Church – Page 2 – Welcome to Cambodia, and…..

SVDP in Louisville

More than food distribution

The operations of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Louisville are quite extensive. Before, I showed photos of the twice-weekly food distribution. There is more.

This is the old St. Paul Church building. Now it is a dining room for the meals served to the poor and homeless.

The building’s origins are obvious. In addition to the stained glass windows, the old altar and tabernacle are still present at the front of the dining room. Lunch and dinner are served to about 290 persons every day, seven days a week. Above, volunteers are preparing to serve a lunch.

The building on the left (where the man is seated) is the old St. Paul school. Next to it is the former rectory where the priests lived. And on the far right is one of five or six residential buildings. The SVDP compound now covers an entire city block.

Two more residential buildings for the homeless. Some of them are for homeless veterans or single mothers with children or people with disabilities.

Another residence for the poor and homeless.

Last October, when I was in California visiting Jim and Roberta McLaughlin, returned Maryknoll Lay Missioners who had worked with me in Cambodia, Jim introduced me to the workings of the St. Vincent de Paul Society food pantry in their home parish of St. Columba. I learned a lot in my time at St. Columba.

Today I had the opportunity to visit a comparable SVDP operation in Louisville at the invitation of Ken and Diane Golliher who volunteer there. And again I learned a lot.

I was surprised to learn that while I was in Cambodia, the archdiocese had made a closed downtown parish campus available to the St. Vincent de Paul Society and Open Hand Kitchen.

The Louisville SVDP food pantry distributes food on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Some of the food comes from businesses and food services in the area. Here a group of volunteers unloads a van of donated food.

The food is first placed on shelves or in a refrigerator or freezer until it is bagged for distribution.

Some food is donated by USDA (Department of Agriculture).

Recipients of the food distribution come on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and receive two bags, one of food from USDA and another from the private sources. In addition to the food, detergents, personal care items, and other necessities are available. Approximately 130 individuals and families are served each distribution day.

Care for Creation

Laudato Si’ challenges us to “hear the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” through ecological conversion, changes in lifestyle and society, and strong political action. What are Catholic Christians to do? Here are some suggestions:

4. DISCERN what you can do to change your own way of living to one that is more sustainable for the whole community. This includes reducing water usage, reducing use of plastics and eliminating Styrofoam, switching to LED lighting, planting trees and native plants, and by becoming an eco-consumer doing eco-investing.

Public Man-Made Death

In an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, historian Richard Rhodes spoke about a certain kind of dying: “the deaths caused not by microbe or misfortune but by policy—by war, by neglect, by privation deliberately imposed. Artificially induced famine. The willful dismantling of the infrastructure that keeps the poor alive. Rhodes gave the thing a name. He called it public man-made death….”

Two reports were quoted. One in The Lancet said: “… in the single year since USAID was destroyed, on the order of seven hundred thousand human beings have already died who would otherwise be alive. The Lancet study calculated that the agency had saved some ninety-two million lives over the previous two decades.”

From a commentary by Msgr. Arthur Halquin.

Care for Creation

USE YOUR HEARING AND SIGHT to respond to the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth. They are interconnected. The poor have been unjustly subjected to the results of abuses on nature brought by wealthy nations.

Care for Creation

2. LEARN by reading Laudato Si’ for free at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

St. Thomas Seminary

Class of 1966-1970

The St. Thomas Seminary class of 1966 (the last class to graduate from high school there) gathered today for a monthly event and it was special because attending was Bill Medley (R), a classmate who was appointed Bishop of Owensboro sixteen years ago. Today was also Bastille Day, and Jane Browne (standing) who has had a fixation on Bastille Day and other things French since her high school French class, brought a cake and a gift bag of French items for the fourteen people who attended. Jane is my sister and she married class member David Browne (L).

Care for Creation

1. REFLECT on the miracle of the natural world and your place in it and PRAY that you might be intentional in her care.

Pope Leo and the U.S.

From the UCAN news service

Meeting reporters outside his villa in Castel Gandolfo Nov. 18, 2025, Pope Leo said, “No one has said that the United States should have open borders,” adding: “I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter.”

However, immigration policy should “look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.”

Mary Queen of Peace Parish

Today I had mass at Mary Queen of Peace parish and it was delightful. First, I bicycled there, about 9 miles, partly to test how uncomfortable I would get in the really warm weather we’re having. I forced myself to go slower than usual and it turned out OK. Second, Mary Queen of Peace is in the area of Angela Merici High School where I taught and two sisters–twins–who were in my class there introduced themselves. Meeting the former Angela Merici High School girls, now grandmothers, has been one of the joys of my return. These sisters had learned sign language and rode with me to the Kentucky School for the Deaf.