Cabrini Students Honor Distinguished Educators

May 18, 2022

NEW ORLEANS – Four elementary school teachers were honored on May 4, 2022, by Cabrini High School students. The Distinguished Educator Award is presented annually to teachers who have done an outstanding job preparing their students to succeed in high school. Cabrini High School’s Distinguished Educators include:
 Teresa Anasagati – Morris Jeff Community School, nominated by Grace Cook ‘25
 Julie Mallory – Lake Harbor Middle School, nominated by Emma Graff ‘23
 Stacie Seube – Our Lady of Prompt Succor, nominated by Eaden Roberson ‘26
 Emily Tornabene – St. Dominic School, nominated by Emma Thomason ‘25

Each year, Cabrini students who demonstrate outstanding character and hold a GPA of 3.5 or higher are given the opportunity to nominate an elementary school teach who has had a positive impact on their lives. In the nomination, students are asked to share why they selected the teacher and the impact the nominee has had in their lives and in preparation for high school and beyond.

Cabrini High School President, Jack Truxillo, addressed the Distinguished Educators and guests. “You have made such an impression and had such an impact on your former students that they chose to go through the nominating process. That itself speaks volumes. The influence you have daily on students is immeasurable. The terms, parent, protector, counselor, nurse, referee, disciplinarian, coach, leader, expert, task master, time keeper, planner, janitor decorator, supervisor and finally, instructor, all fit in your job description. But, as we all know those are just a sampling of the jobs you do. Be assured that the work you do is valued. It is recognized.”
To view additional photos from the event, please click here

Cabrini Immigrant Services Hails Nutrition Grads

May 18, 2022

Cabrini Immigrant Services (CIS), Dobbs Ferry, NY, completed its second Nutrition Program.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing, we were not able to accommodate all the students this past Fall 2021. On May 11th, after an eight-week program, our participants received their Certificates of Completion from Lucy Diaz, a Nutrition Program Educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester County. The course, ‘Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program’, taught the participants about how to read and understand labels on different food and drink items, food safety, reducing salt and sugar intake, etc.

In addition to receiving a Certificate of Completion for the course, everyone received an insulated bag filled with many goodies such as a meat thermometer, refrigerator thermometer, hand sanitizer, etc.
Congratulations to all our ‘graduates’ of the nutrition program.

We are so proud of you!

Cabrini Students Honor Distinguished Educators

May 17, 2022

Cabrini Students Honor Distinguished Educators

Grateful and Blessed

May 17, 2022

The Missionary Sisters at the Sacred Heart Convent in New York just completed an 8 Day retreat with Fr. Jack Baron, S.J. All were feeling very grateful and blessed.

Compassion Has No Boundaries at US – Mexico Border

May 17, 2022

~ by Peter Tran and Lisa Elmaleh, Global Sisters Report

AGUA PRIETA, MEXICO – At 1 a.m. on a later October day, Sr. Judy Bourg’s alarm goes off in the School Sisters of Notre Dame house in Douglas, Arizona. She marshals her three guests, who want to know about her ministry, to get ready for the 10-minute drive through the U.S. Border checkpoint and on to Agua Prieta, Mexico.

They arrive at the Centro de Recursos para Migrantes, or Migrant Resource Center, a two-story building just outside the gate of the border wall there, and set to work to ready sandwiches, hot coffee and warm clothes. She shows her guests volunteers the ropes.

Why do she and others perform this daily ritual in the dark of night? Because the center needs to be ready for the fresh group of deportees who will arrive in the acute hours of the day, classified as “returned or expelled.” In the middle of the night, the U.S. Border officials picked them up from holding centers, put them on a bus, transported them and subsequently left them off at the border gate outside Agua Prieta. All had been refused asylum and sent back. Back to the hunger, poverty, threats and violence they fled.

As Sr. Bourg walks out to the border gate at 2:30 a.m., a U.S. Border Patrol bus drops off some 30 returnees on the U.S. side. They step over into Mexico and Bourg moves in to welcome them.

She invites them to the center for food and a warm place to rest. The migrants, all men in their 20s and 30s, shiver in the declining temperatures. A volunteer doles out socks, a blanket or clothing to the men, who wait patiently in line for coffee and food. Later in the day, other groups of expelled migrants, some of whom are women, arrive. The center receives 100 – 200 expelled migrants each day.

Sr. Bourg says she is deeply moved as she greets the migrants at the gate and offers comfort. “It is dark and cold, and they have no idea where they are. To be able to look them in the yes and tell them that they are welcome into a safe place where they can rest, fills my heart,” she says.

Several hours later, as the sun rises, the migrants shed their blankets. Two Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist walk in smiling. Sr. Maribel Lara Hernandez cleans and can offer first aid. Sr. Emma Rias Flores heads to the kitchen.

Sr. Hernandez sets up a makeshift clinic. One man hobbles over to take a seat, presenting his wounded foot to Hernandez. She washes the blisters, applies medication and wraps it with gauze pad. Another migrant takes his turn and then another.

As the day progresses, the center becomes busy with activities. Volunteers work in the vegetable garden on the center’s grounds. Some deportees rush to help till the soil. As a migrant center is a short-term shelter, expelled migrants will leave it soon. A small number will return to their home country, while others will attempt to cross the border again.

Under the Trump and Biden administrations, more than 1.7 million expulsions have been carried out since the pandemic began, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

The Migration Protection Protocols, known as the “Remain in Mexico” program, were suspended in January 2019, but were reinstated in December 2021 by order of a federal judge in Texas They remain in effect despite human rights activists’ warnings about the high risk of violence to those forced to wait in dangerous border areas. To read the entire article please click here

Pope Francis Embraces Limitations of Aging

May 12, 2022

~ Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, National Catholic Reporter

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis’ willingness to work despite knee pain that has made walking nearly impossible shows other older adults that they have wisdom and experience to offer younger generations, a top Vatican cardinal said.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell offered the assessment as he introduced Francis’ message for World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly. In the message released on Tuesday, May 10, the 85-year-old pope urged older people to consider advanced age a blessing.

Pope Francis is struggling to cope with strained ligaments in his right knee that have greatly limited his mobility. Last week, he was seen in public for the first time using a wheelchair. He recently said he can no longer walk and must rest his knee on doctor’s orders.

Farrell, the head of the Vatican’s office for laity and a trusted papal adviser, said that Francis’ willingness to acknowledge and display his limitations while continuing to hold audiences could encourage others to continue contributing as they age.

Pope Francis instituted the day honoring elderly people (World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, July 24th ) to drive home his belief that younger generations should value older ones as a resource and not treat them as part of modern “throwaway culture.”

In his message, Pope Francis noted that advanced age is a time of life that isn’t understood even “by those of us who are already experiencing it. Even though it eventually comes with the passage of time, no one prepares us for old age, and at times it seems to take us by surprise,” he wrote.

But Francis urged all his contemporaries to embrace their advanced ages as a gift and not to lament the diminishment of their strengths or sense of usefulness.

“Along with old age and white hairs, God continues to give us the gift of life and to keep us from being overcome by evil,” he said. “Aging is not a condemnation, but a blessing!”

Francis closed the message by noting that the war in Ukraine has brought another conflict to Europe as the generation that experienced World War II is dying out.

He prayed that all elderly people are made into “artisans of the revolution of tenderness, so that together we can set the world free from the specter of loneliness and the demons of war.”

Celebrating Nurses Day at Sacred Heart Convent

May 10, 2022

On May 5, 2022, in addition to celebrating Cinco de Mayo with traditional Hispanic food, there was plenty of ice cream and lovely flowers in gratitude for the sisters who continue to exercise their nursing skills with our senior sisters.

Raising Human Trafficking Awareness Among Students

May 5, 2022

Cabrini University’s ECG 200 – Voices for the Voiceless: Anti-Human Trafficking class, in collaboration with the Missionary Sisters Action and Advocacy Coalition, held an anti-human trafficking event on Monday, May 2, at Cabrini University. The event was held to raise awareness and to educate on human trafficking. The students had several “stations” set-up throughout campus where they presented on topics: What is Human Trafficking?, Covid and its Effect on Human Trafficking, Trafficking During Global Events, Child Slavery/Child Labor and Slavery Footprints.

Guilherme “G” Lopes, Director of Campus Ministry, began our event with a beautiful prayer and we ended with a prayer to end Human Trafficking written by Sr. Veronica Piccone, MSC. Both the men’s and women’s lacrosse teams participated in the walk with their coaches, as well as students (and some of their family members) and staff.

We feel the students help create a campus of abolitionists who are passionate about standing up against the injustices of modern day slavery and know they will continue their fight to help end it!

Cabrini Immigrant Services-NYC relocates to St. F.X. Cabrini Shrine

May 5, 2022

Cabrini Immigrant Services of NYC has finally moved to our new location!

We opened our doors on the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine property on Monday, May 2nd.

After almost 23 years at 139 Henry Street, we saw the need to move our offices to the upper side of Manhattan. We believe the services we offer are also needed by the community of Inwood and the surrounding neighborhoods. The big difference is that our food pantry needed to be relocated at 207 Street at the Good Shepherd Parish to share the space with their food pantry however, it will continue to be under our care.
The legal services are now offered at our new location.

As we opened our doors we welcomed our clients with joy and a sense of newness since the place is brand new to all of us. In our new surroundings, sometimes we get lost searching for someone’s office – but, we just laugh about it.

Now we are able to offer to our clients a better space in which to visit and to receive the services they need.

All of us are happy for having a place where we feel at home.

Pope Francis: ‘I am ready to go to Moscow’ to end the war in Ukraine

May 5, 2022

Pope Francis greets the crowd during his general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican April 27, 2022. (CNS photo/Guglielmo Mangiapane, Reuters)

~ by Gerard O’Connell, AMERICA

Pope Francis is deeply concerned that the war in Ukraine shows no signs of slowing and said he is ready to go to Moscow to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin in attempt to bring it to an end. He revealed in an interview with Corriere della Sera, the leading Italian daily, that he let the Russian leader know this 20 days after the war started, but said that he has not yet received a reply from him.

In the interview, Francis recalled that “on the first day of the war I called the Ukrainian President Zelensky by phone, but I did not call Putin. I had spoken with him in December, but this time no. I did not call him.” Instead, he said, I wished to make a clear gesture that the whole world could see, and for this reason I went to the Russian ambassador. I asked him to explain to me [the reason for the war]. I told him, ‘Please stop [the war[.’ Then, after 20 days of war, I asked Cardinal Parolin to get the message to Putin that I am ready to go to Moscow.”

“Certainly, it is necessary that the leader of the Kremlin should open a window (for this to happen), but we have not yet received an answer,” Pope Francis said. “But we continue insisting, even though I fear that Putin cannot and does not wish to have this encounter at this moment. But how can one not stop such brutality?”

Asked whether it was right for Western countries to send so much weaponry to Ukraine, Francis said he “was too far away (from the war)” to respond to this question. But, he remarked, “one thing is clear they are trying out new weapons” in this conflict. Moreover, “the Russians now know that tanks are of little use and so are thinking of other things,” perhaps alluding to the supersonic missiles or nuclear weapons that the Kremlin has publicly threatened it could use.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has also invited Francis to come to Kyiv, but Francis feels the moment is not right. “I feel that I should not go (now). I must first go to Moscow. I must first meet Putin,” he said. “I am a priest, what can I do? I do what I can. If Putin opens the door…”

Pope Francis described the Ukrainians as “a proud people” that “paid a heavy price” during World War II, and that today are a “martyred people, with many who have died.”