Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome back to another edition of our diocesan podcast, Big City Catholics, with Bishop Robert Brennan, the Diocesan Bishop of Brooklyn and Queens, and myself, Father Christopher Henry, the rector of the Co Cathedral of St Joseph. Today joining us is Father Patrick Griffin, Vincentian Congregation of the Mission, who's here to talk about this 400th anniversary of the founding of the Vincentians this year. They're currently in celebrating this jubilee within a jubilee ending in April, April 17, to be exact. It was founded in 1625. And so we're grateful that Father Griffin, the executive director of the Vincentian center for Church and society ministering at St. John's University, is able to join us. But before we begin, we're. We'll begin in prayer. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now at the hour of our death. Amen.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: St. Vincent de Paul, pray for us in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.
[00:01:12] Speaker C: Well, Father Chris, it's good for us to be together, and this is going to be a very interesting conversation. I have personally a great love for the Vincentians, having been educated by the Vincentians at St. John's University. And now to be bishop in the diocese where they have such a strong presence is for me a real treat. I'm so glad to be here in Brooklyn, Queens, of course, but reconnected with St. John's and with the Vincentians who really helped form me. You know, I often say that at the time, Cathedral College was its own college at Douglaston, but St. John's was the minor seminary for me. It's where I got a lot of the formation that I would have needed that brought me then to the seminary in Huntington. So, Father Griffin, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: My great pleasure. And thank you for inviting me, Bishop and Father Chris.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: You know, in addition to the great things you do for St. John's and your experience, you've taught in the seminary that educated our priest in Huntington. You taught many of our priests scripture and formed many of them. And the work that St. John's does, the work you've done for St. John's to me, you're also something of an expert on the Vincentian spirituality, the history and the spirituality. So I remember a couple of years ago we celebrated that 400th anniversary of Vincent de Paul gathering people together to walk in his company. They became the congregation of the missions. But this year we really celebrate the anniversary of the congregation. So the best way to start a discussion about the pensentions is talk about St. Vincent himself, right?
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Yes, I think so.
[00:02:42] Speaker C: I fell in love again through St. John's with St. Vincent to Paul, because it's that story of how he came, I guess, from humble circumstances himself, really through the sacrifice of his parents.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: Received a good education and lots of opportunity, and then could have had a cushy life as a priest. And yet he encountered someone in need. He had this moment of profound conversion, and then it really just takes off from there.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Yeah, Vince's story is a very interesting one. The way in which I usually speak about Vincent is that he was converted by life. So that's my starting description of who he is and the way in which that plays out in his own experience. And so I. I talk about the. The way that he was converted by life. And the. The important values for him was the incarnation, that Jesus is present among us in the particular way in which Jesus is present among us in the poor. And so he has that famous image of the medal. And if you look at the medal on one side, you see the poor person and you flip the metal on the other side is Jesus. And so that's a way of speaking about the way in which Vincent was aware of the incarnate presence. And then another value for Vincent was collaboration. He loved to work with people, and he attracted people to himself in doing the work that he did. So he was the founder of three major communities that really served the poor and served the church, beginning with the Charities, the Ladies of Charity, and then moving to the congregation of the mission in 1625, and then the Daughters of Charity in 1633. So there were three groups that enabled him to work seriously on the kind of ministry that he really thought was most important. And then the last of the values that Vincent really held up was around inspiration and recognizing the gift and the movement of the Holy Spirit and divine providence and the way in which that enabled him to make decisions and seek out new ways of carrying forth his. His ministry. I mean, one of his famous lines is that love is creative unto infinity. And so he was always finding new ways to carry out that. That particular ministry, as I said at the beginning, it was converted by life. He just kept his eyes open, and wherever he saw a need and wherever he saw good people, he immediately tried to bring the two together. One of his famous lines around collaboration is that the poor suffer more from a lack of organization, from a lack of Charity. They suffer more from a lack of organization than charity. And so his great gift, one of his great gifts was, was bringing people together and inviting the people to serve the needs of those who are marginalized among us. And he did that in a rather extraordinary way. And that was his own calling. And when he talks about the Congregation of the Mission, I mean, the first chapter of our constitution said that we have three important things that we need to be attentive to. The first is our own salvation. The priest, the congregation, needs to strive for his own salv denomination and do whatever is necessary for that. And the second was the care of the poor. And the third was the education of the clergy. So those are the three things that are right on the first pages of our constitution. And that really should be and have been important to Princess from the beginning, to be the best man that he can be, to try to serve the poor in the best way that he can, and to be of service to the people of God through the ministry of their priests.
[00:06:00] Speaker C: And then, as you said, he was collaborative by nature, so he brought together many, both men and women, to do this important work. And that's what kind of brings us now to this jubilee celebration. Vincent wasn't one simply to do some good deeds, make a name for himself, and then fade off into history, but he inspired others along that way. So we have the foundation then of the Congregation of the Missions. Even the name called informally, Vincentians, but.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: The name of the society, the Congregation of the Mission. Yeah, that's right. That's our official name. So that when I write my name down officially, I put Father Patrick J. Griffin, comma CM Congregation of the Missions. That's our title. But the interesting question, as you suggested, is what do we mean when we speak about Congregation of the Mission? That's a very interesting thing. When I think of Vincent de Paul. If I was only going to talk about one year in the experience of Vincent de Paul, I'd pick 1617. 1617 was the year in which he preached what he called the first homily of the mission. And so when he did that, what he preached about was the need for confession and the general confession. And he did that to a congregation. And the congregation immediately was carried away by the words that he spoke about the need for the sacrament of reconciliation. And so there was a huge outpouring of people who wanted to come to make the sacrament. And there were lots of priests were brought in to help them to do that. And then Vincent began to realize that this is something that really needs to be done for the people who are in the villages outside the big cities, who don't have as much contact or as much training around some of the important things of our faith. And so that's when he began the missions. But originally, the missions were carried out by different priests and religious orders and kind of worked together with him. But it became clear to Vincent that that really wasn't going to work. Over time, you couldn't get a lot of priests and a lot of people to do that because they already had other jobs. And they just couldn't go away for a month or two months or even three months for some of the missions. And so that's why, in 1625, the congregation of the mission itself was founded. So a group of priests who would carry out the responsibility of the mission. And that was a good thing for him and for the congregation, because it really did start us to do the kind of work that became characteristic of us. When I think of the missions, I always use five Cs. Let's see if I can put them together. What carried the mission forward for him and the priests that he sent out? One was communion, which is to say to celebrate the Eucharist with the community that he was gathered with. The second was confession. He wanted all the members of the local community that he went on mission to to make use of the sacrament of reconciliation. And that was important to him. The third was spiritual conferences. So he gave conferences that were most important to help people to grow deeper in their faith. And then another thing that was really interesting to me and has stayed interesting to me, is the fact that Vincent insisted upon catechetics. He insisted upon that, that there'd be a catechetics session for the elderly people, for the adults in the community, and also for the children in the community. He himself wrote a catechism, simple catechism. Louise de Mariac, his great collaborator, wrote one for children. And so Vincent would say that there has to be a catechism lesson every day, because what people don't really hear is sometimes the things that are most basic. And people in villages and outside the big cities might hear less about it. So we thought carrying out and teaching the catechism was really important. And so we even have letters where members of the community write to him, and he hears that perhaps they thought that it was more important to give a conference than teach the catechism. And he writes back to them. He says, that's not more important. The catechism is something teaching people about their faith. And the real practical order is One of the things that needs to be done, conferences need to be given as well. But catechism, the catechism lessons should not be avoided. And then the final element that was part of the mission was charity. In the villages and the places where he was, he would try to bring together a group that he would call a charity, and they would take care of the needs of the poor who are in their parish and in their area. And so those are the five elements that make up what the mission was. And Vincent and the congregation of the mission carried those out for many, many years around the area of Paris and then around France, and then even in other countries. So the congregation, the mission, is built around these missions sent out for local communities and teaching them about the faith and helping them to grow in the faith.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: You mentioned, Father Griffin, about the homes in Paris. And I know we'll talk a little bit about this. It was pretty exciting that the Holy Father himself wrote a beautiful letter who sends a message to the congregation of the mission upon your 400th anniversary of your founding. But he mentions that as well. The homeless, the work with the homeless in 1643, the houses for the poor. But at what point then does the congregation of the mission come to the United States? And we can go back to that letter in a moment, but let's talk more locally.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: Sure. It's an interesting story. It begins with Bishop Dubourg, who was a bishop out in Louisiana in the early part of the 19th century. And so he's new to the work there. And it was the United States had just gotten the Louisiana Purchase, so a huge amount of land was given to the United States with lots of people on it. I have read that Bishop Dubourg had responsibility for a million square miles.
[00:11:23] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: Now, that's almost beyond imagination. But that was his area of responsibility. And he realized that he couldn't handle that without a large number of priests. And he knew that he needed to get priests and to train priests, and he needed resources. So what he did is he went to Rome. And Bishop Dubourg was a Sulpician. Sulpicians and the Vincentians are friends as communities. Both Vincent and Jean Jacques Olier were around in 17th century France at the same time and founded their communities around the same time. So Bishop Dubourg was a Sulpician. So when he went to Rome, he connected up with the Vincentians, and the Vincentians agreed to send some men to the United States to his area. And so I think there was around seven priests, maybe one brother, and then a number of Seminarians that came to the United States in 1816. They landed in Baltimore, and then after a couple of months, they made their way over to Louisiana. And then right away they founded St. Mary of the Barons, which is a seminary that became a training place for lots of the priests there in the Louisiana area and for the Vincentians themselves. So one of the major works that the earliest Vincentians did in the United States was to establish seminaries to help to train the men who would be able to take care of the dioceses that were growing within the United States. That was. It's always been one of our works, and it was an important work coming here and then at the same time, being attentive to poor who were available in the parishes where they worked. That happened in 1816, and the church continued to grow, and the Vincentians began to spread in different places in the United States. What kept happening to the congregation, however, was that they kept sending men here from different places in Italy and France and others, and they became provincials here in the United States. But then the church saw these guys, and then they picked them for bishops, and so they got shipped somewhere else. So it was tough to keep provincials in the United States because they were capable men, and the church was looking for capable men to lead dioceses. Vincentius, God called that way.
[00:13:25] Speaker C: You mentioned the two statute of Elements, the care of the poor and the education of the clergy. And. And certainly that touches upon our history here in Brooklyn, because with a young diocese in the 19th century, and that is not long after the Vincentians came to the United States, our first seminary education was linked to the Vincentians.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Seminaries have always been important to us. And I taught at the seminary for much of my ministry and was connected up with seminarians. And even today, I'm connected up with seminarians who study here at St. John's University.
[00:13:57] Speaker C: Let's talk a little bit about Brooklyn, Vincent. Were really one of the founding stones, if you will, one of the building blocks of this early diocese, centered right here in Brooklyn and then expanding beyond. It began on Lewis Street. Right. The first Vincent Vincent foundation avenue.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's 50 years, pretty much after the Vincentians arrived in the United States. Bishop John Lachlan, who was the first bishop of Brooklyn, as you would know, he was aware of the fact that so many immigrants were coming to the United States. 1865, after the Civil War, and lots of immigrants were coming to the United States from Ireland and Italy and Germany and places like that. And his diocese, our diocese, was growing. There was a lot of prejudice against These immigrants who came at that time, much like there's a lot of prejudice against immigrants in our current time, he knew that the only way in which he could help these immigrant populations to get ahead was. Was by an education. And so he contacted the Vincentians over In Perryville, in St. Louis and Louisiana, and invited them to open a university here in New York. And so they accepted. And so they came to New York, 1867 or so, and agreed to found St. John's University. We'd already founded a university upstate New York at Niagara. And afterwards we would found another university in Chicago, in DePaul. But St. John's was the one that we started in, in the New York City area. So it was founded on Lewis Avenue and what has come to be called, at different times, the Bedford Stuyvesant area. And that's where the first shovel was placed into the ground. And the first building of St. John's was completed in 1870. And so that was the start of St. John's University. And there's lots of really wonderful things got said. When I do this talk at other times for our faculty, I bring out all these different quotes from these different. At the foundation of the university, I've written one thing down here. This is taken from the diary of St. John's as they were paying attention to what was going on at the university. And so it says, in the year 1865, the Right Reverend John Laughlin, Bishop of Brooklyn, expressed the desire that the congregation of the mission should establish itself in his diocese for the purpose of opening a day college where the youth of the city might find the advantages of a solid education and where their minds might receive the moral training necessary to maintain the credit of catholicity. So it's a wonderful statement about how the university began, and we've tried to be faithful to that. The whole mission of the university is around being a Catholic and a Vincentian university, which is metropolitan and global. We've tried to follow up on that.
[00:16:42] Speaker C: And of course, that site continues to be an important place for us on Lewis street. The university moved out to Queens.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:49] Speaker C: We have the Church of St. John the Baptist. And if you go into that church, there are reminders all around of the Vincentian spirituality, the different Vincentian saints, the moments in history. It really is breathtaking.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: That's really the truth.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: It's a beautiful church. And then you did eventually move your campus to Queens, where it currently stands, and on what was a golf course, I believe. Right.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: That's the truth. The first campus was on Lewis Avenue. There and then we had a second campus on Schmerhorn Street. And so we were there for some time. That was 1920s, I think. And then we bought the golf course in 1936. And then in 1954, we began to build on the Queen's campus. We have about 20,000 students here in this era. We used to be the first largest Catholic university in the U.S. then DePaul beat us out, and I think we're still the second or maybe the third. So we're a big Catholic institution in the United States.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: And when I was there, it was still old commuter. It was a commuter college.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:17:49] Speaker C: And I remember people used to say, well, there's not another stitch of land to build on here. And yet, through a lot of creative work, you really built all around this. And it's a different place. There's a certain continuity, but it just brings in a whole variety of people from now all over the country and really all over the world.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Yeah, that was the intent of putting the dorms in in the year 2000. You know, before then, it was all just commuter. I mean, St. John's is 100 acres. I get the students here, they wouldn't have any idea what the acre is. They said, well, it's around 100 football fields or 100 soccer fields, depending on their particular interest in that. So it's a big campus. We really are healthy by the fact that we've got students here from all over the world and from all over the United States, as well as the majority of our students who are New Yorkers. And so we keep both of those. And the variety of students we have on campus is really incredible. You walk across the campus and you'll hear. You hear young men and women talking one language or another language. And they have that. And they're from different cultures. They really are impressive, the different groups that we have here and the ways that they master their first language and then in English as their second language, and they really get a good education here. And they really add a lot to the richness of the university because of the diversity that is here.
[00:19:03] Speaker C: And in that. I mean, really, they reflect the reality of Brooklyn and Queens, because that's who we are as a diocese. It's just here's the whole world know. And the other thing about St. John's that always stayed with me is that you stay true to that mission of educating not solely, but you had an emphasis on the first generation. You know, I was the eldest in my generation that went to college.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, me too.
[00:19:26] Speaker C: Yeah, you Know, and my. And it was through a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifice on my parents part. But, you know, subsequently, brothers, sisters, cousins, on one side of the family, we came from an immigrant family, the other side of the family from generations of coal miners in Pennsylvania. My parents, boy, did they have the brains. But, you know, they got right to work and had to take care of things. And through their sacrifice, St. John's became a reality for me and for my one brother and my one sister. And that becomes life changing in a sense. It just opens so many doors that, that opportunity for college education.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: It really does, and we are proud to do that. I mean, we began as a school for immigrants and we still have lots of immigrants who study here and people who are, as you say, first generation and all kinds of different cultures. And we try to be faithful to them, particularly those who have less resources. And we try to provide whatever resources we can to them. But it's not just that. We also have other students who have, you know, reasonable resources available to them, reasonable family resources. But with them, what we try to do is help them to understand the needs of those who are marginalized among us and their responsibility to treat them well and to be generous. And the university plays on both sides of it. One of them is taking care of those who are having a difficulty making it, making ends meet, and the others who can do that. But then they should learn to be generous in the gifts that they have for, for the benefit of those who are less.
[00:20:52] Speaker C: And it builds a sense of a solidarity that there really is not then that division because we're all in it together and we're working together on the different academic projects or on the different societies within. And going back to your Catholic identity, since I'm there, you built the beautiful church and you've also built up a good. It was a good campus ministry in my time, but again, it was a campus ministry that served a commuter population. So that kind of changed. And then you have the Catholic scholars and the service, you have the Osnam scholars. Different opportunities for people to go deeper in their faith and connected to the.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Education, you know, Catholic Relief Services and that. We've got a lot of different groups on campus that really do collaborate with, cooperate with being a, a Catholic university and the kind of values that would make important for those who are students here.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: I too proudly am an alum of St. John's both undergraduate and then graduate in the School of Business, the Tobin School of Business. But you have great programs that you offer both for business, for Law. We're talking about the diversity of the community, but there's a diversity also of those studies that are offered and study abroad programs.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Ultra I spent time for the community in both Paris and Rome. I served the international community. But of course, we have campuses in Paris and Rome. So when our students would come there on one of the international programs, I would see them and tour them around those big cities. It was a great, great pleasure for me. But the other programs that we run here that really are very helpful for the students but also contribute to the good of the diocese are things like the School of Ed. Like, we collaborate with Brooklyn with regards to the Institute for Catholic Schools. And one of the newest, the newest building on campus is our St. Vincent's Health Sciences building. So we just built that, that only opened in September. And so St. John's has installed a nursing program in that. So we're in the effort now to put together a nursing program where we Hope there'll be 1200 nurses, 300 in each year over four years. And so, again, it's contributing to the.
[00:22:54] Speaker C: Health care, and that's a real need in society today. I know that's a growing field.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: We believe so.
[00:22:59] Speaker C: So you have some great academic programs. I've seen that get back for different things. But again, St. John's is still connected to your Brooklyn and Queen's roots, and you're still involved in the family. So you mentioned St. John center for Church and Society. I think often of the St. John's bread and life caring for the poor here in Brooklyn, some of those apostolic, if you will, outreaches of The Vincentians of St. John, we do do that.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: And we have lots of programs for our students that they go out to. These programs like go to the Bread and Life and then the Midnight Run and, you know, other kinds of things that bring them to where the needy in our population are. And it gives the students an opportunity to really see and to serve. And it makes a big difference for them, because the important thing is not simply to go there and hand out a sandwich, but it's to have the conversation afterwards. What did you learn? What did you see? How did that affect you? And that really makes a big difference in the lives of some of these kids, because they hadn't perhaps had that experience before, and all of a sudden they've had it. And it's one of those kind of things that they don't forget. University community really supports those kinds of efforts. I'm really happy to, you know, promote those among our students and give them that kind of experience.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: In Pope Francis letter to your congregation of the mission, he speaks of, like, the growth that's happening in the congregation in Asia and Africa. How has that been in terms of, are those members coming to the United States as well for mission work? Are they remaining in parts of Asia, Africa, Europe? Where's the most need at this moment within your congregation of the mission?
[00:24:29] Speaker A: Well, just speaking simply about the congregation of the mission, we have 3,100 members in the world, but it's been that way for a long time. Our numbers in the United States and in Europe have gone down, but our numbers in Africa and Asia have gone up. So. So we've maintained kind of like that same number of 3100, but they're located in different places and they're carrying out the mission in those different places. So some of those men do come here and they go to other mission areas, but basically they stay in the home, their home country, and carry out the ministry there.
[00:25:03] Speaker C: And there's a connection to St. John's there as well, because in a sense, you're educating Vincent from other parts of the world to go back and bring that educational experience to their homes.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: We do, though, and that's a, that's a great honor for us. But that's one of the things that we also collaborate with Brooklyn Diocese on, because we have the international priests who come here from all over the world who want to get an education that they can go back and serve their diocese in one particular way or another or the religious community in one way or the other. So they come to St. John's and we work out a way to handle. Handle the education for them. But Brooklyn is the one that handles the housing and food and gives them a place to be cared for and to minister.
[00:25:45] Speaker C: They're in the life of our church here.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's great for us to be collaborated on that. And the same thing happens with the sisters. We help the sisters in terms of their education, and then Sister Marianne Lopiccolo, she helps to get them set up in different places and that. So there is, on that level, as well as many others, there's a collaboration between the Diocese of Brooklyn and, and St. John's University, and both of us profit from it. So I'm. I'm really happy to collaborate on that. We run an acculturation program also for priests all over the United States who are international and who need to get. Learn a little bit more about the American culture. And so we run that program for them during the summer. And Brooklyn priests and Rockville Center Priests. And last year we had five priests from Alaska.
[00:26:25] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: So a little bit about the letter that the Pope has written to the congregation. And it was a very wonderful letter where he recognized the values that the congregation has brought to the church over the past 400 years, and his confidence and his prayer that we can continue to do that going forward. So it was a real blessing for us. But one of the things that the Holy Father did in the Jubilee Year and also connected up with our Jubilee Year is this whole thing around. I don't know if you heard about the thirteen Houses project. Thirteen Houses Project was created by the Fam Vinh Alliance. It picks up, as you said before, Father Chris, the 1643 Vincent de Paul saw all of these orphans that were around Paris and they needed some place to live. And so he was given a large donation by King Louis. And Vincent took the donation and bought 13 houses and created homes for these orphans and provided for their education and provided for someplace where they could be loved and they could get in a skill that would enable them to move forward. So that happened in 1643, and that was called the Thirteen Houses. But then in this last decade, this Thirteen Houses campaign has really taken hold. And so the congregation of the Mission around the world decided to try to use this as a model and set up homes for 10,000 people in different countries where the Vincentians and the Daughters of charity and the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Sisters of Charity and the all of the other members of the Vincentian family in their particular country try to set up these homes for the homeless. So 13 is a symbolic number. Some places set up 13, some do 20, some do 2. But it is a way of carrying that forward. And then Pope Francis was very much enamored of that whole thing. And so he has taken that 13 Houses campaign as one of the goals of the Jubilee Year. And so he himself has taken on the responsibility for 13 houses and the way in which he's doing it. He's providing for housing in Syria, so providing housing for the people that are there and the particular needs that they have. So it's a way in which the Vincentian charism and the congregation, all the other members of the Vincentian family and the worldwide church are working together in terms of sharing a jubilee experience. And the Holy Father's been wonderful with regard to that. And with us, we have lots of pictures of our Superior General and Director of the Daughters of Charity and other conferers and sisters with the Holy Father blessing this or being there. So it's, it's been a real good thing for us.
[00:28:57] Speaker C: And that's the deeper message of the Jubilee year. It's not just about celebrations and remembrances, but really, in your case, in the congregation mission, living the history, in the wider case of the jubilee year in 2025, it's that renewal of the gospel within each of us and really within all of us together in solidarity.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:29:20] Speaker C: Well, we thank Pope Francis for that greeting and his admiration of the Congregation of the Missions and the inspiration. And we, we strive to follow Vincent de Paul's lead. And I'll care for one another and I'll care for the poor, especially to be especially attentive. And I love the way you said it. You know, his conversion was through life. That's the other thing that popes asked us in this, this Jubilee year to be attentive to one another, to listen. To listen to one another, and to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit through that. So we pray. And by the way, sidebar, we're recording this a little earlier in the week, but we're praying for our Holy Father, for his health these days, that he grows stronger and finds healing. So we pray for the Lord's blessing upon him. Thank you, Father Patrick, for joining us. This is an interesting conversation, and again, I'm just so grateful for the role of Vincentians in my own life and now here in the Church of Brooklyn and Queens.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Thank you very much for having me. I'm also a Brooklyn boy, so I feel very comfortable being with you and speaking about the value of the St. John's University and its foundation in Brooklyn.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: Thank you again, Father Griffin. Bishop, perhaps you could end with a blessing.
[00:30:27] Speaker C: Yes, the blessing of Almighty God. May the Lord bless you and keep you, made his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May he look upon you with kindness.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: And grant you his peace.
[00:30:36] Speaker C: And may the blessing of Almighty God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit descend upon you and your families and remain with you forever and ever. Amen.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: Thanks, everyone, for joining us again in another edition of our Dawson podcast. We hope that you'll join us again next week. God bless.
