HOMEPAGE for this issue: August 10, 2011 // Download PDF Version // Click to install/update Adobe Reader on your computer

Visit by soccer team highlights Knights of Columbus’ work with Haitian amputees

By Veronica Ambuul, Catholic News Service

At an Aug. 1 news conference, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson spoke about Healing Haiti’s Children, a partnership with Project Medishare, whereby Haitians who have had limbs amputated as the result of injuries sustained in the January 2010 earthquake were given prosthetic limbs free of charge.

Anderson was accompanied by four members of Team Zaryen, the Haitian national amputee soccer team, as well as Dr. Robert Gailey, director of rehabilitation services for Project Medishare.

“More than 100 children and 250 adults in Haiti have received prosthetic limbs donated by the Knights,” Gailey said.

The Haitian soccer team will be touring the East Coast in October and will make a stop at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to thank the military for their rescue efforts immediately following the earthquake.

“You are a blessing for us,” Fortilus Cedieu, the team’s coach, told Anderson.

Anderson said that the Knights’ work in Haiti has led to a new initiative to help AIDS orphans in Africa. Through a partnership with the Apostles of Jesus, plans are under way to build schools in Kenya and Uganda, Anderson said.

“When you’re an orphan, especially due to this disease, you’re an outcast living on the extreme fringe of the village,” Anderson said.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., currently administrator of the Denver Archdiocese, welcomed the Knights at the news conference. Denver’s archbishop since April 1997, he was named July 19 to head the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, where he will be installed Sept. 8.

“I expect that this convention will be the source of many, many graces for the local Church,” he said. “The Knights have been my right hand when I was bishop of Rapid City, South Dakota, when I came here to the Archdiocese of Denver, and as I head to Philadelphia, I expect them to be very close partners in the work of the Church in the years ahead.”

During the general business session Aug. 3, delegates heard a talk by Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, former auxiliary bishop of Denver, who reminded the delegates that most Americans are living in the country because of immigration.

“If we traced the genealogies of everyone in this room today, it would lead beyond our borders,” Archbishop Gomez said. “We all have some immigrant blood.”

He added that while he doesn’t like to see immigrants breaking the law, “human rights come from God, not the government. If your homeland can’t provide basic needs like food and shelter, you must be free to seek these things in another country.”