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NYPD Identifies Shooter at St. John the Divine Cathedral, Releases Lengthy Criminal Record

By Jessica Easthope and Melissa Enaje

A gunman was fatally shot by police on the front steps of St. John the Divine Cathedral in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, Dec. 13, after the 52-year-old man began firing two semi-automatic handguns just before 4 p.m., at the end of the Episcopal church’s public outdoor Christmas Choir concert scheduled that afternoon.

A chilling image shows that the gunman was carrying a backpack that contained a full can of gasoline, a Bible, wire, duct tape, knives, and several spools of rope. NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea spoke at a press briefing on Sunday.

“I think we can all surmise the ill intentions of the proceeds of this bag,” he said. “It is by the grace of God today,” he said, that no one besides the gunman was struck.

The gunman shot into the church doors as the church finished its planned 45-minute event “Carols for the Community” on the steps of the cathedral, during the third Sunday of Advent.

According to Commissioner Shea, a detective, sergeant, and police officer who were at the event fired 15 rounds at the gunman, fatally shooting him in the head. The two on-duty officers at the scene were Detective Jason Harper, a 22-year veteran of the force, and Police Officer Daurys Gutierrez, a nine-year veteran. Sgt. Kensington Cunningham was working as a paid security guard at the time.

“You see three officers acting heroically,” the commissioner said, “engaging an armed perpetrator, putting themselves in harm’s way to pull people that are literally hiding in these poles behind me caught in the crossfire.”

Witnesses told police the man was yelling, “kill me,” as he fired his weapon.

Steven Wilson, who attended the Christmas concert with his family, ran and hid after they heard the gunshots.

“We all just got behind the car,” Wilson said. “To see it right up front really makes you appreciate that police officers are putting their lives on the line.”

Rev. Patrick Malloy from St. John the Divine Cathedral said he took people into the church for safety.

“A sense of responsibility took over,” Rev. Malloy said, “and I realized I simply had to take care of the people who were gathered around me and I took them into that building and locked us in.”

The suspect was taken to Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital and pronounced dead. He was identified as Luis Vasquez, from the Bronx. Reports said he had a “lengthy criminal history” including an attempted murder charge.

On Guard

Former NYPD Chief of Department and the former Commissioner of New York City Emergency Management Joe Esposito says churches and all houses of worship should be on guard especially during the holiday season.

“You always have to be on guard,” Esposito said. “Everyone’s excited about the holiday … you got a season that’s more attracted to those emotionally disturbed or have an agenda or is a terrorist because it’s such a high profile time.”

Esposito said that increased church security is already taking place around the Diocese of Brooklyn and that the parties responsible for overseeing security within the diocese already spoke after yesterday’s church shooting in Manhattan.

“It’s important that the houses of worship do security analysis, especially in this time of the season,” he said. “Some churches have added extra ushers to be the extra eyes and ears. It’s an important time of the year to be on guard.”

Assisi Honors Healthcare Workers Amid Pandemic With Nativity Scene and Light Show

By Claudia Torres

St. Francis of Assisi began the tradition of setting up the nativity scene. This year, the town where he grew up will celebrate a very special Christmas. 

Assisi is putting the joy of the Franciscan spirit on display with video projections on the facades of the Superior Basilica of St. Francis and the Cathedral of St. Rufino. It will be a spectacular light show in the town’s streets.

“We want to show, in front of the basilica, the presence into which we can enter, in which each one of us can feel like a part of the event of the birth of the Lord. He is the one who comes to visit us, the Son of God made flesh,” explained Marco Moroni, custodian for the Sacred Convent of Assisi. “We immerse ourselves in this Nativity, and He immerses Himself in our humanity.”

There will also be a large nativity scene composed of 50 shepherd statues, honoring the work of healthcare personnel with a statue of a nurse.

The nativity scene seeks to be an invitation to understand the meaning of the nativity for St. Francis on Christmas in Greccio, in the year 1223.

“What does St. Francis do? In reality, he doesn’t make an actual nativity scene like the one we’re familiar with today. He fixes up a manger, adds some hay, has a donkey and bull brought in, and he celebrates a Mass,” Simone Tenuti, head of the youth ministry at the Sacred Convent of Assisi told Currents News. “For Francis, there is a very strong relationship between the Incarnation and the Eucharist.”

“We are called to truly grow, mature, light up that interior light, this life that is born in each one of us. Then it will be an extraordinary and beautiful Christmas. Why? Because we’ll be able to face any–no, not obstacle–any surprise, because we’ll have that light that illuminates and guides us,” added Enzo Fortunato, Press Director for the convent. 

This Christmas, special attention will be given to those who are far away and can’t travel to Assisi. Thanks to the website ilnataledifrancesco.it, it will be possible to admire the projections with the impressive Giotto frescoes until Jan. 6, 2021.

Bishops: Getting COVID-19 Vaccine Is ‘Act of Charity,’ Supports the Common Good

By Currents News Staff and Julie Asher

WASHINGTON (CNS) — The “gravity” of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and “the lack of availability of alternative vaccines,” are “sufficiently serious” reasons to accept the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the chairmen of the U.S. bishops’ doctrine and pro-life committees said Dec. 14.

“Receiving the COVID-19 vaccine ought to be understood as an act of charity toward the other members of our community,” they said. “In this way, being vaccinated safely against COVID-19 should be considered an act of love of our neighbor and part of our moral responsibility for the common good.”

The bishops addressed the moral concerns raised by the fact the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have some connection to cell lines that originated with tissue taken from abortions.

However, this connection to morally compromised cell lines is so remote and the public health situation is too grave to reject the vaccines, said Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, and Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

Late Dec. 11, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave emergency-use approval to the Pfizer vaccine, with approval expected for Moderna the week of Dec. 14. UPS and FedEx began shipping the doses across the country Dec. 12, with the first shipments arriving Dec. 14.

Each state has a distribution plan for administering them. National guidelines call for health care workers and those in nursing homes and long-term care facilities to be first in line to get immunized.

On Dec. 8, The Lancet medical journal reported that four clinical trials of a third vaccine, being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca “appears to have moderate efficacy in preventing symptomatic illness, and may significantly reduce hospitalization from the disease.” Astra Zeneca is expected to apply to the FDA for emergency use of its vaccine in the coming weeks.

Bishop Rhoades and Archbishop Naumann said they found the AstraZeneca vaccine it to be “more morally compromised” and concluded this vaccine “should be avoided” if there are alternatives available.

“It may turn out, however, that one does not really have a choice of vaccine, at least, not without a lengthy delay in immunization that may have serious consequences for one’s health and the health of others,” the two prelates stated. “In such a case … it would be permissible to accept the AstraZeneca vaccine.”

Shortly after Pfizer and Moderna announced Nov. 11 and Nov. 16, respectively, that their vaccines were 95% effective against COVID-19, critics claimed the vaccines have been produced using cells from aborted fetuses, leading to confusion over “the moral permissibility” of using these vaccines.

Bishop Rhoades and Archbishop Naumann addressed this issue in a Nov. 23 memo to their fellow bishops and addressed it again in their 2,400-word statement Dec. 12. In the memo they noted some were “asserting that if a vaccine is connected in any way with tainted cell lines, then it is immoral to be vaccinated with them. This is an inaccurate portrayal of Catholic moral teaching.”

In their new lengthy statement, the two committee chairmen emphasized that any such cell lines were derived from tissue samples taken from fetuses aborted in the 1960s and 1970s and have been grown in laboratories all over the world since then.

“It is important to note that the making of the rubella vaccine — or that of the new COVID-19 vaccines — does not involve cells taken directly from the body of an aborted child,” Bishop Rhoades and Archbishop Naumann said. “Cells taken from two abortions in the 1960s were replicated in a laboratory to produce two cell lines that can be reproduced again and again, indefinitely.”

“To make the rubella vaccine, cells from these cell lines are stimulated to produce the chemicals necessary for the vaccine,” they explained. “It is not as if the making of the vaccine required ever more cells from ever more abortions.”

The two committee chairmen said the Vatican, through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pontifical Academy for Life, “has offered guidance on the question of whether it is morally acceptable to receive a vaccine that has been created with the use of morally compromised cell lines.”

Both the congregation and the academy “emphasize the positive moral obligation to do good,” they said, “and in so doing to distance oneself as much as possible from the immoral act of another party such as abortion in order to avoid cooperation with someone else’s evil actions and to avoid giving scandal, which could happen if one’s own actions were perceived by other people to ignore or to minimize the evil of the action.”

“Our love of neighbor should lead us to avoid giving scandal, but we cannot omit fulfilling serious obligations such as the prevention of deadly infection and the spread of contagion among those who are vulnerable just to avoid the appearance of scandal,” the two prelates said.

At the same time, the bishops also cautioned Catholics against complacency about the moral issue of abortion and ethical issues surrounding the development of some vaccines.

“While having ourselves and our families immunized against COVID-19 with the new vaccines is morally permissible and can be an act of self-love and of charity toward others, we must not allow the gravely immoral nature of abortion to be obscured,” Bishop Rhoades and Archbishop Naumann said.

“It is true that one can receive benefits from an evil action in the past without intending that action or approving of it. The association with the evil action that comes with receiving benefits from that evil action, however, can have a corrupting influence on one’s perception of the evil action, making it more difficult to recognize it as evil,” they explained.

“One might become desensitized to the gravely evil nature of that action. One might become complacent about that action and ignore the obligation to do what one can to oppose the evil action,” they said, adding that others might see “one’s acceptance of benefits from an evil action” and feel the action isn’t really evil, feel less urgency “to oppose that evil” or even miss opportunities to do what they can “to oppose it.”

“We should be on guard so that the new COVID-19 vaccines do not desensitize us or weaken our determination to oppose the evil of abortion itself and the subsequent use of fetal cells in research,” Bishop Rhoades and Archbishop Naumann said.

– – –

Editor’s Note: The full text of Bishop Rhoades and Archbishop Naumann’s statement can be found online at https://www.usccb.org/moral-considerations-covid-vaccines.

Father Jorge Ortiz-Garay Honored at Our Lady of Guadalupe Feast Day Celebration

By Jessica Easthope

No matter how much music and dancing filled the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe felt empty without Father Jorge Ortiz-Garay. But he was there in spirit on a day he helped design as one of the first Mexican priests in the Diocese of Brooklyn.

“I believe that he is with us, I have his rosary here this is his rosary that I have with me so I feel his presence with us,” said Father Baltazar Sanchez Alonzo, who has been named the new Director of the Mexican Apostolate for the Diocese of Brooklyn following Father Jorge’s passing.

Father Jorge was also the first priest in the United States to pass away from COVID-19, he was only 49 years old. In the time he served the Diocese of Brooklyn he breathed new life into cultural celebrations. Father Jorge is now at rest in Mexico, but on Saturday his family was in Brooklyn celebrating his life and legacy in the Diocese of Immigrants.

“My brother was an example for life, and I come here with honor for my family and for my brother,” said Erais and Edgar Ortiz-Garay, Father Jorge’s sister and brother.

The emotional celebration was scaled back. Instead of thousands about 200 people socially distanced at mass. Everyone wore masks and t-shirts with Father Jorge’s name on them.

“Father Jorge was the ideator, we’re so sorry God took him from us but he’s helping us from his place with the Lord to keep the Mexican Apostolate going,” said Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio.

The Guadalupe Torch which symbolizes the Light of Christ is also lit, this year, in memory of those we’ve lost. For Mexicans in the Diocese of Brooklyn Father Jorge’s light is with them.

Maronite Catholics Demand Justice as Beirut Explosion Investigation Reveals Government Negligence

By Jessica Easthope

At Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Cathedral parishioners are praying for justice.

Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab has been charged with negligence, more than four months after an explosion rocked the country’s capital. An investigation uncovered the blast was preventable had it not been for government mismanagement of a stockpile of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut.

“At this point the Lebanese people are tired of the back and forth plus the economic situation and the COVID on top of that it’s making everyone really tired, they want an end of it,” said Father Dominique Hanna, the director at Our Lady of Lebanon.

Father Hanna said he’s been waiting for this day after decades of government corruption.

“The people who have been held liable or charged or indicted can defend themselves and we will be able to find out who is in charge and who was responsible,” he told Currents News.

In the wake of the explosion, the 45 churches in the Eparchy of St. Maron rallied around their loved ones back home. They sent nearly $2 million and a shipping container of supplies back to Lebanon.

“It is important for us to give something just to put a little bit of healing on that deep wound,” said Joseph Elkallassy, a parishioner at Our Lady of Lebanon who donated money back in August.

Joseph hopes this will be a turning point for his country and a new, transparent government will form.

“May God guide these politicians to do right by the people because they’re here to serve the people not to serve their own interests and unfortunately that’s not what’s happening in Lebanon,” Joseph said.

Formal indictments in the explosion will not be announced until the investigation is ready to go to trial. If Prime Minister Hassan Diab is convicted he could face up to seven years in prison.

Currents News full broadcast for Fri, 12/11/20 (Catholic news)

Currents News reports secular and religious news from the Catholic perspective.

Some of the top stories on this special edition of Currents News:

The FDA advisory panel gives the green light to the Pfizer vaccine.

In an attempt to slow a second wave of the coronavirus, indoor dining is closing again in New York City.

Plus, an original song by students inspired by Carlo Acutis, the first millennial on the path to sainthood.

FDA Advisory Committee Approves Emergency Use Authorization for Pfizer COVID Vaccine

A major step forward to getting Americans a COVID-19 vaccine was announced Dec. 11.  An advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration approved an emergency use authorization for a Pfizer biontech vaccine.

But, it’s not the final step in the process, so how long before you could get the vaccine.

As COVID-19 continues to ravage the country, Americans getting a vaccine could stop the spread in its tracks.

From the FDA to the CDC, a committee there must also give the vaccine a green light.

And if that happens, “20 million people should get vaccinated in just the next several weeks,” explained Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. 

Here’s how Pfizer biontech says it’ll happen:

Within 24 hours of the FDA’s emergency authorization, much of the vaccine will be shipped from Pfizer’s facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, first going to hospitals and pharmacies nationwide that partnered with the federal government.

Next, health care workers and residents in long-term care facilities are at the top of the list to get the vaccine.

But, that timeline could depend on which state you live in. Take Illinois, for example.

‘Yes, there are a lot of people in the priority group. Yes, we want to get it to you. But no, it won’t happen on day one, week one or even week two. Patience will be the name of the game,” said Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health:

Younger, relatively healthy, non-essential workers can expect “end of March, early April,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Once you get into April, probably full blast with those individuals.”

Some details are still being ironed out, but the goal is to make it as simple as getting a seasonal flu shot.

“They’ll come in at their scheduled time. They’ll meet with a pharmacist or technician. They’ll get their flu shot. They’ll get a record card with a vaccination they got, and we’ll also email them with that record,” explained Jonathan Roberts Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of CVS Health. 

Currents News full broadcast for Thurs, 12/10/20 (Catholic news)

Currents News reports secular and religious news from the Catholic perspective.

Some of the top stories on this newscast:

A pivotal day in the pandemic – the FDA could approve emergency use of potentially life-saving COVID vaccine.

Then, the toll the pandemic is having on students with special needs and what’s being done about it.

We’ll meet the new president of St. John’s University and find out what his plans are for the school.

 

Divine Wisdom Catholic Academy Stays Dedicated to Supporting Special Education Students Amid COVID

By Emily Drooby

Teaching and learning during the pandemic has been an uphill battle. While it’s been hard for all kids, it’s proven to be especially difficult for special education students.

“It was definitely different,” Kerri Okula told Currents News. “We had to think of new and inventive ways of getting the students engaged, and actually online.”

Kerri is the special education learning lab coordinator at Divine Wisdom Catholic Academy in Douglaston, Queens.

Since the pandemic hit in March, she and her team have been working on overdrive.

Their learning lab is just one of the ways the school is trying to stay ahead of the curve and on top of student needs. It’s where they can get the extra help they need during this turbulent time.

“Every day it’s a challenge, and every day brings new challenges,” explained the school’s principal, Miriam Bonici.

Across the country, parents are challenging different departments of education.

Unlike the program at Divine Wisdom Catholic Academy, parents don’t feel like the needs of their children with special needs are being met.

Lawsuits have been popping up in multiple states. Families in Hawaii, New York, Connecticut, Texas and other states are alleging mishandling of students’ special education.

In New York City, parents of eight children have filed a federal lawsuit claiming the Department of Education (DOE) has failed to fulfill their children IEPs, a map that lays out a child’s special education programming. These families say they were denied therapists, translators and technology. They believe their child’s progress has halted or in some cases regressed.

A recently released report from the NYC Education Department shows tens of thousands of students with disabilities did not get their mandated services.

Currents News did reach out to the DOE, but they did not return a request for comment.

On the other hand, in Douglaston, Kerri and her team provide services for about 60 kids. They’re not immune to the struggles of the pandemic, and say working with students and coordinating schedules were very difficult at first.

But for Kerri this isn’t just a job, it’s a calling.

“I was a one-on-one aide with a student that was non-verbal and has autism. So, it was a very close relationship and from September to June, just seeing his interactions and him grow as a student, it was great,” Kerri explained.

Kerri says their goal at this time was to have good communication and be very accessible to their students.

“If we are not seeing them, we are going to regress, we are going to see major deficits so the students as we continue to see them, their strengths are improving and their skills are improving,” she explained, adding that good communication and being easily accessible to students has been a godsend to them.

Miriam calls their level of commitment remarkable.

“They make the time, whether it’s during the school day or after school to make sure they are meeting with all of their students and that the students are getting whatever services they need in order to be successful,’ she noted.

St. John’s University’s New President Focused on Vincentian Mission, Community Prior to Installation

Currents News Staff

As the fall semester comes to a close, St. John’s University will be making a fresh start next semester with a new president. Father Brian Shanley O.P., will succeed Bobby Gempesaw in February 2021.

Father Shanley joined Currents News to share his upcoming plans and the story behind how he ended up coming to the Queens campus after spending 15 years at Rhode Island’s Catholic university, Providence College.