We have a beautiful garden here at Casa Juan Diego. It is always a highlight of our visitor tours. We grow fruits, vegetables and herbs, the soil is cultivated with organic ingredients, we capture rainwater for irrigation, we have an ever-growing bee colony, we compost, and everything that is planted in the ground produces something… continue reading
Babies in the River – Urgent Humanitarian Situation, Part 2 – Breaking News and St. Basil
August 14, 2014 by
Commenting here on a breaking news story such as the children from Central America in custody at the Texas border runs the risk that the situation may have changed drastically by the time you read this. On the other hand, it is fascinating to look at current events “with a Bible in one hand and… continue reading
Babies in the River: “Urgent Humanitarian Situation,” Part I
July 1, 2014 by
President Obama recently called the explosion in the number of migrant children crossing our southern border without parents or caretakers an “urgent humanitarian situation.” Ninety thousand children this year, some as young as five years old, making a journey alone that is incredibly dangerous even for adults, many of them beaten, robbed, forced to sell… continue reading
Pope Francis Made His First Trip Outside the Vatican To Visit Migrants
October 2, 2013 by
Where Is Your Brother? Who Is Responsible For This Blood? (Vatican Radio) In his homily at Mass celebrated with the residents of Lampedusa and the immigrants who have sought refuge there, Pope Francis spoke out against the “globalization of indifference” that leads to tragedies like the deaths of so many migrants seeking a better life…. continue reading
Pope Wants a Church of the Poor and For the Poor, But a Well-known Catholic Writer Rejects Saint Francis of Assisi
July 5, 2013 by
The very first thing our new Pope did was to choose the name of Francis for St. Francis of Assisi. No Pope has ever been named Francis before. If Pope Francis had not done anything else, just claiming the name of Francis would have had a tremendous impact. (Para leer este artículo en español, haga… continue reading
Death by Earthquake: Collateral Damages of Neoliberalism: Why Did the Earthquake Do So Much Damage in Haiti?
April 1, 2010 by
Every Wednesday evening at Casa Juan Diego we celebrate Mass in honor of our guests’ arrival in the United States. It is our tradition to ask one of the recently arrived immigrants to tell the story of his journey. Often these are harrowing stories, and usually it is very difficult for the storytellers to put… continue reading
Prayers and Aid for Haiti After the Earthquake
February 1, 2010 by
As we go to press, we hear many reports of the devastation from the earthquake in Haiti. Our prayers and thoughts are with the Haitian people as they try to recover. The Vatican has asked Catholic Relief Services, the official overseas aid and development agency of the United States Catholic Bishops, to coordinate Catholic efforts in… continue reading
NAFTA Corridors, Trans-Texas Corridors, Divide the Nation and Cheat the Workers
April 1, 2008 by
In early 2008 major protests by landowners throughout south Texas have been featured regularly in the press. Thirty counties in Texas have protested the seizure of hundred of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land by the Texas Department of Transportation for NAFTA traffic for a four football fields-side complex of tollways and high-speed rail… continue reading
Labor Unions: Catholic Teaching Versus the Libertarians
February 1, 2008 by
Many politicians, I need hardly remind you, are very unsympathetic toward labor unions. You may think this simply means that they are siding with harsh employers who want to pay their workers as little as possible for interminable hours of toil. It is not as simple as that. Anti-unionism has a long, and sometimes surprising,… continue reading
Mistreatment of Laborers Leads to Abuse of Workers and Children, Including Immigrant Workers and Children
August 1, 2007 by
A priority in the Catholic Worker movement in the time of Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day was the defense of workers against mistreatment and exploitation. Dorothy often quoted the encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII in regard to workers not getting paid, or being paid a pittance for their work: “To defraud anyone of wages… continue reading
