Month: May 2018

Vatican City, May 16, 2018 / 10:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- When Marina “Nina” Vela learned that she had been selected from the community of homeless people on the streets of Denver to go on an annual pilgrimage to Rome, she did not believe the trip would actually happen.

The process was stressful, and she had some stuff to take care of. Not only did she need to get her documents in order – including a passport and finding a missing birth certificate – but she also needed to clear up some trouble with the law.

Vela, 23, is the 5th person selected to go on pilgrimage to Rome through Denver Homeless Ministries (DHM), an organization working to provide opportunities to serve the homeless as both “equals and friends.” They offer the pilgrimage as a way to encourage those who have made difficult steps to change their lives.

When fundraising started for the May 4-14 trip to Paris and Rome last fall, Vela was on probation for domestic violence. In order to go on the trip, she had to go to court to determine if she would have to serve jail time in order to waive the probation, allowing her to leave the country.

“I have a bad record,” Vela told CNA in an interview, explaining that in general, law enforcement “don’t like when you don’t do probation,” especially when the person has a history.

“If you’ve ever been in the system and you know anything about anything, they don’t like that.”

Vela was selected in autumn of 2017, just months before thet trip was scheduled; it was a gamble as to when a hearing could be scheduled and how close of a margin it would be between when she got out and and when she got on the plane.

However, when the day of her April hearing came, Vela said what happened in the courtroom was nothing short of miraculous.

Instead of sending her behind bars, the judge decided to drop the whole case against her and let her walk completely free, after hearing the testimony of Tanya Cangelosi, who has led homeless ministries for years and has organized the past five pilgrimages taking someone from the streets to Rome.

The judge, after hearing Cangelosi’s conviction that an opportunity like the pilgrimage would inspire real change, began talking about people who changed his own life. Before tossing the case, he said the people he tried to make proud set the direction of his life, and told Nina to never let Cangelosi down.

“It was unbelievable at first. I was totally blown away. I almost started crying,” Vela said, explaining that she had been prepared to go to jail, and was shocked by the judge’s decision. “They let me go. They never do that.”

In comments to CNA, Cangelosi said Vela was chosen for the pilgrimage by God’s providence. “The Lord picked her, whether you believe in him or not, he picked her 100 percent.”

“I knew on that level of the heart that she was supposed to go, so I had to do whatever it took,” she said, voicing her conviction that Nina’s life would change as a result of the pilgrimage.

Vela, she said, “didn’t need all of that garbage in her record holding onto her and pulling her down. I thought that if she got off of all this, it would free her. And it did.”

Vela was born in an apartment in Colorado and raised by her grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s. She started couchsurfing when she was a teenager, and eventually ended up on the streets, where she began experimenting with drugs and found herself in and out of jail.

Despite finding friends who valued her for who she was, Vela said she was consistently “oppressed” by men.

However, in a testimony she provided to fund-raise for the trip, Vela said she wanted to change her life and get off the streets. She said that she wanted to travel and eventually go to art school and start a family.

As an art lover, Vela told CNA that her favorite part about the trip to Rome was just walking through the streets and seeing the city.

“I think the city is so beautiful. I love how the ruins in the forum are combined with these old looking buildings. It’s nothing like the United States. And the people are so interesting. It’s a beautiful place.”

She was also a big fan of St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican Museums, especially the Sistine Chapel. “That church was beautiful, so beautiful,” she said, referring to St. Peter’s.

Vela and Cangelosi also had front row tickets to the May 9 general audience with Pope Francis, meaning they got to shake his hand after the event ended.

Although she is not a believer, Vela said the pope is “a really nice guy” and “really sweet.” He listened as she told him about her father, who considers himself spiritual but not religious, but who loves Pope Francis. Vela said she got a blessing and a rosary from the pope that she will give to her father.

This year the Denver Homeless Ministry pilgrimage was joined by Paul Spotts, who runs Catholic Young Adult Sports (CYAS), and 10 young adults from Colorado.

Cangelosi, who met Spotts through some of the CYAS events, said he approached her last fall saying he wanted to take a group to Rome, and that he wanted to invite a homeless person to travel with them. Cangelosi told CNA that she said yes because “I wanted Nina to experience being around people her age who are working and have graduated from college.”

“Hopefully that is something that will stick in her mind in the future,” she said, adding that having Vela with them was also “a life-changing experience” for the other young adults who came, since they had never really spent time with a homeless person before.

In her comments to CNA, Vela said that while the group dynamic was hard, she bonded with some of the people in the group, and felt respected.

Now working at a coffee roaster, and with housing lined up for the future, Vela said she doesn’t know what the future will hold, but is grateful to have had the opportunity to come to Rome.

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Lima, Peru, May 15, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A priest who recently welcomed into the children’s home he runs a newborn with Down syndrome says that child is a gift from God.

The priest is Fr. Omar Sanchez Portill, the director of the Home of the Association of the Beatitudes, located in the Lurín district of Lima, Peru. On his 51st birthday, Portill was contacted by a social worker about a two-month-old baby with Down syndrome who was in need of a home. The child’s mother, only a teenager herself, was unable to care for him.  

Portill named the child Ismael.

“Thank you Jesus for the gift you have given me for my birthday! You never cease to surprise me, my Jesus. Welcome Ismael! Bringing you from Cusco has been a complete adventure, the first of many we’re going to share together. Chromosome of love, Downs Syndrome,” the priest posted on his Facebook page.

In an interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, Portill related that Ismael’s mother was an alcoholic, schizophrenic  17-year-old from a city in southern Peru.

“She went to the hospital to give birth. Apparently she had a difficult pregnancy, she gave birth and left him at the hospital. The Department for Women and Vulnerable Populations knows about our work, the profile of the kids we take in, and called us to receive him. I accepted that responsibility myself,” the priest said.

“He arrived on a very special day, May 5, my birthday, as a special gift from God in my priestly life, as its fruitfulness, as a spiritual father, as a human being. He is a very particular gift from God,” he added.  

The Association of the Beatitudes, founded by Portill, welcomes and provides comprehensive care—nutrition, healthcare, the sacramental life—for children, adolescents, and adults who suffer from physical or psychiatric disabilities, who have been abandoned on the streets or in garbage dumps or who live in extreme poverty.

The Home of the Beatitudes takes in about 60 people every year and currently houses 217 people. They also have a team of about 80 lay people that serve in this work of charity.

“Of the people that live there 98 percent have some disability, a different ability, or a psychiatric or physical illness. We have children who are visually impaired, have multiple disabilities (blind, deaf, mute), children with Down syndrome, intellectual disabilities, autism, adults and young people with mental illness, picked up off the streets,” the priest said.

Fr. Portill told ACI Prensa that he is an admirer of Saint Teresa of Calcutta, from whom he borrowed the phrase: “Don’t abort the child, give the child to me,” and says he does his own “March for Life” because the shelter he runs maintains “a commitment to life from conception to natural death.”

The priest said that those who criticize and accuse the Church of not caring about abandoned children “are either unaware or do it maliciously,” because “the work of the Church in all circumstances is evident.”

Noting that abortion is allowed in some countries when there is a fetal deformity or a genetic disorder is detected, Fr. Omar responded that “the world is losing an extraordinary treasure.”

“What these people really create is solidarity, leading others to open up their hearts and to be detached, it’s a treasure the world cannot do without. They help us to come out of ourselves,” he added.

The priest said that he thanks God every day for the work with which he has been entrusted.

“For having given this priest who is a sinner such a huge, important and meaningful responsibility, and that through the work that God has entrusted to my heart and my hands, so many people have drawn close to God, so many people have converted and have returned to the Church. That is the significance,” he indicated.

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