Dear Friend, This time of year brings the end of summer vacations and a return to the routines of school. The rituals associated with Back to School season are familiar and reassuring: new clothes, school supplies, book bags and lunch boxes to go along with our new teachers and classrooms. But what is routine to [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Dear Friend, As we commemorate our nation’s independence and its values of liberty and justice for all, it is a shocking fact that slavery and human trafficking have been experiencing a dramatic resurgence in recent years. Trafficking in persons is the coerced use of people as a form of commerce, in slave labor and extreme [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Dear Friend, Our commemoration of Mother’s Day offers us an opportunity to acknowledge the great contribution of women in our lives. From our own mothers, who gave us life and nurtured us as we grew, to our grandmothers, sisters, wives, daughters and friends, we all can be grateful for the love and wisdom women bestow [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Dear Friend, Each year, we as Church commemorate the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus during Holy Week and our celebration of Easter. This year, we will gather in prayer against the backdrop of the suffering of our brothers and sisters after the disasters in Haiti and Chile. Archbishop Timothy Dolan, the chairman of Catholic [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Dear Friend, It comes as no surprise that the tragic earthquake in Haiti has attracted an enormous amount of media attention. In my own interviews, I’ve been asked by reporters how I account for the incredible and generous response of the American people to this disaster. To my mind, part of it is the proximity [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Dear Friend, I have just returned from Haiti. The destruction in Port-au-Prince is pervasive. Building after building has crumbled to a pile of rubble. Amid the broken cityscape, thousands of suffering people mourn for the dead, search for the missing and seek help for the injured. The agony is overwhelming. I have not seen a [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Dear Friend, Water is life. I’ve heard this saying in so many places where I’ve traveled, expressed in a multitude of languages. Its truth is self-evident to millions of people assisted by Catholic Relief Services. That’s why you’ll see it painted on the sides of countless wells, tanks and cisterns that bring clean, life-giving water [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Dear Friend, This December 26, as we bask in the warm afterglow of family Christmas celebrations, we will pause to remember the fifth anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the most horrific natural disasters in memory. The tidal wave claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people and left millions homeless, without [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Dear Friend, Just a week after we gather with our families to celebrate Thanksgiving, we pause to commemorate a more somber occasion: World AIDS Day. This observance each December 1 is a time to take note of the toll this awful pandemic exacts: the lives taken, the futures dimmed, the families broken apart. But to [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Dear Friend, As the summer was drawing to a close, we heard of the death of Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, which lifted millions of people, mostly in Asia, out of hunger through the production of high-yield varieties of wheat. Despite Dr. Borlaug’s achievements, we commemorate this year’s World Food Day on [...]
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