Tom Tracy

Hurricane Helene's broad impact across an entire swath of the U.S. South means resources will be stretched thin following the massive storm, according to Peter Routsis-Arroyo, the CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami.

"In the rainy season roads here flood so easily with normal rain so having a hurricane pushing in that water I knew it was going to be devastating, but maybe not quite this devastating," said Maggie Rogers, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of St. Petersburg.
 

Bishop Clyde Harvey of St. George's in Grenada arrived by boat to the island of Carriacou July 12 to find a traumatized community and at least two diocesan churches that suffered catastrophic damage from Hurricane Beryl.

In his first public address since Hurricane Beryl visited the Caribbean's Lesser Antilles region as the earliest formed Category 5 hurricane on record, the bishop of St. George's in Grenada took to social media to offer a spiritual message of hope and resilience following the July 1 landfall there.

The post-Hurricane Ian landscape is expected to trigger housing, employment and other cost-of-living complications for the entire state and in particular on the Gulf Coast.

Catholic Charities is using its statewide network of hurricane and disaster response experience across Florida to help survivors in desperate situations following Hurricane Ian.

Archbishop Roberto González Nieves said he expected Catholic schools in the most affected areas to be closed for weeks and expressed concern for the hurricane's impact on the southern and western parts of the island.

The University of Notre Dame in Indiana and Georgetown University are among a group of some 16 private educational institutions named in a lawsuit alleging a conspiracy to fix student financial aid distribution formulas among them.

Aid agencies including Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services responded this year to natural disasters including wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and winter storms.

Catholic peace activists and policy experts have expressed apprehension that the United States has joined an accelerating rush to perfect new weapons.

With several Northeast states now joining major metropolitan regions in the Gulf Coast as Hurricane Ida-related disaster areas, Catholic Charities agencies are using virtual deployment systems refined during the coronavirus pandemic to maximize their outreach to those in need.

Relief workers say recovery will be complicated in Haiti because the Aug. 14 quake came on the heels of July's presidential assassination, of an economic and ongoing political crisis, the coronavirus pandemic and an active storm season now underway.

U.S. theologians and human rights experts on Cuba worried that any repeat of the widespread protests in Cuba on July 11 may be met with a swift, violent set of state-sponsored reactions.

After girding themselves with eucharistic adoration, rosary, songs and reflections, the teens, young adults and parish community of St. Joseph stepped out into the night air to solemnly walk to Surfside's new ground zero.

It is an understatement to say the people and staff of St. Joseph Parish will be living the crisis of the Surfside condominium collapse in a most intimate way for some time to come. No other Christian house of worship is so close to the ground zero of Champlain Towers South as St. Joseph.

Staff members with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami were on location and developing a response strategy June 24 near the stunning wreckage of a partially collapsed beachfront high-rise apartment building.

In response to recent kidnappings of clergy and religious in Haiti and growing anarchy in the Caribbean nation, Catholic schools, churches and other entities called for a national strike April 15.

"Those images are going to attach themselves and become an iconic symbol of the Trump presidency," said Michael Kimmage, a professor of history at The Catholic University of America.

How far and how quickly the religious liberties landscape will change in the coming four years under the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration remains to be seen. But religious liberty watchers say they are worried.

Admittedly not a big fan of needles, Miami Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski winced as he became possibly the first U.S. bishop to receive a COVID-19 vaccination.