Some Sundays, when the air finally turns warm and the bells of Good Shepherd or St. Sebastian ring out across the neighborhoods, we feel 8 years old again, walking with our grandparents down the avenue. 

They’re carrying a paper bag of warm semolina from the local bakery. We’ve got our good clip-on ties half crooked, and the whole world smells like fresh bread, incense, and possibility. That was Brooklyn. That was Queens. That was New York: work six days, pray on the seventh, and believe with everything in you that your kids would have it a little easier than you did.

We knew who we were because we knew where we came from. The Italians in Williamsburg who still spoke dialect over cards. The Irish who filled the bleachers at Gaelic Park and the pews at St. Sebastian. Puerto Ricans in Bushwick, and Haitians in Flatbush, celebrating independence with soup joumou. The Chinese in Flushing who turned every block into the feast of Our Lady of Sheshan. 

Those were our people. These are our people.

Today, we want to highlight something that’s been in the works for years: a Currents News special called “Belief Beyond Borders.” 

For months on end, the Currents News team has sat at kitchen tables from Bay Ridge to Flushing, from East New York to Elmhurst, and listened. Not to politicians. Not to talking heads on cable news who’ve never waited on a visa line or lit a candle for a family member in detention. No. We listened to the immigrants who make up the heartbeat of the Diocese of Brooklyn.

You’ll meet My Nguyen, a Vietnamese refugee who survived a decade of war, fled through jungles and refugee camps with her family, built a Manhattan salon from nothing, and now transforms her memories into paintings. 

You’ll meet William Shahzad, a Pakistani who helps persecuted Christians in Pakistan with food, clothing, and immigration support, and brought the first Urdu Mass to Brooklyn so his community could worship in their own language. 

We’ll introduce Christopher Chasteau, a Grenadian feeding hundreds in Crown Heights. Or you can catch up with Olena Rogalska, a Ukrainian immigrant and fashion professional who balances her high-end work at Yves Saint Laurent with weekend devotion at Guardian Angel Church in Coney Island.

This is not an obscure history. This is our story.

Maybe it’s your mother’s accent you’ll hear in the hour-long broadcast.

Perhaps it’s the same statue that your grandfather carried through the streets of Williamsburg. Maybe it’s the way your children now light candles for intentions you once whispered in a language you were told to forget. 

This is the only place you’ll find these stories — here, in the newspaper that has sat on your kitchen table since your parents unfolded it next to a Sunday feast.

Because here, you make the news. Your faith makes the news. Your culture, your sacrifices, your stubborn hope that refused to die on the boat, on the plane, in the holding room at JFK — these are the stories that matter.

We’re not talking about “immigrants.” We’re talking about family.