At its annual benefit, held at Bryant Park Grill in Manhattan on October 20, POTS honored Fordham for “its longstanding partnership and unwavering support for our shared community.”

Christina Hanson, the nonprofit’s executive director, noted that Fordham students, faculty, staff, and alumni have been volunteering, interning, and working at the group’s Webster Avenue location, near the University’s Rose Hill campus, since POTS was established as a tiny storefront soup kitchen in 1982.

Today, POTS is far more than a soup kitchen. Last year alone, it served more than 35,000 people at its three-story building. In addition to its food pantry and the daily meal it offers in its community dining room, POTS helps guests with immediate and long-term needs through services including a barbershop, showers, medical and dental services, a legal clinic, and more.

‘Part of Your Loving Community’

John J. Cecero, S.J., vice president for mission integration and ministry, accepted the award on behalf of the University. He said Fordham shares POTS’ commitment to “the core values of respect, hospitality, and empowerment.”

“For this reason, so many community engaged Fordham constituencies have enthusiastically served at POTS, from the Fordham Kiwanis student leaders who were there from your very beginning, to our present engagement through Urban Plunge, Global Outreach, and Pedro Arrupe volunteers, among others,” Father Cecero said.

“We’re so grateful to be a part of your loving community,” he added, and “we hope to contribute as best we can to these efforts for years to come.”

Recognizing the Dignity of Each Person

The organization also honored former board member Francis J. “Fran” Conroy, GABELLI ’79, for his “leadership, service, and longstanding dedication to the people of the Bronx.”

Upon receiving the award, Conroy, a Fordham graduate and a longtime executive committee member of the Fordham President’s Council, said he was “humbled” by the honor and pleased to “celebrate two organizations that have been very meaningful to me.”

He said he and his wife, the Rev. Anne Conroy, FCRH ’79, met as undergraduates at Fordham, and “despite being a kid from upstate New York, in New York City for the first time, I felt an immediate connection” to the Bronx.

“Besides all the technical skills I learned at Fordham, what I really learned was a sense of gratitude and the desire pay forward my good fortune. Fordham continues to instill that in the students … [who come] from all over the country and have a desire to help their neighbors in need.”

He said he has been drawn to support POTS because “in its soul—and I don’t use that term lightly—it recognizes and respects the dignity of each person who walks through the door. It’s inspiring to see and it challenges us to do likewise.”

“As impressive as the food programs are, and as the legal assistance offered to its clients is, it was the shower, the haircut, the clothing—they seem like small things to most of us. But for many of our neighbors, that’s not the case,” he said. “Being able to take a shower, get a haircut, put on clean clothes, have an address that you can list on a job application or benefits application, that means all the difference in the world.”

Father Cecero told dinner attendees he was “especially humbled” for Fordham to be honored along with Conroy.

“Fran and his wife, Anne, are the generous benefactors of the Conroy Family Endowed Scholarship Fund at Fordham,” he said. “Their commitment to POTS is certainly consistent with how they live their lives for and with others.”

‘We’re in This Together’

Conroy is not the only member of the Fordham community who has served POTS as a board or staff member. Hanson noted that many other Fordham alumni have lent their expertise to the nonprofit throughout its 40-year history, including Jack Marth, FCRH ’86, POTS’ longtime director of programming.

Marth was a first-year student at Fordham when POTS was founded. He volunteered to help, working closely with Ned Murphy, S.J., GSAS ’66, one of the organization’s three co-founders. (Father Murphy died in 2012.)

“Being at POTS was an opportunity to sit down and get to know the people better—not just hand them a plate, but to get to know the reality of the people we serve,” Marth told Fordham Magazine in 2014.

“Father Ned used to say, ‘There is no us and them, it’s we. We’re somehow in this together.’ That’s a message POTS still wants to impart to the students who serve here.”

John J. Cecero, S.J., associate professor of psychology at Fordham and former rector of the Spellman Hall Jesuit community, and member of the Fordham Board of Trustees, has been appointed by Father General Adolfo Nicolás, S.J., to be the provincial of the New York Province of the Society of Jesus.

Father Cecero, who will be leaving Fordham after 15 years, will begin his term on July 31, 2014. On July 31, 2015, when the New England Province and the New York Province are united, he will become the provincial of the new combined province.

Overseeing the merger will be both a big challenge and an opportunity as provincial, said Father Cecero. There are 320 Jesuits in the New York province and 240 in the New England province. They reside at colleges, high schools, parishes, and retreat centers stretching from Jersey City to Portland, Maine.

“The real challenge is going to be trying to find ways to move us toward that one unified province with a common vision and purpose, and really set in place structures and relationships that will foster that,” he said.

Although there are cultural differences spanning the region, there is also a great deal of overlap between the two areas, he said. Before he joined the Fordham faculty, he completed his theological studies at the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Ma., and interned as a psychologist in Boston.

A licensed clinical psychologist and director of Fordham’s Center for Spirituality and Mental Health, Father Cecero became a member of the Society of Jesus in 1976 and was ordained in 1989 in the Maryland Province.

He is presently enjoying a sabbatical year, where he is visiting Jesuit communities and spending quality time with his family and friends.

As rector, he oversaw the emotional, spiritual and physical well-being of the approximately 32 Jesuit residents there, and managed the operating budget for the facility. That role, which he took on in 2007 and completed in June 2013, has prepared him for this new assignment, in which he plans to focus on fostering more of a sense of community life.

“In the past, Jesuits had tended to think about community as kind of the place where you hang your hat, while the real action, the real living out of the Jesuit vocation, was outside of the community,” he said.

“But the last general congregation—wisely, I think—changed our thinking about that and said, ‘No, we really have to work on making our [living]communities places of prayer and companionship that support the work that we do. Out of that flows a sustained commitment to both ministries that we presently have and to envisioning new ministries we might undertake.”

Father Cecero introduced initiatives at Fordham that he wants to bring to the larger Jesuit community, including annual community retreats and a committee structure that will enable all members of the Society of Jesus to take responsibility for the life they live together.

After 16 years at Fordham, Father Cecero says he’ll miss his colleagues in the faculty, administration, and the Board of Trustees. But he noted that it’s an exciting time to be in a leadership position within the Society of Jesus, thanks to the elevation of fellow Jesuit, Pope Francis.

The “Francis Factor” comes when the Pope exhorts pastors in the church to “bear the smell of the sheep” and really get their hands dirty. His enthusiasm and his love of the poor has generated a great deal of enthusiasm and interest and hope within the church, he said.

“That’s really inspiring for people, and I can’t help but think that that’s going to continue to inspire vocations and support for what we do,” he said.