Rep. Jackie Walorski, killed in car accident, leaves behind pro-life legacy 

St. Louis, Mo., Aug 26, 2024 / 06:30 am (CNA).

Los Angeles is one of the most expensive cities in the United States, with an average home price almost touching a million dollars in 2024 — a landscape that crowds out not only the poor, but also young families with children. The high cost of housing is one of the primary reasons why tens of thousands of people live on the streets of LA, and most of those who are housed are “rent burdened,” which means they spend more than 30% of their income just keeping a roof over their heads. 

In the face of such challenges, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently announced it will provide land for a new housing development dedicated to serving community college students and young people exiting the foster care system.

Amy Anderson, executive director of Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance and a former chief of housing for the City of Los Angeles, told EWTN News that a group of Catholic lay leaders from the business and philanthropic community reached out to the archdiocese with a vision for creating an independent, nonprofit affordable housing development organization.

“Our vision is to really collaborate with the archdiocese and [use] the resources potentially available from the archdiocese to create homes that are affordable to a wide range of populations and incomes,” Anderson told “EWTN News Nightly” anchor Tracy Sabol. 

She said they hope to break ground on the project, known as the Willowbrook development, “about a year from now.”

“The archdiocese is a fantastic partner. They are providing the land for our first development, which is already in process, and we’re working really closely with them to identify additional opportunities.”

The proposed building, which will be located steps from Los Angeles Community College, will feature 74 affordable housing units, as well as “on-site supportive services” for young people transitioning out of foster care — a population that often ends up experiencing homelessness. 

The land, located at 4665 Willow Brook Ave just a few miles from the Hollywood Sign, currently hosts a Catholic Charities building, which will move its operations to another site to make way for the apartments. 

“Through Catholic Charities and our ministries on Skid Row [an LA street where many unhoused people live] and elsewhere, we have been working for many years to provide shelter and services for our homeless brothers and sisters,” Archbishop Jose Gomez said in a statement to LAist.

“With this new initiative we see exciting possibilities to make more affordable housing available, especially for families and young people.”

Making land work for mission

The Catholic Church is often cited as the largest non-governmental owner of land in the entire world, with an estimated 177 million acres owned by Catholic entities. 

Maddy Johnson, program manager for the Church Properties Initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate (FIRE), noted that the Church as a large landowner is not a new phenomenon, but there is a need today to adapt to modern challenges like regulations, zoning, and the importance of caring for the natural environment. 

Many Catholic dioceses and religious orders have properties in their possession that aren’t fulfilling their original purpose, including disused natural land and parking lots, as well as shuttered convents and schools. Sometimes, Johnson said, a diocese or religious order doesn’t even realize the full extent of what they own. 

“How can the Church make good strategic decisions, strategic and mission-aligned decisions, if it doesn’t know what properties it’s responsible for?” she said. 

Since real estate management is not the Church’s core competency, FIRE aims to “provide a space for peer learning” to educate and equip Church leaders to make better use of their properties in service of the Church’s mission. 

To this end, they offer an undergraduate minor at Notre Dame that aims to teach students how to help the Church make strategic real estate decisions that align with the Church’s mission. The Institute also organizes a quarterly networking call with diocesan real estate directors, as well as an annual conference to allow Catholic leaders to convene, share best practices, and learn from each other. 

In many cases, Catholic entities that have worked with FIRE have been able to repurpose properties in a way that not only provides income for the church, but also fills a need in the community. 

Johnson said the Church is called to respond to the modern problems society faces — one of which is a lack of housing options, especially for the poor. 

“Throughout its history, there have been so many different iterations of how the Church expresses its mission…through education, healthcare — those are the ones that we’ve gotten really used to,” Johnson said.  

“In our day and age, could it be the need for affordable housing?…that’s a charitable human need in the area that’s not being met.”

Unlocking potential in California

Queen of Angels Housing’s first development, which has been in the works for several years, is being made possible now by a newly-passed state law in California that aims to make it easier for churches to repurpose their land into housing. 

California’s SB 4, the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act, was signed into law in October 2023. It streamlines some of the trickiest parts of the process of turning church-owned land into housing — the parts most people don’t really think about. These can include permitting and zoning restrictions, which restrict the types of buildings that can be built in a given area and can be difficult and time-consuming to overcome. SB 4 even includes a provision allowing for denser housing on church-owned property than the zoning ordinances would normally allow. 

Yes in God’s Backyard

The law coming to fruition in California is part of a larger movement informally dubbed “Yes in God’s Backyard,” or YIGBY — a riff on the term “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY), a phenomenon whereby neighbors take issue with and oppose new developments. 

Proponents of the YIGBY movement, which include the co-director of the Fitzgerald Institute at Notre Dame, Father Patrick Reidy, believe the government should make it easier for churches of all denominations to create housing for those who need it. 

Several Catholic real estate professionals with ties to California expressed excitement about the possibilities that SB 4 has created in the Golden State. 

Steve Cameron, a Catholic real estate developer in Orange County, told CNA that he is currently working with the Diocese of Orange, which abuts the LA archdiocese, to inventory properties that could be repurposed for residential use. 

He said their focus is on building apartment buildings and townhomes, primarily for rental rather than for sale, in an attempt to address the severe housing shortage and high costs in Southern California.

Unlike some dioceses, the Orange diocese has an electronic GIS (geographic information system) database showing all the properties it owns. Prepared by a civil engineering firm, the database includes details such as parcel numbers, acreage, title information, and demographic reports, which facilitate the planning and development process.

“Strategically, what we’re doing is we’re inventorying all of the property that the diocese and the parishes own, and trying to understand where there might be underutilized property that would make sense to develop some residential use,” Cameron said. 

Cameron said he can’t yet share details about the housing projects they’re working on, but said they are looking to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Queen of Angels housing project as a model for how to take advantage of the new incentives created by SB 4. 

“I think it’s great, and it’s exciting that they’re taking the lead and that they are able to find an opportunistic way to repurpose an underutilized property to meet the housing shortage in California,” he said. 

“[We] look at them as a role model for what we’re trying to accomplish here in the Diocese of Orange.”

John Meyer, a former president of the California-based Napa Institute who now works in real estate with J2 Development, emphasized the importance of viewing the Church’s vast real estate holdings as an asset rather than a liability. 

Meyer said he is currently working with two Catholic entities on the East Coast on ground lease projects, one of which will fund the construction of a new Catholic Student Center at a university. He told CNA he often advises Catholic entities to lease the land they own rather than selling it, allowing the church to maintain ownership of the property while generating income. 

Naturally, he noted, any real estate project the Church undertakes ought to align with the Church’s mission of spreading the Gospel, and not merely be a means of making money. 

“Any time we look at the Church’s real estate decisions, it’s got to be intertwined with mission and values,” he said.

“We’re not just developing for the sake of developing. What we want to do is we want to create value for the Church, and we also want to create value for the community. So working closely with the municipality to make sure that needs are met, and to be a good neighbor, is important.”

He said Church leaders should strongly consider taking advantage of incentives in various states such as California for projects like affordable housing, which align with the Church’s mission and provide both social and financial benefits. 

“Priests and bishops aren’t ordained to do these things, and sometimes they have people in their diocese that have these abilities, and sometimes they don’t,” Meyer said. 

“This [new law] in California has created an incentive that we can take advantage of, so we need to take advantage of that incentive…it’s allowing us to unlock potential value in land while at the same time serving a social good that’s part of the mission of the Church.”

[…]

Boston, Mass., Mar 10, 2022 / 06:52 am (CNA).

Jason Jones has a saying he often repeats to his staff at the humanitarian organization he founded, The Vulnerable People Project.

“The vulnerable are not weak people,” he says. “They’re strong people that have been placed in impossible situations.”

The Vulnerable People Project (VPP), which Jones describes as a Catholic apostolate animated by Catholic social teaching, was launched last year to respond to one such “impossible” situation: the humanitarian crisis that erupted after the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan, which quickly fell to the Taliban.

Now VPP is helping people escape another dire emergency: the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“We’re seeing the people of Ukraine stuck between these two powerful actors, the same way the people of Afghanistan were trapped between the United States and Taliban,” Jones, a Catholic film producer, speaker, author and activist, told CNA. 

VPP is still helping to evacuate Christians and other minorities from Afghanistan every week, Jones said. 

Now the organization is doing similar work in Ukraine, where Jones says it has transported thousands of people away from the fighting and destruction.

Many of them have Aleksi Voronin to thank for that.

The 35-year-old native of Kyiv manages a team of drivers, himself among them, who voluntarily take residents of Kyiv and Kharkiv, major Ukrainian cities now in the crosshairs of Russian forces, to the relative safety of western Ukraine or across the border into Poland.

The drivers are mostly driving vans but some passenger vehicles, as well. With the vans, Voronin said, up to a dozen passengers can be evacuated. He told CNA he’s working on getting a bus which could evacuate 50 people.

The vans are tightly packed, but Voronin says that he tries to provide the people with blankets to at least give them “minimal comfort.” He estimates that he’s helped evacuate more than 200 people, so far.

“I cannot find the right words to explain the condition of people when I pick them up,” Voronin told CNA, fighting back tears.

Providential connections

Because of VPP’s success in Afghanistan, a Ukrainian friend of Jones asked him to help rescue some family members from the Ukraine following the invasion. As a result, VPP’s newest humanitarian effort, Hope for Ukraine, was born.

Jones doesn’t speak Ukrainian, though. So getting in touch with Ukrainians on the ground posed difficulties, he said. 

But as providence would have it, one of Jones’ friends is Los Angeles comedian Irina Skaya, a Ukrainian-born American. 

“Jason said, ‘Look, we’ve been working with Afghanistan, but now this is a crisis.’ So he knew that I was super connected in Ukraine on the ground and we started evacuations,” Skaya, who is leading Hope for Ukraine, told CNA.

Skaya, who speaks Russian, Ukrainian, and English fluently, has about 200 relatives in Ukraine. Through her contacts, she was put in touch with Voronin.

Skaya had a comedy show planned in Kyiv Feb. 25-26, but that was canceled due to the Russian invasion on Feb. 24. She was supposed to be the opening act for Louis C.K. a popular American comedian.

Skaya said she always thought her purpose in life was to do comedy.

“Comedy is great. I love comedy. And when this is over, I’m gonna perform in Ukraine and try to bring as many American comedians into Ukraine as I can,” she said. 

But war has reordered her priorities. “My absolute life purpose now,” she said, “is to defend my country, to save my country, to save my people.”

How to help

Jones says that Hope for Ukraine has about 100 Ukrainian volunteers, with other volunteers coming from Poland, Ireland, the United States, and elsewhere.

Even a volunteer-driven humanitarian effort is expensive, however. Keeping Aleksi Voronin’s passenger vans and other vehicles on the road gets more costly by the day, due to rapidly rising fuel prices.

Jones told CNA that VPP has raised $15,000 for Hope for Ukraine, but has spent about $50,000 buying resources.

The organization’s response to the invasion will soon include an ambulance and a trauma team of four Emergency Medical Technicians, or EMTs, one critical care paramedic, and two ambulance drivers.

Leading the team will be Andrew Hamilton, 23, a Virginia resident who has worked as an EMT at a construction site and has served as a combat medic while he volunteered with Kurdish military units in northern Syria.

Hamilton, a devout Christian, told CNA his mission is to support the Ukrainian people and if a wounded person needs his care, “they’ll receive the best medical treatment possible.”

Donations to VPP’s Hope for Ukraine initiative can be made online at TheGreatCampaign.org. Jones said he has secured a $200,000 matching gift grant, if the organization can raise $200,000 on its own.

Somehow, Jones said, VPP will meet that goal. “We seek to stand with those who have been abandoned because it’s dangerous to serve them, or because it comes at a social cost,” he said. “When everyone else flees, that’s when we show up.”

[…]

Washington D.C., Mar 6, 2017 / 03:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With people fleeing humanitarian crises around the world, President Donald Trump’s new executive order halting refugee admissions is wrong, Catholic bishop and aid groups maintain.

“We remain deeply troubled by the human consequences of the revised executive order on refugee admissions and the travel ban. While we note the Administration’s efforts to modify the Executive Order in light of various legal concerns, the revised Order still leaves many innocent lives at risk,” Bishop Joe Vasquez of Austin stated March 6. Bishop Vasquez chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on migration.

“The U.S. Catholic Bishops have long recognized the importance of ensuring public safety and would welcome reasonable and necessary steps to accomplish that goal,” he said.

“However, based on the knowledge that refugees are already subjected to the most vigorous vetting process of anyone who enters the United States, there is no merit to pausing the refugee resettlement program while considering further improvement to that vetting process.”

Bill O’Keefe, vice president for advocacy and government relations at Catholic Relief Services, said that “with the most refugees in the world since World War II, now is not the time for the world’s leader in refugee resettlement to back down.”

Trump issued a revised executive order on immigration and refugee admissions on Monday, revoking his old order that was blocked by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A 120-day ban on all refugee admissions remains in the revised executive order, and Trump capped the total number of refugee admissions at 50,000 for fiscal year 2017. In contrast, the Obama administration accepted 85,000 refugees in FY 2016, including more than 12,000 from Syria.

35,000 refugees have already been accepted this fiscal year, O’Keefe noted, which means that under the new policy very few refugees will be accepted from March through September.

“Resettling only 50,000 refugees a year, down from 110,000, does not reflect the need, our compassion, and our capacity as a nation,” Bishop Vasquez stated. “We have the ability to continue to assist the most vulnerable among us without sacrificing our values as Americans or the safety and security of our nation.”

There are several humanitarian crises around the world, O’Keefe said. The Syrian civil war, raging since 2011, has already displaced over 11 million and created almost 5 million refugees, but there are also large conflicts in Iraq, Nigeria, and Ukraine. Four famines in Africa and the Middle East are also worsening, he said.

With all this, “the U.S. needs to be increasing our humanitarian assistance and helping people where they are, as well as taking more of the most vulnerable people who are fleeing violence as refugees, and we can safely take.”

Although the order says that the 120-day ban on refugee resettlement gives the administration time to review the security of the program, the process is already secure, O’Keefe insisted.

“Refugees, though, are already subjected to extreme vetting to get here,” he said, adding that the process often takes at least two years and involves the work of 13 federal agencies.

The indefinite ban on Syrian refugees, featured in the first executive order, is not in the new one. Neither is the prioritization for refugee admissions for those of minority religions who suffer religious persecution.

O’Keefe praised the omission of both policies.

“Being a Syrian doesn’t predispose one to any of the things that our vetting system would look out for,” he said of there being no indefinite ban on Syrian refugee resettlement.

Also, religious-based persecution is already one of five criteria of vulnerability for those refugees who are being vetted for admission to the U.S., he noted, adding that some “local church leaders” have said that a special designation “wouldn’t be helpful” and “actually exposes them to greater danger.”

However, some have been pushing for a special refugee status for persecuted religious minorities, especially those in Syria.

Persecuted Christian minorities, including genocide victims, must have a “fair outcome” when looking to resettle elsewhere, Andrew Walther, vice president of communications and strategic planning at the Knights of Columbus, explained to CNA.

“As part of the review of the refugee admissions procedure, the UNHCR referral process for refugees should be closely scrutinized, and the serious inequities in the number of Syrian refugees admitted from communities targeted for genocide should be rectified,” he said. Refugees must first register with the UNHCR to be eligible for resettlement.

Yet although Christians make up only a small percentage of the Syrian population, the percentage of Christian refugees from Syria who are resettled in the U.S. is even smaller, Walther noted.

“The Obama administration policy was to prioritize these groups, but despite this they remain severely underrepresented in U.S. refugee admissions, so it’s clear that a fair outcome is even more important than a stated priority,” he said.

Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan of Antioch has warned that Christians hoping to be resettled in the U.S. or Canada have never even had the chance.

“I personally heard on several occasions  from  many of our Christian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, that their applications for refugee visas, either to the USA or Canada,  are without any response, if not refused by the consulates of the USA and Canada,” he stated.

Elsewhere in the executive order, a ban on entry by most foreign nationals into the U.S. from six countries is still in effect. The countries are Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan, while Iraq, which was formerly on the list, is now omitted.

Exceptions to the visa ban include refugees already admitted to the U.S., lawful permanent residents, those who received visas before 5 p.m. ET on Jan. 27 – the date of the original executive order – and those travelling on diplomatic visas.

Yemen and Somalia have “developing famines” and their own conflicts, so “it strikes us as cruel, actually, to restrict the number of people who can come,” O’Keefe said.

Catholic Charities, USA, whose affiliates partner with the government to help resettle refugees in the U.S., spoke out strongly against the temporary refugee ban.

“At the heart of the work of Catholic Charities is the Gospel mandate to welcome the stranger and care for the most vulnerable among us,” Sister Donna Markham O.P., president of Catholic Charities, USA, stated on Monday.

“Today’s executive order not only hinders that work, but also effectively abandons, for four months, the thousands of endangered refugees fleeing violence, starvation and persecution,” she said.

The group “is leading an ambitious $8 million campaign to support the work of local Catholic Charities agencies in caring for refugees.”

[…]