On Nov. 18, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced New York City public school buildings would temporarily close and move to remote learning the following day. The percentage of citywide positive tests exactly hit three percent that morning, using a seven-day rolling average.
With many people out of work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, families are struggling to put together Thanksgiving meals. But religious organizations are working to supply families with turkeys to make the holiday a happy one despite the economic uncertainty.
Members of the Armenian community in Brooklyn criticize a recent ceasefire agreement between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan in a decades-old dispute over the mountainous region called Nagorno-Karabakh. They said the deal brokered by Russia lets Azeris keep control over land they seized when fighting resumed n late September. They also worry that unresolved issues might cause warfare to start up again.
The State of New York has responded to the petition filed by the Diocese of Brooklyn with the U.S. Supreme Court over the diocese’s religious freedom case.
For many Catholics, making the transition from in-person to livestreamed Mass during the pandemic has been a sobering experience. It has meant not being able to receive the Eucharist and participate in Mass with the rest of the faithful. That’s not Debbie Starkman-Zdyrko’s experience. She feels closer to her community and the Catholic faith now than she did before quarantine began.
With the end of the COVID-19 pandemic nowhere in sight, how are the faithful left to celebrate Thanksgiving?
For the last 12 years, the Diocese of Brooklyn has been collecting and housing hundreds of religious artifacts from renovated churches and chapels in its own warehouse. One can find century-old stained glass pieces, wooden crucifixes, life-sized statues of saints, and more in the former auto dealership and repair shop space, which was purchased by the Diocese after the Our Lady of Lourdes Parish tragically burnt to the ground in 1975.
Bishop Kearney High School’s larger-than-life Blessed Mother statue has found a new home, just a block away at St. Athanasius Catholic Academy. It used to be a welcoming, iconic figure on the high school’s exterior, located on the corner of 60th Street and Bay Parkway.
Two weeks after Election Day, President Donald Trump had not eased up on challenging the voting results. Reconciliation of the citizenry seemed elusive. But leaders of the Catholic clergy in Brooklyn and across the nation reminded the Church of its unique role in helping the nation heal.
On Nov. 15, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Thomas Chadzutko reassured families, faculty, and staff that all 69 Catholic schools and academies across Brooklyn and Queens will remain open and continue to provide in-person learning — irrespective of any impending decision pertaining to the status of city public schools.
