Friar Michael Lasky, OFM Conv. serves as Chairman of the (JPIC) Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Commission of Our Lady of the Angels Province.
His ministry hub is located in Washington DC.

Latest JPIC Update written by Fr. Michael:
February 27th was a big day for justice as 40 Catholic leaders, mostly women religious risked arrest as they prayed the rosary in the Russell Senate Office Building Rotunda standing in solidarity with DREAMERS and their families.
Hundreds turned out as we started the day with Mass celebrated by Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv. and continued the day with a press conference and prayer as we headed to the Russell building. The Franciscan family was well represented, as there were members of all the branches of the Franciscan family tree. FAN’s Patrick Carolan and Sr. Marie Lucey, OSF both were arrested, processed, fined, and released. Bishop John prayed over those to be arrested just before it happened. We Conventuals were represented by Friar Chris Garcia, OFM Conv. (St. Joseph Cupertino Province), with our province friars – Fr. Julio Martinez, OFM Conv. and Friar Michael Lasky, OFM Conv.
Yesterday was a great show of solidarity for Franciscans across the country, as we continue to stand in solidarity with DREAMERS and their families.
There were a wide range of media outlets covering the event, both religious and secular.

Here are some highlights:
EWTN News Nightly (Video)
Catholic News Service
National Catholic Reporter
Religion News Service
Sojourners
Note: Earlier this month, as the arbitrary March 5th deadline imposed on Congress by the President to pass legislation for DACA recipients passed, hundreds rallied at the Capitol.
Although the Supreme Court upheld injunctions temporarily halting the president’s decision to end DACA, this decision still leaves millions of DREAMERS in limbo. We need a permanent solution. We need a legislative pathway to citizenship so DREAMERS are protected from the fear of deportation. We must also find a way to protect their families. We must continue to take action:

Br. Jim (left) and Friar Emanuel Vasconcelos, OFM Conv., on of our friars nearing the end of his time in Formation, enjoy a visit with the Poor Clares in their Common Room.

On Saturday, March 10, 2018, Br. Jim Moore OFM Conv., who serves our province as a Definitor, as well as Guardian of  our Post-Noviate St. Bonaventure Friary (Silver Spring, MD) traveled with a group of our Friars in Formation to join in prayer, dinner and sharing with the Poor Clares of the Monastery of Saint Clare, in Chesterfield, NJ.

br. Timothy Blanchard, OFM Conv., Friar Emanuel Vasconcelos, OFM Conv., Br. Jim Moore, OFM Conv., Br. Bede Thigpen, OFM Conv. (St. Bonaventure Province), Friar Christopher Garcia, OFM Conv. (St. Joseph Cupertino Province), fr. Franck Lino Sokpolie, OFM Conv. and Friar Maximilian Avila Pacheco, OFM Conv. (friars of Our Lady of the Angels Province, unless otherwise indicated)

During the first weekend of March 2018, Friar Michael Lasky OFM Conv., who serves our province as Chairman of JPIC (Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation) visited the Poor Clares of New Jersey. Together they celebrated Mass and then gathered to talk about his ministry.

On January 15, 2018, posts and fencing were installed around 3 acres of our farm land near our Shrine of St. Anthony (Ellicott City, MD). After a year to replenish the soil, in the summer of 2019, we hope to plant & harvest fresh vegetables to be sent to the Franciscan Center Center of Baltimore emergency outreach.

JPIC Update…HOW is our land being farmed in Ellicott City, MD?

What is sustainable agriculture and what does it have to do with us?
In simplest terms, sustainable agriculture is the production of food, be it plants or animals, using farming techniques that protect the environment, public health, human communities, and animal welfare.  This form of agriculture enables us to produce healthful food without compromising future generations’ ability to do the same.

Ok. But what does that have to do with us?
For many decades, the friars in Ellicott City have leased 85 acres of their property to a tenant farmer. Using the standard methods of farming in industrial countries, the tenant farmer planted one crop on the entire 85-acres each year, requiring extensive use of chemical herbicides and pesticides to protect the vulnerable monoculture from pests and disease. In order that the plant itself could survive the level of herbicide use required for protection, the farmer planted genetically engineered crops designed to withstand very high levels of herbicide application.  While the corn crop itself is engineered to withstand the fatal doses of herbicides applied, the bacteria, fungus, and other biological life in the soil that is essential for plant life, however, are killed.
In addition to chemical herbicide and pesticide, standard farming methods employ heavy applications of fertilizers made from fossil fuel. While this fertilizer produces extraordinary plant growth, it also kills the biological life in the soil.
This combination of heavy applications of fossil fuel fertilizers and harsh herbicides on genetically engineered crops, applied repeatedly over the years, has resulted in soil that is sterile of life and depleted of nutrition.
Each year the tenant farmer alternated between a variety of commodity crops like corn and soybeans grown not for human consumption as part of a healthy diet, but rather to be processed into fuel like ethanol, food additives like high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated soybean oil, or feed for industrial livestock production.
Considering that the method of agriculture currently employed on its land was unsustainable without dangerous—and growing—chemical applications, and that the very crops grown were not even adding to a healthy food source for humans, the friars looked for a different farmer, a different method, and different human outcomes.
The farming method now being implemented on our land is called permaculture (a portmanteau of permanent and agriculture) and restorative or regenerative farming. These concepts all point in the same direction: using farming practices that strengthen the relationships between parts of our ecosystem rather than weakening them. Permaculture tries to use annual crops and perennial crops, as well as land and water use, in ways that let each element strengthen the other elements, creating a perpetual, self-reinforcing food system. Restorative and regenerative farming are, as their names suggest, similar projects: to farm in such a way that the farming itself helps restore the soil and regenerate healthy plants and animals for future generations.
In short, in the past products of the farm were not destined to strengthen human life, they were not fulfilling the mission of the Church. Now, in partnerships, our land is being farmed Laudato Si’ Style!

_______________________________________

A side note from Friar Michael Lasky, OFM Conv.
Our Lady of the Angels Province
Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation Ministry

This past week, I was able to spend several days at our Novitiate, in Arroyo Grande, CA teaching about social justice and care for creation. We explored Franciscan Prayer and Spirituality in light of JPIC and the history of Catholic Social Teaching form 1891 to the present. During a tour of the grounds, I discovered that they have enlarged their vegetable garden and are taking the time to air dry their clothes on an old fashioned clothes line!
In addition, new apostolates for the novices include both hospital and prison ministry.

January 2018 Bush Clinic in Albion Gully

For the past six years, our province has helped to fund “bush clinics” served by nursing students of Elms College School of Nursing (Chicopee, MA), led by their Project Coordinator and Our Lady of the Angels Province friar, Br. Michael Duffy, OFM Conv., DNP, APRN, ANP-BC. Br. Duffy also serves at the University as the Accelerated Second Degree Program Coordinator and as a Professor, having launched the ELMS caRe vaN, a 32-foot converted camper serving as a mobile nursing unit with two treatment stations, a full exam room and a five seat waiting area which doubles as a warming area as needed, providing free health and nursing care to the homeless and underserved of Chicopee, including blood pressure checks and monitoring, blood sugar checks, foot care, episodic first aid, minor wound care, frostbite checks, patient education on these and other topics, and other healthcare needs that arise.).
Br. Duffy formerly served our province as a missionary in Jamaica and the areas served there each year by his students are chosen because of their lack of access to healthcare or lack of finances to access the care they need. In addition, for the past four years, the groups have run an annual worming clinic at the Sisters of Mercy – St. John Bosco Boys Home; treating 100 boys. Traditionally the group utilizes a parish church or basic school as a make shift clinic. They set up registration on the porch, triage in the back, exams in the sacristy or side room, and a pharmacy in the front. Each patient is seen free of charge and is then given sufficient medications such as blood pressure medicine, oral hypoglycemics, antibiotics, vitamins and ibuprofen (donated through one of our pastoral ministries: St. Paul Catholic Church, in Kensington, CT). After their time in Jamaica, the students leave behind additional funds for medication that will be distributed later through the diocesan dispensary and clinic, which both accept prescriptions written by Br. Duffy.
The students also do their own fundraising in order to participate, which allows the funding provided by our province and other supply donors to be used for bush clinic patient care.
Br. Duffy explains that this continued “Mission” experience for the next generation is an opportunity to expose the need and the service now, as students, so they can pay it forward after graduation. The students spend several weeks in service where they learn to make use of the resources they have, while attending to the needs of those who have little. Over the years, the students have learned much about the culture of those they serve while attending to the medical needs of well over 1000 patients, in the Diocese of Mandeville, Jamaica, WI.

JPIC UPDATE
December 21^st is our National Homeless Persons’ Day of Remembrance.  In Chicopee, MA the local friars and the community at The College of the Elms are joining others in praying for +Dakoda and +Ron, both of whom died on the streets this past year.
That evening marks the beginning of the longest night of the year. The friars of our province will join in prayer for the many homeless who die unnoticed, “that the Radiant Dawn, the Sun of Justice, will come and shine on those who dwelt in darkness and the shadow of death.”

JPIC EPISCOPAL “POSTINGS”
(1) In the Savannah newspaper, Our Lady of the Angels Province friar and Bishop of Savannah, GA – Most Reverend Gregory J. Hartmayer, OFM Conv.  recently wrote about helping DACA dreamers fulfill their dreams.  Let us all hope in prayer for Congress to act to protect the Dreamers before the Christmas recess. If you have a moment this week, to pick up the phone and call your representatives. A happier Christmas could be a dream come true for many!
(2) With the help of Franciscan Action Network (FAN) and other partners, Province of Our Lady of Consolation friar and Bishop of  Lexington, KY – Most Reverend John E. Stowe, OFM Conv. authored an op-ed in the Lexington Paper concerning the RECLAIM Act in Congress.  This legislation, if passed, can help the coal region through its concern for the natural environment and opportunities for employment.  Such legislation could be a stepping stone for similar action in the coal region in Pennsylvania, where our friars have served for 117 years!

Adapted from a new series, “Farm Focus” presented by Our Lady of the Angels Province friar, Fr. Michael Lasky, OFM Conv., who serves as Chairman of JPIC (Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Commission) for our province, in addition to serving as Vice President of the FAN (Franciscan Action Network) Board:

“It’s like walking on cement!” was the comment made to me by one of the farmers, as we walked our Ellicott City fields, by to our barn. For years we friars would look out of our car windows, while driving on Folly Quarter Road and see the corn or neatly lined rows of soy (adjacent to our province’s Ellicott City, MD complex ~  home of our Shrine of St. Anthony, Carrollton Hall Historic Site, Companions of St. Anthony and Provincial House ministries). We might have even thought to ourselves how nicely the rolling hills of farmland looked, all the while unaware that the type of farming and crops that were being grown were harmful to the environment. The additional use of pesticides has only complicated the dynamic.
Leaning down with a stone, I scratched as deep as possible into the dirt, about 6 inches, and the resulting smell was … nothing. The soil smelled like nothing. It was exhausted.
A similar thing happened on our land during the time of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737 – 1832), one of four Marylanders to sign the Declaration of Independence and the only Roman Catholic. He owned vast agricultural estates and our property is a very small portion of one of his estates which he gifted to his favorite granddaughter, Emily.
In 1772, the Ellicotts – a Quaker family – settled in what is now downtown Ellicott City, building mills along the river. Having sampled the ground in the area and listening to local farmers, they realized that the soil was exhausted, and recommended a switch from farming tobacco to farming wheat. With the support of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the first to make the change, the land and local economy were saved.
History, in a manner of speaking, is repeating itself as we friars, the caretakers of this Folly Quarter parcel of the old Carrollton estate, are changing our farming ways by partnering with our nearby neighbors at Mary’s Land Farm. In the months ahead, our province JPIC Updates will switch from the usual “Friar Focus” articles to a “Farm Focus” series, chronicling this new farm-partnership and the ways we hope we will help to restore the land.

Mike Haigwood, Tom Cunningham & Christian Melendez

Just a little over a year ago Howard Magazine did a feature article about Mary’s Land Farm, located on another part of the old Carroll estate, running along Sheppard Lane (Ellicott City, MD).
It is owned by tech entrepreneur Tom Cunningham, his wife Rosy, and their children; Luis, Maria, Rosy, Lupe, Thomas and Rita. Different from many farmers, even from some others who farm organically, Cunningham has transformed his land into, “an orchestra of water, soils, plants, grasses, and animals to keep each in balance.” He, his family and his staff farmers, Mike & Barb Haigwood and Christian Melendez, have brought about an ecosystem that is a sustainable incarnation of farming, in the spirit of Laudato Si.

Farmer Mike Haigwood has already planted our first cover crop of wheat-rye, which is helping to take the harmful toxins out of the soil, while facilitating the return of the nutrients needed for the soil restoration process. These new farmer partners of our friars are helping us to sing St. Francis’ praises of the Lord for our sister, Mother Earth.
We look forward to eventually using our own “Little Portion” of the land to feed those served at the Franciscan Center in the northern area of Baltimore City (MD). The rest of our farm land will be used to extend the ecological footprint of Mary’s Land Farm.

The Sultan and the Saint
Mark your Calendars and/or set your DVR!
National Broadcast: December 26, 2017 at 8PM on PBS stations nationwide

Franciscan Action Network (FAN) collaborated with Unity Productions Foundation (UPF) a Muslim film company dedicated to interfaith dialogue and education through media, to produce a new documentary drama entitled The Sultan and the Saint. This film is the first to tell the story of Saint Francis of Assisi and Sultan Al-Kamil of Egypt, using both Christian and Muslim sources.

Viewing Parties:

-FAN has been asked to help set up over 500 viewing parties nationwide.
–Even if you DVR the broadcast, and view it at a later time, you will count as a viewing party. Viewing parties can be as few as two, and can be registered as open or closed.
–Sign up online to host a viewing party, and invite those in your parish or ministry to do the same.
https://franciscanaction.org/article/host-viewing-party-sultan-and-saint

Some Conventual Franciscan Friar Involvement:

• World Premier in Washington D.C. – Our Lady of the Angels Province friars, Friar Michael Heine, OFM Conv. & Friar Dennis Mason, OFM Conv. attended and each gave it two thumbs-up!
• September Screening in Lexington, Kentucky was hosted by Most Reverend John Eric Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of the Diocese of Lexington in Kentucky and a friar of the Province of Our Lady of Consolation.
• Roman Premier for the Franciscan Family and the Muslim community – Will be hosted by our friars at the Seraphicum on May 9^th in collaboration with our province’s JPIC Ministry, FAN, and the Pontifical Institute for Islamic Studies.
• FAN just honored UPF with its annual Cardinal McCarrick Award, given to a non-Franciscan embodies the spirit of St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi. Thank you to Our Lady of the Angels Province friars, Friar Julio Martinez, OFM Conv., Friar Matthew Foley, OFM COnv., Friar Max Avlia, OFM Conv., Friar Manny Vasconcelos, OFM Conv., friar Tim Blanchard, OFM Conv., friar Franck Lino, OFM Conv. and St. Joseph Cupertino friar, friar Chris Garcia, OFM Conv. who all joined Our Lady of the Angels Province Chairman of JPIC (Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Commission) and member of FAN – Friar Michael Lasky, OFM Conv., in attending the event and showing a strong Conventual support for FAN and this inter-faith project!

On October 7, 2018, to kick off the Native American & First Nations Weekend at our National Shrine of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (Fonda, NY), Friar Michael Lasky, OFM Conv., who serves as our province Chairman of JPIC (Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Commission), gave this 2:30 p.m. talk: “A Franciscan Understanding of Sacred Ground and Care for Creation.”

The weekend also included:

• 4:30PM Saturday Vigil Mass with traditional purification rite (smudging)
• 7:00PM Saturday Prayer & Healing Circle with Terry Steele and Deacon Ron Boyer
• 10:30AM Sunday Mass with traditional purification rite (smudging)

For more information on other events are coming up at the Shrine, please visit the National Shrine of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Facebook Page or Website for a calendar of events and contact information.

Friar Michael Lasky, OFM Conv., who serves as our province Chairman of JPIC (Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Commission) will give a 2:30p.m. talk, “A Franciscan Understanding of Sacred Ground and Care for Creation,” to kick off the October 7-8, 2017 Native American & First Nations Weekend, at our National Shrine of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, in Fonda, NY.

The weekend will also include:

• 4:30PM Saturday Vigil Mass with traditional purification rite (smudging)
• 7:00PM Saturday Prayer & Healing Circle with Terry Steele and Deacon Ron Boyer
• 10:30AM Sunday Mass with traditional purification rite (smudging)

For more information on this event or to see what other events are coming up at the Shrine, please visit the National Shrine of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Facebook Page or Website for a calendar of events and contact information.