Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of our diocesan podcast, Big City Catholics, with Bishop Robert Brennan, Bishop of Brooklyn, serving the people of Brooklyn and Queens. And I'm Father John Huang, priest secretary to Bishop Brennan. Recently, Bishop Brennan and I had an opportunity to travel to Portaleza, Brazil, where we accompanied a group of young people from across North America participating in the Shalom's Hallelujah Festival.
During our visit, Bishop Brennan had a chat with one of the Shalom's missionaries about faith, mission, and the work that God is doing in people's lives. We're happy to share that conversation with you today.
Before we begin, let us take a moment to pray in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of your church united across nations and cultures. We thank you for every opportunity to encounter you through the witness of others.
Bless this conversation and bless all who are listening.
Open our hearts to hear your voice, deepen our faith, strengthen our hope, and inspire us to follow you more faithfully each day. We ask this through Christ our Lord.
[00:01:28] Speaker C: Amen. Amen.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Bishop. What an adventure it was.
[00:01:35] Speaker C: What an adventure it was.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: You enjoyed it so much, did you?
[00:01:39] Speaker C: I'm glad you came. These are good opportunities to spend quality time with some of the young people of our diocese. We do it in World Youth Day. We do. We're looking forward to next year, to Korea. We have all these different opportunities, and this was a unique opportunity in Shalom. Being in Brazil. What an amazing experience, seeing so many young people.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Very impressed. Very impressed. I was very impressed with the size of everything.
[00:02:05] Speaker C: Yeah. We had a small group of pilgrims from the different communities here in North America. There's certainly a presence of Shalom here in Brooklyn and Williamsburg, but it was this huge, huge music festival.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Hundreds of thousands.
[00:02:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Every year.
[00:02:20] Speaker C: Every year they do this. I don't know how they put that on. You think of World Youth Day taking three years to prepare for, and everything went very smoothly.
It was nice also to spend some time in the big atmosphere, but in the smaller atmosphere with just our own pilgrims. We had a few other adventures, riding on the buggies and the sand dunes and things like that. But those two about building relationships and coming to understand one another and see that life of faith. You mentioned one of the missionaries, Barbara.
Barbara is one of the vowed missionaries of the community, and she's been serving here in Brooklyn. She and Father Cristiano basically are the main coordinators, but the people Of Sholem. They see themselves as missionaries. And Barbara has really taken that to heart. She was telling us in the call one day, and that's why I wanted to have this conversation about her experience at FIFA, at the.
the World Cup. And as, of course, as we were leaving, the World cup was just wrapping up. In fact, I got the score while we were at the airport. That was another opportunity where the whole world was right here, all over North America, people from all over, and a lot of interest of people who were right here in this neighborhood. Barbara, not only being a missionary in a community, working part, pulling together all the work of Shalom, saw a chance to go out to volunteer with program. She had done it once before in Brazil, and just to volunteer, just to be among the people and to be who she is, a missionary and use those as that work as occasions for drawing other people to Christ. And she told us about some of her conversations with people. Just not, I say it in the conversation, not clobbering people over the head, but simply by talking about what she does. You know, everyday conversation and people start to ask questions. It's very, very interesting. And I think she has a thing to teach all of us, too, about how you bring the faith into the marketplace.
Barbara Freitas is one of the missionaries and really one of the coordinators of the Shalom community that is here in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg, at the San Damiano Center. But we were, were in Brazil. We were in Fortaleza for the Hallelujah Festival with, I don't know, maybe half a million young people. Yes, it was an exciting, exciting time. And we're going to talk today about Barbara's missionary experience, being a missionary in the midst of the world. So, Barbara, we're recording on the day as everybody's starting to leave and wrap up. But it was quite the experience, wasn't it?
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it was amazing. And thank you for the opportunity to be here with you, Bishop, and greetings to everybody in the Diocese of Brooklyn and very happy to be together with the young adults from the United States and Canada these days and live this experience together that really struck a chord of joy and faith. And I believe we all leave this place, leave Brazil, filled with joy and with a new enthusiasm for faith.
[00:05:21] Speaker C: I could see that in the group itself. You know, it was a good group to begin with, but something really happened during the course of the week. We had some nice adventures together, just enjoying the beachfront front area and some adventures with the dune buggies and things like that. But really the highlight was the Hallelujah festival. It was. It's sort of a music festival in the heart of Fortaleza that brings so many. What is it?
[00:05:45] Speaker A: About half a million people in total, the five days? It's 1 million people or more. Right. Wow. So. But the Saturday is the big day that. With half a million people, but every day, 200,000. 300,000. Yeah.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: And one of the adventures for me was we start with Mass at 6, and then it goes through the night. Leading a eucharistic procession and holy hour at two in the morning is stretching me just a little bit.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Yeah. It was funny that one person from our group, Josh, he said, father and Barbara, we say that New York is the city that never sleeps. But I think Fort Elizabeth, Hallelujah is the city that never sleeps.
[00:06:20] Speaker C: I think that's correct. I think that's right. You know, what I wanted to talk about today was some of your missionary experience, because you had a great experience just very, very recently as people we just hosted in the United States, in North America, really, the World cup. And we saw that that was just an exciting time for us and for our visitors. But you served as a volunteer with FIFA with the World cup, and that became an opportunity for missionary work, for evangelization. Tell me about your experience with the World cup and how and why you got involved.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I had this experience before in Brazil when the World cup took place here. And then I saw that the World cup was taking place where I live in New York. And now as a life community missionary of the Shalom community. Because at the time, I wasn't a missionary of shalom. I was a member of a prayer group. And for me, it had been an amazing opportunity to evangelize. So I thought, now as a missionary, I can do that again.
And I just feel like it's so good to take advantage of every opportunity we have to evangelize. And I think the sports and the World Cups and the.
Every kind of sport, the Olympics. Right. It's such a beautiful fun for families, for kids, for adults, for everybody. And in the stadium, when I was going to the stadium here in Brazil or whenever, like in New York as well, I see, like, how it gathers people. One big beautiful image that I saw. Brazilians are very competitive about soccer. And we want to win. Right. And we get. Sometimes you can get a little bit aggressive in our way of supporting Brazil. But I saw something so beautiful as I was welcoming the fans to the stadium. There were two families, one from Norway and one from Brazil, with kids. And the parents put both children to speak and to greet each other and wishing luck to each other. And they took pictures. Right. So you see, like there is with the sports, we see a world that gets together and in a time that our world is so divided, with so many rivalry, so much rivalry and so many things going on, wars, whatever you. You see that gathers people and whatever we can do also to support initiatives like this, as I see the Holy Father is there always, like, supporting those initiatives. And as a missionary, being there for me was like supporting a world that comes together and bringing the. The message of love and peace from Jesus.
[00:08:41] Speaker C: And that was your role in. As a volunteer within the World cup to welcome the people who are coming to the games?
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I was welcoming them during this World cup, and then I had many friends who were volunteers as well. And last year in the clubs World Cup, I was with the media, helping them check in and get into their lockers. And I even went to the field as well and was there for some of the Real Madrid game and all these big teams also from Brazil and these clubs that took place in New York City.
[00:09:10] Speaker C: So being a missionary now.
So you took the volunteer work, which anybody would be doing, but serving something like the World cup as a missionary, it's not that you're clobbering people over the head, but it's simply being who you are. And tell me, how do you evangelize in that situation?
[00:09:30] Speaker A: It's exactly what you said. I believe the approach is just being who I am, a beloved daughter of God. This is my deepest identity.
And coming to the world as this beloved daughter who wants to make the others know that they are also beloved sons and daughters of God. Through my friendship, through the smile, through shaking hands, through saying God bless you and blessings in your life, or just knowing about people and making them known, I think through my relationship with them, making them realize that they are known by God and that they are seen by God. Right. Something very ordinary, maybe, that we turn into this extraordinary moment. The most important thing to realize that right there, wherever we go, out there, wherever we are, that they are beloved children of God and this is who we are. And it was great like that. When I was talking to people, I talked to Muslims, I talked to Christians, people who are no longer practicing their faith.
And every interaction was so beautiful. There was like this guy, the match Brazil and Nori had finished, and I was walking to the train and I was trying to take a picture with the stadium in the back. And this guy, he's a Chinese guy who lives in Queens and He was wearing a Brazilian jersey. And he said, oh, do you want me to take a picture of you? And I said, yes. And then through that, we started the conversation, right? And we were walking to the train, many people walking. He was kind of upset. Brazil lost. He was supporting Brazil. And I said that I was a missionary. And he asked, but really, I never met a missionary in my life.
So these things, like, many times I had interactions with people and they were like, oh, I had never met a missionary. And in that moment, I said, yeah, I came here to serve others and to live my vocation, my call from God. And then I showed the Instagram page of Shalom, and he said, oh, you guys do those things.
Can I come?
And I said, yeah, of course you can come. And he's married, has three kids, showed me the picture of his family, and I said, of course you can come. And he said, okay, I'll go. And then he messaged me asking when he could come, right? So maybe a mass. So people I met in the World cup, volunteers or fans. I was not supposed to be there with the flag of Jesus Christ, right? Or anything, but. But with my heart, like. And these simple interactions and making the experience of God take place in every moment.
[00:11:48] Speaker C: It begins with just a simple human relationship.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: The other day, I was also talking. We were waiting for the players to come out to the bus, and I saw this girl, and she. She's from Westchester, but then she told me that she comes work very close to McCarran park every day.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: Which is right where Shalom is located.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Exactly. Shalom is right there. And I was like, oh, really? We live right there. And she had a tattoo with the cross, and she had a little scapular or a cross on a necklace. And I said, oh, are you a Christian? And she said, yeah, my parents are. Sometimes I go to church and started talking. And then I had a medal of Carla Couti's in my tile, cross in my necklace to my sign. And she works with media, so I gave Carla Coutis medal to her, and she said, oh, that's so good that you gave me this medal, because my father keeps talking to me about St. Carla Cootie's and those simple interactions, you know? And I told her, oh, maybe you'll come to Acams, this camping retreat we are holding in August. She said, yeah, I would love to come, but actually I'm thinking of a friend of mine who needs this. So, you know, it's very simple. I think we can do this every day in our work life. And Everything. I think Pope Francis used to say, I would like to see a church that is not closing itself, but a church that goes out. And another time that I was in an evangelization in Rio, when I was a postulant there in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and someone said, we went to a very complicated place in the city to evangelize, to talk to people.
And the guy was there, he was kind of drinking. And he said to us, our group that was there, oh, the church is here. The church came to this place, seriously. And he was impressed. So I see, like, we should not be afraid to go. We don't go alone. We go with the Holy Spirit, go with our brothers and sisters, and we go to a world that is actually not closed. I see this in New York all the time. People are not close to the message of the Gospel. They sometimes just don't know.
They were never had. They never had the opportunity. So I think as missionaries, we just need to create opportunities.
[00:13:52] Speaker C: Exactly. To translate that to, you know, people who might be listening to this. So, you know, good people who are committed to Jesus themselves and, you know, out in the world, working.
How do we begin some of these conversations in terms of being missionaries, no matter who we are and where we are?
[00:14:10] Speaker A: First of all, I think we need to be just aware that we have a great treasure. And I learned this in the missionary journey as well. We should not keep a treasure for ourselves. It would be very selfish of me to keep this message of hope, the love of Jesus, just to myself. So I come and I don't come just to preach something to people. I come to be one with them in receiving them in my heart. Right. Like Saint this. I think we can read the letters of St. Paul to understand and learn with him how to go there. Not, we are not like the world, but we are there. And we are to bring. Not to condemn them, but to bring them first to the mercy of God and then they will understand.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Right?
[00:14:48] Speaker A: So I think knowing that we have, first of all, knowing that we have a treasure in vessels of clay like us, we are not to say that we are perfect. We are just to listen to them and to talk to them and then in these conversations, to bring hope, bring encouragement. People are struggling with discouragement. People need hope and peace in their lives. So.
And from these conversations, the Holy Spirit will let us know where we should go. Should I pray for this person right now? Should I just intercede for her from far away? Should I invite her? I see an open ground here for me to invite this person to a holy Mass or to a prayer group, or to just visit my house and have lunch with my family, right? You'll see what the Holy Spirit inspires. So sometimes I invite people to a party. We have the cultural parties during summertime, and they come to that. And in the party, maybe we'll invite them to a retreat if we feel like it's not. It's good for them. Or we play volleyball every week, we play soccer. The guys play, like, different things during the week. So what does a person like that wouldn't be aggressive for her to invite her to. I don't want her to feel like, oh, I'm pushing them into church, but I'm pushing her into a community of love, right? And then later on, step by step, this person herself will find out that she's thirsty and that God is there for them.
[00:16:00] Speaker C: That's beautiful. That really is. It's amazing. You know, I'm thinking about this Hallelujah festival here in Fortaleza. The history of it is fascinating. You were telling me earlier in the week that it started as something small, but kind of as an alternative to something else. There was a secular kind of.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: There is a. It's very interesting. Yeah, there is a. Brazilians love to party, right?
I guess.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: I think I've discovered that.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: And young adults like to have fun, right?
Everywhere in the world, I believe. And here in Brazil, we have many carnivals throughout the year. And carnival is normally around February, March, right? But they do carnivals out of season in Brazil to keep partying all year long. So in Fortaleza, in my hometown here, where we were at the Hallelujah Festival, they do a fourth owl. It's a big carnival out of season, and it's four or five days of parties. And they have all these bands that fly here, and people loved it. But this event promotes a lot of prostitution or a lot of drugs and alcohol. Like, it's a hard party. There are people who go for just for the fun. But if young people are very influenced, they can get into these things. So Moises, the founder of Shalom, thought, why don't we come up with a good fun for the people? But as a church, we should. We have the best. We have Jesus, right? And how. Let's start with this kind of carnival out of season, but a Catholic carnival kind of thing. A festival where we can provide fun for the people who want to have fun, but a healthy fun that they can bring their families and everything. So with the group, not just Moises, but the whole. The founder Of Shalom. And other people from the community 29 years ago came up with this amazing idea where they didn't have money. It's like those things in the church, right?
They didn't have partners.
But the Holy Spirit and God, the Father of all of us, he takes care of all things, right? So we abandoned this plan in the hands of God, and Hallelujah started maybe for 500, 1,000 people. The first one one day. And then step by step, every year, Hallelujah grew. And I remember going to a hallelujah that was for two, 3,000 people with my mom. I went, like, probably 20 years ago, and it was fun, too. But then they moved to a bigger place, and now it's five days. And what they say now is that this event outgrew the Fortal, right? We're not competing, right? But at the same time, you see that it reaches people. It starts very small, because when we started, Fortao was super cool. Like, it was super big, let's say. And it was like they all had all these partners. And then we never thought of getting Hallelujah to this extent. Now that city recognizes it's the biggest event in the city, and it's one of the biggest Catholic events in the world.
[00:18:42] Speaker C: And you really get a mix of people there. So I would see the people who are up close, and so these are people who are on fire with their faith. And as the bands are singing and Christian artists from Brazil, they're singing every word, and they're involved in all the gestures. But there are a lot of people who just come in out of curiosity, I hear, and that something strikes them. Is that the experience?
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's the experience. I think I heard this throughout these days. I was at Hallelujah. Like, experiences of conversion through hallelujah, returning to faith. And I remember when I was part of a prayer group, there was one of my prayer group mates, one of the girls there, and she said that she was going to for Tao, actually. But she went through something one day, and she went to Fortal one night, something like that. And the other day she ended up saying, no, I'm going to Hallelujah.
And she was not even practicing her faith. And she went and she started following Jesus more confidently. She was going through many things in her family, in her relationships. And I think one of the bishops mentioned this throughout the Hallelujah festival in one of the masses that one of the priests of his diocese, he came 10 years ago to Fort Tao and he met someone on the street, and this person told him about Hallelujah. And he ended up going to Hallelujah, but he didn't know it was a Catholic event. He went to Fortal. He went to Hallelujah. And. And after 10, then he had a nice experience at Hallelujah. And after that he came back to his diocese that is in the south, and he went to church. And now he's a priest after 10 years.
[00:20:13] Speaker C: Isn't that something?
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Wow, that's amazing, right?
[00:20:15] Speaker C: Oh, it is, yeah. They're just such inspiring stories. Well, you know, first of all, on a personal note, I thank you for the invitation to join with the pilgrims from North America and to be with all of you from Brooklyn. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience. But thanks for what you're doing for the world. For Brazil and now for Brooklyn, for Boston, for Toronto, I think to Philadelphia as well now. Right. You'll be, God willing, hopefully you'll be starting a mission there. And thanks for sharing those gifts. And thanks, I think, for not only bringing people closer to God, but to a certain extent, you are forming missionaries because these young people who have experienced the graces of Hallelujah, but also the week to week at Shalom in Brooklyn, they themselves become ambassadors, missionary ambassadors for Christ. So thank you so much.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: Thank God, Bishop. And we're very grateful for you, too, and for being together in this journey. We want these young adults who came here and all of us to become missionaries there and also reach each heart in Brooklyn and whatever the Lord sends. We say that Fortaleza with Hallelujah, with all these events, needs to become like we hope that it becomes the city of peace. And we want New York City to become a city of peace, of the risen Christ who passed through the cross. Right. And we want every person to touch his wounds that are no longer wounds that are bleeding, but are glorious wounds. With God's help, we want to bring the presence of Jesus to each person.
[00:21:40] Speaker C: So, Father John, wasn't that an interesting conversation?
[00:21:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very inspiring that we are missionaries. And then somehow we have so many opportunities to bring people back to the church and back into the faith just
[00:21:57] Speaker C: by being our authentic selves and living the joy of the gospel.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: It reminded me that that's also what Holy Father was saying to all of us, all of those people participating in that event.
[00:22:09] Speaker C: I mean, Pope Leo is very generous with some of these video messages, and he said, I wish I could get to all these events, but I can't. But he sends video messages and he immediately speaks to them. You can tell he knows who he's Talking to. And he knows what he's talking about.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: He was very powerful. He said the enthusiasm of young people is. He said, I only read in the translation from Portuguese to English, but he said, the enthusiasm of young people is contagious. It's like a fire. But it is also possible. I like this part. It is also possible that over time it would fade away.
So you must remain in the presence
[00:22:52] Speaker C: of God through prayer.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: I like that part. He also reminded us that young people are not simply the future of the church, but they're already missionaries. Today he invited us not just to enjoy this festival, but to let our encounter with Christ become a force of evangelization. So I believe that message encouraged very much everyone who was there, but especially the Shalom missionaries and all of us.
[00:23:20] Speaker C: They were so glad to see him. And I think it is a message that's worth seeing over and over again. His message was one that really does need to sit and take root.
He spoke to don't be afraid. Like you talked about being a missionary, don't be afraid of Christ. Don't be afraid to speak about Christ. And he takes nothing away. He gives life and meaning. And don't be afraid to show how a life without Christ is a life without grace, without meaning. We need to have Christ to find the true meaning of who we are and what our lives are about. And I enjoyed that line that you caught, too. It is, if we think about it, those. Something like Shalom, powerful experience, and you ride the high of the emotional wave. We see it in seek. We see it in some of our own youth conferences here. We see it in some of our own adult events. You know, the Eucharistic revival. These are good, good things. But, yeah, over time, it can go and you fall back into everyday life. And the idea of these things is really to feed, to fuel our fire, but like you say, to remain constant in prayer, constant to keep that fire lit. So that was a good reminder. You know, it's good to be home. It was good to go, but it was. It's good to be home. And folks, I recorded with Barbara during the week, but Father John and I are recording very early on Tuesday morning, having arrived two hours ago and recalling the blessings of the week. The day after we record this, on Wednesday, we'll have celebrated mass at St. Jerome's Church with the Haitian community here in Brooklyn and Queens. I had the chance to celebrate with them on the Feast of Our lady at Perpetual Help the day after the Supreme Court decision was issued about tps.
And so now I think the official removal takes place this week and it's especially concerning. So one thing is we pray with and for the Haitian community. There's an awful lot of uncertainty and a lot of concern. We're united, solidarity and prayer. Take this opportunity to urge our political leaders to find a resolution to this problem. You know, temporary protective status in. I get it.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: It's.
[00:25:30] Speaker C: It's a temporary thing because of a natural disaster, many of those in Haiti and political unrest, many of those persecution, all of that. Thing is, it hasn't gotten better. We need to find ways to help Haiti to rise up from all of this. It hasn't gotten better. And a lot of people who came in good faith and are raising wonderful families, contributing to society and now they came so called legal status. But that legalities being removed. It's not like they snuck in here, you know.
So I urge our political leaders, let's find a resolution. And I urge really leaders on both sides of the aisle, both political parties to stop using people as political pawns. So with that in mind, we continue to pray. The Lord be with you and with your spirit. Lord God, we ask you to watch over us and to help us to see you in every person we encounter, to bring you to every person we encounter. And we ask your blessing upon all of us and all of our loved ones. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May he look upon you with kindness and grant you his peace. And may the blessing of almighty God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit descend upon you and remain with you forever and ever.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Amen. Thank you for listening. See you next week.
