Content from NCR special sections, including our August 30-September 12, 2013, Ministries edition, is not available online. These sections explore topics important to today's Catholics, including Our Environment, Catholic Education, Family Life and Theology.
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House of health
With support from US Catholics, clinic in Port -au-Prince empowers Haitians to aid their own community
By Tom Roberts
One might see in the history of Kay Lasante, which means “house of health” in Haitian Creole, the tortured modern history of a tiny, desperate nation, the extremes of its poverty and desperation and the seemingly unbounded opportunities for transformation. Located in Port-au-Prince, Kay Lasante is a health clinic, one of innumerable ventures to provide care in a country whose circumstances seem to keep outpacing the attempts of the equally countless nongovernmental organizations, church groups, evangelical missions, Catholic parish partnerships and temporary medical teams to staunch the worst of it. Haiti has long been the focus of a kind of ongoing international triage that never runs out of victims. ... PRINT ONLY
Sisters and animals welcome foster kids to farm
By Zoe Ryan
CAMBRIDGE, MINN. A therapy license was not in Norba’s possession. She didn’t know English, either. But she had two ears to listen and a pleasant, calming demeanor. With these qualities, Norba helped children cope with their emotions. Norba was a goat who resided on the Li’l Farm Children’s Home hobby farm in Cambridge, a nonprofit run by two School Sisters of Notre Dame who look after children in short-term foster care, respite care and emergency placement.
Srs. Francette Malecha, 73, and Margaret Roozen, 70, have cared for nearly 350 children in foster care over the years, from a premature baby to a 19-year-old. ... PRINT ONLY
DC monastery offers people a break from hectic life
By Jerry Filteau
WASHINGTON. Reviving a tradition that dates back to St. Francis, the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in Washington recently opened the Hermitage,
a small, secluded guesthouse where someone can take time alone to reconnect with God and his or her spiritual life. Susan Talbot of Seattle, nearing the
end of a five-day stay when NCR visited the Hermitage, was completely enthused. ... PRINT ONLY
Projects bring water lines, electricity and more to remote Honduran villages
By Patricia Lefevere
ALPINE, N.J. The distance between Alpine, one of the most exclusive suburbs in America, and the isolated, mountainous villages of Western Honduras is 2,000 miles. Carmen Ana Unanue has traversed those miles many times, flying into Honduras’ second-largest city, San Pedro Sula, and then making the difficult road trip to the remote, rural areas in the region near the ancient Mayan ruins of Copan. For a dozen years, Unanue has made frequent trips to the impoverished Central American republic and assisted villagers with building a water system, even installing electricity, and often building a school. ... PRINT ONLY
Engineers bring sustainable technology to Nicaragua
By Eloisa Perez-Lozano
As classmates at Iowa State University in Ames in 2007, Gregory McGrath and Wes Meier never thought they would eventually be using their engineering degrees to run their own nonprofit organization and implement systems of sustainable technology in Nicaragua. McGrath and Meier are two of four co-founders of Emerging Opportunities for Sustainability (or EOS) International, started in 2008 to promote appropriate technology in the developing world. ... PRINT ONLY
'This ain't no joint, it's a church'
Erie Benedictines’ collection of ministries serves a wounded city
By Tom Roberts
ERIE, PA. In downtown Erie, you’ll find some striking exceptions to the urban blight that is the norm. Most of those exceptions are the work of the women who are members of the Erie Benedictines and the ministries that have come to define their presence in this depressed city. ... PRINT ONLY