Archive for the ‘Migration and Immigration’ Category

As a priest who is now totally immersed in ministry to Hispanics, Jesuit Father Shay Auerbach said that his introduction to it was “a quirk of fate.”

“I’d just received a licentiate in liturgy and knew I would be going to a parish for two years,” he said.

The parish was St. Raphael’s in Raleigh, N.C., which had seen a recent increase in Hispanics.

“We need somebody to say Mass in Spanish. Can you read the Mass in Spanish?” Fr. Auerbach remembers the pastor asking him soon after his arrival.

“That began a whole new chapter in my life,” he recalls, adding that his stay of two years he began in 1999 ended up being six and a half years. The parish had 4,000 registered families.

At St. Raphael’s he helped establish the new Hispanic community.

“It had started a year before I got there,” Auerbach said. “By the time I left the parish would have 1,300 to 1,400 Hispanics for Mass on a weekend.”

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Jesuit Brother Jim Boynton stands amid the remains of the Eglise Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart Church) in Downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Jesuit Brother Jim Boynton was missioned in late 2009 to Haiti to serve refugees through the Jesuit-founded Foi et Joie (Faith and Joy) school system. When the devastating earthquake hit the small Caribbean island nation on January 12, 2010, Br. Boyton answered the call to lead an emergency medical response team in the weeks following in Port-au-Prince.  Today, Jesuits continue to provide support in the dire situation that is Haiti a year after the natural disaster struck and continue to stand in solidarity with the people of Haiti during their time of need.

National Jesuit News spoke with Boynton about his experiences in Haiti during its monthly podcast series. You can listen to the interview with Boynton below:

Jesuit Brother Jim Boynton stands amid the remains of the Eglise Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart Church) in Downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Jesuit Brother Jim Boynton was missioned in late 2009 to Haiti to serve refugees through the Jesuit-founded Foi et Joie (Faith and Joy) school system. When the devastating earthquake hit the small Caribbean island nation on January 12, 2010, Br. Boyton answered the call to lead an emergency medical response team in the weeks following in Port-au-Prince.  Today, Jesuits continue to provide support in the dire situation that is Haiti a year after the natural disaster struck and continue to stand in solidarity with the people of Haiti during their time of need.

National Jesuit News spoke with Boynton about his experiences in Haiti during its monthly podcast series. You can listen to the interview with Boynton below:

Jesuit Father Peter Neeley of the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) spoke to NPR about KBI’s efforts in the border town of Nogales, Mexico. Fr. Neeley says that relief operations like the KBI, which ministers to deportees with services that include a soup kitchen, are now common on the border.

“Tijuana, Mexicali, Juarez all have these kinds of services, but Nogales, when they started diverting more people through the desert, that’s when we saw the big need here. They need a really organized way to distribute the food and get more people fed and clothed,” Neeley said.

Neeley runs the cafeteria where KBI volunteers typically prepare three meals a day under a tent large enough to feed 200 people.

Crossing into the U.S. illegally is not a sin, said Neeley, it’s a misdemeanor.

Read or listen to the story on NPR.

With over four decades on the continent, Jesuit Father Mike Schultheis has devoted himself to providing Catholic higher education across Africa including stints in Uganda and  Tanzania. In the 1990s, he taught economics at the Catholic University of Mozambique, established its first graduate degree and founded a research and documentation center. He also was  the first president of the Catholic University of Ghana. All of his previous educational apostolic work led him to his latest initiative of opening the Catholic University of the Sudan two years ago.

With educational opportunities in Sudan being among the worst in the world and adult literacy below 30 percent, Schultheis realizes that the Catholic University of the Sudan is a critical component in moving the country forward after almost 25 years of civil war. The founding of the university also comes at a critical time for the nation as it prepares for a historic vote in 2011 to decide if Sudan stays united or becomes two countries.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference established the Catholic University of the Sudan as a centerpiece of their national program to help the country recover from decades of violence, famine and mass displacement of people. The vision for the university and its development goes back even farther, to half a century ago, soon after Sudan’s independence from Britain in 1956. The idea for the university was discussed again when former Sudanese president Jafaar Nimeiry met with Pope John Paul II in Rome in 1983, just months before a civil war broke out in the county and dashed the university project yet again.

“The Catholic University of the Sudan, as a national institution, is a dream long deferred,” explains Schultheis. “

You can read more about the new Catholic University of the Sudan here. You can also watch the interview with Fr. Schultheis on the progress of the Catholic University of the Sudan produced by National Jesuit News last year when the school launched its second faculty of agricultural and environmental sciences in Wau.