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Cardinal Dolan kicked off this year’s “Feeding Our Neighbors” food collection for the needy, using the occasion of the Respect Life Sunday Mass held each year in advance of the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
Immediately after the Jan. 19 Mass, the cardinal stepped outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral and helped load waiting trucks with boxes and bags of donated food bound for food pantries, soup kitchens and meal programs that serve New Yorkers in need.
“It’s just sort of a simple, homemade approach to a big problem: People were hungry. And it worked,” the cardinal said, explaining to reporters gathered on Fifth Avenue why archdiocesan Catholic Charities started the food collection two years ago.
He was joined by Catholic Charities officials and food campaign partners—including the UJA-Federation of New York and Knights of Columbus—and schoolchildren who helped load a Catholic Charities mobile food pantry and a Bronx Jewish Community Council truck with canned goods, boxes of pasta, dried beans, jars of peanut butter and other non-perishable foods.
“Everybody talks about hunger and how bad it is,” the cardinal said, “and our politicians argue about it, debate about it, but the faith community…said, ‘Let’s do something about it.’ ”
The cardinal also said it’s appropriate to have the kickoff ceremony on the day before the holiday honoring the civil rights leader The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. King “spoke so compellingly about the dignity of the human person, and (called on us) to reach out to those Americans who were suffering any kind of injustice,” the cardinal said.
Food will be collected in Catholic churches in the archdiocese and in synagogues in the metropolitan area and at other Catholic and Jewish offices and ministries during the campaign, which runs from Sunday, Jan. 26, to Sunday, Feb. 2.
“We’re all working together on this to alleviate hunger in the city,” said Linda Mirels, board chairman of UJA-Federation of New York.
Msgr. Kevin Sullivan, executive director of archdiocesan Catholic Charities, said the campaign collected food for nearly 750,000 meals last year and has raised its goal to 1 million meals this year.
“This campaign to help hungry New Yorkers continues to build,” Msgr. Sullivan told CNY. “We can reach those in need, who need the basic necessity of food in order to live their lives in dignity.”
At the Mass, organized as always by the New York State Council of the Knights of Columbus, Cardinal Dolan welcomed members of the Knights and the Sisters of Life and others who work toward the “noble cause” of ending abortion.
The cardinal said, “We pray, anticipating the somber January 22 anniversary of the legalization of abortion. We pray in penance and re-commitment to the sacred cause of life.”
Many at the Mass were expected to participate in the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., Jan. 22.
The cardinal, who holds the title of chaplain to the Knights, also welcomed as Mass concelebrants the archdiocese’s vicar general, Auxiliary Bishop Gerald T. Walsh, who serves as associate state chaplain for the Knights, and Father Brian E. McWeeney, director of the archdiocesan Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, who is senior associate state chaplain.
Other Mass participants included Carmine Musumeci, state deputy of the council, and Jeanne Mucci, state president of the Columbiettes, a women’s group affiliated with the Knights. Both served as lectors.
During the offertory, gifts included baskets of food that the cardinal blessed before they were brought outside to load onto trucks.
Introducing the Feeding Our Neighbors campaign during his homily, the cardinal called it “another pro-life endeavor.”
“Anything that enhances the dignity of the human person and fosters the sanctity of human life is close to the heart of Jesus and the heart of his Church,” the cardinal said.
He said the food collection is held during the cold winter months because charitable donations of food and money made during the Christmas season have been exhausted, and “people are hungry.”
The campaign, carried out by Catholic Charities and its partners, was initiated at the request of the cardinal in 2012.
In his homily, and later while speaking with reporters outside, the cardinal quoted Pope Francis, who has made caring for the poor a major theme of his papacy and said, “A life without sharing is a slow suicide.”
The cardinal told reporters that the pope also wondered, “Why is it that if the Dow Jones average goes down two points, it’s headlines? But if people die of hunger, nobody talks about it.”
He said the pope said that we shouldn’t talk about poverty because it’s impersonal. “We should talk about the poor, and…know that the poor have faces, they have names.
“And to people who live by the Book, Jews and Christians…we have a God who wants us to care for the poor,” the cardinal said.
