News - May 2018 RSS Feed

Bishop Serratelli will be the principal celebrant for the annual diocesan Priests’ Jubilee Mass for diocesan and religious order priests who are serving or have served in the Paterson Diocese. The Mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m., Tuesday, June 5 in St. Peter the Apostle Church in Parsippany. The jubilee Mass will honor 22 priests who are marking their 65-, 60-, 50-, 40-, and 25-year anniversaries of their ordination.

Bishop Serratelli was the principal celebrant of the annual Memorial Day Mass at 10:30 a.m. May 28 in the Calvary Mausoleum chapel in Paterson to honor all those who died while serving in the Armed Forces and all the deceased at Calvary Cemetery.

The faith community of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Swartswood welcomed Bishop Serratelli during a pastoral visit on Saturday, May 26, during which he served as main celebrant and homilist of the 5 p.m. vigil Mass for Trinity Sunday. There, he conferred the Sacrament of Confirmation on 12 young people.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Passaic on May 27 where he celebrated the 10:30 a.m. Mass for Trinity Sunday. Concelebrating the Mass was Capuchin Franciscan Father Ed Henning, Mount Carmel’s administrator.

In 2000 at the dawn of the new millennium, the Wilkey family of Assumption Parish in Morristown had only started to wake up to a gradually unfolding — and bizarre — medical nightmare. Over the next few years, Liz Wilkey watched with great distress as all three for her daughters got diagnosed — and then started their struggles — with various autoimmune and rheumatoid diseases in their pre-teens through their early 20s.

Bishop Serratelli ordained nine men of various ethnicities and backgrounds as priests of the Diocese, during Mass May 26 in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson. He challenged these new priests to live out their priesthood ministry as “true icons” so as “to communicate the Divine Presence of Christ — his grace, his love and his will toward all in all they do to serve the people of God in the Diocese of Paterson.”

As we here in the United States paused this Monday on Memorial Day to honor and pay tribute to all those who have served our nation in the Armed Forces and made the ultimate sacrifice, some of our wounded warriors were in France seeking healing and peace in the waters of Lourdes.

The faith community of St. James of the Marches Parish in Totowa on May 20 welcomed Bishop Serratelli, who made a pastoral visit and served as main celebrant and homilist of the noon Mass for Pentecost. During the liturgy, he administered the sacrament of Confirmation on 19 10th-grade candidates and two candidates from the parish’s Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults program.

It was about science and more at the STEM Symposium for elementary schools in the Diocese of Paterson. These were student projects with a purpose: a demonstration on how to shelter the displaced, a better way to engineer weather-resistant roofing tiles to withstand hurricanes and vertical gardens to feed the malnourished. A dozen elementary schools from the diocese participated in the symposium at Caldwell University May 15 showcasing projects that were created over the course of the academic year and included every grade.

Prayers from near and far have been pouring in for the Salesian Sisters of St. Jo­seph’s Province after an early morning blaze on May 18 destroyed the chapel at Mary Help of Chris­tians Academy in North Haledon — a tragedy which has torn at the spiritual heart of this dynamic religious community and the school it operates.

The Diocese honored 79 religious sisters and priests, who are celebrating significant anniversaries in religious life this year, for their faithful service to God and his people, during a Mass on May 19 at St. Mary’s Assumption Church in Passaic. The liturgy also commemorated World Day of Consecrated Life in the universal Church held on Feb. 2. Bishop Serratelli, main celebrant and homilist of the well-attended Mass, thanked the honored religious and praised them for showing the Church how to live, love and minister in the context of community.

Bishop Serratelli will ordain nine transitional deacons of the Diocese to the priesthood during a Mass at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, May 26 in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson. The ordination will be live streamed on the Diocesan website, www.rcdop.org.

A bipartisan bill introduced in Congress this month would make it easier for Americans to receive tax deductions for charitable giving, regardless of whether they itemize on their tax returns. The Charitable Giving Tax Deduction Act would make charitable deductions “above-the-line,” meaning adjusted gross income would be reduced. This would allow taxpayers to write off charitable deductions regardless of whether households decide to itemize. Under the legislation, charitable contributions would not be capped.

The faith community of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in the Haskell section of Wanaque on Saturday, May 12 welcomed Bishop Serratelli, who served as main celebrant and homilist of the 5:30 p.m. vigil Mass for the Seventh Sunday of Easter. During the liturgy, the Bishop formally installed Father Greg Golba, as pastor of the Upper Passaic County parish.

Bishop Serratelli served as main celebrant and homilist of the 11:45 a.m. Mass on May 13 for the Seventh Sunday of Easter. During the liturgy, the Bishop administered the Sacrament of Confirmation to five young people.

Bishop Serratelli visited Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Rockaway on May 10 to serve as main celebrant and homilist at the noon Mass for Ascension Thursday on the 40th day of Easter. It commemorates Jesus’ ascension into heaven and is a Holy Day of Obligation for all Catholics.

What do theologians and historians really know about the wife of St. Peter — if anything? In his Gospel, Matthew tells the story of Jesus performing a miracle to heal Peter’s mother-in -law, giving evidence that the future first pope had a wife. In one in his letters, St. Paul calls Peter’s wife as a disciple of Jesus. Later, Clement of Alexandra wrote that Peter had comforted his wife, before she died as a martyr. The Church also honored their disabled daughter, Petronilla, as a saint. Still, these scraps of information could not even fill a short biographical pamphlet on the saint’s spouse.

Bishop Serratelli has asked Catholics of the Diocese to open their hearts to the poor and donate food to the fifth annual Corpus Christi Food Drive June 2-3 at weekend Masses. The donations will help local Catholic Charities agencies continue to serve as “one of the most important local sources of food for literally thousands of our brothers and sisters in genuine need, particularly children,” through the summer months, when the shelves of its food pantries become emptier.

President Donald Trump lauded the importance of faith in American life as a foundation for freedom in his speech at the 66th annual National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month. “Faith is central to American life and to liberty,” Trump said, “Our founders invoked our Creator four times in the Declaration of Independence. Our currency declares, ‘In God We Trust.’ And we place our hands on our hearts as we recite the Pledge of Allegiance and proclaim we are ‘One Nation Under God.’ ”

The 49th annual Motorcycle Mass was celebrated on Main Street in Paterson May 6 by Msgr. Mark Giordani, rector of St. John’s Cathedral, and founder of the Christian Riders, a motorcycle club that meets in the St. John’s rectory. Msgr. Geno Sylva, diocesan vicar for special projects and the cathedral, was a concelebrant of the Mass and assisted in the blessing of hundreds of bikers after the Mass for a safe biking season.