The House approves the COVID relief bill, now headed to the president’s desk.
You’ll meet the religious sisters making it their mission that everyone has enough to eat.
A Queens Catholic school named best in the borough for the third year in a row shares their secret to success.
What Pope Francis is now saying to Christians that have emigrated from Iraq.
Currents News Staff
In a tent city near the U.S.-Mexico border, Lijia Giselle Amador Zavala waits with her two children. She says she left Honduras nine months ago to seek asylum in the United States.
Lijia says she jumped the border two times illegally because of desperation to find work and both times she was sent back to Mexico. Now she says she’ll wait for a legal way to cross.
The anticipation spreading through this tent city in Tijuana, Mexico speaks to the hope these migrants have that the Biden administration will be more receptive to their plights. But the increasing surge of migrants on the southern border is reaching emergency levels for the administration.
U.S. authorities have arrested and encountered more than 100,000 migrants in the four weeks before March 3 – the highest levels for that same time period in at least five years.
New data shows there are more than 3,400 unaccompanied children in the custody of Customs and Border Protection and federal immigration officials are scrambling to make room.
Temporary processing site for migrants was opened just over a month ago and a Homeland Security official says the facility is “significantly overcrowded” mostly with children.
Republicans and some Democrats say the Biden administration isn’t moving fast enough to keep the migration crisis under control.
“They are completely unprepared for what is going on at the border now and they’re going to be even more unprepared for what will be happening in the coming months,” said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
The Biden Administration says the majority of migrants are being turned away at the border and refuse to describe the situation as a crisis.
“Look, I don’t think we need to sit here and put new labels on what we have already conveyed is challenging,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. “What we have conveyed is a top priority for the president.”
By Jessica Easthope
Anyone who visits St. John’s Bread & Life can tell it’s a well-oiled machine. It feeds 25,000 people every year and sustains 21 other food pantries. But what you can’t tell by just looking – is the machine is powered by nuns.
“When you belong to a religious community if you put the word out that you need help, people show up,” said Sister Caroline Tweedy, the executive director of St. John’s Bread & Life.
The organization that’s been a Brooklyn staple has been around since 1982 and has an upper management staff made up of mostly women.
“We get to share who we are, we look at a problem collectively and we get to address it collectively and we bring a woman’s intuition to what we do,” Sr. Caroline said.
Sister Caroline and associate executive director Sister Marie Sorenson take a hands on approach to ending hunger, something they say comes naturally for sisters.
“I think that’s one of the highlights of women religious, we jump in and we do the work that needs to be done,” Sister Marie said.
It’s Catholic Sisters Week – and St. John’s Bread & Life asked communities of sisters to help support its mission. In just days enough money was raised to feed the people who rely on the pantry for three months, and they’re not stopping there, some have even joined the volunteer staff. Sister Melissa Camardo blends in.
“It’s run by so many talented, committed, passionate women and it’s a really great example to all of us to get involved and use the skills we have to the best of our ability,” said Sister Melissa.
Sister Melissa isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, because, after all, ending hunger in a borough where 20 percent of its residents are food insecure is heavy lifting.
“What I can do right now to make a difference is simple small acts of bagging groceries with great love and to really pray for the people who need food and use my own hands and heart to respond to that,” she said.
The sisters say what puts St. John’s Bread & Life a cut above the rest is its powerful women and their ability to work together.
“Women know things can’t get done alone, that the power is in working together, achieving a goal, sharing resources, sharing talents,” Sr. Marie said.
During the most challenging of times, the machine doesn’t stop because these sisters won’t let it – it’s all part of their power.
By Emily Drooby
From going to class here in kindergarten to having his own class, Peter Stamm loved Sacred Heart Catholic Academy of Glendale so much that he’s now a teacher there.
Keeping former students close is one of the reasons the school won big in the “Best of the Boro” awards.
“The results really speak for themselves, for people to vote this much and to keep bringing their kids here, it’s a very cool thing to see,” Peter told Currents News.
For the third year in a row, they were voted the best Catholic school in Queens by the competition put together by Schneps Media.
“The ‘Bethpage Best of the Boro’ is really a program that’s all about the opinions of the public, explained Joshua Schneps, the CEO And Co-publisher of Schneps Media. “You know, we have hundreds of thousands of votes that come through each year, so you know to win is a major accomplishment,” he added.
The competition names everything from the best school, to the best local pizza.The award is voted on by the community, and the school has a strong one.
“We have an amazing set of teachers and administrators here,” Christopher Russo, a parent of a student at the school explained. “We are backed by a very strong parent base. We also have a good parish and community of Glendale that loves our school, and we have an alumni of 80 plus years that backs our school.”
This third win is a momentous one. The Chairperson of Sacred Heart-Glendale’s board of directors, Fred Haller, said they had big competition.
“We have strong schools, strong Catholic High Schools in Queens and strong grammar schools, and we are among the smallest in the entire borough,” he said.
It was also a tumultuous year for all New York City schools, forced to adapt and adjust because of the pandemic.
“In one day an entire faculty, which maybe used some technology sometimes, really adjusted, knocked it out of the park,” Fred added.
The school survived and thrived — enrollment grew this year. Most importantly, students and parents are happy.
Now, they’re enjoying the big win. Faculty tells Currents News that the recognition brings in more students, and even gets their current students noticed by better high schools and colleges.
So, the only question left to ask is: Will they be able to make it four years in a row?
Catholic nursing students move to the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic by administering vaccines.
New York state is opening up eligibility for those shots to even more residents.
The coronavirus relief bill is getting closer to becoming law. Why Catholic bishops don’t want it passed as is.
A plumber from New Jersey heads down to Texas to help following those severe winter storms.
By Jessica Easthope
Sister Maryann Seton Lopiccolo feels at home in Brooklyn, that’s because she is home.
The borough native who has held the position of Episcopal Delegate for Religious for 22 years spends her days welcoming others home into the Diocese of Immigrants.
“Brooklyn has always been historically the Diocese of Immigrants. We say that all the time but I see them. I see their faces. so there’s an empowering of them by support and I’m there for them,” Sister Maryann said.
Religious from all over the world come to the Brooklyn Diocese for education, for ministry and for roots. They’re roots Sister Maryann has never taken for granted.
“I think there is a sense of welcome and I’m very conscious of that and I often say to them, ‘If I were moving to Kenya, I would want someone to make friends with me right away,” she joked.
As Episcopal Delegate, Sister Maryann oversees more than 850 religious sisters, brothers and priests in the Diocese of Brooklyn. Now with a surge of international sisters, her role has taken on new meaning.
“They come and they don’t have a provincial or a regional superior so they call me the Big Mother, they say you’re just like our mother and I say okay if that’s how I can serve you and if that’s a role that makes you comfortable I’m fine with it,” said Sister Maryann.
Sister Maryann works to find housing that makes people from across the world feel like this urban jungle is their own.
“I really work hard in finding them a place where they will be comfortable too because the cultural differences are real. They’re not good, bad or indifferent. They’re just real,” she said.
As for women being excluded, Sister Maryann says that’s never been the case in Brooklyn, especially not under Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio.
“The Bishop has been super sensitive about including women, what’s happening from our perspective that he should be more aware of that perhaps as a man he didn’t notice it or didn’t hear it,” she explained. “And there’s a side of him that’s so open to learning because he wants to serve the best he can,” Sister Maryann noted of Bishop DiMarzio’s commitment to inclusion.
She’s looked to as a leader in the Diocese of Brooklyn, the go to person. But to the people whose lives she’s touched, she’s “The Big Mother.”
Currents News Staff
Doctors are calling him a miracle.
They say a priest in England who contracted COVID-19 actually died twice and then came back.
That priest is Father Michael Stack, the national chaplain of The Association of Catholic Nurses of England and Wales. He joins Currents News to share his recovery experience.
Currents News Staff
The final passage of President Biden’s 1.9 trillion dollar stimulus plan is underway.
“And one more thing: this plan is historic,” the president said.
President Joe Biden is on the verge of clinching a transformative victory as he prepares to deliver his very first prime-time address this week.
The Senate is completing its marathon consideration of Biden’s sweeping $1.9 trillion COVID relief proposal March 13, with the House scheduled to follow suit later this week.
And Biden, while highlighting vaccinations for veterans, is making clear he’s unequivocally ready to sign.
“As soon as I get it,”he said, even as his administration continues to work behind the scenes to ensure the pathway is clear.
“Obviously our focus continues to be The Americans Rescue Plan and getting it across the finish line,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. “The president is taking nothing for granted.”
The GOP opposition is unyielding, with not a single House or Senate Republican voting for the plan.
“This isn’t a pandemic rescue package,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “It’s a parade of left wing pet projects they are ramming through, they are ramming through during a pandemic.”
But the House vote will complete Biden’s top task from the moment he set foot in the Oval Office: passing a sweeping bill to address the dual economic and public health crises confronted by his administration.
The scale of the bill — and it’s focus on those at or below the poverty level — are almost without precedent. The stimulus checks would provide $5,600 for a typical family of four making less than $100,000; extensions of emergency unemployment benefits for roughly 11 million Americans; an unprecedented expansion of the child tax credit, which would reach 66 million and is estimated to cut child poverty in half; an expansion of the earned income tax credit for 17 million; tens of billions of dollars for rental and homeowner assistance; and the bill would quietly bolster the Affordable Care Act to reduce premiums for millions.
Top Biden advisers, in an internal staff memo obtained by Currents News, are calling the package “a historic response to the moment of crisis we face.”
“We can’t lose sight of what the bill actually means for the American people,” said Psaki.
Still, warning signs for Biden’s future plans exist in the form of Democratic senator Joe Manchin, who is demanding bipartisanship on issues like infrastructure and immigration.
“I’m not willing to go into reconciliation until we at least get bipartisanship or get working together, or allow the Senate to do its job,” said Manchin. “Just by assuming that they’ll never work with us, that’s the other side. This is tribal. Republicans will never agree on anything, or Democrats will never agree. I don’t subscribe to that.”
For now, Biden is firmly in Manchin’s camp in maintaining the rules of the Senate in the search for bipartisanship.
“The president’s preference is to not get rid of the filibuster,” Psaki. said. “Look at what we’ve accomplished the past six weeks.”
This comes all as Biden is making clear that whatever lies ahead for his agenda, his cornerstone legislative proposal is a big deal.
“By passing this plan, we will have delivered real, tangible results for the Americans people and their families, and they’ll be able to see and know and feel the change in their own lives,” the president said.
By Emily Drooby
They might still be students, but Alexana Gadaleto and Gianna Lamarca are fighting COVID-19 from the frontlines: they’re administering vaccines.
“Once we heard word of being able to be a part of these vaccination clinics, I said yes eight million times. And I thought it was just great to be a part of this, and to be a part of history,” Gianna told Currents News.
Back in December, a hospital group approached Lynette DeBellis, a nursing instructor at Mount Saint Mary College. They asked if she had anyone who could help them out.
Lynette’s students jumped at the challenge. Half of the senior class, over 60 students, signed up to staff three hospitals, five days a week.
“It was uplifting to see that much interest and that much willingness to serve,” Lynette told Currents News.
As New York State continues to vaccinate its residents as fast as they can, many hospitals are turning towards students, using them to help free up hospital health care workers to take care of their patients.
“It’s so important that we vaccinate as many people as possible,” Lynette told Currents News. “So, we need the manpower in order to complete that, in order to achieve that.”
The Catholic school students had already learned how to administer vaccines. They also had to get certified by the CDC. They gave up their own time and risked their health to help others.
Gianna said the community was grateful. “We had very positive feedback from anybody who came in and they were like, ‘Wow you guys are students, and you’re doing this on your free time? And it’s amazing that you guys are here,'” she said.
Gianna has given out about 350 shots. She and Alexana say the time they’ve put in has been more than worth it.
“One person said that they were getting the vaccine on his sister’s birthday. And his sister died from COVID, and I was the one to administer the vaccine to him and that was when it hit me: I’m actually changing people’s lives and helping them get through this. And I’m so grateful to be a part of that,” said Alexana.
It’s also a way for them to continue to get hands-on experience.
The college started by working with just one hospital system, and now they’re working with three. They’re planning to continue the program as long as there is a need.
By Currents News Staff and John Lavenburg
HARTFORD, CONN. — From his experience in Iraq in 2018, Msgr. Kieran Harrington doesn’t look at one stop, or moment, from Pope Francis’ trip to Iraq as most significant. Rather, it’s the fact that the Holy Father was there in the first place.
“The fundamental problem for so many Christians in Iraq is they’re alone. That’s why the pope’s visit was so important because, with the pope’s presence, they knew they were not alone. That, in their suffering, they were not by themselves,” Msgr. Harrington, the ecclesiastical assistant for Aid to the Church in Need, told Currents News on March 8.
Msgr. Harrington, who is also the vicar for communications for the Diocese of Brooklyn, visited Irbil, Telskuf, Qaraqosh, and Ankawa on sabbatical in 2018. At that time, the Islamic State was gone, and the rebuilding process had begun.
One thing he remembers from the trip was the joy of Iraqi Christians despite all they had endured. He remembers events like First Communion ceremonies and large parish gatherings in the Iraqi countryside rife with prayer and comradery.
Msgr. Harrington notes, however, that despite the joy of the people, “the trauma of war doesn’t go away.” That many people would still like to leave Iraq but can’t because of the risk and length of time it will take them to find a new life in another country.
For that reason, he said it was important for Iraqi Christians to hear Pope Francis’s encouragement that their decision to stay was a noble one, whether it was their choice or not.
“People have to be empowered, reminded that what they are doing even when they don’t have the ability to make decisions, they have to know that them staying is a heroic decision,” Msgr. Harrington said. “Maybe it’s not so much a choice, but they need to perceive it as a choice, or else life becomes unbearable.”
Msgr. Harrington also views Pope Francis’ meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top cleric in Shia Islam, as an important symbol. It’s an opportunity where Christians can be a “bridge-builder” between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that are still in conflict.
“When [Iraqi Christians] choose against hate and choose the path of love, this then becomes a remarkable witness to the rest of the world,” he told Currents News. “I think this is what the Holy Father has been encouraging Christians to do in that part of the world.”
As for ways Christians living in first world countries like the United States can help Iraqi Christians, Msgr. Harrington said prayer is the first thing they would ask for. After prayer, he suggests financial contributions to help them continue to rebuild and provide necessary social services. And lastly, advocacy on their behalf.
In a statement Monday, March 8, President Joe Biden called Pope Francis’ trip “a symbol of hope for the entire world.” One that “sent an important message, as Pope Francis said himself, that ‘fraternity is more durable than fratricide, that hope is more powerful than death, that peace more powerful than war.’”
In response to the comments, Msgr. Harrington recalled the phrase “you break it, you own it,” said by Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State under President George W. Bush. His point was that when the United States toppled Saddam Hussein, regardless of how evil he was, the relative peace and tranquility he provided for Christians communities went down with him.
“Regardless of the merits of whether we should have been there or not, we own their suffering and that requires us to do everything in our power to ease the suffering of those who are there,” Msgr. Harrington said.
“I think the most important thing in easing someone’s suffering is you’re not alone. You can accompany in suffering. What I think the United States cannot do is abandon the people of Iraq.”