By Anna Gustafson
Archbishop of New York the Rev. Timothy M. Dolan told hundreds of people who gathered to hear him speak at St. John’s University last week that he plans to work with other religious leaders to help Haiti with relief and restoration efforts for years to come.
“We can’t forget Haiti,” Dolan said to more than 400 people in the St. Thomas More Church at St. John’s Fresh Meadows campus. “When the cameras and microphones go, we can’t forget Haiti.”
Dolan, who was the key speaker at St. John’s Founder’s Week celebration, traveled to the Caribbean nation for two days last week to attend the funeral for Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, who was killed during the magnitude-7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti.
“What I saw there was nothing less than Good Friday,” Dolan said. “The devastation was phenomenal. To see the homes reduced to nothing, to see the ruins of incubators and meet the mothers grieving, to see the fear at night, it was Good Friday. But it was also Easter Sunday. The massive relief effort made one stand tall as a human being.”
Dolan, also the chairman of Catholic Relief Services, visited with Haitians and relief workers.
“The Haitian people are resilient,” he said. “Yes, they are scared and crying and bleeding, but they’re not giving up.”
Following his speech on St. Vincent de Paul, a 17th century saint from France honored during the university’s Founder’s Week, Dolan touched on another current issue: health-care reform being debated in Congress.
“Vincent de Paul would be very concerned with health care,” Dolan said of the saint who founded the Vincentian order that seeks to change the world through charity, social justice and education. “%u2026 Everybody has a right to proper and decent health care. Health care should be universal, including for the immigrant — legal or illegal — and the poor.”
Dolan urged those attending his talk at St. John’s University last week to heed the call St. Vincent made for social justice and education in the 1600s that the church leader said was still relevant today.
“Vincent believed our education was hollow unless we served the poor with passion,” Dolan said last Thursday at the gathering.
The religious leader, who has a doctorate in church history, centered his talk around St. Vincent de Paul.
“The church and culture of his day were remarkably similar to today,” Dolan said. “We find a France growing in distance between rich and poor with inequality becoming the norm. We find a church threatened %u2026 and riddled with corruption and traditional piety mocked.”
Dolan praised St. Vincent because he did not give up on the church but rather used religion as a conduit for change. St. Vincent worked to ensure the poor had access to education, and he said Catholics should follow his lead and continue to provide Catholic education for people from all socio-economic backgrounds.
Meredith Leverich, a St. John’s junior, said Dolan’s speech further cemented her plans to do a year of service after graduating.
“I’m hoping to participate in Americorps or go to Latin America,” Leverich said.
Reach reporter Anna Gustafson by e-mail at agustafson@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574
