Thank you, Barbara [Easterling].  It’s an honor to be here with all of you – and with Frank LoBiondo and Bill Pascrell.

It is good to celebrate the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker by honoring the work of the Faith and Politics Institute and to thank Fr. Kiley and the staff.  We are inspired by Pope Benedict’s words on his visit to Washington last year when he said, “The person who has hope lives differently, we ask God for the gift of hope to carry us on.”

And it’s good that this year we’re recognizing the contributions of workers in transportation because it gives me a chance to pay respects to a man who made the biggest contribution to my life – and that’s my dad who was a New York City bus driver.

My mother and father were Irish immigrants whose hope and faith enabled them to start their family – even in the middle of the Depression.  They both worked – my mother as a domestic worker for rich folks on the Upper East Side.  She made low wages and had no benefits.

But my dad was a member of Local 100 of the Transportation Workers which – together with our faith – made the defining difference for our family.  Because of the union, my brother and sisters and I had the chance to pursue a better life.

The president of Local 100 was the legendary Mike Quill, and I spent many evenings with my dad at union meetings listening to Mike Quill rally the members in his wonderful thick Irish brogue.

But my father’s worth went far beyond the walls of our small home in the Bronx.  He was one of the “hidden heroes” of our city – the men and women who kept our buses and subways and our city moving forward – taking people to and from work, making sure families of all kinds could go to church or out to the beach – all in comfort and safety.

We take transportation workers for granted – whether they are drivers, engineers, track workers, mechanics, conductors, airline pilots, flight attendants, air traffic controllers, reservations agents, baggage handlers, taxi drivers – and I would expand that list and include maritime workers like ship and boat captains and their crews.  Many of them are invisible to the public and the only time they get recognized is in times of crisis.

That happened when Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger and his crew safely landed their airliner in the Hudson River in January.  Suddenly, millions of people were reminded of the critical role transportation workers play in our lives.

It happened again when another courageous captain of another kind of ship was willing to trade his own life for the lives of his crew members and helped bring the Somali pirates to justice.

But we seldom hear about the workers who help us avert tragedies or simply make our lives work better — the skilled bus driver who rescues a senior citizen trapped in a crosswalk or calls in a robbery in progress; the track inspector who spots a fault that could derail a train; the mechanic who stands up to his supervisor and demands that an aircraft be taken out of service; the flight attendants who deal daily with difficult circumstances — we owe them all a huge debt.

Our faiths teach us that human dignity demands that all workers have a voice on the job.  And on St. Joseph’s Day, we rightly honor all workers — and we should say a special prayer for all men and women who have been laid off from their jobs and can’t find work, and especially the auto workers and their families who are close cousins to transportation workers and who are sacrificing so much to save their companies, their jobs, and our economy.

God bless all of them and all of you and your families on this special day.