by Jessica Easthope

It doesn’t take much to see Ben Hack’s talent; just pass him the basketball, and watch him shine.

But not many people are willing to give you a shot when you’re 25, with autism.

“The adults with autism community is underserved, underfunded, and always understaffed,” said Mary Beth Walsh, Ben’s mother.

When Hack aged out of his day programs, Walsh was told he wasn’t fit for group sports. His diagnosis left her without options.

That was until Mary Beth teamed up with her parish, St. Joseph’s Church in Maplewood, New Jersey, and CYO coach Gerry O’Connor.

“Everywhere there’s many, many young adults with autism who are bored, who don’t have enough to do, who don’t have recreation programs that work for them,” Walsh said. “So it’s easy to find them. And I just started with calling my friends.”

“I didn’t know what to expect,” O’Connor said. “I didn’t know what levels of autism we were going to encounter. And we have all different levels; it’s been an eye-opening experience for me.”

With a few phone calls, Walsh was no longer on the sidelines, and the St. Joseph’s Adults with Special Disabilities (ASD) Clinic was born.

“It’s not a heavy lift, and it can make a real impact on the lives of young adults who are really, often overlooked,” Walsh said.

“We just took the drills that I teach the little kids and just kind of narrowed them down and simplified them for these guys,” O’Connor said. “They just want to do what their brothers and sisters do. That’s all they want.”

For an hour every Tuesday during the fall and spring semesters, this gym is theirs. It’s a frenzy of inclusion. St. Joseph’s pastor, Father Jim Worth, wonders why the program’s model hasn’t been picked up by parishes and schools all over the country.

“It made perfect sense to do something like this, and it was so organic and natural that, you know, it just happened and was hugely successful,” Father Worth said. “Young adults wouldn’t have this, and you would think, now this has been going on for a couple of years, no one is mimicking it.”

The players who can join for free are coached by Gerry and a team of high school athletes.

“They’re doing service hours that they need for school or CCD, but once they do it, they come back,” O’Connor said. “I think if they completed their service, they would still come back next year, and the year after.”

If these players were accepted everywhere like they are at St. Joseph’s, Mary Beth believes maybe more people would see what they can add to a team and to the number on the scoreboard.

“The promise that the church makes to everybody who’s baptized is that you belong, and you belong forever with us, and we are living out that baptismal promise, really,” Walsh said.

“You cannot help but fall in love with Ben,” Father Worth said. “So Ben has been such a great teacher for me and the parish. Mary Beth is such an incredibly valiant defender and fighter for as many services as possible.”

“What time is basketball? 6 o’clock. What day? Tuesday, every week. We’ll never miss it,” Walsh said.

This program has changed Ben’s life, and all it took was putting a ball in his hand. Maybe that is the point.

The program is free and welcomes young adults with autism from anywhere.

It starts back up again on September 3 and will run for 8 weeks on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. at St. Joseph’s Church in Maplewood.

For more information or to register, you can contact Coach Gerry O’Connor at 201-341-4289.

Dozens of pilgrims are walking thousands of miles across the country to get to the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis July 17-21 .

Many of them are already halfway through their journey.

Currents News has been keeping up with them and has a pilgrim report from New Yorker Zoe Dongas about one of their latest stops, Steubenville, Ohio.

Dongas is currently on the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton route, which is traveling from Connecticut to Indianapolis.

Overall, there are four routes bringing pilgrims from the four corners of the country to the Congress. They are traveling 6,500 miles and passing through 65 dioceses.

There’s always activity at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Corona, because it’s a community full of faith.

A faith that never falters, even when tested by COVID.

“It was a very difficult time because over 100 parishioners from this church died,” said Father Manuel de Jesus Rodriguez, pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows Church.

Father Rodriguez was appointed pastor during the height of the pandemic.

Less than a year later, he dedicated this adoration chapel to the victims and says parishioners are here 24/7, but on Sundays, they fill the pews.

“Right now, we’re getting every week between 10 to 15,000 people,” Father Rodriguez said.

They’re mostly from Ecuador and Mexico, but when the parish was established in 1872, it was founded by 14 families, both German and Irish.

By the time the current church was dedicated in 1900, Italians had moved into what was now called Corona.

In the 1970s and 80s, people from the Dominican Republic moved into the neighborhood, including one particular little girl and her family.

“I remember when I used to go to catechism at Our Lady of Sorrows and it was the nuns that were teaching us at that time,” said Jenny Alonzo. “I dreaded getting up in the morning, I dreaded it.”

Alonzo is now a catechist herself.

Jenny grew up in Our Lady of Sorrows but, as an adult, moved away.

She was home for Christmas in 2019 and stayed because she got sick.

“I had COVID before I even knew it was COVID,” Alonzo said.

It turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Alonzo and the parish, because not only does she teach religion, she’s also a lector, a parish trustee, and the head of the finance council.

“We love Jenny and we’re very grateful to her,” Father Rodriguez said. “She does an amazing job. The kids love her. They’re crazy about her because she connects with them.”

Alonzo is a fierce advocate for young people and works to keep them connected to their faith.

“There are a lot of crazy things happening in our world and our community,” Alonzo said. “That’s why I feel so passionate about catechism because those kids get for a moment to pull away from whatever is going on in their lives and hear positive things, hear hope.”

Even though her life hasn’t always been so positive, she always had hope and faith.

She gets emotional talking about it when she recalls how it lifted her out of a very difficult situation.

“My faith in God got me through the darkest moments during my marriage,” Alonzo said. “There were times I would go to bed that I wasn’t sure I was gonna wake up.”

But she persevered, because, she said, God had her back.

Now she wants the kids to know, God has their back too, and so does she.

“Don’t mess with my Saturdays because this is where I am as they say, come hell or high water,” Alonzo said. “This is where I’m gonna be.”

Now you know Jenny Alonzo from Our Lady of Sorrows and how she makes up the Pulse of the Parish.