Locations around New York City such as churches and even Times Square will now be labeled as “gun-free zones” as new state laws go into effect on Thursday.
One measure limits where firearms can be legally carried in public, and this all comes after a landmark Supreme Court ruling.
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who died Aug. 30 in Moscow after a long illness, met several times with St. John Paul II, and the two often exchanged words of appreciation for each other.
The two leaders met in 1989 and again in 1990, when Gorbachev was still president of the Soviet Union and was introducing political and economic reforms in his country, as well as on other occasions. Both men were key in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who served as papal spokesman for St. John Paul II and often reported on their meetings, later called Gorbachev the most important figure in the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Commemorating the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the wall in an article published Nov. 5, 2009, in the Rome newspaper La Repubblica, Navarro-Valls cited Pope John Paul’s support for the Polish labor union Solidarity as a key development in the pro-democracy movement in the region. But he said Gorbachev saw that the political movement in Eastern Europe was popular and unstoppable, and the Soviet leader avoided military repression and even verbal opposition.
Navarro-Valls said that when Gorbachev first met with Pope John Paul in December 1989, less than a month after the wall’s collapse, the two leaders “understood each other immediately.”
“Both clearly understood the direction that history had begun to take. Both felt that freedom was not a political fact but a human dimension that was essential and not able to be suppressed,” Navarro-Valls said.
A transcript of that 1989 meeting showed St. John Paul and Gorbachev expressed broad agreement on the need for greater religious freedom in the Soviet Union, for a renewal of ethical and moral values, and for improved Catholic-Orthodox relations.
The two leaders also agreed that at a time of upheaval in Eastern Europe, the region should not be expected to simply import Western values wholesale.
“It would be wrong for someone to claim that changes in Europe and the world should follow the Western model. This goes against my deep convictions,” the late pope said.
“Europe, as a participant in world history, should breathe with two lungs,” the pope added, using one of his favorite metaphors for harmony between East and West on the continent.
“That is a very appropriate image,” Gorbachev replied.
Pope John Paul pressed Gorbachev on the possibility of the Vatican and the Soviet Union exchanging diplomatic representatives, which he felt would aid in resolving religious freedom problems and other issues. Gorbachev responded positively, saying that “we approve such an approach” while cautioning against acting too quickly.
In the year that followed the papal audience, Gorbachev followed through on several issues raised by the pope: The Soviet Union enacted a law to protect religious freedom, allowed the Ukrainian Catholic Church to come out from underground and welcomed a Vatican ambassador to Moscow.
After St. John Paul died in 2005, Gorbachev called him “the No. 1 humanist on the planet.”
Gorbachev, 91, was general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991 and Soviet president 1990-91. At its height, the Soviet bloc included 15 countries in Eastern and Central Europe, and in most countries, Catholicism was repressed.
But in 1988, Gorbachev welcomed a top-level church delegation to Moscow for ceremonies commemorating the millennium of Christianity in the region. Early 1989 saw the restoration of the Lithuanian Catholic hierarchy, the return of the Vilnius cathedral and the freeing of a Lithuanian archbishop from house arrest.
In that period, the then-Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, summed up what Gorbachev meant to the church: “We are always ready to dialogue. What was lacking was a partner. Now a partner exists.”
Under Gorbachev’s leadership, in 1990 the Soviet Union passed a freedom of religion law that rolled back decades of communist restrictions on churches, including those against religious instruction and freedom of association. It legalized the 5-million-member Ukrainian Catholic Church and restored some of its churches and other properties.
Several bishops were named in Soviet republics with no interference from the government. The government extended an invitation for a papal visit — which has never occurred — and policy statements by Soviet officials indicated growing recognition that religion represents a cultural strength.
Currents News Staff
From kindergarten to college, students across the Diocese of Brooklyn are preparing for the start of a new school year.
Ahead of their first day of classes, Brooklyn seminarians got to spend some quality time with their bishop.
Twenty-four new and returning seminarians from Cathedral Seminary House of Formation in Douglaston went to a Mets game with Brooklyn Bishop Robert Brennan.
The men started returning Saturday evening to begin their orientation and enjoyed Sunday morning Mass and brunch with the bishop before heading off to the game.
As if that wasn’t enough the bishop also spoke to 66 future priests at St Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie.
The annual retreat included seminarians from Brooklyn, the Archdiocese of New York, and the Diocese of Rockville Centre.
The seventeen Brooklyn seminarians even got to spend some quality time with their bishop, asking him questions and getting advice as they continue their formation.
By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — With St. Teresa of Kolkata’s death 25 years ago, there is an entire generation of young men and women who did not see much about her life and legacy, serving “the poorest of the poor.”
That meant it was time to put her back in the spotlight, said a panel of those who were promoting a new documentary about the life of this saint, known popularly as Mother Teresa, who founded the Missionaries of Charity.
At her beatification in 2003, St. John Paul II called her a “courageous woman whom I have always felt beside me.”
Mother Teresa was “an icon of the good Samaritan” who went “everywhere to serve Christ in the poorest of the poor. Not even conflict and war could stand in her way,” the late pope said.
Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly said at a news conference hosted at Vatican Radio Aug. 31 that the Knights made this film “to reach a new generation with the witness and example of Mother Teresa” and to inspire them.
Produced by the Knights of Columbus, “Mother Teresa: No Greater Love,” had its Vatican premiere Aug. 31, ahead of its release to more than 900 theaters Oct. 3 and 4.
“Thank you for all the efforts made to capture the life of this saint, whose life and testimony have borne much fruit,” wrote Pope Francis, who canonized her at the Vatican in 2016.
“Thank you for promoting this type of initiative that helps, in a creative manner, to make accessible the zeal for evangelization, especially for the young generations promoting the desire to follow the Lord who loved us first,” the pope said in an Aug. 25 letter written to Kelly, replying to news of the Vatican premiere.
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Ganxhe Bojaxhiu to Albanian parents in Skopje, now capital of North Macedonia, on Aug. 26, 1910. On Sept. 5, 1997, she died of cardiac arrest at the motherhouse of the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, India.
The documentary, by Emmy award-winning filmmaker, David Naglieri, features archival footage and interviews with dozens of commentators who knew Mother Teresa personally. It was filmed on five continents, providing interviews with many Missionaries of Charity and offering on-the-ground images of their work following in Mother Teresa’s footsteps, serving in what Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston called “the most hellish places” on earth to “bring the light and the love and the mercy of God.”
The cardinal was overcome with emotion at the news conference, recalling attending a talk Mother Teresa gave in the 1960s before her work was widely known and when he was still a young brother preparing for ordination as a priest of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin.
He said, “this was one of the most inspiring talks I ever heard in my life.” He and the small number of people who had come to hear her speak, he said, “we were all weeping after a while, we were aware that we were in the presence of holiness.”
The documentary shows the work Mother Teresa inspired and, “when she was feeding the hungry or holding the hands of someone as they lay dying, she was treating them as she would the most important person in her life, Jesus Christ himself,” Kelly said in a media release.
“She was teaching us to have a heart that sees, and if we can learn to see as she did, the world would be a radically different and, I would say, better place,” he said.
Monsignor Sean G. Ogle’s Homily from Wednesday’s Mass on 8/31/22
President Joe Biden is focusing on public safety today in Pennsylvania – pushing his “Safer America Plan.”
Deadly flooding across Pakistan is estimated to have caused more than 10 billion dollars in damages so far.
St John’s University welcomed its students back for the fall semester.
By Inés San Martín
ROME — After a diplomatic rift caused by one of Pope Francis’s off-the-cuff remarks about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Vatican on Tuesday released a statement saying that he unambiguously condemns the “large-scale war in Ukraine initiated by the Russian Federation.”
According to the Vatican’s press office, the many remarks by Pope Francis and his collaborators on the war “are mostly aimed at inviting pastors and the faithful to prayer” and calling for “solidarity and efforts to rebuild peace.”
“On more than one occasion, as well as in recent days, public discussions have arisen about the political significance to be attached to such interventions,” says the statement. “In this regard, it is reiterated that the Holy Father’s words on this dramatic issue should be read as a voice raised in defense of human life and the values attached to it, and not as political stances.”
“As for the large-scale war in Ukraine initiated by the Russian Federation,” the Vatican says, the pope’s remarks are “clear and unambiguous in condemning it as morally unjust, unacceptable, barbaric, senseless, repugnant and sacrilegious.”
Pope Francis has used the words “unjustified invasion” and “aggression” before, but he has avoided specifically naming Russia in an attempt to keep the doors of dialogue open.
The statement from the Vatican’s press office comes after the Holy See received pushback from Ukraine over Pope Francis lamenting the death of Darya Dugina, who was killed on Aug. 20 by a car bomb near Moscow. She was the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, a prominent Russian philosopher known as “Putin’s brain,” who had pushed the “denazification” of Ukraine as a justification for the six-month-old invasion.
“I think of so much cruelty, so many innocents who are paying for the madness, the madness of all sides, because war is madness, and no one in war can say, ‘No, I am not mad’,” Pope Francis said last Wednesday, at the end of the weekly audience. “The insanity of war. I think of that poor girl who was blown up by a bomb that was under her car seat in Moscow. The innocent pay for war. The innocent!”
Those comments led the Ukrainian government to summon the Vatican’s envoy in the country, Lithuanian Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, to lodge an official protest. The Ukrainian ambassador, who was present in the audience on Aug. 24, the anniversary of Ukraine’s independence and also the sixth-month anniversary since the beginning of the invasion, had gone to Twitter to voice his concern.
“Today’s speech of the pope was disappointing and made me think about many things: You can’t talk about the aggressor and the victim, the rapist and the raped in the same categories; how can you call one of the ideologues of Russian imperialism an innocent victim? She was killed by the Russians as a sacrificial victim and is now on the shield war [sic],” Andrii Yurash wrote on Twitter.
Critics pointed out that Dugina, 29, was a major proponent of the war and called for Russia to use more force against Ukraine. They also noted Ukraine said it did not carry out the bombing, with some analysts theorizing that the Russian security services were behind her death.
President Biden is calling it a “battle for the soul of the nation.” tonight he’s revealing details about his “Safer America Plan” – all to cut down on gun violence and reduce crime. The proposal includes a ban on assault weapons.
Monsignor Sean G. Ogle’s Homily from Tuesday’s Mass on 8/30/22
By Bill Miller
BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — When the staff at Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens came to work one recent morning, they found asylum seekers from South America sleeping on the sidewalk outside their downtown Brooklyn offices.
Msgr. Alfred LoPinto, CEO of CCBQ, said he remembers how these migrants from Venezuela and Colombia, many with children, arrived by the busloads from Texas after having crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.
The team at Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens served an estimated 200 asylum seekers from Colombia and Venezuela on Monday, Aug. 29, during an information session at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Brooklyn Heights. The migrants also received food boxes (photo below), bags of toiletries, and a hot lunch. (Photos by Bill Miller)
“They came with letters telling them that, from now on, their new residence was 191 Joralemon Street,” Msgr. LoPinto said. “We had them camping out in front of the building. We were just blindsided by the whole thing.”
Still, CCBQ mobilized, first by providing boxes of food and bags of toiletries. They also hosted information sessions conducted by staff and volunteers who spoke fluent Spanish. Two such sessions were held for about 200 people on Aug. 29 at nearby St. Charles Borromeo Church in Brooklyn Heights.
Msgr. LoPinto greeted the attendees in the vestibule and directed them to the information sessions in the front pews. CCBQ also served them a hot meal of chicken, beans, and rice.
During a break, the CEO recounted how federal immigration officials in Texas apparently told the people to find specific addresses for Catholic Charities in New York City.
An estimated 9,000 migrants recently came by bus from Texas to Washington D.C. and New York City. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, arguing his state was stretched to the limits with the influx of migrants at its borders, directed that they be sent to so-called “sanctuary cities,” like New York City.
However, Msgr. LoPinto said, Catholic Charities officials in the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn had no “heads up” that would have allowed them to get ready for the sudden mass arrivals of migrants.
“Who was expecting buses from Texas to drop people off in Times Square? But that’s what they were doing,” he said. “The sad part of it is, had they given notice ahead of time, we could have been more organized and had a much better opportunity to help. But now you just kind of roll with the punches.”
He pledged that CCBQ will continue efforts to help as long as there is money to do so.
“We weren’t prepared financially to take on this responsibility,” Msgr. LoPinto said. “Thank God the St. Vincent de Paul Society has been helping us put together an emergency fund for this effort. With some matching money and some donations from people, we’re at about $300,000.”
Msgr. LoPinto praised the staff, volunteers, and Father Bill Smith, pastor of St. Charles Borromeo, for their prompt response to quickly organize and get services rolling to the people.
“It would be impossible to do this without the parish volunteers,” Msgr. LoPinto said.
Msgr. Alfred LoPinto, CEO of CCBQ, and Richard Slizeski, CCBQ’s vice president for mission, describe challenges they’ve faced helping an unexpected influx of migrants from South America who were bussed to New York City from the border with Mexico. “We were blindsided,” Msgr. LoPinto said. (Photo: Bill Miller)
Richard Slizeski, Catholic Charities’ vice president for mission, said the team at the church is conducting information sessions that are especially welcoming.
“This was a nice addition here at St. Charles because it offers some fellowship,” Slizeski said. “To have this lunch, to serve them, gives a whole different feel to it.
“It has been a 30-plus hour bus ride up from Texas. They’re hungry. They’re confused, disoriented. It’s all terrible.”
Not to mention, added Msgr. LoPinto, the perilous journey the migrants took through South America, Central America, and Mexico.
At the St. Charles Borromeo information session, Alvanys Rondon, a woman from Venezuela, confirmed that the trek through the jungles of Panama was very harsh.
John Gonzalez, CCBQ director of parish and community relations, translated for Rondon, who said the jungle was a rough slog for her 10-year-old daughter. The family had to wade through foliage that tangled their legs and a near-constant quagmire of mud.
The family paused in Mexico for about a month because they had depleted their travel money, Rondon said. There, her husband worked a job long enough for them to get money to continue north.
But every step of the way, she said, the Catholic Church helped her family endure. She expressed deep gratitude for the help they’re now receiving from CCBQ.
“The word she used is bendecida,” Gonzalez said, “which means, ‘blessed.’ ”
John Gonzalez, CCBQ director of parish and community relations, translates for Alvanys Rondon of Venezuela, who describes how her family reached the U.S. for asylum, despite extreme hardships like slogging through dense foliage and mud in the jungles of Panama. (Photo: Bill Miller)