BOSTON -- Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley presented 150 Cheverus Award Medals to laity, deacons, and religious for service to the church in Boston during a prayer service at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Nov. 26, the feast of Christ the King.
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BOSTON -- Young students across the Boston Archdiocese were encouraged to show off their artistic talent and take part in the Catholic School's Foundation's annual Christmas card competition.
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DANVERS -- "You've started something on death row." Xaverian Brother Jim Connolly heard those words from the warden of the maximum-security South Carolina prison where he served as chaplain. Most death row inmates were not Catholic, but when the Protestant chaplain could not hold Sunday service, Brother Jim had to fill in. For that day's service, Brother Jim recounted the story of Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and listened to the inmates as they responded to it.
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WAYLAND -- Before he became pastor of Good Shepherd Parish in Wayland, Father David O'Leary was a chaplain and professor of comparative religion at Tufts University. While there, he noticed that his non-Catholic students were confused by the role of saints in the Catholic Church.
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As I do every year on Thanksgiving week, I am posting my blog a couple of days early so I can spend time with my family for the holiday. Following the meeting of the bishops' conference last week, I traveled to Pittsburgh for the celebration of our Capuchin Province's 150th anniversary. When our Province of St. Augustine started, most of the members were lay brothers, which was very typical of the way things were in Germany -- there were more brothers than priests. [ . . .]
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BOSTON -- When he was a young priest, Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley celebrated the funeral Mass of a woman with Down syndrome. After the funeral, the woman's mother shared her story with him. She said that when her daughter was born, she was angry at God.
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DORCHESTER -- Beth Chambers, vice president of basic needs at Catholic Charities Boston, considers it a Thanksgiving miracle. For 24 years, Catholic Charities has partnered with United Way of Mass. Bay to distribute free Thanksgiving meals to those in need throughout the Archdiocese of Boston. It seemed as though they wouldn't have enough turkeys for everybody -- until they received a call from the St. Vincent de Paul Society. The society had purchased 1,400 more turkeys than it needed, and it was wondering if Catholic Charities had any use for them.
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WALTHAM -- On Nov. 18, the 15 members of the St. Jude Parish G.K. Chesterton Society held their monthly meeting, gathered at a long wooden table in Jake n JOES Sports Grille in Waltham. While those around them eagerly awaited the start of the Bruins game, Father Jeremy St. Martin and his fellow Chestertonians, as they are called, discussed the work of the renowned English Catholic author and philosopher who lived from 1874 to 1936.
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DORCHESTER -- It may come as a surprise, but New England Patriots cornerback Jonathan Jones is as comfortable handling a sheep brain as he is handling a pigskin. Jones dissected sheep organs, played tag with robots, and participated in eight other "STEM activation stations" during STEM Night at St. John Paul II Catholic Academy Lower Mills Campus in Dorchester on Oct. 17. Several of the "activation stations" will become permanent fixtures of the school, thanks to a donation of $50,000 in training and equipment provided by Jones's Next Step Foundation.
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BRAINTREE -- In January 2010, 19-year-old Worcester native Britney Gengel went on a humanitarian trip with her college to help orphanages in Haiti. While on the trip, she texted her parents, Len and Cherylann Gengel, to say that she loved Haiti and wanted to start her own orphanage there.
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In 1847, Father John McElroy, a Jesuit priest, on his way to serve as chaplain for soldiers during the Mexican-American War, stopped in Cincinnati to rest. While there, he celebrated Mass for the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and visited their convent schools. When he was sent to Boston the following year to find a house for the Jesuits, he remembered the sisters' work in Cincinnati. He wrote to Bishop John Purcell of Cincinnati to ask for any available Sisters of Notre Dame to take over the school at St. Mary Parish in the North End of Boston.
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Last Thursday morning, I attended the wake of Margaret Rora, the mother of Father Michael Rora. I was pleased to be able to be there and offer some prayers and tender my condolences to Father Michael, his dad, and the rest of the family.
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BRAINTREE -- Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley will present Cheverus Award Medals to 150 laypersons, deacons, and religious during a 3 p.m. prayer service Sunday, Nov. 26, at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.
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COLUMBIA POINT -- According to Danielle M. Brown, Esq., the associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism, every American city has its own unique melody.
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CAMBRIDGE -- "It's a coin toss he sees dawn." "Time to get a priest?" "That would be prudent." Bill Brennan could not believe that his own son had such a grim prognosis. It was Oct. 15, 2019. John Brennan, days shy of celebrating his 14th birthday, had suffered a brain aneurysm. If the MedFlight taking him from Plymouth to Boston Children's Hospital had been 10 minutes late, Dr. Ed Smith explained, John would've been dead on arrival.
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CAMBRIDGE -- Dany Intsinci, a seventh grader at St. Paul's Choir School in Cambridge, says that Gabriel Faure's 1893 Requiem is a much more challenging work than the latest Taylor Swift album.
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WAKEFIELD -- For the past eight weeks, Father Carlos Martins has traveled 15,000 miles across the U.S. with an armored van and the arm bones of St. Jude the Apostle, first cousin of Jesus and patron saint of impossible causes.
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Before I move on to the events of my week, there are a couple of final items from my time in Rome that I'd like to share with you. On Oct. 29, I visited the Carmelite Sisters of Charity of Vedruna at their generalate in Rome. This is the order of sisters who worked with me for 20 years in Washington. It's a Catalan community that was started in Barcelona by St. Joaquina Vedruna de Mas. She began working with the famous Capuchin Friar Esteban de Olot, who helped her start the order. Now, there are almost 2,000 sisters all over the world.
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BOSTON -- Emily DaSilva's father liked what he saw. Mr. DaSilva, a janitor at St. Catherine of Siena School in Norwood, was so impressed by the school that he worked three jobs so his daughter could receive a Catholic education. When she entered sixth grade, her father had saved up enough money to enroll her in Trinity Catholic Academy in Brockton.
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Following are the prepared remarks delivered by alumni of Trinity Catholic Academy and Pope St. John Paul II Catholic Academy, who spoke about the impact of their Catholic education at the Campaign for Catholic Schools' 15th anniversary celebration.
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MATTAPAN -- Bill Grogan, president of the Archdiocese of Boston's Planning Office for Urban Affairs, can think of many numbers that highlight the seriousness of Massachusetts's housing crisis.
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BRAINTREE -- When celebrating a Jubilee Mass for the Archdiocese of Boston's religious sisters on Nov. 4, Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley had to make a last-minute change to his homily. Cardinal O'Malley said that the sisters, who gathered at the Archdiocese of Boston Pastoral Center's Bethany Chapel to celebrate the 50th, 60th, or even 70th anniversaries of taking their vows, represented centuries of religious life. It turned out that "centuries" was a low estimate. The sisters actually represented a combined 7,875 years of religious life.
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As many may know, this past weekend, we wrapped up our work for this session of the Synod on Synodality, and there are a couple of final events in Rome that I would like to share with you. Last Friday, with the wars raging in Israel, Gaza, and Ukraine, the Holy Father invited us all to be part of a rosary and benediction at St. Peter's Basilica, praying for peace. The Holy Father led us in prayers, and synod members led the decades of the rosary in different languages. There were also meditations on the different mysteries.
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TEWKSBURY -- The work of Rosaries, Inc., also known as Rosaries from Flowers, is equal parts alchemy and meditation. Co-owner Melissa Barbieri cannot describe how her business transforms powdered flowers, left over from weddings and funerals, into a soft clay-like substance that is hand-rolled into rosary beads. It is a trade secret that originated from a group of religious sisters in Lawrence. The sisters taught the process to Barbieri's late mother Pauline, who started Rosaries, Inc. out of the kitchen of her Tewksbury home in 1980.
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QUINCY -- Msgr. Stephen J. Rossetti had his first encounter with demons when he was a seminarian. As he lay in bed, Msgr. Rossetti, founder of the St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal and author of the book "Diary of an American Exorcist," felt himself being pinned down by an unseen force.
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BRAINTREE -- Sister Norma Pimentel, a member of the Missionaries of Jesus and executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, discovered her calling when she visited a detention center for migrant children on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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TYNGSBOROUGH -- Martina Boakye-Yiadom, a junior at Notre Dame Academy in Tyngsborough, enjoys "being down and dirty with the plants." Boakye-Yiadom works in the school's "geodome," a climate-controlled indoor garden that grows over 20 plant species. She and other students are in charge of watering, planting, and harvesting the crops, and distributing the fresh produce to food pantries in the Merrimack Valley.
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NORTH READING -- The Bigginses of Wilmington make quite the holy family. For the last three years, Donna Biggins and her husband Stephen have played Mary and Joseph in the nativity pageant at St. Theresa Parish in North Reading.
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Our nation, once again, is witnessing a horrific and senseless act of violence with the rampage of deadly shootings in Lewiston, Maine. We again see innocent people gunned down while living their lives with family and friends. We again hear calls for thoughts and prayers, and we should. But that is not enough. There is a crisis in mental health in our country that, coupled with a crisis in gun violence, leads to a disastrous loss of our humanity. Today, we pray for the people of Lewiston and the entire State of Maine. We pray for peace, understanding, and support for Lewiston and surrounding communities. They have experienced great anxiety and fear being on lockdown while a search for the suspect is being carried out, at the same time mourning the loss of family, friends, and neighbors. We ask God to heal those who were injured in the shootings, to bring comfort to the families of those who have experienced tremendous loss, and we give thanks for the courage of our first responders, who put the lives and well-being of others ahead of their own. We commend to the Lord those who were lost, consoled by the promise of eternal life.
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