Meetings in Washington

This past weekend I traveled to Washington, D.C. for one of our regular board meetings of the Catholic University of America. The Boston area is well represented on the board, with myself, Deacon Stephen Kaneb and Sister Janet Eisner as members.

While I was there, I also had the opportunity to celebrate a Mass to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Oliveira Lima Library at CUA. The university has the largest Brazilian library in the world outside of Brazil. The collection was given to the University by Manoel de Oliveira Lima, a Brazilian diplomat who eventually retired from diplomatic life and was on the faculty of Catholic University. He contributed the library which, of course, in addition to books contains paintings, maps, manuscripts and other important works...

Visiting our National Shrine

Of course, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is just adjacent to the Catholic University campus. So, on St. Patrick's grants they were holding. All day at the shrine there were people praying for families affected by recent changes to our immigration policies such as the revocation of DACA and Temporary Protected Status.

The vigil concluded with a Mass of Blessed Archbishop Oscar Romero, which I celebrated. It seemed very fitting that the Mass was on St. Patrick's Day -- on the day when we celebrate a great missionary bishop, we also celebrated a bishop who was martyred for his great defense of God's people.

Mother Teresa's sisters

I also had a chance to visit the house of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa's sisters, in Washington, which is not far from Catholic University. It was a wonderful visit, and I was very happy to see them.

Funeral of Father Borges

Wednesday (3/21), I went to celebrate the funeral of Father Laurence Borges at St. Albert the Great Church in Weymouth. Father Borges, who had served with the St. James Society in Peru, was one of the early figures in Hispanic ministry in the U.S., so I had known him for over 40 years. He, Father Wendell Verrill and myself were part of an association of directors of Hispanic apostolates. So, we attended many joint meetings and seminars, and even took a couple of trips together to Latin America. I always say that he and Father Verrill where the first Boston priests that I met...

Seminar on immigration

Finally, on Thursday (3/22) I attended the seminar on the Contribution of Migrants to Development and Social Innovation held at Boston College.

The seminar was jointly sponsored by The Scalabrini Centers of Migration in Boston and Boston College, and it was an opportunity to look at immigration issues from local, national and international perspectives. The seminar included discussion from a number of wonderful panelist speakers, many of whom are in fact immigrants themselves. The Scalabrinians make such an important contribution to the life of our Church. Both here in the Archdiocese of Boston and throughout the United States, they are doing such important work with immigrant communities. The order was originally founded to work with Italian immigrants, and are now doing so much with Hispanics, Brazilians, Haitians and other communities throughout the United States and around the world...