Of all things, it was a car ride that started Zion Charles on the road to a closer commitment to his Catholic faith. It all began when his mother, Jeanneth Lopez, a car service driver, was sent by her dispatcher to St. Bernard of Clairvaux Church in Mill Basin to pick up a parish priest, Father Michael Tedone, and drive him to Kennedy Airport one day last year.
Luis Marquez was teaching at New Jersey City University several years ago when he came across a young woman in tears in the university library. It was a vulnerable time in her life, as she had just learned she was pregnant. At the moment Marquez encountered her, she was thinking about getting an abortion.
For 27 years, people have filled a triangle park in this neighborhood around Memorial Day to honor its namesake, Marine Corps Maj. Eugene McCarthy, who died in Operation Desert Storm. But this year’s observance on Sunday, May 19, took on a new significance — a rededication to include a plaque for McCarthy’s older brother, Dennis.
Throughout World War I, Catholics in the French village of Ban-de-Laveline had no pastor, because their priest was taken hostage by the Germans. But in 1918, a U.S. Army chaplain from Brooklyn came to bury 18 of his men killed in action, and a special bond formed between the village and a new parish in Jackson Heights, Queens.
When he is ordained into the priesthood on June 1, Deacon Randy Nguyen will be a groundbreaker. He will be the first Vietnamese American priest serving the Diocese of Brooklyn, a place known as the Diocese of Immigrants.
One of the 1,891 recipients of academic degrees at St. John’s University’s Queens campus commencement on May 19 was an alumnus who got his first diploma there in 1984. The graduate then was Robert Brennan, who is now Bishop Robert Brennan upon whom the university conferred a Doctor of Sacred Theology degree these 40 years later.
Douglas Oldmixon, a retired member of the U.S. Air Force Reserve, and his wife Jo-Dee Benson consider themselves to be patriotic Americans who are devoted to supporting the nation’s military.
Bishop Robert Brennan will be on the Brooklyn Bridge on Sunday, May 26, but he won’t be taking a casual stroll to see the skyline.
About seven years ago, high school students in a small city along Lake Ontario in upstate New York were assigned a project. Their teacher told them to pretend they were members of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party and argue for, or against, the Holocaust’s Final Solution.
Between piano, taekwondo, and academics, siblings Koey and Keo Ma have devoted themselves to their passions. Even though they are young, the St. Mel Catholic Academy students have spent hours at the ivories learning new songs or in the dojo becoming black belts.
