Catholic News Headlines for Thursday 09/15/22

On his final day in Kazakhstan Pope Francis visited Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cathedral for a meeting with the small Kazakh Catholic community.

Florida’s Governor sent two planes of immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard without advance notice yesterday.

Queen Elizabeth II is lying in state at Westminster Hall. The funeral is on Monday.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Sends Group of Venezuelan Migrants to Martha’s Vineyard

By Jessica Easthope

“Our message to them is we are not a sanctuary state,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Thursday. “And it’s better to go to a sanctuary jurisdiction and we will help facilitate that transport for you.”

Governor Ron DeSantis doubling down, reiterating Florida is not the place for migrants and criticizing President Biden.

“We take what’s happening at the southern border very seriously, unlike some, unlike the President of the United States who has refused to lift a finger to secure that border,” he said.

This comes after DeSantis sent a group of Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

“Martha’s Vineyard community Services had 50 people sort of literally walk up to their front door,’ said Barbara Rush, the warden of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church.

For unsuspecting residents of Martha’s Vineyard, that’s when the calamity began.
But for the 50 men, women and children flown there, none of whom spoke English – the trip began much earlier and much farther away.

“From what we found out talking to the people they’re originally from Venezuela. They were flown here. We’re Not sure what plane brought them here – how they got on a plane to here. They did tell us they came from Texas,” said Rush.

There was no welcoming party, so the group wandered some three and a half miles to Martha’s Vineyard Community Services in Edgartown.

“Immigrants who were told they’d be greeted here with a place to stay, with jobs,” said state representative Dylan Fernandes.

The group includes some elderly people, and some children as well.

“They’re using children as political pawns, but the island community has really rallied together,” said Fernandes.

All the migrants tested negative for COVID, and were given food, water and shelter for the night. A harrowing journey made somewhat better by a community that stepped up in a moment of need.

“It’s all hands on deck of the community. Really beautiful to see the community coming together to try to help,” Rush said.

DeSantis’ move follows in the footsteps of republican governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona. They have been sending migrants to Washington, D.C., New York, and Chicago.

Diocese of Brooklyn Educates Migrant Children as Influx Continues

By Jessica Easthope

Iraima Ramirez’s son Marcell is new to Salve Regina Catholic Academy – and to this country. 

Unlike his classmates in seventh grade Marcell doesn’t speak any English and lives in a shelter, he hasn’t had a permanent home in nine months.

“The situation in my country has made it impossible to provide food and necessities for my family or take care of their health on a salary that added up to 15 dollars a month,” Iraima said. 

Iraima’s family is one of thousands from Central and South America who have landed in New York City with just the clothes on their backs. They left Venezuela, fleeing poverty and political violence.

“The dictatorship in Venezuela has gotten to a point of lawlessness and so we had to abandon everything we have and risk our lives to find something better,” said Iraima.

When they arrived in Brooklyn, the family’s unbreakable Catholic faith led them to church – where they met Father Ed Mason.

“These people have been literally dumped in our city and dumped in our shelters and to be able to help and serve them at this time has been a blessing,” said Father Mason. 

In the last month, Father Mason has raised more than $25,000 to help Iraima’s family and 24 others in his parish, some of whom came on buses from Texas. That includes making sure Marcell’s Catholic education is free of charge.

“Whatever part we can take in that effort, comforting students, being another home for them and showing them the generosity of spirit we’re called to have as Catholics we want to be able to provide that for them,” said Iris Bodre, the director of recruitment and mission development at Salve Regina Catholic Academy. 

In the Diocese of Immigrants, superintendent Deacon Kevin McCormack says this is what the mission of Catholic education looks like.

“If someone wants to be a follower of Jesus they have to protect the widow, the orphan and the foreigner, that’s what we do, we have to be with them, whoever comes to our schools, we will find a way to educate them,” he said. 

And Iraima says she feels like finally someone has her back.

“They have opened up their hearts and blessed us, I have a roof over my head, I am able to find food for my children and they are able to get an education and also have their faith fed,” she said. 

Fr. Mason is helping three more children enroll in Salve Regina Catholic Academy where they’ll participate in the school’s new ESL program and attend tuition free. 

Catholic News Headlines for Wednesday 09/14/22

As migrants at the southern border continue to be bused to New York City from Texas, Catholic schools in the Diocese of Brooklyn are stepping in to help.

Pope Francis is calling for peace during a three-day visit to Kazakhstan this week.

The first national railroad strike in 30 years could happen as soon as Friday.

Pope: Religions Must be Purified of Extremism, Self-Righteousness

By Junno Arocho Esteves

NUR-SULTAN, Kazakhstan (CNS) — As war, violence and extremism in countries around the world threaten the lives of countless men, women and children, religions must rise above differences and be examples of peace and harmony, Pope Francis said.

“It is time to realize that fundamentalism defiles and corrupts every creed; time for open and compassionate hearts,” the pope said Sept. 14 at the plenary session of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions.

“We need religion in order to respond to the thirst for world peace and the thirst for the infinite that dwells in the heart of each man and woman,” he said.

On the second day of his visit to Kazakhstan, the pope addressed 80 religious leaders and hundreds of delegates participating in the interreligious meeting Sept. 14-15 in the Palace of Independence, a blue-glassed trapezoid-shaped building in the heart of the Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan.

The congress, which is held every three years, was the initiative of Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, as a way of promoting dialogue among religions, the congress’ website stated. It also aims to prevent “the use of religious feelings of people for the escalation of conflicts and hostilities.”

Arriving at the meeting, the pope took his place at a huge round table with the other leaders and was immediately greeted by Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, grand imam of Al-Azhar in Egypt. Smiling, the pope affectionately embraced him.

The event began with a moment of silent prayer.

After the formal session, Pope Francis held private meetings with a dozen of the leaders, including the sheikh, but also with Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, head of external relations for the Russian Orthodox Church. The metropolitan took the place of Russian Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who canceled his attendance at the congress.

Metropolitan Anthony told reporters his 15-minute meeting with the pope was “very cordial” and that the pope had asked him to pass his greetings to the patriarch, whom the pope had hoped to meet in Nur-Sultan. The patriarch’s withdrawal from the congress was seen by many observers as a protest of Pope Francis’ decision not to meet Patriarch Kirill in Jerusalem in June because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and of Patriarch Kirill’s support for the war.

“We had worked to prepare the second meeting (between a pope and patriarch — the first was in Havana in 2016), and then it was canceled by the Vatican,” Metropolitan Anthony told reporters at the Palace of Independence. “We’ll see what we can do” to arrange a new meeting time.

Asked if Patriarch Kirill was still bothered by Pope Francis’ comment in May to an Italian newspaper that “the patriarch cannot turn himself into Putin’s altar boy,” the metropolitan said, “I can say it was something very unexpected, this interview, and it is clear that expressions of this kind are not helpful for Christian unity.”

In his formal talk to the congress, Pope Francis said that “authentic religiosity” is needed to fight fundamentalism and extremism in religion and to show the world that it has no reason to distrust or have “contempt for religion as if it were a destabilizing force in modern society.”

Kazakhstan and other nations of the former Soviet Union “are all too familiar with the legacy of decades of state-imposed atheism: that oppressive and stifling mentality for which the mere mention of the word ‘religion’ was greeted with embarrassed silence,” the pope said.

Religion, he said, “is not a problem, but part of the solution for a more harmonious life in society.”

Focusing on the meeting’s theme, which reflected on the role of religious leaders “in the spiritual and social development of mankind in the post-pandemic period,” Pope Francis said the COVID-19 pandemic was among several challenges that “call all of us — and in a special way the religions — to greater unity of purpose.”

“COVID-19 put us all in the same boat,” he said. “All of us felt vulnerable, all of us in need of help, none of us completely independent, none completely self-sufficient.”

Now, he said, religions must not squander “the sense of solidarity” or act as “if nothing happened.”

Instead, the pope said, religious leaders must confront the urgent needs of the world and be “promoters of unity amid the grave challenges that risk dividing our human family even further.”

With the world “plagued by the scourge of war, by a climate of hostility and confrontation, by an inability to step back and hold out a hand to the other,” he said, it is time for religions to purify themselves from evil, particularly the “presumption of feeling self-righteous, with no need to learn anything from anyone.”

“Let us free ourselves of those reductive and destructive notions that offend the name of God by harshness, extremism and forms of fundamentalism, and profane it through hatred, fanaticism and terrorism, disfiguring the image of man as well,” he said.

“And let us learn also to be ashamed: yes, to experience that healthy shame born of compassion for those who suffer, sympathy and concern for their condition and for their fate, which we realize that we too share,” he said.

Catholic News Headlines for Tuesday 09/13/22

People in New Jersey have the chance to venerate five of Padre Pio’s relics.

Pope Francis has begun his apostolic journey to Kazakhstan. He left Rome on Tuesday morning.

King Charles III will be in Northern Ireland today where people will honor the life of Queen Elizabeth II.

A cafeteria worker in Ohio is being called a hero after she saved a fourth grade student who was choking.