A C.D.C panel votes on the fate of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Meanwhile, New York City is allowing all residents to walk-in for shots.
As a surge of migrants overwhelms U.S. shelters, Mexican facilities are feeling the same pressure.
Clergy in the Diocese of Brooklyn react to the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd.
By Emily Drooby
EAST FLATBUSH — The 85 students at Brooklyn Jesuit Prep (BJP) — spanning across grades five through eight — took their religion lessons outside the classroom on Earth Day. They spent the last hour of their school day becoming stewards of the earth, cleaning up loose litter in their school’s vicinity.
After BJP relocated from Crown Heights to East Flatbush at the beginning of this school year, its students wanted to beautify the earth and show their new neighbors who they are as a Catholic school.
Gregory Arte, who has been principal of BJP for four years, said the school’s student government approached him in February expressing a desire to celebrate Earth Week and do a local community service project on Earth Day.
“It was great to see them applying what they’re learning in religion class with the Pope’s Encyclical and the Catholic social teaching — caring for God’s creation — and applying that to things that they can do with the whole student body through service as well,” Arte said.
Eighth-grader Chad Herry explained how he and his classmates walked around the neighborhood, picking up garbage that had been left out on the streets or had blown out of trash cans on windy days.
“Most of our knowledge about saving the Earth comes from what we’re learning in religion class — about how we’re supposed to care for God’s creation,” Herry said. “It’s important for us to try to keep the Earth healthy because we want to try to preserve our lives and the lives that come after us.”
Eighth-grader Tahir Osman said Earth Day, for him, is about spreading awareness on a daily basis and making a real change for the future.
“It’s about finding ways to reduce, reuse and recycle; not buying disposable products and just throwing them away,” Osman said, “and buying reusable items instead to preserve plastic.”
BJP’s four grades split up, walking up and down 15 residential blocks and along Glenwood Road to clean up trash from the sidewalk, along the curbs, and by tree trunks.
Within a half-hour, the students collected more than 20 bags of garbage, which included disposable masks, plastic bottles, and candy wrappers.
Though the Earth Day clean-up project was a new community service initiative in their new area, BJP faculty and students said they look forward to making this a permanent tradition for years to come.
“The community is filled with trash, and we don’t want to see that,” added eighth-grader Justeena Nash, a student government member. “We want to see the beauty.”
Battling climate change – President Biden looks to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half, as Pope Francis calls on us to protect the planet.
Students are taking environmental battles into their own hands, proving that the littlest among us can make the biggest changes.
Catholic organizations look to help migrants as they enter the country, as a bill is proposed in the Senate to handle the influx at the southern border.
Fight to vaccinate – the effort to get shots to underserved communities in the city by bringing it right to them.
By Emily Drooby
It’s a big moment for Vanessa Santiago: she’s being vaccinated.
“I was here last month and now I’m back for my second dose,” Vanessa explained to Currents News.
It’s a Godsend. The non-profit school employee had a hard time finding a slot in her neighborhood.
“Everyone’s trying to get their vaccine so doing a waitlist or even going online to the DOH or the CDC website, every time I kept going in, there were no appointments available,” Vanessa said.
Her shot is coming from a Catholic Charities of New York vaccine distribution event that’s held at the community center of an affordable housing development in the Bronx.
That event will provide health access to people like long-time resident Salvador Carrasco.
“Yes, very helpful this way, I don’t have to go out, just bring it to my door,” Salvador said.
About half of adults in New York City have yet to receive their first COVID shot. Right now, there’s a lot of available appointments but people are facing other kinds of roadblocks.
“The reality is you want to go where people are at, there are still barriers to people getting appointments also getting to the locations,” explained Richard Espinal. He’s the Director of Housing Support Services and Parish & Community Engagement at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York.
He added that for example, getting to Yankee Stadium, a large vaccination site in the Bronx can be almost impossible from certain areas.
There are also tech barriers to consider.
“There’s a city platform, there’s a state platform,” Richard said. “Getting to those different sites and navigating all that can be very confusing for a lot of folks, particularly if language is an issue, if using the technology is an issue, things like captcha and all of those safeguards. For some folks, those are just barriers that we want to eliminate.”
Events like this by Catholic Charities will help to eliminate those barriers. More than 150 people got their second vaccination at the event. Catholic Charities of NY plans to continue to hold similar events in the future as long as there is a need.
By Jessica Easthope
Earth. It’s the third planet from the sun, but at Bay Ridge Catholic Academy, it’s number one.
“It’s about taking care of the planet and when you think about it taking care of the planet also means taking care of you,” said fourth-grader Milena Gafourov.
On Thursday, April 22, students made promises they’d stay committed to the environment longer than the 24 hours of Earth Day. There was a different STEM project happening in every classroom. Some kids were testing the pH balance of the water we drink. Others were getting their hands dirty trying out the effectiveness of natural cleansers instead of harsh chemicals, even the solution used to sanitize the school during the pandemic is all natural.
Older students like Jared Javier weren’t recycling topics. They came up with new research projects his bright idea was light pollution.
“Birds migrating when they go to hotter places, they’ll see the light and they can crash into buildings, and it can kill off the species,” said Jared.
The younger students got just as passionate and sometimes emotional about the damage done to the planet and God’s living creatures. Julian Figueras researched the overfishing of sharks and what happens when they’re killed for their fins.
“It’s not just what they do it’s after it, the fishers just throw the bodies back into the ocean,” said Julian.
Earth Day at Bay Ridge Catholic is a big deal. Principal Kevin Flanagan says keeping the planet healthy starts in the classroom.
“We don’t treat that as a symbolic event at Bay Ridge Catholic we want to inspire students to take an active role in changing the world,” said Kevin.
To get his point across, Mr. Flanagan suited up and became Mr. Frog-agan. He’s putting the environment into a context kids can understand, but he doesn’t shield them from the real issues.
“Seven years ago they discovered a new species of frog in Brooklyn and I wonder how long that would be possible,” Kevin said. “We want students to understand problems like that. That the less they litter or more they pick-up what other people litter, will directly impact the environment around them.”
These kids are making the Earth their own and want to be proud of how they leave their mark.
Currents News Staff
Arizona’s governor is sending 200 National Guard troops to the southern border. Governor Doug Ducey is declaring a state of emergency due to a surge of undocumented immigrants in federal custody.
Ducey says his state needs the protection and the Biden administration is not taking appropriate action. The troops will monitor surveillance systems and provide medical assistance for those at detention centers.
The Supreme Court seems unlikely to grant green cards to undocumented immigrants who were granted a temporary stay for humanitarian reasons.
They are looking into whether 400,000 foreign nationals from countries enduring national disasters or armed conflicts meet requirements for the cards.
Conservatives in the court voiced skepticism over migrants meeting requirements if they initially entered the country illegally.
Currents News has a reporter on the ground at the southern border. John Lavenburg, national correspondent for The Tablet and Crux, is in McAllen, Texas and joined Currents News to discuss the situation.
By Emily Drooby
In the Diocese of Brooklyn, there’s an overwhelming sense of justice being served when it comes to the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin and the murder of George Floyd.
“I prayed and I think God’s justice was really at work in what we saw yesterday,” said Father Alonzo Cox. He’s the Coordinator of the Vicariate For Black Catholic Concerns in the Diocese of Brooklyn and pastor of St. Martin de Porres parish.
Paulitiana St. Hileire works with Father Cox at the Bedford-Stuyvesant parish.
“I am so elated about the verdict. I think justice is served,” said Paulitiana.”I am so happy about this verdict, but this doesn’t bring George Floyd back to us.”
Father Cox called the verdict a first step in being able to live in peace and harmony. He also called it a first step in rebuilding trust.
“Being able to trust those who are called to protect us,” the pastor said. “We are called to trust our law enforcement officials and we lost that trust a year ago when George Floyd was murdered. But now I think that trust can be restored.”
Father Cox adds that there’s still work to be done.
That sentiment was reiterated by Bishop Shelton Fabre, the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop’s Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism.
“Human life is precious, that racism is an attack against human life,” Bishop Fabre said. “It reminds us of the work we must do, continue to do, as disciples of Jesus Christ.”
Protecting human life by fighting racism. That’s what Father Daniel Kingsley spoke about with Currents News as well. Father Kingsley is the administrator of St. Clare Parish in Rosedale. After the video of Floyd’s death was released, parishioners at the Queens church held a rally against the sin of racism.
Father Kingsley called fighting against racism, a pro-life issue.
“God, as you read in Genesis, breathed his life into our first parents and pronounced them good,” Father Kingsley said. “My black brother, my brown brother, my Asian sister, are all charity, are all respect, they’re all dignity. Because it’s not something that I’ve gifted to them, but it’s been gifted by the creator.”
Father Cox says if anyone is interested in getting involved in the fight against racism here in the Diocese of Brooklyn, they can reach out to him by contacting his parish.
Jessica Easthope
Siblings Monica Schuss and John Tomanelli are always baking. It’s one of the many things they love to do together. But they don’t have any family recipes, so they’re creating their own family traditions. That’s because after they were adopted as children, they finally found each other in a time span that seemed like a lifetime.
“He’s 53 and I’m 60,” said Monica. “We only met two years ago, so you’re talking about 58 for me and 51 for him. That’s a lot of time to catch up on.”
Monica is seven years older than her brother John — a brother she didn’t know she had growing up as an adopted, only-child in Richmond Hill, Queens.
“I never had a birth certificate,” Monica said. “It was incredibly difficult to find anything from that name, especially back then. There was nowhere to go.”
John grew up farther east on Long Island. He was also adopted into a family with older parents like Monica’s.
“I grew up kind of shy with a lot of anxiety and my world was very small,” John said. “I lived very cautiously because I was alone.”
They were both living with a void — a missing ingredient. When they got older, they registered with the New York State Adoption Registry. John registered in 1991 and Monica did in 1998. But decades passed with no word. They both married and had children, but the feeling of wondering if a sibling was out there never went away.
Then in March of 2019, they got letters with each other’s name and address. Monica rushed to find her long lost brother on social media.
“I wrote ‘Hi John, did you get the letter?’ that’s all I wrote because I figured if it was him, he would know,” she said.
They met and instantly felt complete.
“We were like, this far apart, and we just hugged and we didn’t let go and it was incredible,” Monica said. “Just this warm feeling of love when we never even met, but we knew, it was just instantly knowing.”
All those years, Monica and John held tight to their faith even when they felt they had nothing else.
“I always believed because I was a good person and always been good to others and done the right thing and lived the right way, that this was the miracle I got back,” Monica said.
John put his faith into action as well.
“I’ve asked God to just put me where I should be and if I do the right things, one day I’ll be rewarded,” John said. “And this was my reward —meeting Monica.”
At the beginning of the pandemic they knew they couldn’t be apart, so John moved in with Monica and her children and pets in Ozone Park.
As their family blended, they knew what happened to them wasn’t an accident — there were just too many signs.
“The first day we spoke was our mother’s birthday,” the two siblings said. “That day, I got the letter with her name on it. It was also the day our biological aunt acknowledged she was our aunt. We have the same birthday. Her son is one day later. Our adoptive mothers passed away the same year.”
They prayed they’d find each other for so long. Now their wish is to help others like them.
“If you don’t give up and just keep the faith, you will be blessed,” Monica said. “It happened to us and it can happen to other people too. We want to help others feel what we feel.”
Now, there are no more questions — they have each other and it’s all the proof they need.
Clergy in the Diocese of Brooklyn react to the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd – saying justice was served but more work needs to be done.
An Asian woman is attacked for speaking her native language – now a suspect is under arrest.
Hundreds of National Guardsmen head to the border as one governor declares an emergency.
Two siblings find each other decades after they were adopted by different families.
Currents News Staff
April is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month and here in the Diocese of Brooklyn, there are strong measures in place to provide healing and protection to survivors of abuse.
Jasmine Salazar is the Vice Chancellor and Victim Assistance Coordinator for the Diocese of Brooklyn. She joined Currents News to discuss the programs in place that protect minors as well as how the Church responds.
To contact the diocese’s toll free and confidential sexual abuse reporting line, dial: 888-634-4499.
Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio highlights Sexual Assault Awareness Month in his latest article in The Tablet. The bishop reinforces the need to protect victims of sexual abuse and prevent further cases.
You can read the full article on TheTablet.org.