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A Faith That Crossed An Ocean

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Mai Vu doesn’t remember much about leaving Vietnam in 1975 as the war was ending. She only knows the story the way her family tells it: climbing aboard her uncle’s small fishing boat with more than 300 people, few possessions, little food, but filled with faith and hope.  “From what my mom told me, it was traumatic,” Mai says. “People died, but we were blessed to be able to come here safely. I don’t remember much because I blocked out most of it.” After weeks at sea, the boat was rescued. Mai and her family were brought to Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, a refugee camp often called the “Ellis Island” for Vietnamese families. More than 50,000 refugees passed through the camp as they began new lives in the United States. After a year there, a Catholic priest sponsored Mai’s family and helped them settle in Algiers, a growing refugee community where her parents still live today. “That’s where my memories really begin,” she says. Growing up in a Vietnamese Catholic family, faith was always p...
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Math & the Music Man

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Ask Roberto Matthews, Christ the King’s musical director, what he’s thinking during mass, and he’ll probably tell you he’s solving an equation. But more on that later.  He didn’t come from a musical family. In fact, his Cuban grandmother, who raised him, forbade him from pursuing music. “In Cuba, music is like a handshake; anyone can play, but you don't get paid for giving handshakes,” Roberto says. She imagined a penniless life for him and instead encouraged him to pursue math and technology. But Roberto loved music, even at six years old, when he got his first instrument: a ukulele with no strings. He would spend hours with the broken instrument in his hands, pretending to play. Years later, at Loyola University, where he was studying math, he would pass by a baby grand in the cafeteria, feeling the urge to hear music come from the idle piano. At first, when no one was looking, he would press just one key. The next day, another. And then another. “I would walk past it and press a...
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Deacon Freddy: A Servant of God

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Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi  Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon…   For Deacon Freddy, the Prayer of St. Francis holds special meaning—it helped heal him from the emotional and psychological wounds of being a political prisoner in Cuba. He vividly remembers his time in a Cuban prison. “When I tell you it's terrible, it’s everything that people could tell you is true. It’s cruel.” Even during his eight years in prison, he never lost faith. “Faith is everything, and hope is your companion every day. So you cannot survive over there without faith and hope, without God,” he says. Even though he held on to his faith, Freddy emerged from prison a changed man—filled with hate and rage. It was only when he met the love of his life, his wife Clarita, whom he calls his angel, that the healing truly began. “I don't have any space for love or for understanding or nothing like that. I came out of p...
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Faith and Purpose in Action

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Fifty-six years after graduating from CTK, Richard Carbo remembers his first day as a fifth grader at his new school, where he met Sr. Marjorie. “Oh, she’s still around!” he says jokingly, “she just retired!” As a religious young man at CTK, he never imagined how his faith would be tested as an adult. After experiencing a challenging period in his life, he was lost and felt abandoned by God. “I was angry. I felt so despaired,” Richard says with tears in his eyes. He wouldn’t return to the Catholic Church until three decades later with the help of his good friend Jimmy and a meeting with Father Nam.  After years away, he moved back to Terrytown to take care of his mother. It was a pivotal turning point in his relationship with God. By then, in his fifties, he was a successful businessman with a family, but something was always missing. “It was a Saturday, and Jimmy and I were talking, and I said, ‘You’re a man of good faith, but I’m just so empty,’” Jimmy simply replied, “You’re emp...
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