OSSINING, NEW YORK — Tai Shiga took a day trip to the Maryknoll Society Center in Ossining, where she learned about missionaries who traveled to China, South America and other faraway places to spread the Gospel. She came away from the trip having learned a lesson she vowed to remember.
“The biggest takeaway message for me was that you don’t have to travel across the world to be a missionary,” Shiga said. “You can also be one in your neighborhood.”
Shiga, a 23-year-old parishioner of the Church of St. Mel in Flushing, was one of 110 young adults, teenagers, and clergy from parishes in Queens East Deanery 4 who participated in a day-long excursion to the Maryknoll Society Center on March 7 to learn about the lives of missionaries, pray, and attend Mass.
The Maryknoll Society Center is the world headquarters of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, a religious order of missionaries founded in 1911. Servant of God Bishop Francis X. Ford, for whom a cause for canonization has been opened and who hailed from the Diocese of Brooklyn, was a Maryknoll missionary in China.
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The trip was organized by Father Joseph Fonti, the dean of Queens East Deanery 4 in northern Queens and the pastor of the Church of St. Mel, with a two-fold purpose — to bring young people closer to their Catholic faith and give parishioners from the deanery’s churches the chance to get to know one another.
“We wanted the young people of our deanery to know that they are called, as all of us, by baptism, to be missionary disciples,” Father Fonti explained. “And hopefully, hearing from missionaries, seeing a sacred place would help them come back to the streets of Flushing, Whitestone, and College Point to do the same.”
The trip was funded in part through a $15,000 grant from the Catholic Foundation for Brooklyn and Queens. Father Fonti applied for the grant on behalf of the deanery. The funds, made available through the foundation’s Community Grant Program, are designed to help parishes and deaneries promote the faith among young people.
John Notaro, executive director of Catholic Foundation for Brooklyn and Queens, said the Community Grant Program, “empowers deaneries and parishes to come together in creative ways that strengthen the local church.”
Notaro added that the organization is “focused on collaborative projects like the Maryknoll pilgrimage, which unite young people from different parishes in shared experiences of faith and mission.”
Peter Paolo, a 24-year-old parishioner of St. Luke Parish in Whitestone, said he was inspired by the Maryknoll trip, particularly by hearing the missionaries’ stories.
“I thought of all the young men from our local area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut who become priests and leave to go elsewhere. I found that very impactful,” said Paolo. “They lay everything on the line for their faith.”
While many on the trip were learning about the Maryknoll missionaries for the first time, others were already familiar with their work. Felicity Liu, 23, said her mother grew up in Taiwan and was familiar with the Maryknoll missionaries who served eastern Asia and China.
“It’s very cool to know that they’re here in New York,” said Liu, a parishioner of St. John Vianney Church in Flushing, who added that the trip brought her closer to her heritage.
“Usually, when I’m at the Chinese Mass at my church, I feel connected to both my culture and my faith,” she said. “But it was really cool to see the museum section at Maryknoll and learn about the founders and their first mission in China.”
Shiga said the trip was also a great opportunity to meet other young Catholics.
“It was a great opportunity to meet people,” she said. “Over lunch, we were just talking about our Catholic faith, and that felt so good.”