Hello and welcome back!
I hope you all had an enjoyable long weekend! For many of us, Memorial Day weekend is a time to gather with our families. This particular Memorial Day weekend I was doubly blessed to be able to spend time both with my Capuchin family and the O’Malley family.
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But before I left, on Thursday, I joined the newly elected major superiors of women religious orders for lunch at the Pastoral Center. Each year I have a lunch for new leadership teams of different religious communities that have been elected in the course of the year.
This year it was the Sisters of St. Chretienne and the Missionary Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. They had new leadership teams and they came and joined Sister Marian Batho and myself for lunch.
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Also on that day we bid farewell to Father Jim Flavin at a reception at the Pastoral Center.
Father Flavin is going for three years to serve as director of clinical services at the Saint John Vianney Center in Pennsylvania. We wish him well and we are very proud of the wonderful work that he has done in our own archdiocese on behalf of our priests.
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Saturday we had the ordination of Capuchin Father Steve Fernandes, who is originally from Goa, India but has lived in the United States for a number of years. He was ordained Saturday at Sacred Heart Church in Washington, a parish I know very well.
As I have mentioned in the past, I said Mass in Spanish there between 1970 and 1984. Many from Boston will remember Sacred Heart as the church where we have gathered for the last several years with pilgrims on the morning of the March for Life.
It was a very beautiful celebration.
There were a number of his relatives from India there. At the luncheon afterwards, they performed some traditional Indian dances.
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From there I went to Miami to be with my family.
My Cousin Barbara O’Malley with her son Steven, who was celebrating his birthday
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While I was in Miami, I spoke at the graduation of Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, where my cousin, Deacon Rob O’Malley, teaches theology.
Belen Prep is a school that was founded by Queen Isabella II of Spain in Havana, Cuba in the 1850’s and has been run by the Jesuits of the Antilles Province. At the time of the revolution, like many Cubans, the school went into exile and was reestablished in Miami.
Today, it has about 1,800 students, most of them Hispanic although they are from different nationalities. I myself have been affiliated with them through my cousin who teaches there and through the Agrupacion Catolica Universitaria to which I have belonged for forty years which is also affiliated with the Jesuits and the school.
Congratulations to all the graduates! May God bless you with a faith-filled and fruitful future!
Until next week,
Cardinal Seán