The president of Ukraine is making an impassioned plea to the United Nations in the wake of gruesome attacks by Russia in the war-torn country.
Teens forced to leave Ukraine are welcomed with open arms by a school in Hungary.
Why the CDC is about to undergo a sweeping review and possible changes.
How chess is helping Afghan refugee children adapt to life here in the U.S.
Currents News Staff
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is used to scrutinizing science. But now, the agency itself is under the microscope. Its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky says the Department of Health will conduct a sweeping review starting next Monday.
In a memo to staff, Walensky says it’s to improve how the agency communicates with the public and consider a restructuring. That news comes the same day as a bipartisan deal Senator Mitt Romney helped negotiate for his chamber.
It’s for $10 billion dollars of COVID relief money. The measure would fund therapeutics like oral antiviral pills and it would support vaccines, testing and research. What it would not do is send money directly to the CDC. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he wants to vote on the measure this week.
“On COVID, very briefly, over the last few days my Democratic colleagues and I continue talks with Senator Romney and Republicans, working all hours of the night and into the weekend,” said Sen. Schumer.
The White House says it would like more money in the plan.
“While we’re very encouraged by the progress,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, “we’re going to need more because our objective here is going to make sure we can have funding for antivirals, the vaccines needed for, for people for many months to come.”
Currents News Staff
Marking 50 years since the passing of a parish hero: Our Lady Help of Christians in Midwood, Brooklyn held a Memorial Mass for Gil Hodges who is set to become a baseball Hall of Hamer.
The Brooklyn legend was a parishioner at the church and often said a “Hail Mary” before big-league games.
While he will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in July, his parish also dedicated their statue of St. Joseph in his honor.
St. Vincent Ferrer
Feast Day April 5th
“Whatever you do, think not of yourself, but of God”
Currents News Staff
Outrage and calls for a war crimes trial against Russian President Vladimir Putin are echoing across the globe.
“The perpetrators of all these violations and war crimes will be held accountable,” said Peter Stano, Spokesperson for the European Commission for External Affairs.
The U.S. is seeking Russia’s suspension from the ‘UN Human Rights Council.’ President Joe Biden vows more sanctions are on the way.
“This guy is brutal and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous…” the president said. “You may remember I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal. Well, the truth of the matter is you saw what happened in Bucha. This warrants him – he is a war criminal.”
Over the weekend, horrifying images emerged out of Bucha near Kyiv: the bodies of at least 20 men, civilians left scattered along a single street. The town’s mayor says this mass grave could carry up to 300 victims.
“Russia will never be forgiven on this earth or in heaven,” said Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk.
Despite all the video evidence, Russia is claiming it’s “fake.” Ukraine’s president witnessed the atrocities from the ground and called it a “genocide.”
A holocaust survivor once escaped the Nazis as a baby and now at 82-years-old, she’s pushed out of her home for a second time.
“It is very difficult to see that my lovely town, my beautiful town, where I lived all my life,” said Margaryta Zatuchna, “is destroyed.”
Pope Francis is now home after his apostolic journey to Malta.
Concerns about both a surge in migrants at the southern border and a rise in COVID cases here in the U.S.
A family is grateful for two police officers who rescued a woman from homelessness.
Currents News Staff and Catholic News Service
HAL FAR, Malta (CNS) — Saying civilization itself risks foundering because of apathy and selfishness, Pope Francis insisted that migrants and refugees must be treated with care and kindness and recognized as brothers and sisters.
In the shipwrecks that lead to thousands of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean each year, “we see another kind of shipwreck taking place: the shipwreck of civilization, which threatens not only migrants but us all,” the pope said April 3 at a meeting with about 200 migrants at the John XXIII Peace Lab in Hal Far.
Imagine, he said, “that those same people we see on crowded boats or adrift in the sea, on our televisions or in the newspapers, could be any one of us, or our sons or daughters.”
“Perhaps at this very moment, while we are here, there are boats heading northward across the sea,” he said. “Let us pray for these brothers and sisters of ours who risk their lives at sea in search of hope.”
The day before the meeting, the pope said, there was the report of a rescue of four migrants off the coast of Libya. More than 90 people were reportedly on the boat; only four did not drown.
Pope Francis sat against a shimmering backdrop of shades of blue topped with blobs of florescent orange — a backdrop built with plastic bottles and life vests pulled from the sea.
Franciscan Father Dionisio Mintoff, the 91-year-old founder of the center, welcomed Pope Francis, telling him, “Your urgent appeals to be close to the weakest spur us to do better and to continue our daily mission toward those who, whether for a limited time or permanently, land on our Island, to escape from misery and to have a better life.”
The pontiff spoke after listening to Daniel Jude Oukeguale and Siriman Coulibaly describe in harrowing detail how they finally made it to Malta.
Oukeguale said he left his home in Nigeria five years ago. “After 13 days of traveling, we arrived at the desert. While crossing, we passed dead people and animals, burned cars and a lot of empty water cans. After eight traumatic days in the desert, we made it to Libya.”
He would pay smugglers for a place on a boat, only to have the trip canceled and the money unreturned. Twice he attempted the crossing, only to be pushed back by the Libya or Tunisian coast guards and detained.
The sixth time he paid, he said, they set sail, and after three days “it was all smiles when the Maltese coast guard rescued us. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Tears of joy flowing freely. My dreams came true!”
“But these were short lived since we were put in detention for six months the same night we landed. I almost lost my mind,” he said, and he wondered, “Why were men like us treating us like criminals and not like brothers?”
“When you run away from a situation of war, conflict and extreme poverty,” Coulibaly said, “you have nothing except for your determination to live a better life and a lot of courage and resilience to face all the challenges you encounter.”
Unfortunately, he said, too many individuals and governments seem to think a migrant ceases being human when he or she leaves home.
“Today we want to remind people in decision-making positions and who hold power, that human rights and dignity are universal and inherent,” he said. “We are ‘fratelli tutti” (all brothers and sisters), right?”
At the end of the meeting, Pope Francis prayed that God would “free us from fear and prejudice, enable us to share in their sufferings and to combat injustice together, for the growth of a world in which each person is respected in his or her inviolable dignity, the dignity that you, O Father, have granted us and your Son has consecrated forever.”
Located between the Italian island of Sicily and the North African coast, Malta — a tiny nation with fewer than 500,000 residents — has been the first port of call for thousands of migrants and refugees crossing the sea from North Africa in search of a better life in Europe.
Current European Union policies have left Malta and other frontline countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece, on their own to rescue, shelter, verify and try to integrate the migrants.
In his talk at the center, Pope Francis asked, “How can we save ourselves from this shipwreck which risks sinking the ship of our civilization?”
The answer, he said, is “by conducting ourselves with kindness and humanity” and by regarding people not as statistics but as “what they really are: people, men and women, brothers and sisters, each with his or her own life story.”
The Acts of the Apostles says that when St. Paul was shipwrecked on Malta, he and his fellow passengers “were treated with ‘unusual kindness.’ Not merely with kindness, but with rare humanity, a special care and concern that St. Luke wished to immortalize.”
“Let us respond to the challenge of migrants and refugees with kindness and humanity,” the pope said. “Let us light fires of fraternity around which people can warm themselves, rise again and rediscover hope. Let us strengthen the fabric of social friendship and the culture of encounter, starting from places such as this.”
Currents News Staff
Surges in COVID-19 cases and asylum requests might soon hit the U.S. at the same time. The CDC is lifting a Trump administration order that stopped most migrant crossings at the southern border, including those for asylum since March 2020.
Immigrant advocates argue Title 42 is about politics, but the stated reason for it is COVID-19. The CDC says it’s lifting the measure on May 23. It says prevention and mitigation strategies and public health conditions are better now.
“Por eso me espero,” said Liliana Lopez, a Honduran mother waiting to seek asylum. “Hasta que quiten el Articulo 42.”
Lopez said she hopes that the country will get rid of Title 42. Refugees like this mother plan to cross the border as soon as they can. Officials expect as many as 18,000 migrant encounters at the Southern border daily in the short term.
“The goal should be to make sure those asylum claims are heard in a prompt way,” said Ron Klain, White House Chief of Staff, “that those who deserve protection from prosecution are heard, those who don’t are sent back.”
Add to that number the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees President Joe Biden promised asylum.
“The easiest way to get to the U.S. right now isn’t easy at all,” said Central America Bureau Chief at The Washington Post Kevin Sieff. “It requires flying to Mexico and then eventually to Tijuana on the border and putting your name on a list and then waiting.”
They’re seeking to enter a country where average daily COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been going down nationwide. But experts say the highly contagious Omicron subvariant ba.2 might be reversing those trends.
COVID cases continue to fall in 21 states. They’re plateauing in these areas and going up in more than a dozen states plus Puerto Rico.
Currents News Staff
Pope Francis only spent two days visiting the island of Malta, but his trip was filled with powerful words and messages. After arriving on the island, the pontiff met with the President of Malta and the country’s political leaders. The Holy Father urged the Maltese government to be a source of welcome to the hundreds of refugees who reach their shores each year.
Here are the pontiff’s top four messages:
“The other is not a virus from which we need to be protected, but a person to be accepted.”
Later that day, the Holy Father traveled to the island of Gozo by boat, where he visited the sanctuary of Ta’ Pinu. There, he said how Christians must return to their roots to recover a rich and living faith.
“The crisis of faith, apathy in religious practice, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic, and indifference shown by many young people towards the presence of God: these are not issues that we should ‘sugarcoat,’ thinking that, all things considered, a certain religious spirit still endures. We need to ensure that religious practices do not get reduced to relics from the past, but remain the expression of a living, open faith that spreads the joy of the Gospel.”
On the second day of his visit, Pope Francis celebrated Mass before a crowd of 20,000 in the city of Floriana. In his homily, he said to be Christian is not to condemn others, but to lead a life of forgiveness.
“Those who believe they are upholding the faith by pointing their finger at others may have a certain ‘religiosity,’ but they have not embraced the spirit of the Gospel, for they disregard mercy, which is the heart of God.”
To end his trip, Pope Francis visited a migrant center, where he reiterated his closeness to refugees, and encouraged them to move forward despite the challenges they face.
“You are not statistics but flesh and blood people with faces and dreams, dreams that are sometimes dashed.”
The Holy Father then headed to the airport to return to Rome and end the 36th international trip of his papacy.
Currents News Staff
Pope Francis did not avoid talking about his knee problems during a brief press conference after his trip to Malta. His difficulty walking throughout the trip and the fact that he had to use an elevator to board his plane did not go unnoticed.
“My health is a bit “capricious” because I have this knee problem that makes it difficult to walk,” the Holy Father said. “It’s annoying, but it’s getting better. At least I can walk. Two weeks ago I couldn’t do anything.”
The pontiff took a moment to address the migration crisis in Southern Europe. He reiterated the need for neighboring countries such as Malta, Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Spain to develop a shared policy on receiving migrants to managing the crisis.
“We forget that Europe has been made with migrants, but that’s the way things are,” Pope Francis said. “But at least we should not leave all the burden to these bordering countries that are so generous. Malta is one of them.”
There was also talk of a possible papal trip to Ukraine. While the pontiff did not deny the possibility, he said that no decision has been made.
“It is there, as one of the proposals that came to me,” the pontiff said, “but I don’t know if it can be done, if it is suitable to do it, and if doing it will be good. If it is fitting, I will have to do it.”
Pope Francis was very critical of the rise in arms manufacturing in response to the war in Ukraine, insisting that military spending does not build peace.
“Investing in weapons,” the Holy Father said. ‘”But we need them to defend ourselves.’ But this is the logic of war. I am pained by what is happening today, we do not learn. May the Lord have mercy on us, on all of us. We are all guilty.”
The Holy Father also revealed that another meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill was being prepared, and that it would most likely take place in the Middle East.