CHARITY NOW

WINTER 2022

THE LOVE OF JESUS, like water on its steady descent from source to sea, will use every available channel to find its way to the people who need it. Thus, Christian charity has a single source and countless delivery systems, from mega-agencies coordinating aid for tens of thousands, to the compassionate individual who offers his neighbor a coat or a coin or a cup of soup. In the middle ground is the central unit of Catholic service: the parish- or community-based ministry.

Ultimately, all charity comes down to the individual. A person who is able gives – in the form of money, goods, or time and effort; a person who is in need receives. At their best, large charitable institutions aggregate the contributions of many generous individuals and pass them on, amplified through economies of scale, to an exponentially larger number of needy people. In terms of numbers – important numbers such as healthful meals served, housing units constructed, warm coats delivered, perhaps even lives saved – the benefits of these institutions are very real.

A parish-based ministry may deliver impressive numbers, too, but the sense of connection is what sets it apart from most institutional charities. The donors and workers and volunteers are neighbors. They attend church together. The people served by the ministry are also neighbors. For all the many social and economic forces that may be driving them apart, the love of Jesus draws them together.

There are 284 parishes in the Archdiocese of New York, and virtually every one has at least one charitable parish ministry – a food pantry, a soup kitchen, a community closet. Many parishes are home to multiple Christian service programs. Often these ministries are supported by Catholic Charities of New York, but their missions are defined by the parishioners who create and coordinate them on behalf of their community.

In the next few pages, Archways offers profiles of three parishes in eastern Westchester County, on the shore of Long Island Sound, where a robust set of community-based ministries makes a significant difference in the lives of poor and vulnerable residents. St. John Bosco parish in Port Chester and the parishes of St. Augustine and Sts. John and Paul in Larchmont embody beautifully the spirit of all our parishes in the loving and generous ways they witness to Jesus’ mercy. We are inspired by their example.

Does your parish have a charitable ministry you find inspiring? Tell us about it at archways@archwaysmag.org.
 

PORT CHESTER: DON BOSCO COMMUNITY CENTER

At a little past 7:30 a.m., Don Bosco Place is already starting to buzz with Catholic action. On an otherwise unremarkable block a few steps from Port Chester’s downtown business district, a line of people is growing along the facade of the Don Bosco Community Center. Inside, Carmen Linero, the center’s coordinator, is neatening the breakfast array of coffee, juice, and bagels near the entry, signing in clients, and directing them to a large gymnasium where a food pantry and community closet have been set up. At the back of the cafeteria, staff and volunteers of the center’s soup kitchen are starting to prepare today’s hot lunch. And back outside on the sidewalk between the center and the Church of the Holy Rosary, Pedro Peña of the Don Bosco Workers program is assisting day laborers who have gathered in hopes of finding a job for the day or the week.

A parish-based ministry with the scope and scale of a much larger charitable organization, the community center was founded in 1928 by the Salesians of Don Bosco, who administer the parish of St. John Bosco. The center’s mission, originally focused on assistance to Italian immigrants, evolved as priests and parishioners saw the changing needs of the surrounding population. “The charism of St. John Bosco was all about serving children and the poor,” says the pastor, Fr. Pat Angelucci. “The center is very much a community and a parish enterprise.”

Linero, the center’s coordinator, is a parishioner. “The priests support us completely,” she says. And associate director Margaret Diaz agrees: “We’re all connected. The priests come down to visit and to do services. We are very much a part of the parish.” Formed out of a recent merger of four different Port Chester parishes, the St. John Bosco ministry has six parish priests, who offer weekly Masses in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish.

The center’s daily schedule is very full. “We start off serving breakfast, of course following Covid protocols,” Diaz says. “It’s either packaged and brought out to people, or they wait in line to come in. We have our clothing closet two mornings a week and we also give them shopping bags of food to take home.” The Don Bosco Workers program advises its clients, makes sure they return safely from work assignments, and advocates for them when employers sometime fail to pay their wages.

After lunch, the center prepares to welcome dozens of children in its after-school programs. “We open the boys and girls clubs at three o’clock in the afternoon, Monday through Friday,” Diaz says. Following Covid protocols, the children remain in pods and within their age groups. In good weather, one group at a time walks to a nearby park for some outdoor activity. Inside, the kids do homework and arts and crafts, play board games, and occasionally watch movies. “We’ve been averaging 40 to 60 kids per day,” Diaz adds. “At six o’clock they get ready to go home, and they leave with a hot, healthy meal for their dinner. In normal times, we would remain open until 7:30 and they would eat in the building, but right now we are trying to keep everything safe.”

On weekends, the center runs more programs: a pre-K class for toddlers, read-aloud mentoring for older grade-school kids, and computer training for their parents.

During the pandemic, there have been many challenges for the center and its clientele. Because so many other ministries in the region closed down during the worst days of the health crisis, the Don Bosco Center served many new people who came from miles away by train or bus. The clientele for the food pantry and hot lunch rose to twice pre-pandemic levels, even as the majority of volunteers had to stay away because they were seniors, at high risk for Covid-19 infection. Many clients lost jobs, and multiple families sharing apartments found that their children could not participate in remote education because of inadequate space and bandwidth for home studies.

There is little sign of burn-out among staff and volunteers at the center, however. Fr. Angelucci marvels at their spirit of community and service, and he cites an example: A couple of years ago, a woman came to the rectory on a Saturday morning in the middle of winter. “She was just arrived in the country, had no housing, no food, no employment, and several children. Walked into the office and said, ‘I need help.’ I called Carmen [Linero] at the center, and within a couple of hours the woman and her family had food, warm coats, and a community looking out for them.”
 

LARCHMONT: ST. AGUSTINE AND STS. JOHN AND PAUL

On a Friday night in November at the Church of St. Augustine in Larchmont, 10 miles south of Port Chester, a crew of a dozen parishioners is preparing for a Midnight Run. In a large meeting room on the ground floor of the parish center, adult ministry leaders work alongside student volunteers to sort items into portable bins – food, toiletries, socks, underwear, coats and scarves, all collected from the parish in the previous weeks. Once the bins are filled, the crew packs them into vans parked outside the parish center and heads off to upper Manhattan. There, they will distribute the much-needed goods, along with a Christian greeting, to people living on the streets.

Two days later, across town at Sts. John and Paul parish, Deacon Jack Shea stands in the parking lot behind the church with a cluster of parishioners loading donated food into the back of cars, to be delivered to local food pantries. One by one, parishioners pull up in their cars and hand over bags full of cereal, pasta, canned goods, and other non-perishables. This scene has played out one Sunday per month since early 2020, when Deacon Shea became aware of dramatically increased demand for food aid at the Hope Pantry in New Rochelle. With the members of the parish’s existing food ministry, he put out the call for Sunday morning food drop-offs.

“The response was astounding,” he recalls. “The first Sunday we did it, it was like a carnival. People were just driving in here, car after car after car. . . . The first trip, we had about 12 SUVs loaded with groceries.” The SUVs bring the food to Hope every Monday, and additional groceries, donated directly by Stop and Shop or bought and trucked from a nearby grocery wholesaler, are delivered later in the week to a variety of local pantries. “It’s grown week after week and month after month,” Deacon Shea says.

Welcome to the Catholic community of Larchmont, whose two parishes are served by a single pastor but retain their separate identities. Each sponsors an unusually robust array of charitable ministries – modest parishioner-led programs which, taken together, add up to an impressive campaign of Christian service. At St. Augustine, these include the Midnight Run group, a food pantry, a clothing drive, aid to refugees, collaboration with the Fuller Center for Housing to help build and rebuild housing for people in need, and an Angel Tree, providing toys and gift cards to families and children at Christmas. At Sts. John and Paul, efforts include multiple initiatives to battle food insecurity, clothing drives, Christmas giving programs, and much more. Students of the Sts. John and Paul School also participate in service projects throughout the year.

“One of the first things I noticed when I arrived here, one of the things that bring the two parishes together, is this desire to be of service to others,” says pastor Fr. John Bonnici, who was assigned to head both parishes in July 2021. “It’s a collection of individual efforts to support need in the community; but beautifully, it does come together. It creates a tapestry of service that reflects the people of both St. Augustine and Sts. John and Paul.”

Fr. Bonnici becomes animated when he describes the ministries he has witnessed in the parishes. “We had a clothing drive in the fall at St. Augustine, and there was so much donated that the truck that was sent to pick up the stuff was too small. They had to send a second truck. And it wasn’t only hand-me-downs, there were new products. And people went out of their way to dry clean some of the items. That was very nice to witness,” he says.

Then he starts in on the monthly Sts. John and Paul food drive. “The cars literally just pass by and deliver bags and boxes of food,” he says. “It’s both encouraging and inspiring.”

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