{"id":634,"date":"2007-05-01T14:55:12","date_gmt":"2007-05-01T14:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=67"},"modified":"2007-05-01T14:55:12","modified_gmt":"2007-05-01T14:55:12","slug":"43007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=634","title":{"rendered":"4\/30\/07"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our family went Sunday to a gathering for Liberian refugees who \u00a0were relocated \u00a0to this Near Westside Cleveland area several years ago. \u00a0 This small enclave of Liberians are just a few of some 340,000 Liberians who have fled the Civil War in that country over the past 13 years. \u00a0 The refugees here have, in large part, been ‘adopted’ by St. Patrick’s Church. \u00a0 Church members have donated money for homes, food, clothing, furniture… \u00a0 In addition, the church has set up an after school tutoring program to help Liberian students integrate. \u00a0 And they have, indeed, become part of the community. \u00a0 St. Patrick Deacon Bill Merriman said at the gathering that these Liberian’s have been surrounded by violence. \u00a0 They have lived in extremely difficult conditions in refugee camps. \u00a0 And now it has been like “the Exodus,” said Merriman, with Cleveland becoming the “promised land.” \u00a0 [There’s a different take on Cleveland, huh.] \u00a0 Merriman added that the people at St. Patrick’s who have rallied around these refugees are deeply living the Gospel message about: \u00a0 “Welcoming strangers…” \u00a0 What’s more, Fr. Mark Denardo said that what is happening at St. Patrick’s should be a model \u00a0for how we can build “one world,” in peace. Note:<\/strong> \u00a0 For more, see my column<\/a> on this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our family went Sunday to a gathering for Liberian refugees who \u00a0were relocated \u00a0to this Near Westside Cleveland area several years ago. \u00a0 This small enclave of Liberians are just a few of some 340,000 Liberians who have fled the …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}