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The parish community of St. Nicholas in Passaic welcomed Bishop Serratelli, who celebrated the vigil Mass for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time during his pastoral visit Aug. 10. The Mass was a bi-lingual English/Spanish celebration for the community.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to Sacred Heart/Our Lady Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Dover where he celebrated Mass in Sacred Heart Church for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Aug. 11. The Mass was a bi-lingual celebration in English and Spanish.

When people think of summer vacations, they think of exotic locations, tours through European cities, or the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore. But for a group of teens from the Catholic Heart Work Camp, their summer vacation meant cleaning homes, working outside and making a difference in the lives of those in need who are served by Catholic Charities.

Since the inception of the Paterson Diocese in 1937, St. John the Baptist, the titular of our diocesan Cathedral, has always been considered the patron saint of the Diocese. But, there are four other saints, Clement and Felicity, Urban and Claude, all early Roman martyrs, who might also make a claim as diocesan patrons. These four saints — two popes, a Roman maiden and a stonemason — are not well known and do not have any churches or chapels in the Diocese dedicated to them. Nonetheless, they have a substantial presence in the Diocese because the relics of these martyrs are imbedded in many of the altars of the Diocese.

A short ride on a small boat takes visitors across Lake Kinnelon to a tiny island in Kinnelon where, after 130 years, St. Hubert’s Chapel continues to make its presence known with a tall stone clock tower that rises up above the stands of lush trees that surround it on several sides. Yet its out-of-the-way location inside the Smoke Rise community here has been hiding the little-known but sizable Catholic legacy of tiny St. Hubert’s — the former private chapel of the wealthy Kinney family and the first consecrated Roman Catholic place of worship in Kinnelon in 1889.

As the Passaic Neighborhood Center for Women marks its sixth anniversary, it continues to maintain its identity as a place to empower women — many of whom have traveled far from home to make a better life for their families here. With more than 10,000 visits through its doors in the past six years, it is evident how important the mission of the center is in serving these women.

While it is important Church leaders remain focused on serving the people’s pastoral and spiritual needs, today’s world requires them to also be connected with managing a parish on an administrative and organizational level. To better equip church leaders, pastors and business managers, the Villanova School of Business Center for Church Management is offering a church management webcast series,

Members of the youth group at St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Mountain Lakes spent July 14 to 20 on a mission trip with more than 250 teens from around the country in Boston for the Catholic Heart Work Camp (CHWC). They worked together to paint houses, build fences, and complete yard work and landscaping for needy families.

Director Michael J. Wickham gives 150 “extras” of a fictitious congregation, dressed in their Sunday best, instructions about how to make the Sign of the Cross, before shooting an Ordination Mass scene for a movie in St. Cecilia Church in Englewood. Then, he takes his perch behind a camera and yells “Action!” to start the scene, which shows the congregation clapping, as a procession, which includes a few actors playing newly ordained priests, exits the church, bathed in plumes of incense.

Resonating the lyrics of a popular reggae song, young people from St. Michael Parish here acted with “one love, one heart” to serve some of the poorest and most forgotten people on a mission trip to Jamaica. For one week in late July, the Netcong missionaries traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, the capital of the Caribbean country spending time with orphans, the disabled and those living with HIV.

The strident opening strumming of an acoustic guitar introduces “Meet Me Where I Am” right away as a driving pop-rocker, while its first verse almost seems a set up to a song about romantic love. A few lyrics later, Dan Ferrari makes it clear that he is looking to heaven for the love he seeks — and has found. The CD was written and sung by Ferrari, minister to young adults ages 21-29 at St. Paul Inside the Walls: the Diocesan Center for Evangeli­zation at Bayley-Ellard in Madison.

On May 11, Joanne Ponnwitz of Our Lady of Good Counsel (OLGC) Parish, Pompton Plains, ascended the stage at Drew University to receive her Doctor of Ministry. Her hard work — three years of rigorous academic research and writing — resulted in a boost to her level of personal satisfaction, but more importantly to the certification and ongoing faith-formation opportunities the Diocese offers parish catechists.

It quickly became a matter of trust. On the night of July 12, a group of high-school-age teens from the new Young Prophets youth ministry at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson had fun taking turns wearing a blindfold, while struggling to navigate an obstacle course — a crooked trail of cups and pylons — on the Cathedral’s lawn. After each teen would start to knock into the obstacles, another teen would step in to help him or her through the second half of the course.

Pope Francis has approved a miracle attributed to Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, making possible the American television evangelist's beatification. The Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints promulgated the decree approving Sheen’s miracle on July 6.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to Assumption of the Blessed Mary Church in Morristown where he celebrated Mass to mark the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time on July 28.

Parishioners of St. Mary Help of Christians Parish in Paterson welcomed Bishop Serratelli on his pastoral visit to the parish July 27, where he served as main celebrant and homilist of the vigil Mass in Spanish marking the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to Our Lady of Mount Carmel (OLMC) Parish in Passaic on July 21 where he celebrated the 10 a.m. Mass to mark the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to Sacred Heart Church in Clifton where he was the main celebrant and homilist of the 5 p.m. vigil Mass on July 20 for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to St. Francis of Assisi Church in Haskell where he celebrated Mass marking the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time. During the Mass, the Bishop blessed statues of the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph, which were donated to the parish by Msgr. Remigio Rocco, former longtime pastor of St. Francis Parish.

Juliana Beltran, 19, admitted that it felt strange walking into St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital in Paterson July 17 for a visit with a group of adults and young people of her parish, Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Wayne. That afternoon brought back Beltran’s memories of being hospitalized here frequently and for periods of time as a child while undergoing treatments for a serious illness.