Posts Tagged ‘Jesuit’

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.”

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jesuit Father TJ Martinez is well-loved, energetic and totally hip. Everything from his sleek pointed-toe cowboy boots, eye-catching belt buckle and occasional faux-hawk to his outgoing demeanor says “approachable.” He loves wandering the halls and joking with his students; a self-professed cheerleader, he loves to be right in the middle of everything – both the good and the bad. The zero-tolerance gang and cheating policies can put him in a difficult position, but at the end of the day, Fr. Martinez says he is the “luckiest Jesuit priest in the country.” You can read more about Fr. Martinez, president of Cristo Rey Jesuit College Preparatory in Houston, and the success of the newly opened school for children from economically challenged families in 002Houston magazine.

Jesuit Father Tom Neitzke, recently ordained in June, spent a summer two years ago in China working at a leprosarium. The journey to the remote Chinese village to stay among those suffering with leprosy and to understand their subsequent shunning by their community, Fr. Neitzke understood that there is much to learn from those among us who have the least. His reflections on the experience of being in China are below.

Read the rest of this entry »

As a Jesuit institution, Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.  is grounded in a 450-year-old educational tradition inspired by St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus. Since 1980 alone, 30 Georgetown alumni have entered the Society of Jesus, which represents the largest male religious order in the world, to become Jesuits.

On their campus website, the school recently profiled several alumni in various stages of Jesuit formation. Click here to read these next-generation Jesuits’ stories.