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PATERSON, N.J. (OSV News) — Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney echoed the joy and hope of the faithful of the Diocese of Paterson, proclaiming “Viva il Papa!” — “Long Live the Pope!” — at the end of a Mass of thanksgiving he celebrated on May 14 for Pope Leo XVI’s election at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson.

The bishop said this Chicago-born “missionary pope” — and the first North American pontiff — could inspire all Catholics to become “missionary disciples” of Christ.

The afternoon Mass of thanksgiving came six days after Pope Leo XIV was elected the 267th head of the universal church — in Rome May 8. Bishop Sweeney was the main celebrant. Many priests concelebrated the English and Spanish liturgy, with deacons assisting.

Church’s Spiritual Father

Local religious, laity and public officials were among those at the liturgy. Attendees prayed for the pope in his new role as the church’s spiritual father. Masses for Pope Leo have been celebrated around the diocese and world.

“We celebrate and give thanks to Almighty God, especially for the Holy Spirit inspiring our cardinal electors to give us our new Pope, Pope Leo XIV,” Bishop Sweeney said in his opening remarks at the Mass.

The altar of St. John’s, the diocese’s mother church, displayed an image of Pope Leo, the former Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, with flags including those of the United States and Peru, where he served as a diocesan bishop. The new pope holds dual citizenship as an American and a Peruvian.

The multicultural cathedral is home to a Peruvian group, Señor de los Milagros (Lord of Miracles). Paterson has the largest community of Peruvians outside their homeland in the world. Little Lima is a Peruvian community located very near the cathedral in downtown Paterson.

Christ’s Great Commissioning

In his homily, Bishop Sweeney said that Pope Leo, who spent decades missioning in Latin America, could remind Catholics of Christ’s great commissioning of his followers “to go and make disciples of all the nations” at the end of Matthew’s Gospel.

“We must be missionary disciples. We each have a responsibility to hear, learn, and share the good news of Jesus Christ — that work of evangelization to which we are called. The vocation that all of us share from our baptism is that call to holiness, that call to be saints,” said Bishop Sweeney, reminding the faithful to live out Jesus’ commandment, “Love one another.”

Diocesan faithful joined the church worldwide in expressing joy and surprise over the news of Pope Leo’s historic election. He was also the head of the Vatican dicastery that chooses those named bishops. Catholics said they liked his warm personality and hoped his vast experience would help him lead the church in these challenging times.

Excitement and Shock

In his homily, Bishop Sweeney recalled his excitement and shock on the day the College of Cardinals elected the Chicago-born Pope Leo.

“An American? Wow!” Bishop Sweeney said. “Now we’re praying for Pope Leo at every Mass.”

Bishop Sweeney said he was moved by Pope Leo’s first public words as pontiff looking over St. Peter’s Square: “Peace be with you” in the hearts of everyone worldwide. The words called to mind the Jubilee Year of Hope, the bishop said, which Pope Francis decreed to encourage all people to become “pilgrims of hope” in Christ.

An Augustinian friar, Pope Leo will bring the spirituality of St. Augustine, his order’s founder, to the papacy, such as the value of solidarity — “we’re walking the journey together” — and humble service as a leader, the bishop said.

“To be a leader in the church, we need always to remember that,” Bishop Sweeney said.

Moved by Pope’s Spanish

A Spanish speaker, Bishop Sweeney said he was also moved when Pope Leo spoke in Spanish to believers in the Chiclayo Diocese in Peru, in his first public address. The pontiff was Chiclayo’s bishop from 2015 to 2023. Earlier, he was a parish pastor, diocesan official, seminary teacher and administrator in Peru. Pope Leo has been a Peruvian citizen since 2005.

“A blessing for all of us is to know the blessing of the Latino, Hispanic community here in our diocese, our country, and all parts of the world, and the beauty of our Catholic faith, no matter what language or where you come from. It’s all part of the beautiful flavors that make up our one holy Catholic Apostolic Church,” Bishop Sweeney said.

In a special episode of his podcast, “Beyond The Beacon,” Bishop Sweeney said May 9 he was thankful to God, the Holy Spirit and the cardinal electors for coming to “a consensus pretty quickly.” Then-Cardinal Prevost was elected pope on the fourth ballot, which was “a sign” that the cardinal electors “were very united,” he said.

It’s “just a wonderful time for the church,” Bishop Sweeney said, but also for the Peruvian community in the diocese. “It is certainly a great joy for them” to have a pope who served for years as a Augustinian missionary priest in Peru and later as Chiclayo’s bishop.

This story was originally published by The Beacon at Beaconnj.org, the diocesan news and information outlet for the Diocese of Paterson in northern New Jersey and distributed through a partnership with OSV News. Michael Wojcik is the managing editor of Beaconnj.org.

3-minute read

Before my taking office as mayor in 2018, “data” was a four-letter word in Paterson. Previous administrations viewed it as a pejorative term, but my team and I have used data not only to improve people’s lives but to save people’s lives, too.

Within weeks after being sworn in as mayor for my first term, I was selected as one of 40 mayors from around the world to participate in the prestigious Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. Many value-added lessons were learned throughout the yearlong program, but one specific takeaway was how data can help cities make more informed decisions.

After I completed the initiative in 2019, Barbara Lawrence from The Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation asked how the benevolent organization could help implement an idea I had obtained from Bloomberg Philanthropies. I asked for the foundation to fund two positions: a chief innovation officer and a chief data officer. Little did I know that less than a year later, the CDO would play a pivotal and critical role in my administration.

On March 16, 2020, I announced Paterson’s first COVID-19 cases. I immediately asked our relatively new chief data officer, Harsha Mallajosyula, to quickly create a dashboard that would be updated daily with meaningful metrics: infection rates, hospitalization rates and death rates. The daily dashboard drove my decision-making as to when to close and open our businesses and our public spaces. Data helped us save lives in Paterson during the pandemic.

Last year, Bloomberg Philanthropies invited me and 22 other mayors from North America, South America and the Caribbean to join its City Data Alliance. As a part of the alliance, we are receiving multi-year operational and technical coaching on how to leverage data and artificial intelligence to assess needs, strengthen services and codify policies that enshrine results-based practices across our City Hall organization. The initiative has inspired us to launch a data-driven initiative to go from being paper-based to paperless in Paterson. One example would be our objective to streamline our permitting process by going digital.

Welcome, DataRise Paterson

Our aim is to continue transforming Paterson into a 21^st-century city by ushering in a new era of accountability, transparency and progress powered by data-driven decisions. Therefore, we are proud to announce DataRise Paterson to help us create better outcomes for our residents, improve government efficiency and enhance community engagement.

DataRise Paterson will also guide us on how to use and manage data across all of our departments. Our overall goal is to ensure that data is used responsibly, improve decision-making and eventually build a culture where data is used to support our city’s growth and development.

Bloomberg Philanthropies has also blessed us with a graduate from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Ana Rocio Castillo Romero is our senior process improvement leader and is spearheading DataRise Paterson. She has been an indispensable advocate to help us become a stronger and sustainable city.

When Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York City, he often said, “In God we trust, everyone else bring data.” In Paterson, we subscribe to the same axiom and believe that data is more than just a four-letter word but a red-letter solution.

Andre Sayegh is the mayor of Paterson.

A new pope with American and Peruvian roots means a lot to many people in Paterson, New Jersey.

Pope Leo XIV has dual citizenship, holding nationality in both the United States and Peru, where he served for many years.

In his first address after being elected the new pope on Thursday, Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Prevost greeted the people of Peru and his former diocese in Chiclayo. It was a welcome sight in Paterson's Peru Square.

"Hope is very great for our culture and our community, especially in New York and New Jersey, where we are big," Peruvian-American Ceasar Moreno said.

Moreno said he often visits Paterson's Peruvian enclave, where there's a sense of pride and, he says, hope for humanity with this new pope.

"We need more reunion. We need more people to be unionized and to love each other," he said.

At Peruvian restaurant Mi Barrunto, Miguel Iglesias said he feels proud the pontiff has Peruvian roots and hopes he blesses the community with everything migrants are facing.

"It looks like God wanted an American this time"

At the Diocese of Paterson, Bishop Kevin Sweeney weighed in on this important moment for the Catholic Church.

"To see him come out on the balcony, just a gift for the church and the world," Sweeney said. "We believe that those cardinals were praying to the Holy Spirit. Who does the Holy Spirit want? Who does God want for us? It looks like God wanted an American this time, so thanks be to God."

Sweeney said there's "every indication" Pope Leo XIV's leadership will be similar to that of Pope Francis.

"To hear his words of peace and that we're bridge-builders and saying we have to continue the synodal work of Pope Francis," he said. "If he's similar to Pope Francis, I think it will be a great blessing."

Jenna DeAngelis

Jenna DeAngelis is an Emmy award winning journalist. She joined CBS News New York as a general assignment reporter in March 2018.

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The long-awaited cleanup of one of Paterson’s most important industrial relics began this week.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency arrived at the Allied Textile Printing property opposite the Great Falls to begin removing loose bricks from the smokestack. It has been slowly crumbling since 1983, when a huge fire tore through the complex and left the historic Colt gun mill, located on the ATP site, in ruins.

Securing the smokestack is the first step in the EPA’s $4 million project to remove lead and asbestos from the fire-gutted factory buildings.

The cleanup, which could take a year or more, has to be finished before the Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park can open its new $8 million river walk that leads visitors to the Colt ruins.

“We are mobilizing a lot of equipment right now, but the actual brick removal will happen in the next week or so,” said Stephen McBay, an EPA spokesman. It’s not yet clear whether all – or some – of the ATP smokestack will be dismantled to protect the workers who will be doing the asbestos removal, he said.

Some residents who live near the ATP site are concerned about safety. David Soo, an historic preservationist who lives in the restored Phoenix Mill with his wife and six-month-old daughter, worries about the potential health effects of airborne asbestos.

“My concern is the EPA hasn’t done anything to create an emergency alert system if something happens,” Soo said. “They haven’t even suggested that the people who live right next door to the property close their windows while the working there.

McBay said the EPA has created the ATP project website to keep residents informed. Anyone with questions can contact the project’s community involvement coordinator, Joel Waddell, at 929-656-3416 or by emailing him at waddell.joel@epa.gov.

McBay said the EPA crew is monitoring air quality and testing samples for asbestos. According to the project website, the EPA collected 26 air samples in January, and there was no asbestos detected in any of them.

Once the smokestack is secure and the asbestos removal begins in the gutted buildings below, workers will continually water down the site so the asbestos particles do not become airborne, McBay said.

Closing windows should not be necessary, McBay said. “The air is being monitored at all times,” he said. If something went wrong, “we would know way before it got to your open window,” he said.

Located next to the national park, ATP is considered the oldest mill site at the Great Falls. It is where U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton established America’s first planned industrial center through the creation of the Society for Useful Manufactures in 1791.

The first mill on the ATP site produced nails. Then in 1836, Samuel Colt opened the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company in a four-story brownstone built with rock hewn from cliffs overlooking the Passaic River.

Colt didn’t invent the revolver, but he created an assembly line system to mass produce the weapon. But he initially had trouble selling the weapon, because people didn’t know how to use it. He shut down the Paterson mill in 1843, then moved his operation to Hartford, Connecticut, where he made a fortune selling guns during the Mexican-American War.

After guns, machine parts, and locomotives, textiles became the next big industry. By the late 1800s, Paterson had been dubbed “Silk City” with mills employing thousands of workers, many of them immigrants from countries around the world.

Allied Textile Printing grew to become the largest mill in Paterson. By 1940, it employed over 1,000 workers. But as Paterson’s silk industry went into decline, so did ATP, which closed in 1982.