Author: Beth Griffin
Beth Griffin
Beth Griffin is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Rye, New York. She is the New York correspondent for Catholic News Service. Beth was educated by the Sisters of Charity of New York and the Jesuits. She worked in communications and media relations for Catholic Relief Services and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
As the Catholic chaplain at John F. Kennedy International Airport ambled through Terminal 4 on a hot summer afternoon, security personnel, airport employees, and flight crews shouted a cheery hello or stopped for a quiet word. “That’s my priest,” one uniformed woman told her companion with a confident nod. The bearded man in a black polo shirt, black trousers, and scuffed black Crocs smiled back at them. “There’s no average day here. Most of my ministry happens on the go,” Father Chris Piasta said in an interview at the airport, located in Jamaica in the New York borough of Queens.…