope for Haiti is that things will get better. Haiti will become the country it used to be,” said Father Rigaud, ” Haiti is a country where people are, they are good believers in God and those who believe in God. There’s always hope, even when everything seems to be hopeless.”
Save the date! The countdown is on for the Diocese of Brooklyn’s Eucharistic Revival. Find out what is in store at the Louis Armstrong Stadium of the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center on April 20.
While this is a Catholic event, people of all faiths are welcome and are taking part in helping the Diocese get ready for the highly anticipated revival.
As violence and unrest ravages Haiti, gangs running rampant, a Brooklyn priest has returned home after surviving the chaos unfolding across the country.
Just a week after that cargo ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, Catholics are coming together in a big way, donating nearly $50,000 so far to help those effected.
The revival is actually an interfaith collaboration. The signs to be displayed throughout the stadium during the event are the work of a Jewish-owned business.
More than 100 flags displaying the names of Catholic organizations will be made by the Borough Park business “Fast Signs”.
The group is still putting them together.
They say it took three weeks just to process them all!
The shop, which handles requests from across the five boroughs, said it’s used to tall orders like this one.
The signs should be finished within a week, just in time for the revival.
By Jessica Easthope
Without Christ’s body and blood, a church is no more than brick and mortar.
Most Precious Blood in Astoria Queens has been built and renovated to withstand. The job, done by Zaskorski and Associates, took 15 years to complete.
“The building is a gem, early Art Deco design, and so on many levels, the building is interesting and exciting and important to preserve,” said Carlo Zaskorski, Founding Principal of Zaskorski and Associates Architects.
The roofing, facade, stained glass windows, wall, and bell tower were just some of what was restored on what Carlo Zaskorski calls an Art Deco masterpiece.
“You have to understand the design and significance and keep in mind in the repair that you were not to damage or build anything that was not correct or original or part of the original design,” Zaskorski said.
Zaskorski’s firm has renovated 20 churches across the Diocese of Brooklyn, but two stand out. Renovations at Most Precious Blood and St. John the Baptist in Bedford Stuyvesant has received the Lucy G Moses Award, the New York Landmarks Conservancy’s highest honor.
“It’s very exciting,” Zaskorski said. “You work on a project, and an organization like the New York Landmarks Conservancy recognizes the work you did and says you did a good job that’s very valuable.”
“It was a life-changing experience,” said Jason Galindo, Assistant Project Manager at Zaskorski and Associates Architects. “Seeing the church on a different level, seeing it as I have to protect and inspect every brick, every stone, it was a surreal moment.”
Galindo finds that his two jobs intertwine. In addition to his job at the firm, Galindo works nights and weekends as the youth minister at St. Brigid Church in Bushwick. He came into the job when the existing youth program was feeling the effects of the pandemic, but he built that back too from the ground up and now has 160 kids registered.
“When I came in it was literally a fresh start and I had to bring them back,” Galindo said. “I thought the best way to do this was a program called Faith and Sports.”
Carlo and Galindo’s Catholic faith has become a tool of the trade in renovating churches.
They’ve removed and replaced, redesigned, and reimagined, but Christ remains the cornerstone of every job they do.
Zaskorski and Associates will be presented with the Lucy G Moses Awards at a ceremony on April 10 at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.
Almost a year after being elevated to an Archdiocese by Pope Francis, Las Vegas is getting a new parish.
The archdiocese believes that with the opening of a new parish, thousands of more faithful will return to the church.
National Correspondent for The Tablet and Crux, John Lavenburg, joins Currents News to discuss more about the Archdiocese of Las Vegas.
After a container ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore March 26 causing its collapse, news reports mentioned how members of Baltimore’s Apostleship of the Sea had reached out to and cared for the ship’s crew members.
Hours after the bridge collapse, Andy Middleton, the group’s director, said that he had been in touch with a member of the crew of the ship, Dali, just after the collision and found out that everyone on board was safe and uninjured.
He also told the Catholic Review, the official news outlet of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, that members of the outreach group, based at St. Rita’s Parish in Dundalk, had delivered Easter boxes to Dali’s crew members just days before the crash.
Apostleship of the Sea is not just a ministry of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, but part of a national and global outreach of the Catholic Church that provides pastoral care to those who work at sea.
The ministry, which started in Glasgow, Scotland in 1920, has been in Baltimore for 21 years. Four years ago, the international group officially changed its name to Stella Maris (Star of the Sea), but many still call it by its initial name.
Two years after the organization formed, Pope Pius XI gave it his blessing and encouraged the Apostleship of the Sea to extend its mission to the waterways and shores of all hemispheres. In every major country, an Apostleship of the Sea bishop promoter oversees the work of a national director whose responsibility it is to coordinate the chaplains’ efforts and assist them in developing their ministries.
In most major ports around the world, the diocese assigns a chaplain — a priest, deacon, religious, or lay ecclesial minister — to serve mariners aboard ship and ashore on merchant vessels, cruise ships, and docks.
The chaplains provide, or find someone to provide, Catholic Mass, and sacraments of reconciliation and anointing of the sick, along with pastoral care. They also work to ensure a safe work environment and fair contracts and provide a welcome and safe haven while sea workers are in ports. The group also oversees chaplains on board cruise ships.
In the U.S., the Stella Maris ministry has a presence in 53 maritime ports in 48 archdioceses and dioceses in 26 states. There are over 100 chaplains and pastoral teams are made up of priests, deacons, religious, and lay ministers.
Globally, Stella Maris has more than 200 chaplains and over 700 volunteer ship visitors supporting seafarers and fishers in ports in more than 50 countries. It is the largest ship-visiting network, and its network of chaplains and volunteers makes more than 70,000 visits to ships in a normal year.
Two years ago, national directors, chaplains and volunteers of this ministry met in Glasgow to celebrate the 100th anniversary of their outreach that had been postponed by the pandemic. In a message to the group, Pope Francis thanked them for their work and urged them to continue standing up for people struggling to make a livelihood from the sea.
A key concern, he said, is how climate change is impacting people who fish for a living as well as those who staff large ships.
“Creation, our common home, is comprised of a vast expanse of water, which is essential for life and human commerce, not to mention tourism,” he said. “It should not be surprising, therefore, that around 90% of the world’s goods are transported by ships, which is made possible by the daily work of over one and a half million people, many of whom are far removed for months at a time from the support of their families as well as their social and religious communities.”
There’s still time for Catholic students across Brooklyn and Queens to express their faith through art.
The Tablet, in collaboration with the Archbishop John Hughes Council of the Knights of Columbus, invites youth to express their faith through art by participating in this year’s digital Easter Art Contest.
Remember, the contest is drawing to a close. Make sure to submit your artwork by Wednesday, Apr. 3, at midnight to be part of this exciting event.
Grab your paintbrushes, pencils, or iPads, and create! You can use any medium to portray Christ’s resurrection. The only rule to follow is to use the theme “Christ is Risen.”
Go to https://thetablet.org/christ-is-risen-easter-art-contest-2024/ to submit your artwork.
Following the devastating Baltimore bridge collapse, we’ll tell you how a Catholic ministry is stepping up to help the crew stranded aboard their ship in the Patapsco River.
Since Pope Francis elevated Las Vegas to an archdiocese last May, a new parish has been established, and several church-building projects are underway.
Two Catholics are using their skills as architects to help renovate churches across the Diocese of Brooklyn.
There’s still time for Catholic students across Brooklyn and Queens to enter the Tablet newspaper’s Easter art contest. Learn how to join the contest!
By Katie Vasquez
At the start of one of the most important liturgies of the Catholic church, a fire is blessed,the flame is used to light the paschal candle
And then light dozens of individual candles, illuminating the Co-cathedral of St. Joseph with candlelight.
Bishop Robert Brennan says this symbolic start to the Easter vigil is meant to show us how Christ guides us.
“While we’ve experienced a lot of darkness in the world, we also experience a certain amount of darkness in our lives right don’t we? and things that weigh us down. and when we’re pulled down, it’s Christ who lifts us up. He brings light to the darkness,” said Bishop Brennan.
Bishop Brennan leads the people’s prayers in darkness during this mass, as they mourn the death of Christ, until the lights come back on, signaling Jesus’ resurrection.
Rector of the Co-Cathedral, Father Christopher Heanue says it’s the culmination of everything Catholics have been waiting for.
“It’s just we call it the mother of all liturgies. It’s what we call it, the mother of all. because it is just, it compiles everything. And when done right, it’s beautiful,” said Father Heanue.
For hundreds around the diocese of brooklyn, this mass is also the culmination of their journey of faith.
Bishop Brennan baptizes four of the more than four hundred new Catholics joining the church at the Easter vigil, including Holly Turner who was seeking a clean slate.
“I actually grew up in a Baptist church, but my mother is a Catholic and my father is Baptist. And coming to this church, I felt like it was beautiful and I just loved how sacred everything was and I was really drawn to this church. and I wanted to be baptized. To start over,” said Turner who was baptized at the vigil.
The mass was also a chance for some to finish receiving their sacraments like Jorge Deroche who grew up Catholic, but was confirmed at the vigil.
“I feel like everything’s finally coming to completion. everything we’ve been working for,” said Deroche.
Bishop Brennan and Father Heanue say this group now fully formed in the faith is a reminder of how fortunate we are as catholics.
“They’re coming with a longing for peace. They’re coming for our longing for, for Jesus’ love,” said Father Heanue.
“That sense of baptism renews the gift of faith that inspires us. that people have made the conscious choice to embrace the faith, and that makes us stop and think. and that’s always a source of great excitement around Easter time,” said Bishop Brennan.