Cardinal Timothy Dolan paid a low-key visit to LAMP (Lay Apostolic Ministries with the Poor) Catholic Ministries’ weekly “café” near the entrance of the Corpus Christi Monastery on Lafayette Avenue in the Bronx on Wednesday, October 30.
Cardinal Dolan visited with homeless and other area residents who came to LAMP’s food distribution truck, talking about their situation, their needs, and that night’s upcoming World Series game.
The truck, adorned with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, also bears the Scripture citation from which the ministry takes its name, 2 Samuel 22:29: “You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light.”
Co-founded by Lyn and Tom Scheuring in 1981, LAMP Ministries provides sandwiches, soup, or instant noodles, along with fruit and snacks to those in need, along with spiritual material that includes copies of the New Testament in English and Spanish and rosary beads, Marybeth Greene, pastoral co-director of LAMP, told The Good Newsroom in an interview. Volunteers prepare sandwiches and non-packaged foods. LAMP serves 50-100 people per distribution, Greene estimated.
LAMP does four food distributions per week, twice at the Corpus Christi site, and two at St. Thomas Aquinas on Crotona Parkway, also in the Bronx, she said.
It was Mother Lucille Cutrone, CFR, who entered eternal life just days earlier, who had originally suggested the Corpus Christi site as an area where there would be a need for LAMP’s ministry, Greene said.
“We do [the distribution] here because of the proximity to the Blessed Sacrament,” Greene said, so that those who wish to avail themselves of the sacraments may do so.
“I’m always amazed that we’re so blessed with dedicated people like this, that just go when they’re needed. LAMP is unique,” Cardinal Dolan told The Good Newsroom. “What’s great is, that they go to the people, they don’t wait for the people to come to them. It’s like Jesus out on the street, tending to people on the side of the street,” he said.
Officers from the New York Police Department’s 41st Precinct, which is close to the Corpus Christi Monastery, also visited while Cardinal Dolan was at the café.
To learn more about and support LAMP, visit their website.