Archives

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.

Arriving in Kazakhstan, Pope Makes Case for Peace

By Junno Arocho Esteves

NUR-SULTAN, Kazakhstan (CNS) — Arriving in Kazakhstan, a country that borders Russia, Pope Francis said he came as a “pilgrim of peace” at a time when “our world urgently needs peace; it needs to recover harmony.”

“I am visiting you in the course of the senseless and tragic war that broke out with the invasion of Ukraine, even as other conflicts and threats of conflict continue to imperil our times,” the pope said Sept. 13 in a speech to the country’s civil authorities, representatives of civic groups and members of the diplomatic corps.

“I have come to echo the plea of all those who cry out for peace, which is the essential path to development for our globalized world,” he said.

After a nearly seven-hour flight from Rome, Pope Francis arrived in the capital city, Nur-Sultan, where he will attend the Sept. 14-15 Congress of World and Traditional Religions. As he arrived in Kazakh airspace, his plane was escorted by fighter jets.

Arriving at the presidential palace, Pope Francis, who continues to suffer from knee pain, remained seated while Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev stood next to him as an honor guard played the national anthems of Vatican City State and Kazakhstan.

Welcoming the pope, President Tokayev thanked him for his “tireless and dedicated efforts in the name of the human family around the world” at a “critical juncture in human history.”

As Islamophobia, antisemitism and Christian persecutions continue to rise, the president said, “humanity could really go one way or the other if we are not vigilant.”

“I believe it is high time for moderates from different cultures and religions to pool their wisdom and energy to unite people behind the ideas of peace, social harmony and mutual support,” he said.

Tokayev said the pope’s presence at the interreligious meeting would ensure its success “and instill a true joy and happiness in the hearts of all devout Catholics in Kazakhstan and beyond.”

Responding to the president and addressing the civil leaders, the pope reflected on the two-stringed “dombra,” a traditional Kazakh musical instrument, and noted its use for centuries, thus “linking the past to the present.”

“As a symbol of continuity in diversity, its rhythm accompanies your country’s memory,” he said. “It thus serves as a reminder of how important it is, amid today’s rapid economic and social changes, not to neglect the bonds that connect us to the lives of those who have gone before us.”

Because of its history, St. John Paul II regarded Kazakhstan as a “land of martyrs and of believers, land of deportees and of heroes, land of intellectuals and artists,” he said.

That history, the pope said, is one of “culture, humanity and suffering,” particularly during the Soviet era that brought prison camps and mass deportations.

Nevertheless, “Kazakhs did not let themselves remain prisoners of these injustices,” the pope said. “The memory of your seclusion led to a deep concern for inclusion.”

“In this land, traversed from ancient times by great displacements of peoples, may the memory of the sufferings and trials you endured be an indispensable part of your journey toward the future, inspiring you to give absolute priority to human dignity, the dignity of every man and woman, and of every ethnic, social and religious group,” he added.

Noting the hundreds of ethnic groups peacefully coexisting in Kazakhstan, the pope said he was honored to take part in the Congress of World and Traditional Religions to “emphasize the importance and the urgency of this aspect of encounter, to which religions are called especially to contribute.”

He also praised Kazakhstan’s constitution, which defines the country as a “secular state” and thus, “provides for freedom of religion and belief.”

“A healthy secularity, one that acknowledges the important and indispensable role of religion and resists the forms of extremism that disfigure it, represents an essential condition for the equal treatment of each citizen, while fostering a sense of loyalty to the country on the part of all its ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious groups,” he said.

Freedom also recognizes basic human rights, the pope said, praising the country’s abolition of the death penalty “in the name of each human being’s right to hope.”

The pope lauded Kazakhstan’s commitment to peace and expressed his appreciation for the country’s “decisive repudiation of nuclear weapons” as well as its environmental policies that invest in clean sources of energy.

“Together with a commitment to interreligious dialogue, these are concrete seeds of hope sown in the common soil of humanity,” Pope Francis said. “It is up to us to cultivate those seeds for the sake of coming generations, for the young, whose desires must be seriously considered as we make decisions affecting the present and the future.”