U.S. population expected to decline after 2080; low fertility a cause, Census Bureau says

Washington D.C., Nov 23, 2017 / 05:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his Thanksgiving message, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he is grateful for the gifts and contributions of immigrants and refugees in the United States.

“As we do every year, we will pause this coming Thursday to thank God for the many blessings we enjoy in the United States,” DiNardo said.

“My brother bishops and I, gathered last week in Baltimore, were attentive in a special way to those who are often excluded from this great abundance—the poor, the sick, the addicted, the unborn, the unemployed, and especially migrants and refugees.”

Following the lead of Pope Francis, as well as the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, the U.S. Bishops have been increasingly vocal about their concerns regarding immigration reform and policies, particularly those that harm families or endanger the safety of immigrants.

The U.S. bishops have expressed “a shared and ever-greater sense of alarm—and urgency to act—in the face of policies that seemed unthinkable only a short time ago,” DiNardo said.

These policies include the ending of DACA, which benefited hundreds of thousands of young people who entered the U.S. as migrants, as well as the ending of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for people of several Central American countries, who have sought refuge from violence and natural disasters in the United States.

Earlier this month, the U.S. bishops recommended that the government extend TPS status for tens of thousands of Haitians, who came to the United States after a 2010 earthquake devastated their country.

The bishops, who sent a delegation to assess Haiti’s capability to accept returned nationals, found that the country would not be capable of supporting tens of thousands of people who would be forced to return home. Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced that TPS status would end for Haitians in the United States by July 2019.

“One common feature of all these developments is their tendency to tear apart the family, the fundamental building block of our, or any, society,” DiNardo said.

“These threats to so many vulnerable immigrant and refugee families must end now. My brothers have urged me to speak out on their behalf to urge the immediate passage—and signature—of legislation that would alleviate these immediate threats to these families,” he added.

These current issues are symptomatic of a broken immigration system that has long been in need of comprehensive reform, a process which will take years but to which the bishops are committed, in order to ensure that the United States is “welcoming the most vulnerable, ensuring due process and humane treatment, protecting national security, and respecting the rule of law,” DiNardo said.

“So this year, I give thanks for the gift and contributions of immigrants and refugees to our great nation,” he said.

“I also pray that next year, families now under threat will not be broken and dispersed, but instead will be united in joy around their tables, giving thanks for all the blessings our nation has to offer.”

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Denver Newsroom, May 19, 2020 / 04:49 pm (CNA).- In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic hitting the United States in mid-March, thousands of Americans were either furloughed or laid off from their jobs as non-essential businesses shuttered or restricted their operations in a bid to slow the spread of the virus.

One of the harder-hit areas of the country has been Acadiana, Louisiana, a region in the southern third of the state that got its name from the Acadian population of the area, also known as Cajun or Creole Louisianans, who have French roots in the area of Acadia.

According to a 2019 report from Louisiana Association of United Ways, nearly half of Acadian Louisianans live paycheck to paycheck. For people in this situation, every pay period can mean the difference between having a place to live and being homeless.

That’s why Catholic Charities in Acadiana, Louisiana is appealing to the local mayor for additional funding from a federal grant to help shore up housing, after seeing a 58% spike in people experiencing homelessness in the region since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.

This week, Catholic Charities wrote a letter to the Lafayette Consolidated Government, as well as the Lafayette City and Parish council members, appealing to them for aid from a federal grant given to the local government from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Lafayette Mayor-President Josh Guillory has said he plans to use the $852,935 grant to help small businesses in the area who have suffered from the widespread shutdowns.

But Ben Broussard, the chief communications officer for Catholic Charities of Acadiana, said he hoped the funding could be used to help the rapidly increasing number of homeless people in the area.

“We have seen the rise in that instability; the calls to our services have gone up drastically,” Broussard told CNA.

The nearly 60% spike in homelessness in Acadiana is high, even compared to what is anticipated across the rest of the nation due to the pandemic. According to an analysis by a Columbia University economist, reported in the Los Angeles Times, the United States expects could see up to a 45% increase in homelessness due to fallout from the coronavirus.

Even before the virus hit Acadiana, Broussard said, “roughly 30% to 35% of folks are experiencing that level of poverty where they’re one missed paycheck away from (homelessness).”

“That’s just during normal times. And we have a very heavy retail and service economy in southern Louisiana, and those are some of the parts of the economy that have been hardest hit,” he said.

“So our concern has always been with housing stability and with food access. It doesn’t matter who you are…if you’re having to choose between putting food on the table or paying your bills, that’s a hard choice to make for a family or for an individual who’s reeling from not having the work that they had before,” he said.

Louisiana has been one of the harder-hit states when it comes to coronavirus, with 34,709 total cases and 2,440 deaths so far, according to reporting by the New York Times. Acadiana was one of the hotspots for the virus, Broussard added, and increasing the homeless population in the area could contribute to its spread.

“It is a rule of thumb that those who are chronically homeless…the longer you spend on the street, the harder it is on the human body. It ages you. It is taxing. And so we have always seen those that we serve who are experiencing homelessnes are part of a vulnerable clientele. They are those who were most susceptible to getting sick and suffering due to any virus, flu outbreaks, all those things,” he said.

Broussard said that while he wanted to make it clear that Catholic Charities wants to work with Mayor Guillory, he also wanted to make it clear that money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development should first go toward housing, and that there was other money available for relief for small businesses, for example from the Small Business Association.

“As an organization that responds (to emergency needs), our desire is to see those funds be used for what they were intended to be used for, which is shoring up housing stability in the wake of a crisis,” Broussard said.

“There is money available for businesses through the Small Business Association, SBA. But we can’t access SBA money to fund shelters and to provide for people who are in crisis,” he added.

Besides social distancing making some processes of Catholic Charities more difficult – like serving soup kitchen meals or spreading out people staying in shelters – it has also meant that Catholic Charities has had to forgo all in-kind donations such as donated food or clothing, in order to prevent bringing the virus into its facilities.

“That’s tens of thousands of dollars worth of donations that people bring us every year” that Catholic Charities in Acadiana is currently having to forgo, Broussard said. “And so that added to the economic hardship on the organization.”

According to local ABC affiliate KATC 3, the Lafayette City and Parish Councils were holding an emergency joint meeting to discuss increasing grant revenues on Tuesday.

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Pope Francis visits the elderly priest-residents of Casa San Gaetano in Rome, June 17, 2016. / L’Osservatore Romano.

Vatican City, Sep 17, 2021 / 04:00 am (CNA).

Pope Francis told elderly priests from northern Italy that aging is a privilege because they have the chance to suffer like Jesus Christ.

“You are experiencing a season, old age, which is not a disease but a privilege,” he said in a Sept. 16 letter to priests from the Lombardy region.

“And even those of you who are sick live, we can say, a privilege: that of resembling Jesus who suffers, carrying the cross just like Him,” he added.

Pope Francis sent the letter as elderly priests and the bishops of the Lombardy region met for a day of prayer and community at the shrine of Santa Maria del Fonte in Caravaggio, 25 miles east of Milan.

The day began with Mass offered for the repose of the souls of the 92 Lombardy priests who died as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The Mass was followed by a shared lunch.

“Think of Simeon and Anna: just when they are elderly, the Gospel enters fully into their lives and, taking Jesus in their arms, they announce to everyone the revolution of tenderness,” the pope wrote in his letter.

Francis said that the sick and elderly priests were not merely an object of assistance, but also active protagonists in their communities.

“You are the bearers of dreams, dreams full of memory and therefore very important for the younger generations precisely because your dreams are the root,” he wrote.

“From you comes the sap to flourish in the Christian life and in ministry,” he commented.

The 84-year-old pope, who underwent colon surgery in July, also said that communities caring for sick and elderly priests are “well rooted in Jesus,” and closed his letter by asking for prayers.

“Please, pray for me who is a little old and a little, but not too much, sick!” he said. “May the Lord bless you and Our Lady keep you.”

The Sept. 16 gathering of priests and bishops took place at the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fonte, a shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Caravaggio in the province of Bergamo, one of the areas in Italy worst affected by the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Caravaggio was built on the site of a 15th-century Marian apparition.

The Blessed Virgin Mary reportedly appeared to a young peasant girl, Giannetta Varoli, in a hay field outside the town of Caravaggio on May 26, 1432.

In her message, the Virgin urged penance for sin, including fasting on Fridays. The apparition is also called Our Lady of the Fountain because a spring of water appeared under the stone where the Virgin stood, and on which she left an imprint of her feet.

That same year, the first small shrine was built at the site. More than 100 years later, in 1575, St. Charles Borromeo, then the archbishop of Milan, hired an architect to begin the long process of expanding the shrine into what it looks like today.

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