Daniel Angel, Christopher Mertens, Robert Angel - Off to Africa With CRS

One of the greatest delights of my life as  both a priest and a bishop has been a long association with Catholic Relief Services. For twelve years I served on the Board of Directors of our Church’s overseas development and relief agency and for the last six I was privileged to be its Chairman of the Board and for a time, its President. During all those years I came to deeply appreciate CRS’s work throughout the globe to the poor, disadvantaged and ignored. Its staff, U.S. and international, are both committed and extremely competent. At the present moment I serve on a Search Committee seeking a replacement for Kenneth Hackett who is retiring after eighteen years at the helm of this agency which will approach one billion dollars in program services in the coming year. I was also on the Search Committee when chose Mr. Hackett. So my history, knowledge of and love for CRS runs very deep and is in my DNA.

Two years ago I invited a college Junior at what was then Loyola Baltimore and a graduate of St. Jude the Apostle elementary school and Jesuit High School to consider a summer internship with CRS. At the time I thought he would likely be assigned to Africa or South America, but instead the agency sent him to India for eight weeks. Brendan J. Stack who on Saturday graduated from Loyola Maryland had a great summer watching the Church work in an environment which was not easy and he came away with a deep respect for the work of CRS and a personal commitment to serve the poor as long as he might. This August he leaves for Idaho to spend a year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps work with the homeless and undocumented in Boise, Idaho.

This summer I have invited two seminarians and one junior at Notre Dame University to take advantage of a similar opportunity and they leave shortly for their eight week assignments on the African Continent. Bob Angel is a graduate of Holy Family elementary in St. Petersburg and Northeast High School where he was a competitive swimmer. After graduating from the University of Florida he worked for one year as a fireman with the Tampa Fire Department where we won an award as the most spirit-filled recruit the department had in 2009. However, he heard the voice of the Lord suggesting to him that he might wish to try priesthood and he has spent the last two years in the pre-theology program at St. John Vianney College Seminary in Miami and will enter St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach for his theology studies this August. Bob has been assigned to Sierra Leone where he will be involved in peace-building efforts in which CRS is engaged in a country that has recently seen the end to a long and bloody civil war. He will also work with children in a Catholic parish.

One year after Bob entered the seminary in Miami, his younger brother Dan who was halfway through  his college studies at the University of Central Florida decided to do the same and he joined his older sibling last Fall and finished his junior year a few weeks ago. Dan, like Bob, attended Holy Family Catholic School and Northeast High School where he also was a competitive swimmer. While attending UCF, Dan worked as a watchman and “friend” of Shamu at Sea World in Orlando. Dan has been assigned to a parish in Liberia, 100 miles outside of Monrovia, the capital. Liberia is also in the midst of reunification of purpose and people following a deadly and long civil war.

If it seems like all the CRS interns this year have swimming in their background, it is true but merely an accident. Christopher Mertens will be a junior in pre-med at Notre Dame University this fall as well as a student manager to the football and other varsity sports. He was the St. Petersburg Times “Male Scholar-Athlete” for Pinellas County in 2009, was captain for two years of the Palm Harbor University Swim Team, held a couple of school records and led his team to successful post-season competition in regional and state swimming meets. At Notre Dame, Christopher is one of the leaders in  his dorm’s commitment to Dismas House, a halfway house for convicted felons who have served their prison sentences, have been released and are looking for employment and some future better than what they have just left. Christopher has been assigned to Ghana and will work with a Doctor in an AIDS clinic in the northern small city of Tamale for eight weeks as a medical assistant.

If these three men have a great experience in the universal Church and a new appreciation of the role of Catholic Relief Services, then as long as CRS accepts young people in its program, I will be open to offering the opportunity to other young women and men who might wish to be sent to any where on the globe where there are people in need and suffering. Remember, however, it could be tough like Haiti and all the assignments have a certain amount of low risk and major inconvenience to the standard of living to which we are accustomed.

The Angel brothers are blogging their experiences this summer on http://african-angels.blogspot.com/ The first installment is up and ready for your viewing and I shall throughout the summer be posting from all three things I think you will be interested in reading and/or learning about our “three ambassadors to Africa” from the Diocese of St. Petersburg.

+CRS

Stain Glass Window of the Holy Family at Holy Family Church, St. Petersburg

Some weeks ago, in fact during the November meeting of bishops in Baltimore, you may recall that I wrote of a luncheon I had with two seniors at Loyola Baltimore. One was from our diocese, Brendan Stack who wrote so well in this space of his experience with Catholic Relief Services in India during the summer of 2009 and his roommate whom I had never met until then, Patrick Sullivan who attended Chaminade High School in Mineola, New York. I asked both men what the Church could do generally and what I might do specifically as bishop to staunch the flow of young people from leaving the Church of their baptism for other faiths or no faith. Patrick must have spent some time reflecting on the question because shortly after I returned home he wrote me quite a letter which I think is very appropriate to share with you today. I have his permission and what follows in strictly Sullivan and not Lynch:

“As I was thinking more about our conversation, particularly about our ‘losing’ of  practicing Catholics, I thought about our families being the foundation of our faith. I can not tell you the amount of times I have heard from my friends, even those strong in faith, that prayer in the home is few and far between. I can speak from personal experience; my mother is extremely involved with the Church, spending the majority of her day working with those who form men for the priesthood. My father is a recent convert to Catholicism whose fervor for the Church is paralleled by few. Even with their strong convictions, though, familial prayer is something that is hard to find in my home. Perhaps, if we stress the noticeable presence of Jesus within the Catholic home, the foundation that Brendan alluded to might be formed on more solid ground and so would be less likely to fade away in the relativist storm that is the university. The effect that our families have on our faith formation is paralleled by few others. If prayer and familial worship become a normalcy in Catholic life, imagine the type of young men and women entering the world. Built on a strong familial prayer life, imagine the influx of young men and women entering the ordained and consecrated life.”

As I think of this traditional feast, I often think of things in my own life as a child which might have been formative. We were not all that great on family prayer except before every meal and occasionally when we were “monitored” at night before going to bed but there was one annual experience which still looms large in my memory and life sixty-five years later. On our annual June family vacation trip to see my paternal grandparents and large family in the Boston, Massachusetts area, the evening meal had to be finished by 6:40 pm so that all of us, three generations could move from the Dining Room to the Living Room and kneel down on the floor while the radio (there was no TV) was properly tuned. At exactly 6:40pm a male voice sounding something like what I thought an archangel would sound like announced, “Live, from the Cardinal’s Residence on Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton, Richard Cardinal Cushing will now lead the faithful of the Archdiocese in reciting the Rosary.” If the announcer had an archangel’s voice, my brothers and I thought the Cardinal sounded like God – nasal, prolonged pronunciation of words, stentorian – it had to be God who spent twenty-minutes each night leading us in this prayer which we seemed only to say in Boston, where God lived. Beyond the sound of the radio, however, remains the image of my then eighty year old plus Grandfather, rosary in his hand, his wife of sixty years, my grandmother with a rosary in her hands, my grandmother’s spinster sister who kept an account of our sins and misbehavings with a rosary in her hands, my mom and dad with rosaries in their hands, and we three boys, skillfully provided the necessary beads by our Mom who feared reprisals if her kids did not have the proper equipment for prayer, all as one family joining God in Hail Marys and Our Fathers and Glory Be’s. As Patrick Sullivan said above, there is power in a family at prayer.

Perhaps on this great feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph those who still have a family about them could think about more time together in prayer. While I desperately want an increase in vocations, I want more young people to remain true to their baptism as Catholic Christians and enlighten the world.

The new shrine to the Holy Family at Holy Family Church in St. Petersburg using an original statue and placing in a spot for prayer and meditation.

Some words later in the week on the meaning of Epiphany and then more silence as I am on retreat. Back for the Baptism of the Lord.

+RNL

Brendan Stack has now left India, where he spent the summer as a CRS volunteer intern.  The fourth and final update in the series of letters he has written is attached to this post and can be viewed by clicking here.

If you want to read more about Brendan and view his first three “Letters from India,” please click on the tag “Brendan Stack Update” at the end of this post.

The third of Brendan Stack’s  ”Letters from India” has arrived and can be found here. If you are new to this blog, Brendan is a junior at Loyola Baltimore  (member of St. Jude the Apostle Cathedral parish and graduate of Jesuit High School) and is spending the summer as an intern with Catholic Relief Services in remote India, and you can find his first two letters by clicking on the tag “Brendan Stack Update” at the end of this post. As you can tell, he is experiencing Church, poverty, charity, culture at a new and amazing level of engagement and he shares this experience in  his “Letter” back to us. I hope you enjoy it.

+RNL

Several weeks ago in this place I offered the first “Letter from India” written to me by Brendan J. Stack, a junior at Loyola Baltimore and from the Cathedral of St. Jude parish. Brendan is being sponsored by the diocese for a summer intership program in India by Catholic Relief Services. He reports on his experience and this time includes several photos which you can access by clicking here.

The Diocese is sponsoring a college junior  in the summer internship program of Catholic Relief Services. Brendan J. Stack, with his parents and sister Caitlin, are long time members of the Cathedral of St. Jude parish in St. Petersburg. He is a graduate of Jesuit High School in Tampa, Class of 2007, and will begin his junior year at Loyola Baltimore this Fall, except that he will be spending the year abroad studying in Cork, Ireland. He approached me during his Freshman year and expressed an interest in doing something which might be of benefit to others, more thinking of something in the Baltimore area than internationally. I was just finishing my six years as Chairman of the Board of Catholic Relief Services and I immediately thought of them and possibly Africa for a summer. In consultation with CRS personnel who run this program, a small town in India was chosen and Brendan has just finished his first week. I asked him to send reports from time to time to share with us through inclusion on this blog and you can read his first report after arriving by clicking here. Here is a photo of Brendan taken at the Cathedral on the day before his departure, ten days ago.

Brendan J. Stack now interning for CRS in India

I asked only that Brendan share his experience with the youth of the diocese when possible upon his return and he has graciously agreed to do this as often as possible. As he relates, he is residing in a social service center and is being supervised by a partner agency of CRS in India and this location which is approximately equivalent to our Catholic Charities. Service like this involves some risks and the living situation as he will describe is radically different from anything he is used to. He is serving in an area of some religious unrest in the past and all of India is an opportunity for malaria if one does not take the proper precautions. CRS staff suggested that he get his hair cur short as Indian barber shops in his part of the country can even be somewhat risky. So I admire Brendan and other young people who wish to learn more about the needs of humanity in other places. My wonderful associate, Andrea McSorley and her husband Spencer who is head of Faith Formation at Espiritu Santo will be leaving the diocese this summer to spend three years as missionaries with the Comboni Fathers in either the African nation of Malawi or in Guatemala.  I will miss her and the parish will miss Spence, but there is something wonderful about a couple still willing to take those risks to share the Gospel in far away places with strange sounding names.

I hope you will enjoy Brendan’s occasional “E-mails from India” and share the experience through the eyes and mind of a twenty year old willing to take a risk to see if he might be able to serve the Church and others. He will be at his assignment for two months and hopes to take a train to Calcutta and spend a number of days working with the Missionaries of Charity at the motherhouse and final resting place of Blessed Mother Theresa. I guarantee you that working with the Missionaries and the poor of Calcutta will wear even the healthiest person out – prayer at four am, Mass at five am, and then the poor from six to six every day. He will have a lot to share with us upon his return and through these e-mails.

+RNL