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Calling the Staten Island community an “icon” that embodies the meaning of Thanksgiving, Cardinal Dolan praised the efforts of volunteers—from high school students and local clergy to elected officials and leaders of community organizations and congregations—who joined forces to raise hunger awareness and feed the needy as the holiday season nears.
“It’s great what you are doing this evening in the spirit of sacrifice and sharing,” he said during his keynote address before nearly 1,000 guests at the 18th annual Poor People’s Dinner at the Hilton Garden Inn on Staten Island.
The annual interfaith event, held on Nov. 23, raises thousands of dollars to fund the food pantries and soup kitchens run by Project Hospitality, the largest nonprofit interfaith effort and provider of direct services and advocacy for poor and immigrant communities on Staten Island. Last year it served 35,000 impoverished Staten Islanders and nearly 2 million meals in the borough.
Guests were asked to bring food donations for Project Hospitality’s pantry, and later were served a meal of soup and bread to underscore the struggles facing the borough’s impoverished.
The cardinal spoke of the true meaning of Thanksgiving as generous Staten Islanders gathered to battle the Island’s hunger issues just three days before Thanksgiving.
“This evening here on Staten Island we’ve got an icon—a genuine, beautiful, radiant icon—of what this holy day of Thanksgiving means,” Cardinal Dolan said.
“As people of faith, all of us recognize that charity and justice is an essential part of that faith,” he continued. “As loyal Americans we recognize that we have an ingrained solicitude for those who are struggling, for those who are in need, for those who are underdogs— that’s Thanksgiving everybody—and that’s the spirit that I sense so vividly in the room this evening.”
He also praised Rev. Terry Troia, executive director of agency, calling her a “great example” to Staten Islanders.
He went on to say he had pride for the Catholic people on Staten Island who participated in food drives in the borough leading up to the annual dinner.
“You make me very proud on an evening like this to be your archbishop,” he said.
More than 30,000 students in the Island’s public, private and parochial high schools joined in a massive food drive to fill Project Hospitality’s pantry ahead of the winter, including Gianna Giambrone, a freshman at St. Joseph Hill Academy, who is a volunteer at the soup kitchen.
“This is a great opportunity and it shows how we come together to help those less fortunate,” she said.
Dawn Twomey, parish manager of St. Teresa’s, one of the community sponsors of the event, said the fund-raiser “brings people together for a common human need, which is hunger.”
“During the season of giving, it makes us mindful of those less fortunate,” she said, adding that the church has a strong need for its own food pantry.
Cardinal Dolan spoke of a growing need for charity with respect to hunger.
“The problem’s not that God is not providing us with enough food—the problem is we are not sharing it with others,” he said.
However, he thanked the Staten Islanders for their “magnificent example,” which will allow him to please the Lord.
“When I stand before Jesus at the end of time, he’s not going to say, ‘Are you a cardinal?; Did you remodel St. Patrick’s?’; or ‘Did you give good sermons?’
“He’s going to say, ‘Timothy, when I was hungry did you give me something to eat?’
“Because of an evening like this, I’m going to say: ‘Well, Lord on Nov. 23, 2015, you’ll see that I was with a group of people on Staten Island that did indeed come together in the spirit of faith, and charity, and Thanksgiving to share and give others something to eat.’
“I congratulate you for taking our Lord seriously when he tells us: ‘Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me,’ ” the cardinal said in closing, quoting Matthew 25:40.
