V Encuentro Offers Insight to Future of Latino Ministry in U.S.

Currents News Staff

American Catholic leaders recently presented the historic findings of the National V Encuentro to Pope Francis.

The Latin American pontiff has has been closely following the Encuentro, which represents work done around the nation to make the Hispanic and Latino ministry in the U.S. stronger than ever.

Wanda Vasquez and Luis Peña are two of the lay leaders who were at the Vatican with the Holy Father to present the findings.

Wanda serves as the Director of Hispanic Ministry for the Archdiocese of New York, and Luis is the outreach coordinator for the Office of Hispanic Ministry in the Archdiocese.

They join us to discuss how the findings of the Encuentro will enrich the Church going forward, what is in store for the future of the movement.

Currents News for Wednesday, September 25, 2019

On the newscast: A day of fast-breaking news about President Trump: his phone call with Ukraine’s president and the battle on Capitol Hill over impeachment; A great story about a Christian girl and her best friend/dog, teaming up for a match made in Heaven; A presidential contender’s stop at a lemonade stand takes a surprising twist; And Catholics in the Brooklyn Diocese are rallying around Mother Cabrini.

Watch weeknights at 7:00 pm EST on NET-TV in the New York City area on Spectrum, Optimum, and Fios. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive notifications about new content.

Missing St. Saviour Student Found After Two-Day Search

By Tim Harfmann

The Mill Basin, Brooklyn community is grateful tonight.

Since Monday, September 23, the neighborhood had been on a frantic search for 14-year-old GiaMarie Duffy, a freshman at St. Saviour High School in Brooklyn.

“She asked if she could go for a walk, which is not out of the ordinary, and she just left,” said Keith Duffy, GiaMarie’s father.

According to Keith, police learned the five-foot-two-inch teen turned off her phone, boarded a nearby bus and took it to the Kings Highway subway station.

An online plea for help went viral and was shared on Facebook over 10,000 times.

GiaMarie wound up in the Bronx, and finally answered a call from a family friend on Wednesday, September 25.

The police picked her up and took her to Jacobi Medical Center for evaluation.

How or why she was in the Bronx is still unclear.

GiaMarie’s mother, Ashley Capoziello, said her daughter has a huge heart and doesn’t understand what made her leave.

“She has an overwhelming amount of love and support and family and friends that are always going to be here for her,” Ashley said.

GiaMarie has also enjoyed her Catholic education at St. Saviour ever since she finished her first week of classes.

“She loved it! She loved it,” said Keith. “She told me, ‘Dad, I’m mad tomorrow’s Saturday because I can’t go to school.'”

“Catholic high school was always an option,” Ashley added. “It was the only option. But, inevitably, we decided on St. Saviour and so far, it’s the best decision.”

GiaMarie’s parish, Saint Bernard in Bergen Beach, planned a Wednesday night prayer service in Thanksgiving for her safe return.

“It’s every parent’s nightmare to get something like this,” said neighbor Leeor Solomon. “Thank God she’s alive and well. She’s a sweetheart. None of this makes sense.”

Family and neighbors said there are a lot of unanswered questions, but their main question is answered: GiaMarie is alive.

With Trump Transcript Released, Impeachment Battle Continues

By Emily Drooby

President Trump is now responding to critics who want him impeached due to his conversation with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Democrats charge that the president threatened the Ukrainians with a cutoff in aid if they did not investigate former Vice President Joe Biden for corruption. Now an official impeachment inquiry is underway in the House.

“The president himself just came out with a statement saying there was absolutely no pressure put on him, and there wasn’t,” said Trump of Zelensky. “Just so you understand, it is the single greatest witch hunt in American history, probably in history, but in American history.”

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham argued that a transcript of the call doesn’t support that move.

“Underwhelming. If you’re looking for a circumstance where the president of the united states was threatening the ukraine with cutting off aid unless they investigated his political opponent, you’d be very disappointed. that does not exist,” Graham said. “So, from my point of view, to impeach any president over a phone call like this would be insane.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, strongly disagrees with Graham.

“It is shocking at another level that the White House would release these notes and felt that somehow this would help the president’s case or cause. Because what those notes reflect is a classic mafia-like shakedown of a foreign leader,” he said.

The transcript does show that Trump sought a review of Joe Biden’s family dealings related to the Ukraine, but he did not directly link starting a Biden investigation with granting U.S. military aid to the country.

“A lot of european countries are the same way, so I think it’s something you want to look at but the united states has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine,” Trump said during the call.

On September 25, Trump and Zelensky appeared together at the United Nations, with the Ukrainian backing up the U.S. president, and Trump defending himself.

“No, you’re sure that we had, I think, a good phone call. It was normal. We spoke about many things. So I think, and you read that nobody pushed me,” Zelensky said.

“In other words, no pressure,” said Trump.

Girl’s Best Friend: Service Dog Aids Teen With Autism

By Michelle Powers

Roxy isn’t your typical dog, and Maggie Banks isn’t your typical teenager.

Roxy is actually a rescue dog, and Maggie has autism and a condition that makes her pick at her skin.

“She’s destroying her body and she can’t stop,” explained Maggie’s mom April, who for years struggled to see her daughter’s face pockmarked with scars.

The disability and disorder could be at times isolating. With her anxiety skyrocketed around other people, Maggie was spending most of her time inside.

When nothing else was working, April decided they would try one more thing, as far-fetched as it seemed.

April reached out to Janice Wolfe, a canine behaviorist and the founder of Merlin’s Kids, an organization that rescues dogs from shelters and trains them to be service dogs.

Each dog Janice trains costs between $20,000 and $30,000. The canines learn 17 different tasks before they become service dogs, and their training continues on even after they’re placed with owners.

Only one in 100 dogs has what it takes, and Roxy — a rescue from Missouri — is one of them.

“It was like magic. The first time they met, they clicked,” April explained. She never thought she would see her daughter this happy until Maggie’s best friend came barreling through.

“She came running out and pushed me backwards,” Maggie said, recalling the very moment that she and Roxy became an inseparable duo.

In the last four months since Roxy joined the Banks family, Maggie has stopped picking.

“If I’m picking she licks me,” said Maggie.

Roxy is trained to detect an increase in Maggie’s cortisol levels, so when Maggie is feeling anxious, Roxy knows to press up against her skin and stop her from picking.

“I never thought she could go to college,” said April. For her, the relationship between the two is a life-changing one that’s opening many new doors for Maggie.

“God knows what you need and when you need it,” she added.

The Banks family calls it a match made in heaven: the dog who saved a girl, and the girl who saved a boxer from a pound in Missouri.

Sheen Center Previews New Show on Original Sin

Currents News Staff

A new show is about to debut, and it’s one Catholics may want to watch.

Called ‘Evil,’ the show pushes the boundaries between science and religion. The show follows a psychologist, a seminarian and a contractor who team up to investigate the church’s backlog of unexplained mysteries – like miracles and demonic possessions.

The Catholic Sheen Center in Manhattan gave Currents News and some lucky viewers a sneak peak and the opportunity to talk with the series creator, Robert King.

“The show is an acknowledgement of Original Sin. So, it’s not just looking at evil with a capital E, you know the possessions, the exorcisms. It’s trying to be very unlike the movie or the television show The Exorcist. it’s looking at evil in all its forms or in its daily forms,” he explained.

Evil premieres on CBS at 10 pm on September 26.

House to Start Formal Impeachment Inquiry

Currents News Staff

The tide has turned quickly among congressional Democrats, and now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says her party will move forward with an impeachment inquiry.

It’s a historic and dramatic move that will now dominate Capitol Hill.

“The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law,” said Pelosi.

House GOP leadership was sharply critical of the speaker.

“I realize 2016 did not turn out the way Speaker Pelosi wanted it to happen, but she cannot change the laws of this Congress. She cannot unilaterally decide an impeachment inquiry,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Movement toward an impeachment inquiry escalated quickly amid reports of a controversial July phone call in which President Trump admits he discussed former Vice President Joe Biden and his son with the president of Ukraine.

The call is part of a whistleblower complaint to the intelligence community’s Inspector General.

For some democrats, even in vulnerable swing districts next year, the reports marked a turning point.

“What we discovered this past weekend was egregious,” said Rep. Dean Phillips from Minnesota.

President Trump responded to the impeachment inquiry on Twitter, calling it, a “witch hunt” and saying “they never even saw the transcript of the call.”

The White House says they’ll release that transcript today.

Some republicans say democrats got ahead of themselves by launching the inquiry, before seeing it.

Mourning Loss After Storm Imelda, Family Holds Tight to Faith

Currents News Staff

Last week, while rain from Tropical Storm Imelda was hammering the city of Houston, Texas, 56-year-old Raul Eliseo Rivas-Hernandez lost his life.

His is one of five deaths in Texas linked to the storm.

Raul was a husband, a father, an uncle, and a cancer survivor. But he was also a man of faith who always had scriptures in his home, and the Bible nearby for him and his wife to read.

“My husband he loved the Lord. he loved the Lord,” said his wife, Irma Rivas.

Irma is peace now, but at the height of Imelda on September 19 and the days thereafter, she was “crying like a baby,” and could not control the rush of emotions.

That morning, she had begged her husband of 25 years not to go to work that day, but he insisted that he would be okay

At about noon she called him one more time, begging him to come back home.

“‘Honey. come back home. Come back home.’ He said, ‘I will call you back.’ He never called me back, never called me back,” Irma said.

According to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, Raul attempted to drive the van he was in through Will Clayton Parkway in Texas, but the vehicle sank in about eight feet of water.

The family found out the following day that he had passed away.

“He used to tell me all the time that I was his very special niece,” Raul’s niece, Xeoara Zepeda, said in Spanish.

“Now I’m happy,” said Irma. “Now I’m happy because I know he went to the best place. He called him home. He went home with the Lord.”

Although the entire family is heartbroken and devastated, their faith is helping them heal.

Brooklyn Catholics Raise Funds for NYC Statue of Mother Cabrini

Currents News Staff

Mother Cabrini is one of the most famous New Yorkers of all time, and city residents overwhelmingly voted to build a statue in her honor as part of a project called ‘She Built NYC.’

Despite the landslide for the patron saint of immigrants, the City of New York is not putting up a Mother Cabrini statue.

John Heyer is the lay coordinator for the Italian Ministry in the Brooklyn Diocese, and lobbied for Mother Cabrini to be honored.

Now the ministry is taking action on her behalf, forming a fund meant to raise money for a public statue in the likeness and in honor of Mother Cabrini. On October 6, they will also be organizing a march in her honor.

Currents News for Tuesday, September 24, 2019

On the newscast: President Trump speaks to the world at the United Nations. Many of the points he makes are important to Catholics; The vaping crisis is getting the attention of lawmakers on Capitol Hill as another person dies from a lung illness; Mother Cabrini is getting new support in the Brooklyn Diocese, after that statue controversy; A church’s message to the thief who swiped their new air conditioner: You’ll need it.

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