It’s a phrase that’s uttered often in Jesuit circles, and at Fordham, it’s been exemplified through programs such as the Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice and Global Outreach.

This year, as part of an effort to advance and expand that work, Fordham’s Office of Mission Integration and Planning launched the Center for Community Engaged Learning.

Arto Woodley, Ed.D., the center’s executive director, said the goal is to streamline operations, provide support for faculty who integrate community-engaged learning in their classes, and help students become civic leaders.

He also wants to instill what he calls a “philosophy of community.”

“When we say, ‘We’re working with the community,’ what does that really mean? Are we working with certain neighborhoods? Are we working with certain zip codes? What’s our emphasis? How do we engage with them?” he said.

“Part of developing this center helps us say, ‘Who are our neighbors? Who are we working with, and why are we working with them? What will be the impact of our work?’”

A Focus on Faculty

As part of the reorganization, the Dorothy Day Center and Global Outreach no longer operate as independent entities. Former Dorothy Day Center director Roxanne De La Torre has assumed the title of director of campus and community leadership in the larger center. Likewise, Paul Francis, who had been director of Global Outreach, has assumed the title of director of programs and operations.

Woodley said the level of community outreach, leadership development, and faculty support should increase significantly with the reorganization. This, he said, will honor the legacy of Day, for whom the University’s Community Service Program was renamed in 2009.

Faculty will be a key part of the center’s new focus. That’s because like the residents who live near Fordham’s campuses, they have long-lasting ties to the community. The goal is to develop deep and sustainable relationships between the two groups that will provide a context for students to learn.

“At many institutions, it’s activity-based. You know, we sent 50 students to a soup kitchen, they stacked 100 cans, and they gave those cans to five families. Our whole goal is to make sure we expand the boundaries of engaged scholarship beyond that,” he said.

Not every subject taught in the University naturally lends itself to engaged scholarship, but for some professors, it is a powerful tool. Karina Hogan, Ph.D., an associate professor of theology who was part of a faculty advisory committee on community outreach, plans next semester to have students in her Sacred Texts of the Mideast class examine the ways in which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam address themes of social justice in their texts. They will split into three groups and work out of a New York City synagogue, church, and mosque, where they will be able to observe how members of the respective congregations put words into action.

“The idea is to really get out and see how these ideas are actually put into action. I think it’ll be a good addition to the class,” she said.

“They Live In This Community”

For Carey Kasten, Ph.D., associate professor of modern languages, it would be inconceivable not to send students in her Spanish Language and Literature class off campus.

“They live in this community, and I want them to see that they’re capable of engaging civically with their community, ” she said.

“Speaking in a different language creates foreign travel opportunities in the city we live in, but ultimately, I would like to students to apply those skills to everything they do.”

In the past, Kasten has found partner organizations to work with both on her own and through the Dorothy Day Center. It can be a logistical challenge; since many only need three to four students, she works with several different groups to place all her students. She’s intrigued by possible connections the Center for Engaged Learning will create, and hopes they will add to those that happen organically.

A good example is the immigrant support group New Sanctuary Coalition, she said. Although many students have been referred there via faculty, several have found the group on their own and incorporated volunteering there into their own studies.

Ideally, Kasten said, she’d also like to connect volunteer opportunities to her research agenda, something that Woodley said the center will focus on as well.

“I’ve really struggled with how to bring some of this work out of the classroom and into my research. I hope to see examples from faculty members on how to do this,” she said.

Scholarship Intertwined With Civic Involvement

One of Kasten’s students, Colleen Kelly, a senior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center who’s majoring in social work and Spanish, used a Dean’s Summer Research Grant to intern last summer at the Northern Manhattan Immigration Corporation. She was interested in learning what it actually means for New York City to be a sanctuary city.

She learned that immigrants who are in the country legally are being discouraged from applying to become citizens because seemingly minor crimes—such as jumping a turnstile—on their record might trigger a visit from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“In this time, it’s very critical to have an open definition of sanctuary and realize, in terms of the immigrant community, it’s always changing because the current administration is instilling a lot of fear of anyone who’s not a citizen,” she said.

“So anyone that’s not a citizen is really in need of sanctuary, in the form of community.”

Both this internship and one she’s currently doing at a school in the Bronx, where she’s assisting a social worker, have been directly informed by her classwork.

“I also know if a client comes to me and they need help with their asylum connection, I now have connections,” she said.

“Growing my network is not only great for my own job prospects but also my clients I’m going to serve.”

Woodley said establishing successful partnerships will go a long way toward helping Fordham fulfill the tenets of its Jesuit heritage.

“When Jesus was asked by the Sadducees what the greatest commandment was, he said to love the Lord thy God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and to love thy neighbor as yourself,” he said.

“The center is the ‘love thy neighbor’ part of it, but with a system that’s tied to engaged scholarship.”

The dinner reception and certificate ceremony capped off the first English as a Second Language (ESL) course offered to Bronx adults by Fordham’s Institute of American Language and Culture (IALC). The free course was made possible by a grant from the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development and through collaboration with Fordham’s Office of Sponsored Programs.

“We wanted to be more involved in the community,” Community ESL Program Coordinator Jesús Aceves-Loza said of the IALC, which has been providing English courses for college students from around the world for more than 30 years.

“The Jesuits have this principle of cura personalis, care for the whole person. Talking metaphorically, the whole person is the Bronx, and we need to address the needs of every part of that huge body.”

Students in the Community ESL program hailed from 13 countries, including Nicaragua, Mexico, Italy, and the Dominican Republic. Many of them brought children and other family members to the reception. After the certificate presentation, some gave speeches or performances, including dances, songs, and even a clown act.

‘I Have Been Waiting for This’

Aceves-Loza said the ESL students ranged in age from a young man of 23 to 83-year-old “Italian nonna” Giuseppina Cibelli, of whom he spoke fondly.

“She said, ‘This is the first time we feel that any Catholic college is interested in us. For 50 years I have been waiting for this. It’s wonderful that Fordham is taking care of us as its neighbors.’”

The program was taught and developed by Joy Jo, Ed.D., and other ESL teachers from the IALC; other volunteer instructors included Fordham staff, students, and Jesuit scholastics from Ciszek Hall.  All teachers completed a certificate program in Mental Health/First Aid from the New York City health department as part of their training.

The course was taught on the Rose Hill campus and, through a connection with Fordham’s Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice, at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish, which had offered ESL courses in the past. Several of the students were nuns in the Hermanas Misioneras Servidoras de la Palabra order, who come from Mexico and serve communities throughout the Bronx.

“We had a chance to learn firsthand about the challenges these people face on a daily basis,” said Aceves-Loza. During the assessment period, he said, “Some people broke down.” Some students were living in shelters, looking to find a job so they could find a home. Some were refugees. Some were looking to advance in their jobs and provide a better life for their families.

Supporting Not Just Students, but Families

One of the students, Luis Ingram, works in a company that makes electronic systems for elevators. He is a 37-year-old father of two children who came to the U.S. from Nicaragua.

“This program has given me the chance not only to learn a new language, but also to find new opportunities and open new doors in my life,” said Ingram, who wants to go back to college and become a manager. Aceves-Loza said for Ingram, “family is everything.”

Many of the program’s students had a high level of education, holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Most had finished high school. “But they can’t find a job here because they don’t speak English,” Aceves-Loza said.

Student Quendy Perez, 47, lives with her son, Adonis, who was also a student in the program. Perez has a part-time job, but wants to become proficient in English in order to find better employment. She built a strong connection with Professor Jo, her instructor.

“I love the way she teaches us,” said Perez, who came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic, “I also love her passion, patience, and dedication.”

The program initially enrolled 146 students with beginner and intermediate English skills. Some had to drop out because of other commitments, including one person who found a job during the course—“which was a good reason!” said Aceves-Loza. At the end of the six-month program, Fordham presented 96 certificates to students who showed a gain on the assessment test and attended at least 85 percent of classes.

James Stabler-Havener, director of the IALC, noted that working together with the Office of Sponsored Programs, the institute received a renewal of the grant and is also seeking additional funding sources to expand the program for returning students and new students.

In the meantime, over the summer the institute will be offering free career workshops, as well as programs on immigrant rights and how to navigate the school system as parents.

“When we enroll a student, it’s not the student alone, it’s their family,” said Aceves-Loza, who noted that these language skills are helping adults to communicate with their own children, many of whom have forgotten their parents’ native tongue. “Family support is crucial.”

Aceves-Loza said when a representative from the Department of Youth and Community Development came to visit the program, she called it a model.

“She said, ‘You are one of my two best programs,’” he said, acknowledging that he and his colleagues appreciated the praise.

“But it’s much better to see how the program has changed lives.”

A medical doctor considers how socioeconomic factors affect our health

Dr. Hussein Safa’s ambitions were shaped by a war. It broke out in 2006 in Lebanon, where he grew up, and he was impressed by the doctors who showed up in his country and risked their lives to provide much-needed medical help.

He later learned the name of their organization: Doctors Without Borders. “When I learned about that, I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do. That’s how I want to give back at some point.’”

Today he’s closing in on that ambition, having just finished medical school at Creighton University and preparing to begin his residency at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

The idea of giving back was reinforced by his education at Fordham. Grants and scholarships made it possible for him to attend, and the University’s Urban Plunge program fueled his own extraordinary community service efforts, which were recognized by Fordham’s Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice.

At Creighton, he founded an organization to advocate for the needs of LGBTQ patients and providers. And he sought out his residency program because, in addition to its medical training, it teaches community involvement and advocacy so that doctors can better meet the health care needs of urban, diverse populations.

It was Urban Plunge that opened Safa’s eyes to the particular problems facing some urban residents, like a lack of affordable nutritious food.

“Human health doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” Safa says, expressing a holistic view reinforced at Fordham and at Creighton, both Jesuit universities that nurture the whole person. “The whole person includes their social environment.”

He feels privileged to have the opportunity to be a doctor and wants to use it for others’ benefit. After completing his three-year residency, which will also include an HIV and global health track, Safa plans to join Doctors Without Borders so he can help people in distressed areas, regardless of whether they can pay for health care. He himself didn’t have health insurance until he came to the United States with his parents and settled in Staten Island just before his 17th birthday.

“I know what it’s like to be constantly afraid that you’re going to get sick and you don’t have money for it,” he says. “That’s part of the reason that I want to give back.”

Read more “20 in Their 20s” profiles. 

An economist helps produce a monthly report that gets U.S. presidents tweeting

As a senior economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Wander Cedeño helps to produce the nation’s monthly jobs report—a highly cited indicator of the economy’s health. Growing up in New York City’s Washington Heights, he says he never could have imagined “working steps from the Capitol and having current and former presidents tweet about your report. It’s very humbling.”

Cedeño received scholarship support for his undergraduate studies at the Gabelli School of Business. “The help that Fordham provided sealed the deal in my being able to attend a top-notch institution,” he says.

It also helped seal another deal: On a trip with the University’s Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice, he met his wife, Honduran-born Aryany (Pérez) Cedeño, FCRH ’11. The two were married in 2013.

For his master’s degree in international political economy and development (IPED), Cedeño was awarded a scholarship from Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “I think it’s a very special place,” he says of IPED, adding that he appreciated the program’s small size and the diversity of his cohort. He studied abroad briefly in the Philippines, where the conditions he witnessed made a big impact. “I came from a working-class neighborhood and I saw poverty in the U.S., but seeing poverty in a developing country is on another scale. It just makes you outwardly focused,” he says. “And it reaffirmed my desire to live a life of service.”

After graduation, Cedeño served as a New York City Urban Fellow. He worked in the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, where, among other things, he helped assess and catalog the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. “It was a massive cleanup, a crash course in emergency response,” he says. “It was really a dynamic experience.” He joined the labor statistics bureau in 2013, and was promoted to his current position last December.

Leaving New York was bittersweet, Cedeño says. He misses his parents, who were born in the Dominican Republic. “But I think everyone understands the journey. Not only mine, but my family’s, coming to America 30 years ago.”

Read more “20 in Their 20s” profiles.

Social justice leaders Chloe Potsklan, GABELLI ’17, and Alexa McMenamin, FCLC ’17, will be awarded the Dorothy Day Peacemaker Award for Leadership in Social Action at this year’s 2017 commencement ceremonies.

“They have built amazing relationships and transformed their communities, which has inspired their fellow classmates and leaders to continue to fight for justice on campus and off campus,” said Katheryn Crawford, associate director of the The Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice.

The award’s namesake, Day, co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement, where she applied Catholic social teaching to advocate for the poor and marginalized communities.

Potsklan, who has served as a mentor and New York regional director at the Social Impact 360 program at Fordham, has helped to cultivate conversations at Fordham focused on everything from race and diversity to gender and class. She said community service allowed her to connect with her roots.

“I think most of it stems from the fact that my mom is an immigrant from Venezuela, and growing up in Greenwich, and particularly Connecticut, I was one of the few people [in my community]who were of mixed backgrounds,” said Potsklan, an information systems major.

Potsklan said her participation in the pre-orientation program Urban Plunge exposed her to the diverse community of the Bronx during her freshman year, and inspired her to raise awareness about issues that were affecting underrepresented Bronxites, including food justice and immigration. Since then, she has volunteered at local nonprofits like The Bronx is Blooming, tutored bilingual middle school and high school students, and mentored underclassmen at Fordham. But there’s still more work to do, she said.

“One thing that Father McShane said that has really resonated with me was that he wants us to leave Fordham ‘bothered.’ I really like that term because it encourages us to not be numb to the things that are going on around us,” said Potsklan, who will be volunteering in Ecuador this summer. “Even standing in solidarity with other people makes a huge difference.”

McMenamin grew up attending Quaker school in Philadelphia, where she said social justice was an integral part of her upbringing. She recalls tagging along to work with her grandmother, who taught low-income disabled students in the Philadelphia school district.

“It’s about collective labor,” she said. “We’re all personally obligated to do this work.”

McMenamin, a programming director of the Feminist Alliance at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, co-founded the anti-sexual assault organization, the It’s On Us Coalition at Fordham last year to promote healthy discussions among students around sexual assault and sexual misconduct. A double major in political science and English, McMenamin has also helped to organize a “blackout” protest at Fordham in 2015 to bring attention to racism and bias crimes.

“A lot the work that I have been doing has been about building community and making people feel like they have access when things go wrong, especially marginalized communities on campus,” said McMenamin, who writes about campus life issues for Teen Vogue.

After graduation, McMenamin will be working as a volunteering fellow at the Philadelphia nonprofit the Bread & Roses Community Fund.

Crawford said Potsklan and McMenamin’s dedication and passion for creating a better world will take them far.

“I think Chloe and Lexi have learned some great skills and lessons through the Dorothy Day Center that they will take with them to the next community they build,” she said.

Since her death in 1980, many people have hoped to see Day canonized as a saint, recognizing her lifelong commitment to helping the poor, fighting for workers’ rights, and opposing war.

For Kate Hennessy, the youngest of Day’s nine grandchildren, Dorothy Day was indeed an inspiring figure of goodness. But she was also “Granny,” a very real person in her life.

A prolific writer herself, Hennessy has shed light on this personal side of her grandmother in a book titled Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty (Scribner, 2017).

She shared her recollections of Day with the Fordham community in a reading and book signing on March 28 at the Rose Hill campus. The portrait she presented was of a woman who continually gave of what she had to others.

“My grandmother was extraordinarily non-material,” she said. “People were always giving her gifts and she would immediately hand them off to someone else. It was just a kind of instinctive gesture.”

Before a capacity audience, Hennessy said she was motivated to write the book to help people understand Day as a mother, grandmother, and a member of both her own family and the Catholic Worker family.

“If we lose that part of her story it would really be a tragedy. It puts her in the context of a whole human life and doesn’t elevate her or simplify her,” she said.

For Hennessy, the book is as much a portrait of Day as it is a portrait of Hennessy’s mother, Tamar, who played an integral role in the course of Day’s life.

“After all,” she said, “it was the conception of my mother that started my grandmother on her path of Catholicism.” It had been Day’s joy in her pregnancy that had awakened her spiritual longing and her desire to have Tamar baptized. Soon after, Day joined the Catholic Church.

Though Hennessy portrayed her mother and grandmother as two very different women, she said they were ultimately bound by a profound love for each other and by a shared belief in one’s personal responsibility to care for others.

“Both of them deeply believed every single person has a vocation and it is so important to figure out what it is,” she said. “What are your skills? What do you have to give? Where are you drawn to?”

In reading from her book, Hennessy brought to life her teenage visits to see Day at Maryhouse, one of the Catholic Worker “houses of hospitality” that still operates on 3rd Street in Manhattan. She depicted a place of congenial activity and ringing phones, with Day at its center, peaceful in the simple room where she lived, surrounded by her beloved books.

Hennessy said she believes it’s important that each new generation reexamine the life of her grandmother for guidance in how we can respond to the continued problems of poverty, injustice, and hopelessness.

“I certainly wrote this book with every intention of trying to change people’s lives,” she said. “The story of Dorothy Day will change your life if you pay attention to it.”

Day’s legacy continues in Fordham’s Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice, which connects students to justice-related community service opportunities. The center co-sponsored Hennessy’s reading together with the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies.

For Roxanne De La Torre, the director of the Dorothy Day Center, learning more about Day’s life helps us to understand that “holiness, goodness, and discovering beauty through all of life’s ups and downs is all a part of this glorious mystery.”

“Hopefully our students can understand that it’s not out of their reach to live a good, blessed life—a life of vocation and direction,” she said.

Hennessy’s previous book, a collaboration with the photographer Vivian Cherry titled Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker: The Miracle of Our Continuance, was published by Fordham University Press in 2016.

–Nina Heidig

But if they are going to thrive, said a Jesuit bishop at a June 1 Fordham event, they need to improve academic standards.

Speaking at the 22nd Annual Catholic School Executive Leadership Dinner hosted by the Graduate School of Education (GSE), Bishop George V. Murry, SJ, cautioned that demographic shifts have brought Catholic schools to a crossroads. When parents can choose a public education that’s free, tuition-dependent schools need to raise their bar.

“Many of our Catholic schools are exceptional in the quality of education. But we also know that if we’re honest, we have many schools that are mediocre,” said Bishop Murry, who is chairman of the board of directors of the National Catholic Education Association. “We have to challenge ourselves in terms of quality of education to not simply be good enough, but to be … better than the public schools that are around us.”

Bishop Murry, who acts as chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Education Committee, said that a “living faith, academic achievement, and self-discipline have long been hallmarks” that are worth preserving in Catholic schools.

The GSE event, inspired by the Jubilee of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis, recognized leaders of ‘Schools of Charity and Mercy’ who advance school programs that teach and practice the spiritual and corporal works of mercy in unique ways. Representatives from schools from the Archdioceses of New York, Newark, and Hartford, and the Dioceses of Albany, Bridgeport, Brooklyn, and Rockville Centre attended. Fordham’s own Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice was also honored.

Joseph M. McShane, SJ, president of Fordham, compared the honorees’ work to that of the U.S.-based De La Salle Christian Brothers at Bethlehem University in the West Bank—a place he had visited the week before during a trip to the Middle East.

Bethlehem is filled with grinding poverty and despair, he said, and there’s a sense of apprehension at every turn. The university campus is an oasis in the city, however—one where Muslim and Christian students meet and take on the “responsibility to build a world in Palestine, which is a world of peace, where [students] will learn that [they]  are Palestinians together … men and women of faith who can build a future,” Father McShane said.

“This is your story,” he told the honorees. “I remind you that the Christian Brothers who are there [in Bethlehem] were educated by you. They have the experience you gave them: excellence with purpose and a sense of responsibility to transform the world. They took that message to a very barren place, a place of fear, and made it a place of empowerment and transformation.”

Sarah Allison (Rose Hill): Allison dedicated much of her time to the Dorothy Day Center and the circulation of its social justice values with her fellow Fordham students.  As a Social Justice Leader, she has focused on the issues of police brutality and institutionalized racism. 

Zann Ballsun-Simms (Lincoln Center): Ballsun-Simms has worked with Fordham freshmen as a leader in the Urban Plunge program, as well as assisting rural Ghanaian students in the construction of a school.  She was a program coordinator with the Met Council on Housing, where she helped organize rallies, protests, and marches that drew thousands.

Chris Hennessy (Lincoln Center): As a Social Justice Leader, Hennessy worked to connect Fordham with the community outside the campus on social justice issues. He has taken a leadership role in the Urban Plunge program, the Hurricane Sandy relief programs, and numerous on-campus events, such as talk backs and black outs.

Scarly Rodriguez (Rose Hill): Rodriguez has been a coordinator with Fordham’s History Makers Program since even before her enrollment at Fordham. Since then, her work has extended from the local sphere, as a volunteer at the Bronx Teen Health Center, to the international, in India with Global Outreach and in El Salvador with the Casa de la Solidaridad.

Emily Tormey (Rose Hill): In her time at Fordham, Tormey has advanced from Urban Plunge and College Access, to initiatives such as Global Outreach and the Social Justice Leaders. She was the chapter Director of “Strive for College” and the Fordham Club. As a graduate, she will continue her service work with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.

— Kiran Singh contributed to the reporting

Thursday, Oct. 29
10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Various locations

The teach-in will be divided into five sections and will be led by members of the psychology, theology, sociology, and English departments, as well as the Graduate School of Education, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and Campus Ministry.

In addition to “History and Groundwork,” the topics addressed will be “Intersections of Identity & Identity Beyond Black and White,” “Religion and the Movements for Racial Justice,” “Microaggressions,” and “Becoming an Anti-Racist Institution.” Members of the Fordham community can visit the page for more information and to register.

Jeannine Hill Fletcher, PhD, an associate professor of theology who will participate in the first and last sessions of the day, said the teach-in originated with meetings between faculty and staff members who’d attended training at the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, which describes itself as an international collective of anti-racist, multicultural community organizers and educators dedicated to social transformation.

At Fordham, the group began meeting three years ago as the Undoing Racism Collective, said Hill Fletcher. In February 2014, in response to an invitation by Fordham President Joseph M. McShane, SJ, to have a university-wide dialogue on racism, it held its first open meeting.

Hill Fletcher said that the idea for the teach-in predated a recent campus incident where racist and anti-Semitic graffiti was discovered in a dorm on campus; the incident, however, illustrates the value of promoting racial justice through a campus-focused event, she said.

“A teach-in became pressing last year with the national events (such as) the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Gardner, and the reality that, 50 years after Martin Luther King, we’re still not following though on the promises of the civil rights movement,” she said.

Hill Fletcher said organizers hope to offer shared language, history, and analysis that comes out of scholarship around issues of race to create a shared space where all feel comfortable speaking freely about a contentious topic. And it’s not just for students.

“At the same time we want to ask, how does Fordham as an anti-racist institution have an impact on all staff, faculty, and administration members?” she said.

“What are the ways in which Fordham moves us toward a fully inclusive world, through its policies, and its programming, the education it provides, and to whom it provides?”

At Fordham, students from all three campuses gathered to listen to, discuss, and commemorate the historic visit from the first Jesuit pope.

A live viewing at the Lincoln Center campus of the pope’s address to Congress

Papal flags flew and “Pope2Congress” bingo cards were distributed on Sept 24, as members of the Fordham community gathered around televisions on all three campuses to watch Pope Francis address a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

In addition to the lobby in the McGinley Center and Room 228 at the Westchester campus, the address—the first ever for a pope—was broadcast in the plaza-level lobby at the Lincoln Center campus.

The address, in which the pope challenged U.S. leaders on issues such immigration, global climate change, and income inequality, drew both a mix of curious onlookers who lingered at the top of the escalators upon seeing the crowd, and those who listened intently to the hour-long address.

Jamie Saltamachia, FCRH ‘14, GSS ’15, assistant director of the Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice, was excited that the pope was speaking directly to leaders whose constituents, in many cases, are poor.

“He’s really made an impact on a lot of people and really opened a lot of eyes,” she said.

“People who may have lost their faith years ago are starting to come back to the church, because he is so open minded and has a strong sense of social justice.”

Katie Svejkoski, a first-year English graduate student from St. Louis, said she was pleasantly surprised that Francis called for the abolishment of the death penalty, and was thrilled that he praised Dorothy Day.

John J. Shea, S.J. director for Campus Ministry at Lincoln Center, said he found the pope to be very strong in what he wanted to say without being political. And while he was particularly impressed that Francis grouped Thomas Merton with Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Dorothy Day as Americans worthy of emulation, he said it was amazing just to see a pope in such a setting.

“We live in interesting times. A pope would never have been invited when I was a boy in high school, when John F. Kennedy was trying to get elected, because they thought the pope would try to run America,” he said.

“Today we see that 30 percent of Congress is Roman Catholic, including the speaker of the house, as are the vice president and more than half of the Supreme Court. It’s all amazing.”

Procession through Central Park

The pope’s second day in New York began with an address to the United Nations, followed by a solemn visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in downtown Manhattan. Later that afternoon, the pontiff spoke to elementary school students at Our Lady Queen of Angels School in Harlem before greeting the multitude in Central Park.

At Central Park, where 80,000 New Yorkers won tickets in a lottery to the papal procession, some members of the Fordham community waited in line for nearly three hours to get into the park, as several lines snaked between 60^th and 69^th streets.

Once in the park, Maddy Cunningham, DSW, professor of social work at the Graduate School of Social Service, made a decision to watch the procession rather than try to photograph the pope with her phone as he passed by in his Popemobile.

“I just wanted to see him with my own eyes, to experience the moment,” said Cunningham, who still remembers seeing Pope Paul VI in a procession on Queens Boulevard as a child in 1965. “I am glad I didn’t even try to film [because]he was turned to our side, and he was waving. I now have that image in my mind’s eye.”

Noreen Rafferty, an assistant director in the office of marketing and communications, videotaped the moment when “all the hands went up.”

“It was unbelievable,” she said. “There were so many nationalities—Italian, Irish, Filipino, Puerto Rican. He’s got to come again.”

The Papal Mass at Madison Square Garden

From Central Park, Pope Francis journeyed south to Madison Square Garden, where he celebrated Mass Friday evening with more than 20,000 people.

Despite a three-hour wait and a line that stretched 20 city blocks, the atmosphere outside the arena was one of excitement and conviviality. Strangers befriended one another as they inched closer to the entrance. A group of nuns sang hymns to pass the time. One man broke from the line and ducked into a Duane Reade, returning with a case of water for the wearying pilgrims.

“I was thirsty, and I figured everyone else was, too,” he said as he distributed water bottles down the line.

At 6 p.m. sharp, musicians from St. Patrick’s Cathedral Choir and the New York Archdiocesan Festival Chorale began the processional hymn, and Pope Francis processed into the arena accompanied by bishops, priests, deacons, and seminarians from throughout New York State.

The 90-minute Mass was as international as the crowd itself, with the liturgy alternating between Spanish and English and prayers being offered in Gaelic, Mandarin, French, and Italian. In his homily, Pope Francis spoke in Spanish about the role of faith in cities. Big cities encompass the diversity of life, with their many cultures, languages, cuisines, traditions, and histories. Negotiating this diversity is not always easy, though, the pontiff said. Tragically, our most vibrant cities tend to hide “second-class citizens.”

“Beneath the roar of traffic, beneath the ‘rapid pace of change,’ so many faces pass by unnoticed because they have no ‘right’ to be there, no right to be part of the city,” Pope Francis said from an ambo built especially for the Mass by young men from Lincoln Hall Boys’ Haven.

“They are the foreigners, the children who go without schooling, those deprived of medical insurance, the homeless, the forgotten elderly. These people stand at the edges of our great avenues, in our streets, in deafening anonymity. They become part of an urban landscape which is more and more taken for granted, in our eyes, and especially in our hearts.”

The remedy to our “isolation and lack of concern for the lives of others” is faith, the pope said. We must heed the words of the prophet Isaiah by “learning to see” God within the city, and then go out to meet others “where they really are, not where we think they should be.”

“The people who walk, breath, and live in the midst of smog, have seen a great light, have experienced a breath of fresh air,” Pope Francis said. This light imbues us with a “liberating” hope—“A hope which is unafraid of involvement… which makes us see, even in the midst of smog, the presence of God as he continues to walk the streets of our city.”

As the Mass drew to a close, Archbishop of New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan offered words of welcome and gratitude to the Holy Father on behalf of New Yorkers.

“Every day and at every Mass, we pray for Francis our pope—and now you here you are!” Cardinal Dolan said, prompting an eruption of cheering and applause throughout the arena—the single display of ebullience amid an otherwise reverent liturgy.

“It is so dazzlingly evident this evening that the Church is our family. Thank you, Holy Father, for visiting us, your family.”

The pope offered a final blessing and before departing, delivered his familiar farewell.

“And please, I ask you—don’t forget to pray for me,” he said.

Fordham Day of Service

On Sept. 26, students and other members of the Fordham community participated in a day of service with Habitat for Humanity-Westchester in honor of the pope’s visit, said Carol Gibney, assistant director of campus ministry. More students showed up than had signed up, she said.

The students worked on refurbishing the Pope Francis house in Yonkers as well as on some other projects in the surrounding area—cleaning an abandoned lot, planting flowers, and laying a brick walkway.

“The area we worked in is one of those communities that are often plagued with violence, crime, and poverty,” said Gibney. “It is one of those communities often forgotten or discarded as ‘worthless’” that Pope Francis spoke about on his U.S. trip.

Once the South Yonkers house is completed in December, it will become the home of U.S. Army Sgt. Michael Velazquez, 24, and his family of six.

“It was a great day for our students as the idea of being men and women for others, particularly by helping to build a house for an Iraqi veteran, a house that is named after the first Jesuit Pope!”

(Patrick Verel and Janet Sassi contributed to this report. Various photographs were submitted by members of the Fordham community.)

[doptg id=”34″] ]]> 28546 https://now.fordham.edu/living-the-mission/fordham-freshmen-take-the-plunge/ Thu, 10 Sep 2015 14:35:57 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=28128 Each year during orientation, Fordham freshmen join fellow Rams and head out to do some good in and around the city. This year a group of students planted and harvested food for the homeless at the Rauschenbusch Metro Ministries on West 40th Street in Manhattan.

The Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice sponsored the Urban Plunge events for more than 100 students at nine locations throughout Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. The service projects focused on local youth, the elderly, the homeless, and the environment.
(Video by Jeff Coltin, FCRH ’15)

— Janet Sassi