Bishop Serratelli installed Father Pawel Szurek as pastor of St. Catherine of Bologna Church in Ringwood Feb. 19 during the Mass at which the Bishop was the principal celebrant for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time.
For teens on their faith journey, the Sacrament of Confirmation is the next step for them to grow stronger in their relationship with Jesus and his Church. Because of the importance of this Sacrament, Bishop Serratelli met with high school students at DePaul Catholic High School in Wayne Feb. 19, as they continued their preparation for the final sacrament of initiation in the Church.
More than 1,500 miles away, an outreach to some of the poorest people on the globe continues through the efforts of Haiti Hope and Promise, a non-profit organization whose main goal is to assist the people of Haiti with basic needs of food, shelter, education and self-sufficiency.
The Imiliwaha Health Center the Njombe region of Tanzania faces a formidable task: serving 16 impoverished villages that are stretched out over 4,000 square miles in a remote, mountainous area half the size of New Jersey. It’s tough for people in the U.S. to imagine that the villagers must walk nearly 50 miles for healthcare — even emergency treatment.
Catholics and other concerned believers, remain vigilant! The sustained attacks that the Obama Administration launched against the positions of the Church and other religions about matters of conscience and religious freedom through overreaching legislation over the past eight years continue today by increasingly hostile liberal and secularist sectors of society. That’s why Robert George, a professor at Princeton University, urged Catholics to “remain vigilant” in promoting and protecting religious freedom — and their faith-based understanding of conscience — against forces that “seek to diminish it, especially when those threats come from overreaching governments.”
On the feast day of St. Francis deSales, patron of writers, editors and communicators, Pope Francis condemned the tendency for media to focus on “bad news,” saying journalists, while being accurate, must also offer a message of hope.
Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to St. Joseph Parish here Feb. 11 where he celebrated the 5 p.m. Vigil Mass. During the Mass, he administered the Sacrament of Confirmation to young people of the parish.
Shortly before Christmas, the chapel of St. Francis of Assisi Church in the Haskell section of Wanaque received a gift of its own: a makeover that revitalized the much-used worship space. The chapel accommodates not only its daily Masses during the week, but also numerous religious activities and devotions, which two new large paintings on display now reflect.
Bishop Serratelli installed Father Edward Rama as pastor of Our Lady Queen of Peace Church in Branchville Feb. 12 during the 11 a.m. Mass for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
More than 400 young people and their parents from Assumption Parish in Morristown got a terrifying glimpse into the dark hell of addiction that grips so many people throughout the U.S. But they also glimpsed a bright ray of hope for themselves or people they love through the potentially life-saving information that they learned about drug-abuse prevention and recovery.
On Sunday, Feb. 12, Bishop Serratelli dedicated a $2 million, two-story addition to St. Vincent Martyr School in Madison. It provides six more classrooms and much-needed room for an upper-grade student population that has grown fourfold in recent years since the re-establishment of the middle-school grades. The long-awaited 5,964-square-foot building, designed to “enhance the learning” of these older students, opened on schedule on the first day of the school’s 2016-17 academic year.
Health care is one of the most important yet controversial issues facing Congress this year. Some feel that Obamacare appears to be dead on arrival with this Congress; while others say that major pieces of it will be subject to being gutted. No matter what happens to Obamacare, a very critical piece of legislation, the Conscience Protection Act, needs to be part of the new health care discussion.
Back in the 1950s, young Joseph Anginoli seemed way ahead of his time. As a fourth-grader, he would play “Mass” at home with able assistance from his sister, Regina — decades before the Church permitted girls to serve at altar. “I started thinking about the priesthood in fourth grade. I always wanted to be a priest,” said now-Msgr. Anginoli, pastor of St. Joseph Parish here, who spoke on Feb. 2 to the students of St. Joseph School about vocations — part of the school’s many activities for Catholic Schools Week (CSW). “Later, I dated girls and played sports in high school, but I kept pushing the idea of the priesthood to the back of my mind. Somehow, Jesus kept following me, tapping me and saying, ‘start thinking.’
Robert George, the celebrated McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence and founding director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, will speak on “Conscience and Its Enemies: What Moral Truth Matters” on Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 7 p.m. at St. Paul Inside the Walls: the Diocesan Center for Evangelization at Bayley-Ellard in Madison.
Protestants in Congress have dropped from 75 percent in 1961 to 56 percent today, while the Catholics in Congress jumped from 19 percent to 31 percent in the same time frame.
A child’s love of their mother is always held in their heart forever. At St. Therese School in Succasunna, the students are learning to have a greater devotion to a special mother in their lives — the Blessed Mother — during Catholic Schools Week and beyond.
Imagine seeing a piece wood from the Cross of Jesus or touching a fragment of a veil worn by the Blessed Mother. These “Treasures of the Church” can be viewed in the Paterson Diocese at St. Francis de Sales Church in the McAfee section of Vernon on Feb. 19 at 3 p.m. More than 150 relics of saints contained in reliquaries will be on display, including those of the Twelve Apostles.
The Paterson Federation Knights of Columbus honored Bishop Serratelli at its annual Bishop’s Night held Jan. 20 at St. James of the Marches Parish in Totowa. More than 40 councils from the Paterson Diocese, the state council and various assemblies, attended the event at which the councils presented Bishop Serratelli with donations to be used for diocesan ministries, including seminarian education and diocesan Catholic Charities agencies.
Bishop Serratelli gave a talk to a group of Confirmation candidates, who were on a retreat preparing for the sacrament, at the Shrine of St. John Paul II/Holy Rosary Parish here that was held Jan. 16-18. Each night, Mass was celebrated at 7 p.m. in the evening and the Bishop gave a catechesis to the young people. He spoke to them in depth about the sacrament they are going to receive and the teens were able to ask the Bishop questions.
Middle-school students at Our Lady of Mount Carmel (OLMC) School here can get into lively discussions in language-arts class, especially when reading great and timeless literature that stimulates both their hearts and minds. That happened with the novel “The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame.