The horse carriage driver’s union in New York City has hired someone, whose only job is to make sure the horses are being well cared for.
Pope Francis is the first pontiff to visit the country of Mongolia, which only has three catholic churches.
The pontiff will also visit the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Mongolia.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams held his own migrant rally this morning to once again call on the federal government to expedite work authorizations for asylum seekers.
After the fall of communism in 1991, religious practice was restored in Mongolia.
Buddhism had been predominant before communism and is again the most widely practiced religion in Mongolia.
However, with the end of religious repression, the Catholic community began to grow.
A missionary from the Philippines was named Mongolia’s first Catholic bishop in 2003.
There are now just under 1,500 Catholics in the country.
Pope Francis will visit the country for the first time on Friday, Aug. 31.
Elise Allen, senior correspondent for Crux, joins Currents News to discuss the historic papal trip.
By Katie Vasquez
Mongolia is a country that doesn’t receive a lot of visits from foreign leaders.
This papal visit is historic, because Pope Francis will be the first pontiff to visit the Asian country.
Professor Morris Rossabi, a Mongolian history professor at Columbia University, has visited the country 20 times and written or contributed to countless books on it.
Today, a little more than 1,400 people identify as Catholics out of the 3.3 million people who live in Mongolia. But Professor Rossabi says Catholics have been visiting there since the 13th century.
“There were a couple Catholic priests that went to Mongolia up until 1920 and who tried to proselytize among the Mongols,” Professor Rossabi. “Then communism took hold in 1921 and so that was forbidden, but there were a number of Catholic priests who continued to write about Mongolia.”
When communism collapsed in 1990, the people of Mongolia were able to practice religion freely and Christianity has grown, but the country is mostly Buddhist.
The nation is located between China and Russia, which may be another reason for the papal visit. Pope Francis has tried to establish relations after years of no contact between the Vatican and Beijing.
“There’s been a kind of, not a deal made, but a better relationship between the Chinese Catholic Church and the Vatican and this visit to Mongolia might strengthen that aspect,” Professor Rossabi said. The Holy Father will spend most of his time in the capital where half of the country’s population lives.
Professor Rossabi expects him to also address the environment and poverty. “Mongolia has a high incidence of poverty; more than 30% of the people live below the poverty line,” he said.
Pope Francis will stay in Mongolia Aug. 31 through Sept. 4, which Professor Rossabi believes is a longer time than most foreign leaders spend there.
Pope Francis is getting ready for his trip to Mongolia this weekend.
Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Florida today as a Category 3 storm.
by Katie Vasquez
Behind a blue door on Sixth Avenue lies the only perpetual adoration chapel in Manhattan.
St. Joseph’s Church pastor, Father Boniface Endorf said the process to transform the chapel from a choir room took about four and a half years, with some construction delays due to the pandemic.
“The floors, the ceilings, the walls, absolutely everything you can see is new,” Father Endorf said.
The opening of this sanctuary comes at a time when crime is on the minds of New Yorkers and the number of felonies is rising across the city.
The chapel is located within the area covered by the NYPD’s 6th Precinct, which has reported a 21% increase in felony assault from last year.
Parishioner Maureen Healy has lived in the neighborhood for 30 years and said she’s been more cautious.
“I’m very careful walking in the streets now. Because there are a lot of strange people now and I’m just being very very careful,” Healy said.
Father Endorf hopes the chapel will be a sanctuary of peace for people that visit.
“Certainly, God’s grace is very powerful,” Father Endorf said. “And to have prayer at the center of this neighborhood of Manhattan and of the city will have an effect on many people’s lives.”
There are security measures in place. Visitors have to sign up for a key card to access the outside door and they also ask people to sign into a kiosk before they go in.
“It’s to protect the space but also to protect the adorers,” Father Endorf said. “If they know the people here are people coming to worship and as you know in New York, if you just leave an open door, you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The chapel has only been open since late July, but 300 people have already signed up, including Daniel Vignon, who visits once a week.
The Greenwich Village resident agrees with the registration process because he knows safety is a top priority.
“I can definitely understand that from the Father’s concern about safety because that’s one of the main reasons why the parish is not always open,” Vignon said.
Father Endorf hopes more people will come to pray and enjoy the space.
There’s a sanctuary in the city offering a place of peace at any time of day.
A mass was held yesterday to conclude the year-long bicentennial celebration of the Cathedral Basilica of St. James.
A former flight attendant is pushing a beverage cart from Newark airport to Shanksville, Pennsylvania to honor the flight crew who died there on 9/11.
Pope Francis received “E’ Giornalismo,” an award known as the Italian Pulitzer.
It was a call for economic and racial equality, a call to action that brought more than 200,000 people to the national mall in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963, exactly 60 years ago.
It’s a day best remembered for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s historical “I Have a Dream” speech.
“Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy,” Dr. King, a Civil Rights Leader, said during his speech.
Among the hundreds of thousands who attended the march, were two young activists, Courtland Cox, then 22, and Edward Flanagan, then 20, who were filled with hope.
Cox, 82, was a 22-year-old working for the civil rights organization, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at the time.
“My thought today is that we succeeded in changing this country,” Cox, now Chairman at SNCC Legacy Project, said.
As a young organizer, Cox was responsible for arranging safe transportation for people making the trek from the south to Washington D.C.
For Cox, there were many challenges in the days leading up to the march.
“The challenge from the top was [that] the Kennedy Administration was opposed to John Lewis’ speech,” Cox recalls.
Cox worked alongside then 23-year-old civil rights activist John Lewis, who was the chairman of SNCC at the time.
This picture shows the two men as they rewrote the speech to tone it down to make it less critical of the Kennedy administration’s civil rights bill, which they felt didn’t go far enough to protect people from police brutality.
“John Lewis, Jim Foreman, and myself were in the back of the Lincoln Memorial rechanging John Lewis’ speech to make sure, that while it was critical, it was not negative,” Cox said.
“It is true that we support the administration’s civil rights bill,” Lewis said during his speech. “We support it with great reservation, however.”
Flanagan, who was a waiter, wanted to take a stand for civil rights, like scores of others.
“It was in fact a march for jobs and freedom,” Flanagan, who attended the March on Washington in 1963, said.
Both Cox and Flanagan agree, while much was accomplished that day, the work is not over.
“We are still, while in a much better place than we were in ’63, not in a place one would expect 60 years on,” Flanagan said.
“We succeeded in doing a number of things by what we did in the past,” Cox said. But we also know we have to do much more for the future.”
Cardinal Timothy Dolan is in Ireland where he celebrated mass on Sunday for the 150th anniversary of St. Patrick’s in the Archdiocese of Armagh.
He also visited the Shrine of Knock and shared a story about when a baby stopped crying after being held by her mother.
Today marks 60 years since the March on Washington for jobs and freedom took place.
A Florida bishop is condemning a racially motivated shooting that took place in Jacksonville over the weekend.
Pope Francis is heading to Mongolia this week.
Close to 4,000 new and returning students moved into St. John’s University campus over the weekend.
by Katie Vasquez
A line formed around the block from Reaching Out Community Services, with parents and children holding their vouchers.
Families waited patiently for new backpacks and school supplies.
“We get school supplies that could really help us in our school year,” Juliana, a student who attends school in the neighborhood, said.
“Our old backpacks are too old and small for the new supplies,” Youana Nasif, another student who attended the school supply drive, said.
For 28 years, the organization has been helping out struggling families. This year they expect to help 600 children, but every year the demand grows.
“Everything costs more than the previous years and that’s why our inventory is less than it was years ago. More kids, less supplies,” said Tom Neve of Reaching Out Community Services.
Elic Cedillo along with his three siblings and mom waited for two hours in the rain for a chance to stock up.
The ninth grader said his family couldn’t afford to pay out of pocket.
“We needed them because for everyone, we’re having a big struggle for money and school supplies,” Elic said.
For parents in the neighborhood like Eunice Brown, the annual event is a big help that will save them at least $60.
“Everything is very expensive,” Brown said.
The nonprofit also runs a food pantry.
City Council member Justin Brannan contributed $116,000 on behalf of the City Council so they can keep their various services going.
“COVID may be in our rearview mirror but the demand is still very much there and it’s not just food. That’s also for school supplies, anything for families that are struggling,” Brannan said.
Now these students are ready to start the new school year.