Piarist Vocations

09/11/2026

THE CHILDREN OF NEPAL
By now you have all seen the awful images and video of floodwaters crashing into Rasuwa and Nuwakot. The Piarist Fathers are present in Nepal. More than 22,000 children across the affected districts urgently need one thing above all: clean water. UNICEF reports these children are without access to safe drinking water or basic sanitation, putting them at high risk of waterborne illness. And while a definitive count of orphaned children hasn’t been established, UNICEF has already documented at least 107 children separated from their parents in the flooding. According to our team on the ground, more than 1,252 people have died and 4,200 remain unaccounted for in this disaster.

Many have only have one pair of clothes, what they are wearing. Nothing is left. They have no electricity — no telephone — and then what happens? They cannot purchase anything. With water systems damaged across the region and no way to buy supplies, families are left waiting for someone to bring clean water to them.
In some families, only one person survived. With families crowded into shelters and sanitation facilities in ruins, the risk of waterborne and infectious disease is climbing fast for the children who remain.

Across the hardest-hit districts of Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading, only 3 schools remain safe and structurally sound for students. Eight more have been partially damaged, and 8 have been completely destroyed. With 41 bridges washed away and roads still buried in mud, even the schools left standing can’t function normally — many are serving as emergency shelters instead of classrooms.

09/06/2026

10th Anniversary of the Canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Did you know that Mother Teresa was BAPTIZED on August 27, 1910 on what was then the Feast Day of ST. JOSEPH CALASANZ?

Mother Teresa was born in Skopje, Macedonia, Ottoman Empire [now in North Macedonia, and she died September 5, 1997, in Calcutta [now Kolkata], India. She was canonized just ten years ago on September 4, 2016. Her feast day is September 5, and she was the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to the poor, particularly to the destitute of India. She was the recipient of numerous honors, including the 1979 Nobel Prize for Peace. In recognition of her ministry, and she was honored on January 6, 1971, by Paul VI, who awarded her the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize. Long regarded as a “living saint,” she was formally recognized as one by the Roman Catholic Church in 2016, less than two decades after her death.

08/26/2026

08/26/2026

Painted in 2026 by Deacon John Murphy in the Bronx, this portrait of St. Joseph Calasanz now hangs in St. Helena Parish in the Bronx. The parish is administrated by the Piarist Fathers.

08/25/2026

Click to view this power point Life of St. Joseph Calasanz. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q4Kot3SGJir4iKlaocTb1Y2Ol12pwdLJ/view

The Life of St. Joseph Calasanz - a powerpoint presentation.

08/25/2026

The Piarist Fathers in Guatemala.

08/24/2026

08/24/2026

ST. JOSEPH CALASANZ - Feast August 25
St. Joseph Calasanz was born in 1557 in the hamlet of Peralta de la Sal, which is located within the municipality of Peralta de Calasanz, which is located in the Aragon region of Spain. He was ordained INM1583 as a diocesan priest and later became the Vicar General of the Diocese of Urgel. He later went to Rome and in 1597 founded the world's first free public school dedicated to poor children and in 1617 founded the Piarist Fathers, a Religious Order of Clerics Regular dedicated to the care and education of poor children. He suffered trials, slander, and persecution silently and serenely. He died peacefully in 1648 at the age of 90.

From St Joseph de Calasanz to Cardinal M.A. Tonti:
Let us strive to cling to Christ and please him alone
Everybody realizes the great dignity and merit of that ministry in which men devote themselves to the education of boys, especially poor boys, so that they may learn the way to eternal life. When, in the interests of soul and body, knowledge is imparted, piety cultivated, Christian doctrine inculcated, their teachers share in a certain manner in the work of their guardian angels.

Help of the most excellent kind is given to young people, whatever their origin or station, so that not only are they preserved from evil but they are more easily and gently drawn towards good. It is universally accepted that when the young receive such aid, they become so much changed for the better as to be no longer recognizable for what they previously were. The young, like tender plants, are easily trained in the desired direction, but if allowed to toughen, we find that our best efforts may fail to correct their wills.

The education of youth, particularly of the poor, while it assists them to grow in human dignity, also concerns all members of Christian society. Parents rejoice to see their children being led along the right path; civil authorities approve the formation of good-living subjects and citizens. The Church especially has cause to be glad, for, as lovers of Christ and defenders of the gospel, the young are more speedily and efficaciously brought into her many and varied fields of life and action.

Those who undertake this work of teaching, surely a task to be carried out with the greatest care, must be endowed with overflowing charity, inexhaustible patience, and, above all, profound humility. So may they be found worthy for the Lord, in answer to their humble entreaties, to make them fellow-workers with Truth itself; may he strengthen them to carry out their noble office, and finally, may he grant them a heavenly reward in accordance with the saying: ‘Those who instruct many in virtue will shine like stars for all eternity.’

They will attain more easily to this, if, having made profession of perpetual service, they strive wholeheartedly to cleave to Christ and to please him only, who said: ‘Whatever you did to one of the least of my little ones, you did it to me.’