Guadalupe 2010

Images from the 2010 celebration of the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia - thanks to the remarkable camera of CS&T freelancer Kevin Cook (kevincookphoto.com).

Catholic Social Services offers legal assistance with TPS applications for Haitians in Philly

From Catholic Social Services of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia: The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for the citizens of Haiti. TPS provides Haitians that were physically present in the United States prior to Jan. 12, 2010 the opportunity to apply for a temporary legal status with the USCIS and to receive a work permit. Catholic Social Services is offering legal assistance with TPS applications by appointment. Call 215-854-7019 to schedule an appointment. Counselors will meet with applicants, determine if they are eligible to file for TPS and assist with the application process. Many people would qualify, including citizens of Haiti who have overstayed their visas, entered illegally, or have prior cases with the immigration court. All information discussed with Catholic Social Services is completely confidential.

Photo of Mass celebrated for Haitians in Philadelphia by Kevin Cook.

A new look... and another look

A new look for the newspaper:

We've just completed the redesign of our newspaper -- from flag to folios. Let us know what you think! Of course, you have to pick up the print edition to see just how extensive the redesign really is....

And another look at an issue I write about often: the Catholic Church's commitment to bettering the plight of immigrants and reforming broken immigration policies:

The photos I've included in this post are by freelancer Kevin Cook. They were taken at a Philadelphia Catholic leadership meeting on immigration reform that took place at Our Lady of Ransom School's gymnasium Sept. 11.

Msgr. Hugh Shields, vicar for Hispanic Catholics of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and other Hispanic apostolate leaders addressed approximately 90 people who gathered -- to formulate a genuinely Catholic response to the challenges posed by current immigration policies. An article about the event, written by freelancer Denise Peterson, will appear in the Sept. 24 issue of the Catholic Standard & Times (in English and in Spanish), but here's a teaser:

Sister Pat Madden, S.S.J., who works at the Sisters of St. Joseph Welcome Center in North Philadelphia, attended the meeting at Our Lady of Ransom. “I’m glad to see the energy is back. A couple of years ago we were going to rallies and all, and then it just died. I can feel that the energy is coming back, that the time is now, and that hope is here. The plight of the immigrant is very important to us. Jesus welcomes everyone — lepers, Samaritans, the woman at the well — so we should too.”

On Sept. 17, the Hispanic Bishops of the U.S. met with legislators in Washington D.C. about policy issues most affecting Hispanics in the U.S. This is from a USCCB report on the meeting:

At a series of meetings at Capitol Hill, a delegation of Hispanic Bishops discussed with Democratic and Republican legislators of both houses, four areas of deep concern and offered principles of Catholic social teaching to help in the current debates.

Archbishop José Gomez of San Antonio, Texas, led the September 17 delegation, representing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“The bishops are keenly aware of the substantial contributions Hispanic communities make to the prosperity and well-being of the United States,” said Archbishop Gomez. “Yet those same communities suffer under the weight of a broken immigration policy, as well as lack of access to quality education, adequate medical care and economic opportunities.”


“We met with our political leaders of both parties to re-affirm the principles of Catholic social teaching about the dignity of all human beings from conception to natural death and the centrality of the common good. We offered these principles grounded in social ethics and our religious heritage as constructive guidelines for achieving a just and equitable resolution of the public policy debates around these key issues,” he said.

The U. S. Church and our Bishops continue to remind Catholics about the moral implications of current immigration policies, and a debate about the issue that has turned increasingly vitriolic. From Catholic News Service:

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Outside the Capitol Sept. 15 bishops of three denominations led a brief prayer service for an end to hate, particularly hatred toward immigrants.
[...]
"The current environment dehumanizes our fellow human beings and diminishes us as a nation," said Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the migration committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
[...]
Meanwhile, elsewhere on Capitol Hill, 47 radio talk show hosts held a two-day broadcast capping a lobbying effort aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration and derailing efforts to approve comprehensive immigration reform.

Read the CNS brief here (scroll to second brief).

Archbishop Wuerl, of Washington, included the following in an op-ed piece about another fractious issue -- health care reform:

The United Stated Conference of Catholic Bishops, following the Gospel mandate to care for the "least of these," urges us to look at health care from the bottom up. A particular gauge against which to measure true universal coverage would be how reform treats the immigrants in our midst who contribute their labor and taxes to our nation, but are at risk of being left out of health care reform.

Read the full op-ed here (and note comments on the post, if you have the stomach for them).

And Our Sunday Visitor, in an editorial about health care reform and the Bishops' call to cover immigrants in it, notes that:

It may be that what America needs right now is a conscience prick about what society is supposed to be all about: serving the common good, as Pope Benedict XVI so forcefully underscored in his latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate.

Read the full editorial here.


Comprehensive immigration reform and the treatment of immigrants in our country is as fractious an issue for the Catholic laity as it is for the rest of the population. Working at a Catholic newspaper I get to see letters to the editor and to field calls from readers who are upset at our priests and religious for their ongoing work to minister to the undocumented.

I get to track poll results from our own newspaper web site that indicate that a substantial number of our readers think the Bishops shouldn't involve themselves in immigration because it is a "political" issue.

But it isn't be the first time we've needed the priests and religious -- and our Bishops -- to remind us that issues of shared humanity and human dignity go beyond the merely political; and that they aren't predicated on race, or ethnicity, or status in society.

Some time ago I fielded an unrelated call that took me into the newspaper's archives. I rooted around in the CS&T issues from the 1960s. By chance I ended up looking at a number of editorial pages. There were lots of letters to the editor in those old issues very similar to ones I'd been seeing about immigration. Catholics were taking the Bishops to task for what the letter-writers saw as meddling in politics. You see, the Bishops had issued statements and were advocating for desegregation... and the readers didn't like it one bit.

Today it is hard to imagine that any Catholic could have wanted the Bishops to stay mute about segregation.

And years from now, I believe, it will be equally inconceivable for us to imagine that any would call for our Bishops to be silent while immigration policies tear families, lives and communities apart.

Prophetic voices are desperately needed (I'm shamelessly stealing this line from one of my favorite CS&T columnists, Msgr. Francis Meehan).

On this issue and in this debate, I'm proud that some of the strongest prophetic voices belong to our Bishops.

Let’s talk soccer: A new Union, striking workers and the World Cup

There are only four sporting events I will watch without coercion: the World Series, the summer and winter Olympics, and the World Cup.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not about expertise in any of the sports involved. I haven’t engaged in many summer or winter Olympic sports – only cross country skiing, swimming and equitation – and never at a level that would approach competitive (or in the case of skiing, even proficient). And while I know the rudiments of baseball and soccer, I’m blind to the finer points of both games. In the latter case, I can’t even credibly speak about the sport in English because all the terminology resides in my memory banks in Spanish….

So it takes some nerve on my part to be writing this post at all.

But there can be something really compelling about sporting events of this magnitude – and that’s what gets me every time.

So, let’s talk fútbol.

The World Cup will take place in June 2010 in South Africa – with inaugural games slated for stadiums in Johannesburg and Cape Town – and most of the world will be watching. Netherlands is in, as are Australia, Japan, the two Koreas, and, of course, the host site, South Africa. Other berths are still up in the air, with teams at different stages of the qualifiers according to region.

Like all host sites in advance of World Cup stints, South Africa is in the throes of nationwide stadium and transportation infrastructure building. Not without hitch. The photos that accompany this post are by Catholic Standard & Times freelancer Kevin Cook, who is currently in South Africa. They were taken July 8 in Soweto’s Soccer City, one of 35 major sites that saw 70,000 construction workers go on strike that day. (Click here to see more photos and to read about Cook’s experiences in South Africa.)

According to media reports, the construction workers’ demands include higher minimum wage, maternity leave, and annual bonuses (Read news report here).

It is interesting to me (I am an editor of a Catholic newspaper, after all) that one day before the workers went on strike, Pope Benedict XVI’s social justice encyclical “Charity in Truth” was released. In it, the pontiff reaffirms the role of labor unions in the pursuit of economic justice for their communities. According to Cook’s blog, the striking workers are asking for a 10-15 percent raise in their current wages, “2,000 Rand a month – roughly 250 US dollars.” Which seems shockingly low to me from a U.S. wage perspective. (I hope any of my readers who know more about the wage structure in South Africa will comment, or send me an e-mail.)

In any case, South African officials are worried that if the strike continues, the venues in South Africa will not be ready in time for World Cup play.

Not that any of this is generating much press here. Despite our obsession with sports and the fact that the U.S. national soccer team is consistently a contender within its North, Central America and Caribbean group, by some inexplicable quirk soccer has never become the phenomenon here that it is in the rest of the world.

Still, in May it was announced that Philadelphia will have a new professional soccer team – the Philadelphia Union – starting in 2010. The team will play its home matches at a new 18,000+ seat stadium in Chester, Pa. – approximately 13 miles from downtown Philadelphia.

A brave proposition. Attendance was good the year the U.S. hosted the World Cup – but our professional soccer franchises don’t draw great crowds. Not even after importing megastar David Beckham.

Perhaps the timing of the Union’s first season will help – particularly if the U.S. national team qualifies and performs well during the World Cup.

It is fitting that the Union’s stadium will be in Chester rather than some swankier location. Soccer is, at its foundation, an incredibly egalitarian sport – stripped down to a ball and skill and no more. You can play it as spectacularly on the streets of a shantytown as you can on a groomed pitch. As a sport, it is beloved equally by the most educated and the least; those with enough money to own teams and those with barely enough to pay for the batteries in the radios on which they listen to the matches. I hope the Union’s stadium ticket prices reflect that reality. I hope, too, that many of our region’s new immigrants come to feel that the Union is their hometown team.

It’s all about connection. The possibility of connection, anyway, and soccer comes as close to being a global conductor as anything in our fractured world.

Okay, that might be a little exaggerated – but only a little.

Mention Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Mueller, Jairzinho, Rivelino or Giorgio Chinaglia to almost anyone of a certain generation – outside of the U.S. – and you’ll have instant conversation. Mention Bebeto or Zinedine Zidane and you’ll have the younger generation chiming in. Talk about Italy’s reemergence at the last World Cup, or the year Turkey and Korea placed third and fourth, or the year Cameroon’s made its historic run ….

It can turn ugly, of course – there have been riots at soccer matches, nasty jingoism, and even a fútbol-instigated war – but at its best, the sport is a language spoken readily by most of the world, no translators needed.

Commonality of experience. A common narrative. The evolution of personalities and Cinderella stories watched from every corner of the earth at once.
Pretty amazing.

(Okay, I’m stopping now. Before I get too terrified at the fact I just wrote over 900 words about a sport …).

Click here to go to the World Cup web site; here to read about the Philadelphia Union, and here to link to the Pope's social justice encyclical.

Photos of Soweto Soccer City workers striking ©Kevin Cook. Used by permission.