News - February 2022 RSS Feed

Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney made a pastoral visit to St. Jude Parish in Budd Lake where he marked the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time by celebrating the vigil Mass on Saturday, Feb. 19.

A school tradition, the eighth-grade class at St. Gerard Majella School in Paterson received their class rings during a ceremony at Mass on Feb. 18. Vocationist Father Leo Antony, pastor, blessed the rings with Filippini Sister Jo-Ann Pompa assisting in the ceremony. Each student was joined by his or her parents as the rings were blessed.

When Sarah Escobar packed her bags for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, she included a memento from her mother: a stone carved with the word “Faith.” “Sarah’s mom said she gave it to her, and Sarah holds it near because she feels that she is grounded in her belief in God and in the fact that we are all connected in our humanity,” Pamela Madzy, the coordinator of the migrant ministry at Escobar’s hometown parish, St. Kateri Tekakwitha here, told CNA.

The new online show, “Rise Up Live!,” leaps off smartphone, computer, tablet, and TV screens with the dazzling energy of its title. Produced by Array of Hope, a Catholic multimedia ministry, the hour-long variety program offers family entertainment. It ranges from interviews with prominent Catholics and profiles on local faithful to videos of faith-based songs, like its title track, “Rise Up.”

To celebrate the unique gifts of the service recipients of the Department for Persons with Disabilities (DPD), diocesan Catholic Charities is hosting the 52nd annual Murray House dinner dance as a virtual celebration on Thursday, March 17, St. Patrick’s Day at 6 p.m. The celebration will feature an awards video that will premiere that night.

In their understanding, most Catholics separate the ministry of catechesis, educating people about the faith, from the ministry of spiritual formation, helping guide people on their ongoing journey toward union with God through the Holy Spirit. Yet the Church teaches that all baptized members of the Church can play a critical role in the spiritual formation of other people in the faith by helping them encounter God. That is what a group of workshop participants from the Diocese learned in “Being Guided and Guiding Souls,” a three-night workshop series, held this month at the Evangelization Center at St. Paul Inside the Walls in Madison.

With even greater urgency, pro-life advocates in the Paterson Diocese are continuing to be on the frontlines of being a voice for the voiceless in the womb as state laws have made New Jersey the most pro-abortion state in the nation. Morris County Right to Life (MCRTL) has a full year of events scheduled for those willing to be part of the pro-life movement. Jean Capone, president of Morris County Right to Life, told The Beacon, “We have a very ambitious program in 2022. It’s going to be a very profound year, filled with witness, hope, advocacy on behalf of the unborn, the infirm, and the elderly in our state and in our country.”

It is extremely rare these days in Wash­ington, D.C. for bipartisanship support for legislation amid all the political infighting. However, there is a ray of hope for a bill that has gained traction among Repub­licans and Democrats alike. Awaiting a final vote in the Senate is the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which seemingly has cleared all hurdles on both sides of the political aisle.

Welcome Home to Healing is the name of an initiative or program that has been offered in our Diocese during Lent for the last few years. It is an invitation to celebrate the Sacra­ment of Reconciliation during the season of Lent, especially by making the Sacrament available in every parish in the Diocese on each Monday night of Lent from 7 to 8:30 p.m. As we enter the season of Lent this year, I would like to take this opportunity to invite everyone to consider, perhaps in a new or different way, what it means to celebrate this “Sacrament of Healing.”

Diocesan Catholic Charities has named Mukesh Saxena, who has a diverse experience in the corporate world, as its new CFO following the retirement of Rocco Zappile, who served the organization for more than three decades. Saxena comes to Catholic Charities as a newcomer to the organization and looks forward to working for the non-profit agencies.

When serving at an organization like Catholic Charities, a person’s passion for mission takes precedence over many other typical business goals. Rocco Zappile has come to understand that well after serving at diocesan Catholic Charities for more than 30 years. He started his career at the Department of Disabilities (DPD) as CFO and later, was named CFO for the entire Diocesan Catholic Charities organization. Through leadership, diligence, and love, Zappile has been able to take diocesan Catholic Charities to new heights.

Father Raimundo Rivera, pastor of Our Lady of Victories (OLV) and Our Lady of Lourdes (OLL) parishes in Paterson, had the honor of helping concelebrate a Mass on Jan. 22 for the beatification of four Catholic martyrs from El Salvador, including a Jesuit priest, Blessed Father Rutilio Grande — all killed by death squads in the country’s civil war. The Paterson priest’s latest visit to his native El Salvador — like all his return trips — was tinged with sadness with a reminder that the bloody civil war took the lives of seven of his family members, including his mother and father.

Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney presided at the annual Scout Sun­day Mass to honor Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson on Feb. 13. At the end of the Mass, he presented Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in attendance with various religious awards designed to help inspire and streng­then their Catholic faith, as well as Boy Scout adults with leadership awards.

Listening to a violinist recently gave Pope Francis the opportunity to remind the faithful to turn away from our “throwaway culture” and do just the opposite. At the Vatican earlier this month, Pope Francis listened as a violinist played a tune from a famous Italian composer on a multicolored violin made by prisoners using the wood of a shipwrecked migrants’ boat.

I hope that most of the readers of this column and most of the Catholics in our Diocese are aware that we are currently responding to an invitation from Pope Francis, given to the whole Church, to participate in the Synod on Synodality. I know that many parish delegates and others have been trained (prepared) to help us in this “Synodal process” of encounter, listening, and discernment and there is a great deal of excitement and enthusiasm for the Synod here in our local Church of Paterson.

Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney celebrated Mass with the students of Holy Spirit School in Pequannock in attendance Feb. 3 during Catholic Schools Week. After Mass, the Bishop visited the school and stopped in each classroom. The Bishop also blessed the class rings of the eighth-grade students, a tradition at the school, during the eighth-grade ring ceremony.

Carmelite Sister Hannah Berith of the Almighty Father made her final profession of vows at the Monastery of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel in Morristown Feb. 5 before Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney. From Guam, Sister Hannah’s family traveled to Morristown to attend the profession of solemn vows.

Mourners filled the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist here Feb. 4 for the funeral Mass of Robert Cuadra, an 18-year-old teen from Paterson, who was killed in a hail of gunfire Jan. 19 while unloading groceries from his grandmother’s car. The Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated by Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney and concelebrated by Msgr. Geno Sylva, rector of the cathedral, who was the homilist.

Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney marked the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord Feb. 2 in St. Mary Assumption Church in Passaic as the principal celebrant of Mass in Spanish. The feast is also known as Candlemas and it is a traditional feast day in Mexico known as Dia de la Candelaria. At the Mass, families brought Child Jesus statues from their homes to be blessed by the Bishop.

St. Anthony of Padua Parish here is hosting the Jubilee Pilgrim Cross celebrating 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines. The Jubilee Cross is a replica of the cross that was raised by Ferdinand Magellan during the first Mass that was celebrated on the island nation on Easter Sunday in 1521. Statues of Santa Nino de Cebu and the Blessed Mother accompany the Pilgrim Cross. All the objects of devotion have been traveling throughout parishes in the Diocese and the Arch­diocese of Newark since last April. The theme of this yearlong celebration to mark the quincentennial is “Gifted to Give.”