When Pope John Paul II arrived for a six-day trip to Cuba on January 21, 1998, he closed his first address to the Cuban people with a historic message: “May Cuba, with all its magnificent potential, open itself to the world, and may the world open itself up to Cuba.”
Father Christopher Heanue recently served his final Masses as administrator of Holy Child Jesus Church, bidding farewell to hundreds of parishioners who came to wish him well. Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio recently announced a new assignment for him — rector-pastor of the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph.
Jesuit priests may have educated the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro but, as a Communist dictator, he sought to separate people from religion — a grim legacy that Catholics still struggle to overcome.
Members of Saints Peter and Paul Parish packed their new 550-seat church in a historic building to witness the consecration of its altar by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio.
The 220 attendees also paid loving honor to the late Father Jorge Ortiz-Garay, who died in March of COVID-19.
On the evening of June 5, 2006, Msgr. Octavio Cisneros, my college seminary rector, asked if I would be available to drive him somewhere the next day. He said that he would have too much on his mind to drive himself and didn’t want to get in an accident. Little did I know then that I would be driving him to the announcement of his nomination as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn, along with Msgr. Sansaricq and Msgr. Caggiano.
“I come from everywhere and I go everywhere. I am art among the arts and with the mountains, I am one.” These verses, from Cuban patriot and poet José Martí, were on the mind of retired Auxiliary Bishop Octavio Cisneros as he prepared to present Our Lady of Sorrows Church with a statue of Our Lady of Charity.
Auxiliary Bishop Octavio Cisneros, a native Cuban who came to the U.S. as a teenage refugee in the early 1960s without his parents, became a priest and served the Diocese of Brooklyn for 49 years, officially retired from his post on Oct. 30, after Pope Francis accepted his resignation.
For Miguel Guilarte who works for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as the manager of public affairs, what he witnessed last week at the border of Venezuela-Colombia border was harrowing.
Our Lady of Candelaria has made its way to Brooklyn and Queens. Parishioners of Blessed Virgin Mary Help of Christians (St. Mary’s Winfield), Woodside, gathered on Sunday, Feb. 2, for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, or Candlemas, to show their devotion for the black madonna.
