Arkansas senate passes abortion ban in new challenge to Roe

Detroit, Mich., Nov 18, 2017 / 12:17 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- It’s a Franciscan custom to give food – even if that’s just a simple sandwich – to anyone who comes to the door hungry.

Beloved Capuchin friar and doorkeeper Father Solanus Casey, set to be beatified Nov. 18, knew the custom well, and had a desire to feed anyone who came to the door of St. Bonaventure monastery in Detroit.

“They are hungry; get them some soup and sandwiches,” Fr. Solanus would often tell his fellow friars.

The need became especially great in 1929 at the start of the Great Depression. That’s when Fr. Solanus had the idea to start a soup kitchen down the street from the monastery, where he could send anyone who came to the door looking for food.

“In time the lines grew to more than 2,000 people waiting for their single meal of the day. The friars knew they had to do more,” the Capuchins explain on their soup kitchen website.

To expand their ability to feed and serve people, the friars turned to the Secular Franciscans in their community. Together, they worked to gather, cook and serve meals at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, which is still operating out of multiple locations in Detroit today.

The soup kitchen just down the street from the monastery is a rebuilt version of the original site founded by Fr. Solanus Casey.

Today, Alison Costello is the head chef at the soup kitchen, and she runs a tight ship. Friday, November 17 may have been the day before Fr. Solanus’ beatification, but it was a bustling day at the soup kitchen just like any other.

Coney dogs were on the menu, along with mixed green salad and roasted potatoes. Once Chef Alison got a breather, she sat down with CNA to talk about her philosophy as the head chef.

“This is a holy place, you have to treat it like a church,” Costello told CNA. So there are some rules: Don’t cuss. Dress modestly. Recycle.

A practicing Catholic herself, Costello came onto the staff of the soup kitchen about 17 years ago, “burned out” from the hectic hours of the regular restaurant industry. She was familiar with the Capuchins and saw the soup kitchen chef role as an opportunity to serve those in need.

“I knew I had to boost up the nutrition levels of the food here because most of our folks have a compromised immune system,” she said, “and I have to be culturally sensitive at the same time.”
 
While the guests at the soup kitchen are a diverse crowd, the majority at this particular location are African Americans, who tend to have similar genetic health problems and nutritional concerns.

“So when I started, I knew I couldn’t’ just serve brown rice, I had to serve white rice as well. Or our salad couldn’t be just iceberg, it turns out that our guests really liked the bitter greens, and so I brought in spring mix salad. Our soups started to be made from scratch, and I make purees, which they had never seen, like I make a roasted red pepper puree,” Costello said. Her puree is very popular with the guests.

She has told other chefs that it doesn’t matter “if people are paying customers or they’re sitting there smelling (badly), they deserve to eat well.”

Talk to almost anyone at the Capuchin soup kitchen, and they’ll tell you the reason they continue to come there, whether as a guest or as a volunteer, is because of the community atmosphere.

Frank Shorter, who was pouring water into vases on Friday, said he originally started volunteering at the soup kitchen as part of a probation program, but he stayed because he got “addicted to helping people” and enjoyed the friendly environment at the kitchen.

Margie Coleman is a longtime volunteer with the soup kitchen, whose husband is a parishioner at Sacred Heart parish in Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit.

“I love working with the people, it’s always a good time, I’m having a blast,” Coleman told CNA.

“You never know what you’re going to run into here, and I keep learning new tips and tricks for cooking, and I’m just having a good time. It’s all about service and giving back to the people,” she added. “Fr. Solanus was all about helping his fellow man, and I feel the same way.”

Margie’s husband Mark often works right alongside her in the kitchen. He said Fr. Solanus’ example teaches us that you don’t have to be academically smart to make a difference in the world.

“I got the sense that he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the closet,” because he struggled with seminary classes, Mark said. “But he actually was a much more powerful light, once you kind of dug into him, which I think is a real testament to him as an individual. Just because you’re not the brightest person in the world doesn’t mean you can’t have a wonderful impact on the world.”

Today, the Capuchin soup kitchen not only serves food, it also provides showers to those who need them, as well as social services. It is connected to a Capuchin-run urban farm, which provides much of the produce for the kitchen.

“People should come experience it for themselves,” Costello said, “and what a community this is and what a witness the friars are. I have enjoyed every day…that I’ve been here, the camaraderie, the family, we have our family here,” she said, thinking of guests or volunteers that they’ve grown close to over the years.

Costello added that she was “honored” to follow in Fr. Solanus’ footsteps at the kitchen. The quality she most admires in the friar’s legacy is his humility.

“I think Solanus would want people to know you can be an extraordinary person by doing ordinary things,” she said.

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Peoria, Ill., Aug 25, 2021 / 10:58 am (CNA).
Proponents of the beatification of Venerable Fulton Sheen are still searching for answers about the cause, nearly two years after that process was paused.“I don’t know much,” Bishop Louis … […]

CNA Staff, Aug 26, 2020 / 04:15 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski was installed this week as the Tenth Archbishop of St. Louis, on the feast day of the city’s namesake, Louis IX of France. The new archbishop challenged Catholics to put their faith into action and seek to meet the world face-to-face.

“Parishes are not built from behind desks. Communities are not built from behind desks. As a Church, evangelization does not happen from behind a desk,” Rozanski, 61, said in his installation Mass homily Aug. 25.

Rozanski acknowledged that during the pandemic, most interactions have had to be mediated through the internet and screens.

“I yearn for that day when we can meet safely face-to-face, and not through our TVs. computers, and phones. While we are compelled to be our brother’s keeper, and so must live within these necessary public safety parameters for the time being, let us nonetheless be visible and encounter people as best we can, to spread the joy of the Gospel.”

Pope Francis in June appointed Rozanski to lead the Archdiocese of St. Louis. He succeeds Archbishop Robert Carlson, who presented his resignation to Pope Francis at the customary age of 75.

St. Louis is the largest archdiocese in Missouri, and is home to over half a million Catholics.

Rozanski expressed gratitude for his priesthood and gratitude to Pope Francis for choosing him to lead the archdiocese. The installation Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis was closed to the public because of the pandemic.

Referring to St. Louis by its popular nickname, “The Rome of the West”— so called because of its many grand Catholic churches— Rozanski pointed to the city’s most well-known symbol, the Gateway Arch, as a symbol of hope and unity.

“How much that hope is needed in our country, and in our world, today,” he remarked.

The city’s namesake, St. Louis, was holy “not because of the crown he wore, but because of the service he allowed it to give,” Rozanski said.

“We are called to be a people of hope,” he said, adding that each individual, as well as the Church as a whole, is called to practice love, putting it into action by seeking to meet with people face-to-face.

“We ourselves must be gateways to healing, to evangelization, to mercy, to compassion, to listening with the ears of Jesus,” he said.

COVID-19 is not the only urgent cross facing us today, he said, referring to the “scars of systemic racism.”

St. Louis has seen racially-charged protests in recent months, and historically has been a segregated city. Racial tension in the city has been heightened ever since the Aug. 2014 killing of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, MO police officer.

Rozanski referred to racism as “a man-made plague that isolates us from one another” and diminishes our God-given dignity.

A bishop must always foster a missionary attitude in his diocese, Rozanski said, which involves listening to all his people, not merely those who “would tell him what he wants to hear.”

He called for Catholics to work on “bold and creative methods” of evangelization.

“Let us walk together on this journey of faith. I need your help, and I need your prayers,” he said.

Rozanski had previously led the Diocese of Springfield in Massachusetts since 2014.

A Baltimore native, Rozanski was born in 1958, and attended Catholic schools in the city. He attended seminary at the Catholic University of America, and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore in 1984. He served in parish ministry, the archdiocesan curia, and with its seminary, and was named a monsignor in 2003.

St. John Paul II appointed Rozanski auxiliary bishop of Baltimore in 2004. He oversaw one of Baltimore archdiocese’s geographical vicariates while parishes were merged, and served as vicar for Hispanics. He was vocal in supporting Maryland’s DREAM act, allowing some undocumented immigrants to receive in-state college tuition.

At the time of his episcopal consecration, Rozanski was the youngest bishop in the United States. He went on to serve as chair of the U.S. bishops’ conference committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs and as a consultant to the National Association for the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities.

A Polish-American, Rozanski has co-chaired the Polish National Catholic – Roman Catholic Dialogue. The Polish National Catholic Church is a schismatic Church founded in the U.S. in the late 19th-century by Polish-American immigrants.

He is a member of the Knights of Columbus and a Knight Commander of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

Though Rozanski himself backed major changes in the Springfield diocese’s handling of abuse, CNA has reported that one anonymous abuse victim has asked for a Church investigation into whether Rozanski was involved in covering up abuse by a former bishop of the diocese.

On June 24 of this year, the Springfield diocese released a 373-page report finding that an alleged victim’s claim he was molested by the late Bishop Christopher Weldon were “unequivocally credible,” despite Weldon not yet being listed on the Springfield diocese’s list of clergy credibly accused of abuse.

The investigator, Judge Peter A. Velis, said his findings raise questions about whether there was an attempt to conceal the report’s contents about Bishop Weldon from the review board or Bishop Rozanski.

In June, Rozanski apologized for the “chronic mishandling of the case, time and time again, since 2014.”

“At almost every instance, we have failed this courageous man who nonetheless persevered thanks in part to a reliable support network as well to a deep desire for a just response for the terrible abuse which he endured,” Rozanski said at a June press conference, one year after he commissioned the independent investigation into the matter.

In March 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, Bishop Rozanski attempted to authorize a change to norms for the anointing of the sick, permitting a nurse, rather than a priest, to conduct the physical anointing. Only a priest can validly administer the sacrament.

Later that same week, the diocese told CNA it had rescinded that policy. Rozanski emailed Springfield priests that afternoon explaining that “After further discussion and review, I am rescinding my previous directive and temporarily suspending the Anointing of the Sick in all instances.”

The diocese reinstated the practice of the anointing of the sick in May.

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