Catholic Charities of New York has opened a day laborer center in Yonkers.
The United States could default on its debt as soon as June 1st if Congress doesn’t act.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says the suspect in a Texas massacre has been deported several times in the past.
A federal bill has been reintroduced to put research animals up for adoption.
By Gina Christian
(OSV News) — As a small Texas community grapples with a mass shooting, a Catholic parish is turning to prayer and trust in God.
“God is with us amid evil,” Deacon Larry Terrell of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Cleveland, Texas, told OSV News May 1.
The small town, located some 45 miles northeast of Houston, was the scene of an April 28 execution-style murder of four adults and one child at a residence.
The victims were Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9. All were shot at point-blank range with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. Two of the victims were found covering two unharmed children, according to San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers.
Neighbor Francisco Oropesa, 38, is believed to have targeted the victims, who lived next door, after they asked him to stop firing rounds in his backyard late that evening. Oropesa is now the subject of a manhunt including over 250 law enforcement officers from more than a dozen agencies, according to the FBI’s Houston field office. A combined reward of some $80,000 (with $25,000 from the FBI) has been offered for information leading to his capture.
St. Mary’s Masses April 29 and 30 were offered for the victims and their loved ones, who were not known to be parishioners, said Deacon Terrell.
A number of parishioners also attended an April 30 evening prayer vigil organized by the Cleveland Independent School District at Northside Elementary School, where Laso had been a student, added Deacon Terrell.
The tragedy followed an April 23 mass shooting north of Jasper, Texas, some 90 miles from Cleveland. In that incident, 11 teens ranging in age from 15 to 19 were wounded by gunfire at an after-prom party. Four teens were charged in the attack and in a second shooting that took place minutes later in downtown Jasper.
In an April 29 message posted on the Diocese of Beaumont’s Facebook page, Bishop David L. Toups said the Cleveland shooting was “another act of senseless gun violence” that had struck the diocese “for the second time in a week.”
“It saddens me for the communities of Jasper and Cleveland that they now have to heal the wounds of doubt and fear in the hearts of all of our citizens,” said Bishop Toups. “It should deeply upset all of our sensibilities that a thousand violent crimes occur every year in Beaumont alone.”
The bishop pointed to the “need to work together and pray as a community to build a civilization of peace and hope with greater respect for the sanctity of all life.”
“May we as a nation experience a conversion of heart respecting the rights and the dignity of all persons,” he said.
The first step in that conversion is trusting God, said Deacon Terrell, noting that Scripture repeatedly encourages the faithful not to fear.
“God is in control, and he will be with these families,” said the deacon. “God is for justice, and we’ll let God handle this. God is going to combat this gun violence in our country now. He is with us all the way to the end. … We have to keep (these families) in our prayers, and pray for our country.”
Laborers who line up on the streets of Yonkers hoping to be hired for the day now have a place to call their own, thanks to Catholic Charities of New York.
The organization opened its Yonkers Day Laborer Center to support the often hidden community and help them learn the skills they need to thrive.
The center was almost a decade in the making of cutting through red tape and pandemic delays to get up and running.
“We want to make sure people don’t abuse our immigrants and that they get what they’re entitled to,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan said. “That’s what Catholic Charities is here for, they really come in the defense of workers.”
For Cardinal Dolan, it was fitting that the grand opening happened on the feast day of St. Joseph the Worker.
“So, God the Father thought so much of the dignity of human labor that when his only begotten son took on flesh and became one of us he wanted him raised in the home of a working man, a carpenter, St. Joseph. So, that’s why we love and embrace these people,” Cardinal Dolan said.
The facility will be a gathering place for day laborers, who are often undocumented migrants.
It will also provide legal counsel, English classes, nanny training, and even help workers obtain OSHA certifications.
Executive Director of Catholic Charities of New York, Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, said the facility
“My job is pretty simple,” Msgr. Sullivan said. “It’s too affirm that in the world we live in, Catholic Charities is one organization that doesn’t believe in division but coming together.”
The center will also educate workers on how to prevent labor abuse and wage theft from those who are looking to pay them less than what their work is worth.
The labor center will supply a community of politicians and advocates to back that up.
There are more than 10,000 day laborers in New York City and about 1,000 in Yonkers, according to the Day Laborer Workforce Initiative.
Diocese of Brooklyn Bishop Robert Brennan joined the parish of St. Paul Chong Ha-Sang to mark their 50th anniversary Saturday.
Bishop Brennan led the Flushing community in music and prayer. The parish, which opened its doors in 1973, celebrated its first Korean Mass in Rego Park.
Since forming, the parish has baptized over 7,000 people and officiated more than a thousand weddings.
Our Lady of Fatima has traveled the world for 70 years and touched millions of hearts. The statue itself is delicate, but her message of peace is unbreakable.
Father Kevin Kilgore can’t be too careful. He’s been trusted with taking this statue of Our Lady of Fatima from the shrine of the Marian apparition in Portugal all the way to his parish of St. Pius X in Old Tappan, New Jersey.
“She’s in been in war zones, she’s been in places of peace, she’s been in grand cathedrals, she’s been in Rome and over 70 years it’s the faith of our Church,” said Fr. Kilgore.
Fr. Kilgore and Ricardo Casimiro led a group of nearly 30 parishioners on a pilgrimage to Fatima to bring the statue back, husband and wife Mitchell and Christine Arthur were there, Christine says she came back changed.
“It also made me really want to spread her message, I was always more of a quiet prayer, keep it to myself but now I really want it to be out there,” said Christine.
In 1917, three shepherd children saw the Blessed Mother before them in the town of Fatima, Portugal. A church and shrine were built around the exact location of the vision and today it’s one of the most popular Catholic pilgrimage sites in the world.
Fr. Kilgore said the hope for this pilgrimage is that it will touch young people ahead of World Youth Day in Lisbon this summer.
“This would become an opportunity to support young people who can become leaders in our church so we wanted to invest in them and give them the experience of grace, of faith, of an international church and bring that back to their parishes,” he said.
The statue will leave St. Pius X on Monday and travel to 13 other parishes across the Archdiocese of Newark before making its way back to Portugal at the end of the month.
Pope Francis is back in Rome after a three-day trip to Hungary.
As more companies adopt the use of artificial intelligence, millions of jobs are expected to disappear in the next five years.
A Staten Island ferry bearing the name of Catholic icon Dorothy Day is now in the water.
By Cindy Wooden
ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT FROM HUNGARY (CNS) — The Holy See has a project underway related to peace between Russia and Ukraine, but Pope Francis told reporters he could not talk about it yet.
“There is a mission underway that is not public yet; when it is public, I will tell you about it,” Pope Francis told reporters traveling with him from Budapest, Hungary, back to Rome April 30.
He also said discussions already were underway with Indigenous communities in Canada for the repatriation of cultural artifacts held in the Vatican Museums.
Pope Francis had been asked whether, after giving three fragments of the Parthenon marbles to the Orthodox Church of Greece in March, he was planning to do the same with artifacts that have been traced to the Inuit, Métis and First Nations communities of Canada.
“This is the Seventh Commandment: if you have stolen something, you must give it back,” he said.
“The restitution of Indigenous articles is underway with Canada — at least we had agreed to do it,” the pope said.
What can be returned to its rightful owners should be, the pope said.
“Sometimes you can’t — (when) there isn’t a political or real, concrete possibility to do it — but to the extent that you can return something, you should. This is good for everyone, so no one gets used to putting their hands in someone else’s pocket.”
On his two-hour flight back to Rome from Budapest, Pope Francis spent about 20 minutes answering five questions from reporters traveling with him. Other topics included his health, his travel plans and his discussions in Budapest with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and with Russia Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion of Budapest and Hungary.
Asked if he had spoken about peace in Ukraine or sought contacts with Moscow during his meetings with Orbán, a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and with Metropolitan Hilarion, the pope responded that “peace is made by opening channels. You cannot create peace with closure. I invite everyone to open doors, channels of friendship.”
As for his conversation with Metropolitan Hilarion, the pope said, “well, we weren’t talking about Little Red Riding Hood.”
“I am willing to do anything that must be done” to promote peace, he said.
Asked about his health, Pope Francis said that when he got sick in late March, he did not lose consciousness, as some media reported, but he was in such pain that he skipped lunch and went to take a nap.
“I did not lose consciousness but, yes, I had a high fever, and at 3 in the afternoon the doctor had me immediately taken to the hospital,” he said. “It was a strong case of pneumonia in the lower part of the lungs.”
He spent three nights March 29-April 1 in Rome’s Gemelli hospital. The Vatican press office had said his doctors diagnosed bronchitis.
The day before the trip to Hungary, Pope Francis said, he had seen his doctor, “who came to look at things a bit,” and they spoke about his travel plans, which include Lisbon, Portugal, in early August for World Youth Day.
“You all can see for yourselves that things are not the same as they were two years ago,” but “with the cane, I’m doing better. For now, the trip (to Lisbon) is not canceled,” the pope said. “Then there is the trip to Marseille (France), a trip to Mongolia and there’s another one that I don’t remember.”
“You see how the program keeps me moving,” he said.
During the inflight news conference, Pope Francis refused to criticize Orbán directly on migration even though the prime minister has enacted a tough “no migrants” policy and built fences along Hungary’s borders with Serbia and Croatia.
Asked about Hungary’s policy, Pope Francis insisted — as he has before — that the European Union must act. Currently he said, only five countries — Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Spain and Malta — are bearing a disproportionate burden in taking in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing poverty and civil strife.
After Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal met Pope Francis at the Vatican April 27, the prime minister told reporters he had asked for the Vatican’s help in returning to Ukraine children taken by force to Russia.
The Ukrainian government’s “Children of War” website claimed, as of April 30, that 19,393 children had been forcibly removed from Ukraine and taken to Russia.
Asked on the plane if he thought the Vatican could help, Pope Francis responded, “I think so because the Holy See has been a go-between in some of the prisoner exchanges” between Russia and Ukraine.
“The Holy See is willing to try because it’s the right thing and we have to help,” the pope said. He explained it’s not about helping with the war effort, but with a humanitarian cause.
“All humanitarian gestures help,” he said. “Gestures of cruelty do not.”
Pope Francis is back at the Vatican, after wrapping up a three-day visit to Hungary.
It was The Holy Father’s first trip since he was hospitalized about a month ago.
It was the closest he’s gotten to the war in Ukraine.
Pope Francis visited a Catholic University in Budapest, where he spoke with students and faculty.
He came with a big message to Hungary and the rest of Europe; to open their doors to migrants.
“It is sad and it hurts to see closed doors,” Pope Francis said. “Brothers and sisters, please, please, please. Let us open the doors. Let us also try to be like Jesus with our words, gestures and daily activity. An open door–an open door that never closes in anyone’s face.”
While the pope was meeting with refugees at St. Elizabeth Church of Hungary, two Ukrainian children, grateful for that door Hungary opened for them, played a song of thanksgiving on Saturday.
Despite Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s harsh treatment of Syrian refugees in 2015, which included building a 13 foot razor wire fence along Hungary’s southern border, the country has welcomed more than two-million Ukrainian refugees since the invasion last year.
Elise Allen, a senior correspondent for Crux, was in Hungary with the pope. She joins Currents News to discuss The Holy Father’s visit to the country.
Most people carry high power tech in their pockets all day, but the everyday tasks computers can carry out are starting to worry some, including Pope Francis.
There are concerns over a new report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF), which claims as more companies adopt advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, 14-million jobs will disappear in the next five years.
“This could potentially save time and resources,” said Douglas Rushkof, an American media theorist. “But it could also lead to a loss of personal connections and a decline in the quality of those types of interactions.”
Although big changes are expected for the global job market, some of the fastest declining jobs are bank tellers, cashiers and data entry clerks.
The WEF was also able to identify three of the fastest growing jobs in A.I., such as machine learning specialists, sustainability specialists and business intelligence analysts.
Entrepreneur and big tech heavyweight, Elon Musk, is cautiously optimistic about the future of A.I., but he is working with lawmakers to make sure it’s handled accordingly.
“Met with Senator Chuck Schumer and many members of congress about artificial intelligence regulation today. That which affects safety of the public has, over time, become regulated to ensure that companies do not cut corners. A.I. has great power to do good and evil. Better the former,” Musk said last week on Twitter.
By Carol Zimmermann and Jessica Easthope
PROSPECT HEIGHTS — The Dorothy Day ferry — a new Staten Island Ferry boat bringing passengers between Staten Island and lower Manhattan — made its inaugural ride April 28.
And before it set sail across the New York Harbor, city officials, and friends and family of Day marked the occasion with a brief ceremony, paying tribute to the ferry’s namesake — a peace activist and journalist who is a candidate for sainthood and primarily known for co-founding the Catholic Worker Movement, a group committed to the social justice teachings of the Church.
“As we get on this boat and sail the choppy waters with her, stand tall against the headwinds which sometimes can cause us to falter. And may we, like her, ask for that vision that sees goodness, love, and dignity in every single person,” said retired New York Auxiliary Bishop John O’Hara.
Bishop O’Hara noted that the significance of the ferry named after Day was not just about boats but should remind people in this polarized and divided society that “God has raised up a prophet from Staten Island.”
He said Day had a vision “that we need to embrace, celebrate, and activate in our own lives.”
Martha Hennessy, social justice activist and granddaughter of Day, thanked those who made this day possible and shared with the crowd one of her grandmother’s writings that spoke against war and emphasized the need to care for the poor.
“We know that during her life, Day loved riding this ferry — and she was like Staten Islanders who know that a short ferry ride can serve as a peaceful, even meaningful, escape from the hustle and bustle of life in our city,” said Ydanis Rodriguez, commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation.
Day, who died in 1980, had deep roots in Staten Island, where she lived for many years and where she is buried. It is also where she was baptized into the Church as an adult and began a cooperative farm for those in need and Catholic Worker members.
Coincidentally, Day also loved the Staten Island Ferry, which she rode back and forth for years from her cottage in Staten Island to the soup kitchen where she worked in Manhattan.
Those promoting her sainthood cause — which officially opened in 2000 and gave her the title “Servant of God” — are hoping the ferry lets more people know about her.
“There’s a very nice plaque (on the ferry) that tells who she is,” said Kevin Ahern, an associate professor of religious studies at Manhattan College and member of the advisory committee for the Dorothy Day Guild working to promote Day’s sainthood cause.
Ahern told The Tablet that the ferry launch comes at a time when there is an increased interest in Day’s life and legacy, and is a good opportunity to educate more people about her.
He said it was conflicting for some in the Catholic Worker Movement that Day, who was such a humble woman, is getting her name on an expensive vessel paid for with public funds, but he also said there are many positive aspects to this honor that the members acknowledge.
For starters, Day loved Staten Island, which she viewed as a place of retreat, and she wrote about her love of taking the Staten Island Ferry, taking in nature and the New York City skyline.
Ahern also stressed that the Staten Island Ferry is free, connects New Yorkers, and serves primarily the working class, all things Day would appreciate.
Also, Day often wrote about the Christian view of pilgrimage — being on a journey — which the ferry ride certainly is.
The ferry will join the rotation of vessels going back and forth across the New York Harbor about a week after the initial launch.
It is one of three Ollis-class passenger ferries commissioned in 2014. The first two ferries, the Staff Sergeant Michael H. Ollis and the Sandy Ground, began serving passengers in early 2022.
The group of new ferries is named after US Army Staff Sergeant Ollis, a Staten Islander killed in action during the War in Afghanistan in 2013. Sandy Ground is named in honor of the nation’s oldest continuously inhabited free black settlement on Staten Island.
New York City has operated the Staten Island Ferry since 1905. The boats carry more than 12 million passengers annually on a 5.2-mile run between the St. George Terminal in Staten Island and the Whitehall Terminal in lower Manhattan.
The ferries run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and on a typical weekday, five boats make 117 trips, carrying approximately 35,000 passengers. The boats make over 40,000 trips a year.
When the Dorothy Day ferry was commissioned last November, Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement: “Dorothy Day represents so much of what is great about New Yorkers and our city, and we are proud to honor her by commissioning this Staten Island Ferry.
“Having her name on this boat,” he said, “will remind New Yorkers and visitors alike of her fight for peace and against hunger, fights that we are continuing every day.”