January 2009

Time to share recipes for Lent

ORLANDO | The Florida Catholic’s editors again this year seek to share readers’ favorite meatless recipes for Lent. We’d also like to know where you got the recipe, and whether making it brings back any memories. To view the recipes we collected last year or to read last year’s story visit the links at the close of this post.

Selected recipes for this year and some of the stories behind them will be published just in time for the first Friday of Lent in Feb. 27–March 12 print editions and also will be included in our online “Lenten Cookbook” which is growing annually with new recipes. Submissions may be made through the Web site HERE or by mail to Lenten Recipes, Florida Catholic, P.O. Box 4993, Orlando, FL 32802–4993. Please include an e–mail address and/or daytime phone number so a reporter may contact you. Submissions must be received by Monday, Feb. 9.

01.31.09 | Return To Top | 2008 Readers’ Recipes | Modest ingredients make for memorable Lenten meals

Super Bowl is super for fundraising, evangelization

TAMPA | Whenever the Super Bowl comes to Tampa, as it does again this year, it’s cause for excitement at Jesuit High School.

The NFL’s championship game not only brings one of the world’s highest profile sporting events to Jesuit’s neighborhood, but also about 600 cars that will park at the school, only a block from Raymond James Stadium. At $60 each, the parking money provides a nice boost for the Catholic boys high school scholarship fund and operating costs, said Nick Suszynski, director of alumni and development.

“We’re really blessed with location,” Suszynski said.

As Super Bowl XLII arrives Feb.1, the city’s fourth since its inception in 1967, Catholics from around the Diocese of St. Petersburg are involved in related activities ranging from collecting food and sporting goods for the needy, to joining games and meeting players at the NFL Experience at the stadium. CONTINUED...

Steven Girardi | 01.29.09 | Return To Top

Florida’s own March for Life

About two years ago, pro–life supporters in the St. Augustine area — including many Catholic parishioners in the Diocese of St. Augustine — created an alternative for people from Florida and south Georgia who want to take a stand for life each year around the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, but can’t make it to the national March for Life in Washington, D.C. The third annual March for Life St. Augustine took place Jan. 17. Organizers estimate more than 1,000 people of many faiths, backgrounds and ages walked the half mile from the Mission Nombre de Dios to the public plaza in downtown St. Augustine to show their opposition to abortion and desire for reversal of the Jan. 22, 1973, Supreme Court ruling that legalized it through the U.S.

Photojournalist Jennifer Surgent was in the nation's oldest city to document this year's March for Life. Her slideshow is here.

Denise O’Toole Kelly | 01.20.09 | Return To Top

Many Catholic Floridians have high hopes for Obama presidency

ORLANDO | Tampa resident and St. Peter Claver parishioner Gene Black worked as a self-described “foot soldier” in the campaign to elect Barack Obama. And now he is among the millions of people expected to be in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20 to witness the historic inauguration of the nation’s first African-American president. MORE...

01.16.09 | Return To Top

Postcard campaign coming to parishes

MIAMI | Though many abortion opponents were discouraged at first by the results of the Nov. 4 election, pro-life supporters in Florida are regrouping and focusing their efforts on making sure the Freedom of Choice Act is not signed into law by President-elect Barack Obama.

“Now is the time to come together,” said Father Alfred Cioffi, a Miami priest with doctorate degrees in moral theology and genetics who works with the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. “If there is a silver lining in all of this, it is that this should drive us even more.” MORE...

Anne DiBernardo | 01.16.09 | Return To Top

Florida’s life marchers have young faces, fresh concerns

ORLANDO | Just before Christmas, Deacon Dennis Demes received a reminder of why he and many other youth ministers from all over Florida lead student pilgrimages to usually frosty Washington, D.C., each January for the March for Life.

Deacon Demes, director of formation for the Diocese of Palm Beach’s diaconate program and a staffer at Cardinal Newman High School in West Palm Beach, is traveling to the annual march this year with students from the high school and their chaperones. As he stood in line recently at the Wellington Mall to buy a gift card, Deacon Demes said, a man waiting behind him spoke up: “You may not remember me, but I traveled with you to Washington, D.C., for the March for Life in 1992. I’m pro-life today because of it. It really made a difference in my life.” MORE...

Florida Catholic Staff | 01.14.09 | Return To Top

Barry senior will witness history firsthand

ORLANDO | Barry University senior Jennifer Sastoque got her first taste of government as a freshman. She then focused on her nursing studies but after two years missed the rough-and-tumble discourse of politics. So she got involved with the College Republicans.

Now the 22-year-old sits at the political epicenter of the United States, representing the Miami Shores-based Catholic university at the Presidential Inauguration Seminar. The event, sponsored by the Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, runs Jan. 10-20. President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday, Jan. 20, caps the journey. MORE...

Lynn Ramsey | 01.14.09 | Jennifer Sastoque’s Blog | Return To Top

Making ‘Spiritual Cents’ of a bad economy

Everywhere you turn, it seems, someone is offering advice on how to weather the economic downturn. The Florida Catholic’s newest columnists, Jon and Evelyn Bean, suggest turning to an age–old and reliable source for money–management strategies: the Bible. The Beans have been involved for 20 years with Crown Financial Ministries, a nonprofit, nondenominational Christian organization dedicated to teaching biblical principals of money management. They lead the ministry’s Catholic Initiative and their column, “Spiritual Cents,” is exclusive to the Florida Catholic.

Denise O’Toole Kelly | 01.14.09 | Return To Top