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
~ 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
~ 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
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
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
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
~ 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.”
Sunday, May 8th is World Day of Prayer for Vocations
This special day, also liturgically known as “Good Shepherd Sunday”, invites the Church to publicly pray for and promote vocations in all its forms.
Many parishes and religious institutes commemorate this day with prayer for vocations and vocation promotion events. Considering that 73 percent of women and men professing final vows participated in one or more parish activities and 88 percent served in one or more parish ministries before entering religious life, our presence and participation in activities that mark this special day is essential.
[Religious congregations] should consider asking local parishes for opportunities to speak, pray, and meet the parishioners before and after Masses. ~ NRVC website
It the joy of simplicity, the joy experienced daily by those who care for what truly matters: faithful closeness to God and to our neighbor. How good it would be if the same atmosphere, simple and radiant, sober and hopeful, were to pervade our seminaries, religious houses and presbyteries! I pray that you will experience this same joy, dear brothers and sisters who have generously made God the dream of your lives, serving him in your brothers and sisters through a fidelity that is a powerful testimony in an age of ephemeral choices and emotions that bring no lasting joy.
May Saint Joseph, protector of vocations, accompany you with his fatherly heart!
–Pope Francis, World Day of Prayer for Vocations, 2021
Thank you, Volunteers!
Thursday, April 21st was a special day at Cabrini of Westchester as we honored our dedicated volunteers with a blessing ceremony and luncheon. Pastoral Care Director, Fr. Ron Galt bestowed a beautiful blessing upon all during the ceremony and afterward, a barbecue luncheon was provided thanks to Director of Food Service, Daryl Foriest and his staff.
Cabrini’s volunteers are people who donate their time, skills and talents to support our programs and services. They lend a hand wherever help is needed, from transporting the residents to and from daily Mass, working in the Gift Shop, helping with clerical administrative tasks and so much more!
While addressing the group at the blessing ceremony, Bonnie Burke, Vice President of Operations and Administrator stated, “This year’s theme for National Volunteer Recognition Week is ‘Empathy and Action’ which describes you all perfectly. This means as a volunteer you are caring and you understand and share the feelings of your fellow human beings in their times of need. Bringing such wonderful attributes to the residents shows an excellence of character that we want to be sure to appreciate and recognize always, but especially today. From all of us at Cabrini, thank you for your empathy and action, for your heartfelt efforts and hard work to make a difference every day that you are here.” ~ submitted by Susan Herceg, Director of Development and Public Relations
A Blessed Divine Mercy Sunday at St Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine in New York
The Shrine was blessed last Sunday with beautiful flowers, good music, and the presence of the Missionary Sisters. Following the 11am Mass Missionary Sisters Renee Kittelson, Dianne McKenna, and John Giani showed the video Divine Mercy 101 and were on hand to answer questions. Also present were Sr. Aynalem Paulos, MSC Sr. Ayantu Abera, MSC and the novices Evarlyn Ndunge and Evon Somirla, who regularly help out at the Shrine on Sundays.
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