{"id":417,"date":"2009-04-13T20:45:14","date_gmt":"2009-04-13T20:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/joy-and-hopes.html"},"modified":"2009-04-13T20:45:14","modified_gmt":"2009-04-13T20:45:14","slug":"joy-and-hopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/joy-and-hopes.html","title":{"rendered":"Joy and hopes…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Richard<\/span>At another U.S. parish, this time in Vermont, there is rejoicing over the dramatic and traumatic conclusion of the hostage ship captain held for five days by Somali priates<\/a>. Richard Phillips (at right, with the captain of the USS Bainbridge) was rescued unharmed as three of the four priates were shot and killed by Navy Seal snipers. The fourth Somali kidnapper was arrested. Phillips had offered himself as a hostage to the pirates who tried to seize the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama April 7 in the Indian Ocean, in exchange for releasing the crew. As CNS reports<\/a>:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

“We’re so happy that it turned out the way that it did,” said Donna Schaeffler, secretary of St. Thomas Church in Underhill Center, Vt., the parish where Phillips, 53, and his wife, Andrea, regularly attend Mass. <\/p>\n

“There is so much media here and we’re trying to give the Phillipses their privacy, but we’ve been praying at Mass for his safe release,” Schaeffler told <\/font>Catholic News Service<\/font><\/a> April 13 in a telephone interview. <\/p>\n

“Our pastor (Father Charles R. Danielson) also asked everyone to pray for the Phillipses during the Easter morning Mass. We were just so happy to hear the news of his rescue later in the day,” she said. <\/font><\/p>\n

[snip]<\/p>\n

“It’s been a real eye-opener, I’ll tell you that,” Father Danielson told CNS in a telephone interview. “An event like this really humanizes the news. It really brings home that the faces of people in the news belong to real human beings. It’s someone in your parish, in your community, and we’re hoping and praying for the best.”<\/p>\n

The ordeal has also shown the priest, who has been pastor of St. Thomas since last July, that he has a faith community of people who really care about one another, pray for each other and band together in difficult times.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A little-noticed aspect of the saga also reinforces those bonds, in a parish and in the wider, global community: The ship the priates tried to hijack was carrying tons of food from Catholic Relief Services<\/strong><\/a> that is destined for Rwanda:<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Forty-nine containers aboard the ship hold 860 metric tons of bulgur wheat that are to be used by CRS relief workers for some of the poorest populations in Rwanda.<\/p>\n

The wheat will feed 8,000 of that country’s neediest people through two programs. One targets 5,600 of those considered most vulnerable — people living with AIDS, orphans and those identified as significantly malnourished — living in the southern district of Rwanda, one of its poorest areas.<\/p>\n

The other program feeds 2,400 people throughout the county who receive food at safety net centers such as orphanages, old age homes and homes for the handicapped.<\/p>\n

The wheat on board the hijacked vessel is a six month supply for the programs. CRS hopes that the ship will now be able to make its way to its destination of Mombassa, Kenya as any interruption of the food supply for these vulnerable Rwandans could be critical to their health. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At another U.S. parish, this time in Vermont, there is rejoicing over the dramatic and traumatic conclusion of the hostage ship captain held for five days by Somali priates. Richard Phillips (at right, with the captain of the USS Bainbridge) was rescued unharmed as three of the four priates were shot and killed by Navy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nJoy and hopes... - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/joy-and-hopes.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Joy and hopes... - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At another U.S. parish, this time in Vermont, there is rejoicing over the dramatic and traumatic conclusion of the hostage ship captain held for five days by Somali priates. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}