We have issued the following press release:
Press Release
Franciscan Fathers Bless the Animals of the Charles and Alewife
Contact: Robert J. La Trémouille, chairman, Friends of the White Geese, 617-283-7649 or boblat@yahoo.com.
On October 2, 2011, the Franciscan fathers of St. Anthony’s Shrine and Missionary Center blessed the Animals of the Charles and Alewife as part of their Franciscan Blessing of the Animals in celebration of the Feast of St. Francis of Assissi. The Franciscan Friars respected the needs of the resident animals by blessing them.
Services were conducted as an open air service in their block of Arch Street in Downtown Crossing, Boston, MA.
Robert J. La Trémouille, chairman of Friends of the White Geese presented as a representation of the Animals of the Charles and Alewife a plush raccoon which he carried with me.
The service was well attended, overwhelmingly by dogs with their masters. There was one cat.
The service was quite lovely. The dogs were uniformly well behaved. There was a significant amount of barking, but it was happy barking of dogs saying hello to their canine friends.
The Franciscans provided La Trémouille a certificate signed by Father Jim Kelly, Guardian and Executive Director of St. Anthony’s Shrine and Ministry Center indicating that “Animals of the Charles and Alewife received a special blessing for the Feast of St. Francis of Assissi” on Sunday, October 2, 2011.
The animals of the Charles River Basis are subject to ongoing abuse by Cambridge and its friends. This has extended to deliberate starvation of the Charles River White Geese, the most visible of the few remaining animals who have not been killed or driven out.
The animals of Alewife are about to be subjected to killing on mass. Killing will commence in October 2011 and last for a month as part of a massive logging and clear cutting project for “flood storage” which amounts to a pittance of the flood storage needed.
Directly across Cambridge Park Drive in Cambridge from destruction zone is a massive parking lot which could readily hold, if taken by eminent domain, a very large multiple of flood storage needed.
The Alewife area, as a result of overdevelopment allowed by Cambridge, has seen two storms in the last twenty years each of which normally would be the worst storm expected to occur in a 50 year period, 50 year storms. The massive destruction of trees and animals which is imminent will protect against two year storms, a fraction of the storage needed.
Cambridge and the Department of Conservation and Recreation admit the pittance of storage their destruction will provide, but have no intention to put the storage across Cambridge Park Drive where it could do good and would not kill a lot of animals.
The two have now officially declared the Charles River Basin off limits to resident animals. They have stated they will allow no use except as a “park” with “park” defined as no animals. While they were doing earlier destruction on the Charles, they specifically claimed they no intent to harm the Charles River White Geese who have lived on the Charles River as very valuable residents and tourist attractions for more than 30 years now..
For further details, please see our blog report at: http://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/franciscan-fathers-bless-animals-of.html.
