1,000 Years: Polish Apostolate in the Diocese of Brooklyn Celebrates Kingdom of Poland

By Currents News and Bill Miller

PROSPECT HEIGHTS — The coronation the King Bolesław the Brave, 1,000 years ago, established the Kingdom of Poland — a milestone celebrated on Oct. 19 by Polish parishes in the Diocese of Brooklyn.

The historic date was observed during the annual Polish American Heritage Month Mass at the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph. This year, the Mass included a special guest — Archbishop Wiesław Śmigiel of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Szczecin-Kamień in Poland.

The visiting archbishop was the celebrant and homilist and Bishop Robert Brennan, Auxiliary Bishop Witold Mroziewski, and Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus Octavio Cisneros concelebrated the Mass.

The co-cathedral was nearly filled with Polish Catholics of all ages, many dressed in traditional attire. Archbishop Śmigiel praised the attendees.

“They are people of love,” he said later, with Bishop Mroziewski interpreting. “They have love of America, but in their hearts, they have a part for Poland.”

This special Mass of the diocese’s Polish Apostolate added to multiple celebrations this year in Poland to mark the 1,000-year anniversary of King Bolesław’s coronation.

Bolesław previously ruled Poland as a duke, but his coronation as king changed the land from a duchy to a true monarchy with political and economic power in the Holy Roman Empire.

The king was baptized a Christian. As a duke, he sponsored missionaries, such as a Catholic Bohemian bishop, Adalbert of Prague, to the Prussians. Adalbert’s martyrdom and canonization gave Poland its first patron saint.

Also, while ruling as a duke, Bolesław paid a ransom for the missionary’s corpse — the cost being the weight of the martyr’s body in gold. The act bolstered Bolesław’s reputation as a Christian leader, which followed him into his brief reign as king.

Historians speculate he died of an unknown illness at about age 57 or 58 in 1025, soon after his coronation. Still, that pivotal year is the original milestone for the Polish people, who have been predominantly Catholic throughout their history.

“From the beginning, the culture and the faith are going together,” Archbishop Śmigiel said. “That’s why each celebration reminds us about our identity and history, and they also point to the images of Our Lady of Częstochowa, the Blessed Mother, and to the images of St. Adalbert and all the saints.”

The special Mass was organized by the Polish Apostolate in the diocese, led by its coordinator, Father Grzegorz Stasiak, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Parish in Brooklyn.

Most of the Mass, including the music, was in Polish, but “God Bless America” was sung in English toward the end.

Youth from Polish parishes throughout the Diocese of Brooklyn carried flags and banners and stood at attention with their colors throughout the Mass. A children’s choir from St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Academy also performed.

“The Polish community always impresses me,” Bishop Brennan said. “What we experience here is a community of great faith. … I was impressed by the number of young people and their participation.”

Bishop Brennan said he is constantly amazed by the honor guards and their stamina to stay at attention during Mass.

“You can see that they’re not strangers to all of this,” he said. “They can do this well because they do it often.”

Court Street Re-Design Has Brooklyn Church Parishioners Praying for Answers

By Katie Vasquez and Paula Katinas

CARROLL GARDENS — Plans by the New York City Department of Transportation to install a bike lane on Court Street aren’t the answer to parishioners’ prayers at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church.

Far from it, in fact.

The church’s pastor, Msgr. Guy Massie, and parishioners charge that rather than improving safety on the busy thoroughfare where St. Mary Star of the Sea is located, the bike lane will make crossing the street more dangerous.

The DOT’s plans call for the installation of a bike lane on a 1.3-mile stretch of Court Street in Carroll Gardens from Schermerhorn Street to Hamilton Avenue. Under the plan, the bike lane would be installed on the east side of the one-way street.

Temporary markings have already been drawn on the street to delineate the bike lane, and the DOT is moving ahead with plans to paint permanent markings. The agency has also moved the parking lane — formerly at the curb — further into the street to accommodate the bike lane.

The redesign of Court Street unfairly reduces the busy thoroughfare to one lane for traffic, opponents charge. Court Street contains numerous shops, restaurants, apartment buildings, churches, and schools, and the B57 bus runs along the street, which is also a truck route.

“My concerns are many,” Msgr. Massie said of the bike lane. “Number one: safety issues in our neighborhood.”

Msgr. Massie pointed out that people, many of whom are elderly, who cross the street will pass through the lane for the bicycles, which will be coming from both directions — “That is a problem.”

Because a portion of the bike lane runs outside St. Mary Star of the Sea, which is located at 467 Court St., the church will be impacted, he added.

“How do I get a funeral in here or a wedding in here?” Msgr. Massie asked. “How do you do this without causing more chaos on Court Street?”

“Our neighborhood has never been so unsafe,” said Louise Passantino, a Carroll Gardens resident and lifelong parishioner of St. Mary Star of the Sea. She expressed concern about not being able to cross the street on her way to church.

“I have nothing against people riding bikes, but they don’t observe the laws,” she said. “They come up to you and you don’t hear them like a motor on a car.”

Another parishioner, Arthur Mortensen, said the street is too narrow for a bike lane.

“I couldn’t believe they were doing it on Court Street, “ he said. “What a mess!”

The DOT did not respond to a request from The Tablet for comment. But, in a report the agency presented to Brooklyn Community Board 6 in June, officials noted that neighborhood residents had requested safety features and a bike lane.

According to the DOT report, the agency plans to implement safety measures, including painting pedestrian islands in the middle of the roadway and painting lines that extend from curbs at intersections — known as curb extensions — to provide pedestrians with more space.

However, for Msgr. Massie and his parishioners, it all comes down to the bike lane. Msgr. Massie contends that Court Street, with only one lane of moving traffic, will make it difficult for emergency vehicles to navigate the street.

“We’ve already had an experience where … it took an ambulance a half hour to get down Court Street,” he recalled. “It’s just unacceptable.”

TONIGHT AT 7: New Bike Lane Outside of Brooklyn Church Raises Safety Concerns

By Katie Vasquez

A plan to solve a traffic problem on a busy street in Brooklyn is actually creating traffic headaches, according to parishioners at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in Carroll Gardens.

They say the city’s plan to make Court Street safer has only made things worse.

Catholic News Headlines for Monday 10/20/2025

Pope Leo XIV met with survivors of clergy abuse for the first time since his election, spending an hour listening to their stories.

The Diocese of Brooklyn marked World Mission Sunday by honoring students from Brooklyn and Queens for leading fundraising efforts to help children in need worldwide.

The Jornada Movement celebrated its 400th retreat, where Bishop Robert Brennan joined members in marking nearly six decades of faith-building ministry.

Volunteers at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Queens run a “parking ministry” to help worshippers find spots and make it to Mass.

From France to New York: Sisters of St. Joseph Mark 375 Years of Service

By Currents News and Paula Katinas

BRENTWOOD, N.Y. — From modest origins in a picturesque French town, a movement was born that would span continents and centuries.

In the mid-17th century, six women in Le Puy-en-Velay, a town in southern France, saw how families lived in poverty and decided to devote their lives to assisting them — the humble beginnings of the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Today, 14,000 members working in several countries are celebrating the 375th anniversary of their formal recognition by the Catholic Church as a religious congregation in 1650.

The Sisters of St. Joseph Brentwood, formed in 1856, 20 years after the congregation arrived in the U.S., celebrated with a gala dinner, “Ignite the Night,” at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, New York, on Oct. 15.

Because of their close ties to the Diocese of Brooklyn, where they have established schools and hospitals, they will also celebrate by visiting parishes throughout the diocese to talk about their history. And on Oct. 19, the sisters will gather at the Cathedral Basilica of St. James in Downtown Brooklyn for a special Mass at 11:30 a.m., followed by a reception.

Sister Tesa Fitzgerald, CSJ, president of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, said the anniversary is giving her an opportunity to reflect.

“When the 375, this anniversary, arrived at our doorstep, I thought ‘Oh, wow!’ But it gave me pause to really look back and to get a sense of greatness and the magnitude of the incredible women who went before us,” said Sister Tesa, who professed her vows in 1964.

The congregation has weathered many storms over the centuries and has persevered to continue its work of serving God and those in need.

A century after their founding, the French Revolution ushered in a period of danger and uncertainty as anti-religious fervor swept through France. Four of the sisters were dragged off to the guillotine. The surviving sisters were forced to disband their congregation in 1793.

However, a determined young nun named Sister Jeanne Fontbonne re-founded the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1807, and the congregation regained its footing. Fontbonne Hall Academy, the girls’ middle and high school in Bay Ridge, is named for her.

In 1836, six members of the Sisters of St. Joseph crossed the Atlantic Ocean and arrived in the U.S. to open a school in St. Louis, answering a request for teachers issued by its Bishop Joseph Rosati.

Before long, more sisters arrived, and the congregation expanded from Missouri to other states, including New York. A local congregation that would later become the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood was founded.

Over the years, when the local congregation’s mission was primarily focused on education and healthcare, the sisters founded schools and hospitals in the Diocese of Brooklyn.

But starting in 1970, that mission expanded, and the sisters began working in prisons with incarcerated women and opening shelters for domestic violence victims.

Sister Tesa, who was among the sisters helping the incarcerated, said the expansion of mission has been a gift. In 1986, she founded Hour Children, a home for children whose mothers were in prison.

“I was an educator in the field of formal education for nine years, but then the call to prison ministry was there … and I had no sense where that was coming from within me, but I certainly knew that was a calling I had to pursue,” she explained.

In more recent years, the congregation has assisted immigrants with housing and job training, and worked on environmental issues — moves that align with the sisters’ history as women who identify a need and take action to address it.

“It was always a community of people who really listened, were attentive to the signs of the time, the needs of the people, and did something, and they did something concrete,” Sister Tesa said. “Whatever it was, they really hit the streets runninThe Sisters of St. Joseph started with six women helping the poor in the 17th Century and has grown to include 14,000 members.g.”

Jornada Movement Celebrates 400 Retreat Milestone in Diocese of Brooklyn

By Currents News

The Jornada Movement, a beloved Hispanic youth ministry in the Diocese of Brooklyn, marked a significant achievement on Saturday with its 400th retreat since its founding 58 years ago.

The movement, which unites teens and adults for faith-building retreats and reflections, celebrated the milestone during a Mass led by Bishop Robert Brennan at St. Bartholomew in Elmhurst, Queens.

At the heart of the Mass, coordinators rang bells during the consecration, symbolizing the Jornada members’ ongoing faith journey and inviting those present to let Christ live and work through them.

Seven New Saints Canonized by Pope Leo XIV on World Mission Sunday, Including Venezuela’s First Saints

By Carol Glatz and Currents News

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Canonizing seven new saints on World Mission Sunday, Pope Leo XIV said God is present wherever the innocent suffer, and his form of justice is forgiveness.

“God grants justice to all, giving his life for all,” he said in his homily during a canonization Mass in St. Peter’s Square Oct. 19 – the second-to-last Sunday of October, when the church prays for missionaries and their efforts in evangelization, education, health care and other ministries.

“Indeed, it is this faith that sustains our commitment to justice, precisely because we believe that God saves the world out of love, freeing us from fatalism,” he said. “When we hear the cries of those in difficulty, let us ask ourselves, are we witnesses to the Father’s love, as Christ was to all?”

Jesus “is the humble one who calls the arrogant to conversion, the just one who makes us just,” he said.

During the second canonization ceremony of his pontificate, Pope Leo declared the sainthood of seven men and women from the 19th to the 21st centuries, including Venezuela’s first saints: St. Maria Rendiles Martínez and St. José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros.

St. Rendiles was the Venezuelan founder of the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus, who was born in Caracas in 1903 and died in 1977. St. Hernández was born in 1864 and became a Third Order Franciscan. A Venezuelan doctor, he became known as “the doctor of the poor,” and he was killed in an accident in 1919 on his way to helping a patient.

The pope also canonized:

– St. Ignatius Maloyan, the martyred Armenian Catholic archbishop of Mardin, which is in present-day Turkey; born in 1869, he was arrested, tortured and executed in Turkey in 1915.

– St. Peter To Rot, a martyred lay catechist, husband and father from Papua New Guinea. Born in 1912, he was arrested in 1945 during the Japanese occupation in World War II and was killed by lethal injection while in prison.

– St. Vincenza Maria Poloni, founder of the Sisters of Mercy of Verona, Italy; she lived from 1802-1855.

– St. Maria Troncatti, a Salesian sister born in Italy in 1883 who became a missionary in Ecuador in 1922. She died in a plane crash in 1969.

– St. Bartolo Longo, an Italian lawyer born in 1841. He had been a militant opponent of the church and involved in the occult, but converted, dedicating himself to charity and to building the Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompei. He died in 1926.

The pope called the new saints “faithful friends of Christ” who are “not heroes or champions of some ideal, but authentic men and women,” who were martyrs for their faith, evangelizers, missionaries, charismatic founders and “benefactors of humanity.”

Having faith on earth is what “sustains the hope for heaven,” the pope said in his homily.

In fact, Christ tells his disciples “to pray always” without becoming weary, he said. “Just as breathing sustains the life of the body, so prayer sustains the life of the soul: faith, in fact, is expressed in prayer, and authentic prayer lives on faith.”

In his parable of the persistent widow in the day’s Gospel reading (Lk. 18:1-8), Jesus asks his disciples if they believe God is a just judge toward everyone, and “if we believe that the Father always wants our good and the salvation of every person.”

It is important to ask because two temptations test this belief, the pope said. The first temptation “draws strength from the scandal of evil, leading us to think that God does not hear the cries of the oppressed and has no pity for the innocent who suffer.”

“The second temptation is the claim that God must act as we want him to: prayer then gives way to a command to God, to teach him how to be just and effective,” he said.

But Jesus “frees us from both temptations,” especially with his words during his passion, “Father, your will be done,” Pope Leo said.

“The cross of Christ reveals God’s justice, and God’s justice is forgiveness. He sees evil and redeems it by taking it upon himself,” he said. “When we are ‘crucified’ by pain and violence, by hatred and war, Christ is already there, on the cross for us and with us.”

“There is no cry that God does not console; there is no tear that is far from his heart,” he said. “The Lord listens to us, embraces us as we are, and transforms us as he is.”

“Those who reject God’s mercy, however, remain incapable of mercy toward their neighbor. Those who do not welcome peace as a gift will not know how to give peace,” he said.

Jesus invites the faithful “to hope and action,” and he asks, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith in God’s providence?” the pope said.

After the Mass and before praying the Angelus, Pope Leo thanked the leaders and dignitaries from different countries who attended the canonization Mass, including Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Lebanese President Joseph Khalil Aoun.

He told some 70,000 people present that “today is World Mission Day.”

While the entire church is missionary, “today we pray especially for those men and women who have left everything behind to bring the Gospel to those who do not know it,” he said. “They are missionaries of hope among all peoples.”

Our Lady of Sorrows’ Parking Ministry Turns Chaos Into a Calling in Corona, Queens

By Christine Persichette

In Corona, Queens, where parking spots are as scarce as miracles, Our Lady of Sorrows Church has transformed a daily challenge into a unique ministry.

The church, a spiritual hub drawing Hispanic Catholics from across the Diocese of Brooklyn and as far as New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, sees lines of cars and people every Sunday, packing the pews for Mass.

A few years ago, Father Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez, the pastor, recognized the need to address the constant parking lot disputes and disruptions.

In 2021, he launched the Parking Ministry, a volunteer effort to help drivers find spaces and keep the faith—and traffic—flowing smoothly.

“Our goal is to get the people in time for the Mass,” said Gilberto Perez, a member of the ministry. “Some people come late, running late. I tell them if you want to come early to the Mass to be on time, you’ve got to wake up early to get ready to come to Mass.”

Without the ministry, volunteer Denise Rivera described the situation as “chaos… total chaos.”

“Ever since Father Manuel installed the Parking Ministry, it has brought a lot of peace among the parishioners because parking in Corona is like hitting the lottery,” she told Currents News in Spanish. “Very slim… it is very slim, and I do this with a lot of love because I just want to make sure that everybody has a beautiful experience as they come here to receive Mass.”

Father Manuel emphasized the church’s role as a spiritual home for its diverse congregation. “Once you find the church that better fits your spiritual needs, you don’t give that up at all,” he explained. “You stick to that because there is what you feel home.”

As the neighborhood grows more crowded, the Parking Ministry ensures there’s space for every soul, making the journey to worship a little easier for all.

Young Adult Group Hosts Talk on Newly Canonized Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati

By Alexandra Moyen

BAY RIDGE — Michael Petruso said an Oct. 16 discussion on the life of St. Pier Giorgio Frassati helped him realize his faith journey is not something to go through alone.

“There are many people who struggle to go through the various battles in life by themselves, not asking for help,” Petruso said. “But Jesus, often times, works through the people he puts in our lives.”

The event, attended by 27 young adults, was held at St. Anselm Church in Bay Ridge and led by Father James Kuroly, the director of the Youth and Young Adult Ministry for the Diocese of Brooklyn.

Father Kuroly said that there are many lessons people can learn from St. Pier Giorgio Frassati, but the ones he emphasized were having a friendship with Christ, having a passion for the faith, and putting faith into action.

During the event, which the parish’s young adult group organized, Father Kuroly highlighted aspects of St. Pier Giorgio Frassati’s life that many young adults today can relate to, including his devotion to daily Mass and a commitment to evangelization and social activism.

“One of the phrases we often use is ‘normal,’ and Pier Giorgio Frassati would certainly be a very normal person, the way that anyone his age, during his time would be,” Father Kuroly said. “He loved to mountain climb, he loved smoking a pipe with friends, he liked to pull jokes on those friends, but at the same time he was always rooted in his faith and rooted in Christ.”

In addition to the talk, attendees were invited to venerate a relic of St. Pier Giorgio Frassati — a piece of linen from the bed where he died, which Father Kuroly brought from Cathedral Preparatory School and Seminary, where he is rector and president.

Sarah Cappiello, a member of St. Anselm’s young adult group, said she was excited that her group sponsored the talk.

“[St. Pier Giorgio Frassati] is a really good example of how we as young Catholics are able to live in the world,” Cappiello said. “A lot of the time, I feel, when we look at the saints, we always think of them as being priests or religious, so he’s a really nice example of how that doesn’t necessarily have to be our calling in life.”

Catholic News Headlines for Friday 10/17/2025

More than 50 years after his death, loved ones and fellow officers gathered to honor NYPD officer Pat Canavan in Brooklyn.

Young adults in Brooklyn venerated a relic of St. Pier Giorgio Frassati at St. Anselm Church, reflecting on his example of faith in action.

Catholics worldwide prepare for World Mission Sunday, as Pope Leo XIV urges the faithful to give generously to support struggling parishes and spread the Gospel.

King Charles will make history as the first British monarch in over 500 years to pray with a pope, meeting Pope Leo XIV next week at the Vatican.