Heshima Kenya volunteer exults in her work

The situation:

There are currently over 600,000 refugees in Kenya’s refugee camps, many of whom are unaccompanied, orphaned and separated refugee girls and single young women without family members. Refugee girls and young women face the highest risks of exploitation, assault, forced marriage, and abuse, resulting in extreme barriers to education, medical care, and employment.

Sara Lind continues:

These are the kind of things I learned when I started volunteering for Heshima Kenya, an organization that specializes in protecting unaccompanied refugee children and youth, especially girls, living in Nairobi, Kenya. As a mother, especially a mother to a daughter, these statistics have more power over me than they once did.

Read the rest of it.

And know that OPRF grad Anne Sweeney co-founded Heshima Kenya and has been its executive director. She and our #2 Son, Peter, tied the marital knot a couple years ago, by the way. He’s put in time at Heshima K, now back at his work as architectural designer, she soon to rejoin him in Chi.

Learn all about Heshima Kenya at its site, http://www.heshimakenya.org/. Follow it on Twitter, https://twitter.com/Heshima_Kenya.

Happy Mother’s day.

A Fresh Catholic Voice at the U.S. Bishops’ Conference

Not for attribution

New spokeswoman for U.S. bishops put in a few months with Sarah Palin, ’09 to ’10 as an advisor. Hackles rose on the Left. She was defended by Austen Ivereigh, who has worked with her on her Catholic Voices site:

“Knowing of her involvement with Sarah Palin’s campaign,” said Ivereigh, “I expected to find someone with Republican views. But what I met was a Catholic first, whose faith gives her a much higher horizon than U.S. party politics offers. She’s deeply pro-life and passionate about religious liberty, but she’ll go out to bat for migrants and underpaid workers and against the death penalty — in other words, she embodies the Church’s social teaching in all its breadth and depth.”

via A Fresh Catholic Voice at the U.S. Bishops’ Conference | Daily News | NCRegister.com.

Very good. How is she on fiscal responsibility and pro-growth government policies, without which the whole shootin’ match goes down the drain…

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Gay is great, gay is good

Oak Park Chronicles

NBA player announces that he’s black (which we knew) and gay (which we didn’t), finds it therapeutic to the extreme. Bulls player Kirk Hinrich is asked about it, delivers a resounding shrug:

“Its really not significant to me. It surprised me but its just a big distraction right now [playoff games, you know]. I was surprised . . . . It doesnt really change what kind of person he is or anything. Its just who he is. He was a good teammate, good guy. Thats about all I have to say about it.

Good. Toleration is it. It’s the least and most you can expect — or require, for gosh sakes — of a man or woman beyond his or her family and friends, where it’s not enough.

A few years back, I covered Courage at a widely unpublicized national meeting at St. Mary of Lake Seminary, Mundelein, writing…

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Chicago priest crosses border illegally to highlight immigration reform | CLTV

Father Graf’s incredible adventure:

A Catholic priest from Chicago’s Southwest side crossed the border from Mexico into the United States illegally to call for immigration reform.

Father Gary Graf from Saint Gall Church did the border crossing in Nogales, Arizona recently, by hopping a fence.

He then turned himself into federal agents, and asked for forgiveness.

He returned to Chicago Saturday night and celebrated mass Sunday morning.

Father Graf hopes the crossing sparks authentic dialogue on immigration laws.

I get the protest part. But forgiveness? What the . . . ? Like if stopped for speeding, you tell the cop you’re sorry? What the . . . ?