Archive for the ‘Social Justice’ Category

Jesuit Father Matthew Ruhl is cycling cross country to call attention to the nation’s staggering poverty level.

After a four hour, 67 mile trek from New Orleans, Fr. Ruhl and his 15-member Cycling for Change team – 11 cyclists and four support team members – recharged their physical and spiritual batteries at Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos Church on Aug. 15 before resuming their journey the next morning, en route to Dauphin Island, Ala.

After five years of intense training and planning, the group began its 5,000 mile, 100 day journey on Memorial Day in Cape Flattery, Wash. and, thus far, has traveled more than 3,000 miles. They are slated to wrap up their trip on Labor Day in Key West, Fla.

Ruhl said the idea of cycling cross country to raise poverty awareness was inspired by Catholic Charities USA’s Campaign to Reduce Poverty – a plan to cut poverty in half by 2020.

“I thought that was a pretty audacious goal, so I went to Catholic Charities USA with this idea of getting a group of riders together and traveling across country to talk about the plan and why it’s so important and they thought it was a great idea and agreed to sponsor it,” he said.

Why cycling?

“It’s a very good way to meet people and talk with people,” Ruhl said. “It’s also very convenient. It’s a traveling billboard. It always attracts attention and allows us to get from Point A to Point B – from Cape Flattery to Key West – in about 100 days without pushing too hard so we can meet and greet people. It also corresponds with the 100 years that Catholic Charities USA has been in existence.”

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On August 29, 2005, New Orleans experienced one of the worse natural disasters in U.S. history. While the city escaped a direct hit from Hurricane Katrina, the rising waters breached the levees that surround the city, leaving 80 percent of New Orleans under water. Five years later, New Orleans is a city rebuilding.

There has been a strong Jesuit presence in New Orleans from the days of the city’s founding over 300 years ago. The Jesuits have been in New Orleans in times of crisis like typhoid and yellow fever outbreaks at the turn of the 19th century and when the city flooded previously in the 1920s. Jesuit works like Good Shepherd Nativity School, which provides educational opportunities to disadvantaged children in the city, and Café Reconcile, a youth training program that provides on the job training in its restaurant, continue to help the city look toward a vibrant future. Schools like Loyola University and Jesuit High School continue to provide top notch education opportunities, while the Harry Thompson Center, a day shelter for the city’s homeless, reach out to the city’s most vulnerable. Today, the Jesuits continue to serve the spiritual needs of people of New Orleans and will continue be there for the city as it rebuilds and recovers.

National Jesuit News highlights the outreach and the dedication of the New Orleans Jesuits in the video piece below and provides a comprehensive overview of the Jesuit works in New Orleans five years after Katrina in the article following the video below.

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Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life has been awarded a two-year, $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to study the education of undocumented students at Jesuit universities. Fairfield University will lead the project, collaborating with Santa Clara University and Loyola University Chicago.

Jesuit Father Rick Ryscavage,  professor of sociology and director of the Center for Faith and Public Life at Fairfield and a former national director of Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, who will serve as director of the project, said, “there is very little hard data about the situation of undocumented students in American universities. This grant will allow us to make a major contribution to the national understanding of the problem.”

Under the grant, a research study will seek to survey and understand the social context and current practices and attitudes in American Jesuit schools of higher education regarding undocumented students.

The study will consider:

• Structures that support or challenge the higher education of undocumented students
• Best practices and strategies for ensuring their eventual success
• A potential collaborative model for helping students as they move through their university years
• Issues facing students after graduation

Leading the research team, consisting of law and social science faculty from all three institutions, will be Dr. Kurt Schlichting, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Fairfield.

The project is designed to stimulate a sustained dialogue with the 28 Jesuit schools of higher education in the United States by asking two questions:

1. What are the current practices among our schools?
2. What challenges do we face in trying to serve these students?

A final policy paper, highlighting the results of the study, will include a moral argument, anchored in Catholic social teaching, for better meeting the needs of undocumented students.

St. Aloysius Gonzaga High School is located in the impoverished Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya and is dedicated to serving AIDS affected youth. With nearly 1 million inhabitants, Kibera is the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa. In order to be admitted to the school, students must have lost one or both of their parents to HIV/AIDS and their surviving parents must also be afflicted with the disease. Jesuit Father Terry Charlton co-founded the school in 2003, which recently open a new building to its 280 students.

St. Aloysius is based on the Jesuit model of Catholic education and serves bright youngsters of all faith backgrounds who are at risk by providing a college preparatory education and support to overcome the deficits of their environment. Their educational philosophy is based on the Ignatian principals to become men and women for others who are dedicated to bettering society. Even facing such challenges as dire poverty and being orphaned, the children of the school take its motto to “live, love and learn” to heart.

You can read more about Fr. Charlton’s vision for St. Aloysius here or by watching the video below:

Six months after the earthquake devastated Haiti on January 12, more than one million survivors continue to live in appalling conditions, with inadequate sanitation, limited access to services and food shortages, say the Jesuits who are working to provide humanitarian assistance.

Conditions in many of the nearly 1,400 camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) around the capital, Port-au-Prince, are extremely critical. The conditions at the largest Jesuit Refugee Services’ (JRS) camp, Automeca, with a population of 12,000, are typical. Here, residents continue to live in shacks held up by rags and poles. There are no schools or electricity, sanitation is poor and the water barely drinkable. When heavy rain falls, garbage rushes through the camp.

For many years, JRS has had a grassroots presence in Haiti and has provided humanitarian assistance to displaced Haitians in both the Dominican Republic and along the Haitian border. JRS – Haiti is focusing its current relief efforts in the Port-au-Prince area, working in seven camps that serve the needs of more than 21,000 displaced people in and around the capital by providing emergency assistance, psychosocial support, and training to community leaders to manage camps and civil society organizations.

“Camp management and aid delivery structures should always include consultation and cooperation with the displaced people who are swiftly forming their own organizations to advocate for their own particular needs,” said JRS/USA Director Jesuit Father Kenneth J. Gavin. “More attention must be placed on supporting the food and relief needs for IDP recipient communities and people not living in camps so that moving to a camp is not the only way for people to receive minimal food, water, and livelihood assistance.”

At a meeting with JRS – Haiti on June 20, seven IDP camp leaders highlighted numerous concerns, including the lack of security, particularly in camps that don’t have electricity and lighting at night, which pose a particular threat to women and children.

The situation in unofficial camps is even worse. Throughout the city, unofficial camp residents receive little or no care from large aid organizations or international coordinating bodies; many have even been told leave the camps but have not been provided with alternative housing.

“JRS welcomes the moratorium on forced evictions issued by the Haitian government. Unfortunately, pressure from landowners on IDPs to evacuate the sites continues. Actions go so far as intermittent disconnection of the water supply, and refusals to allow the construction of more permanent shelters and street lighting. ,” said JRS – Haiti Director Jesuit Father Wismith Lazard. “The government needs to use its authority to protect camp residents from this kind of harassment, and put more effort into identifying suitable shelter.”

In the video below, Frs. Lazard and Kawas Francois, president of the Jesuit Interprovincial Committee for the Reconstruction of Haiti, discuss the conditions in the camps in Haiti and the plans to open 17 Jesuit Fe y Alegria (Hope & Joy) schools in the next year in Haiti.