Want some good news?

Here’s a nice story. Cardinal Francis Arinze just visited a school in Pittsburgh and found good things going on there.

A joyous African celebration filled St. Charles Lwanga parish yesterday as boys drummed and girls danced to welcome Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, who came from the Vatican to visit schools supported by the Extra Mile Foundation of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Four Extra Mile schools serve a black, non-Catholic student body in impoverished neighborhoods. The foundation, supported by many non-Catholics, subsidizes about 60 percent of operating costs, keeping tuition low.

The Cardinal told the students

“The school is a community of love, of caring, of training. The school … wants to build you up in character so you will be a joy to your family, so that society rejoices because of you,”

And he told the press that he had never seen Catholic schools with such broad support.

“An organization to help the children who are disadvantaged from the financial point of view, an organization that is diocesan and that has behind it not just Catholics but Episcopalians and other Christians and Jews who are convinced of this good effort and who give and who serve on the committee — I have not seen such before. This is good news,” he said.

This is the good news we never hear. Now’s a good time to hear it.