The Best of the Field Hospital

by Peter Feuerherd

PHILADELPHIA There is no zone of piety around the Mother of Mercy House mission on East Allegheny Avenue in the K&A (Kensington and Allegheny) section here.
Fr. Joseph Devlin, Fr. Liam Murphy and Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Ann Raymond Welte, the three leaders of the storefront mission, want to be where the action is, and in Kensington there's plenty.

by Peter Feuerherd

Sin and the Trinity.
These are two elementary points of Catholic theology in the work of Michael W. Ryan, a retired U.S. Postal security specialist, who has spent more than two decades alerting church authorities to fixing accounting lapses in parish collections.

by Peter Feuerherd

Some, but not all, dioceses and parishes are taking a new look at securing offertory collections, and that's a good thing, say critics of how the church has handled money.
"The bishops are finally recognizing that embezzlement doesn't help their moral standing," Charles Zech, the director of the Center for Church Management and Business Ethics at Villanova University, told NCR.

by Peter Feuerherd

In the small Catholic world of the bucolic North Carolina mountains, this Advent is dawning with discord between parishioners in Waynesville, N.C., and their pastor.
A total of 143 parishioners from St. John the Evangelist Church in Waynesville, in a parish of roughly 300 families, have petitioned Bishop Peter Jugis of the Charlotte diocese to remove their pastor, Fr. Christopher Riehl, who came to the church just a little over a year ago.

by Peter Feuerherd

PLAINFIELD, N.J. -- In the early, heady days post-Vatican II, enthused Catholics flocked to movements such as Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, and the Christian Family Movement, often spending weekends away to return home with a zeal to spread the Gospel and transform the church and the world.
Msgrs. Tom Kleissler and Tom Ivory, two New Jersey priests, wondered: Why not bring that energy to parishes? And so was born RENEW, now RENEW International, begun 38 years ago.

by Peter Feuerherd

Fr. James J. Grogan is running late for a morning appointment, and when he gets to the rectory he is profusely apologetic and ready with an explanation.
"Not every newly-ordained priest has to help his son change a tire," he says.
But so it is with Grogan, ordained in 2015 for the Diocese of Trenton and now the associate at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Moorestown, N.J.

by Peter Feuerherd

Sulpician Fr. Phillip J. Brown, rector of the Theological College, the national diocesan seminary of the Catholic University of America in Washington, sayys the Francis effect is alive and well, and growing, at least among seminarians. It's been a sudden development.Teaeser.

by Peter Feuerherd

St. Lucy's Parish in Syracuse has been a Pope Francis-type of parish since back when there was simply an Argentine Jesuit named Jorge Bergoglio.
Evidence is the sign long adorning the outer church: "Sinners Welcome." It is a parish unafraid to reach out to the margins; in fact, the margins pretty much permeate everything the church community does..

by Peter Feuerherd

NORRISTOWN, PA. -- A giant statue of the Irish patron stands atop St. Patrick's Church in this gritty city's downtown, beckoning to immigrants as it has done ever since the church was built in 1907. These days, it is more popularly referred to as San Patricio.

by Peter Feuerherd

Reader responses to "Field Hospital" reports on grassroots efforts to support homeless persons have been edifying to NCR and inspirational to other giving communities.
Speaking of inspirational, more than one reader called our attention to the outside-the-box outreach in San Francisco, The Gubbio Project, based at St. Boniface Church in the heart of the city's Tenderloin -- a roughly 40-square block patch of poverty known for drugs, prostitution, homelessness and crime.

by Dan Morris-Young

"Joe was shivering. His hands were hard and numb. We wrapped the coat around him, and we helped him put on the gloves ... You and your team have made a difference again today."
The note from a Vancouver, British Columbia, winter street minister synthesizes the reason the Helpers of St. Anne and St. Joachim have sustained their ministry of handcrafting a remarkable garment designed for people trying to survive on the streets.

by Dan Morris-Young

As a young Irish priest in 1944, William Treacy raised his hand when his bishop asked for volunteers to help out for a while in a U.S. archdiocese short of priests because of the world war. Little did he know that his temporary assignment in the Seattle archdiocese would last the rest of his life.

by Dan Morris-Young

Spiritual home to nearly 2,400 households (more than 5,000 individuals), Seattle's St. James Cathedral serves as ground zero for archdiocesan events from ordinations and high school graduation Masses to civic, cultural, inter-religious and artistic gatherings.
It also enlists upwards of 1,000 volunteers who bring to life a jaw-dropping array of outreach ministries.

by Dan Morris-Young

St. Jerome Parish in Jerome, Idaho might be the poster child for rural U.S. parishes seeking ways to deal with the collisions between a long-established, European-heritage parishioner base and the influx of Hispanic/Latino Catholics seeking work, security and a better life.

by Dan Morris-Young

When Redemptorist Fr. Don MacKinnon speaks about the Kmhmu' people, he often employs "we" as a matter of course. Indeed, members of the Kmhmu' Catholic Community in the San Francisco Bay area embrace the San Diego native as one of their own, a designation he has earned over the last quarter century ministering to the roughly 1,000 members in the area.

by Dan Morris-Young

Seattle's Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish campus features an array of "living green" initiatives -- projects like solar panels, water catchment, recycling and energy monitoring. However, the long-term example set by the parish might rest more on its sustained commitment to environmental stewardship than
s cutting-edge technical and operational enterprises.

by Dan Morris-Young

"My son and his wife wake up to the impact of war on a daily basis," the mother of retired Maj. Darren Baldwin told NCR. "As our lives go on, theirs often do not, at least not in the capacities they once could."

by Dan Morris-Young

More than 50 years ago, a single mother's tragic suicide -- which also claimed the lives of her three children -- became the seminal moment for a still-growing movement in the Diocese of Paterson to reach out to families and individuals who are impacted by developmental disabilities.

by Dan Morris-Young

Be they called food banks, soup kitchens, food pantries, hot soup outreaches, brown bag ministries or caring cafes, programs that provide nutrition and goodwill are headed by parishes across the nation.
St. Bernard Parish in Akron, Ohio, for example, sponsors an extraordinarily active three-pronged ministry to provide food for the homeless, poor and lonely.

by Dan Morris-Young