So often in the Gospels we read about the Lord Jesus’ love and concern for the sick. Not only do they seek him out throughout his travels but he actively pursues them. It would not be an exaggeration to describe his work as a “ministry of healing.”
One of the greatest contributions of the Catholic Church in our country remains the establishment of Catholic schools. Millions of young Catholics (and numerous non-Catholics) have been educated in Catholic schools since the very foundation of the United States. In the face of unrelenting obstacles and widespread social opposition, colonial Franciscan missionaries, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and her sisters, St. John Neumann and his co-workers laid the foundation for the most extensive Catholic school system in the world. It is their legacy that we commemorate during Catholic Schools Week.
My dear sisters and brothers in Christ of the Diocese of Trenton, Although the recent amputation of my lower left leg will keep me from marching with you in Washington, D.C. this year, I will be marching with you in my heart.
As we witness the slow but steady erosion in our society of the conviction that all human life is sacred and worth preserving at every moment from conception through natural death, I call upon all Catholics within the Diocese of Trenton, indeed, upon all people of good will, to recommit themselves to the belief that God is the only Creator and source of all human life and that, therefore, God alone has the right to determine its natural end.