Hello and welcome!
During the Octave of Easter, we celebrated the 2026 Boston Eucharistic Congress, which involved over a dozen parishes holding a week of Masses, adoration, and processions. And, on Wednesday, April 8, they asked me to celebrate the Cape Verdean Mass at St. Patrick’s in Roxbury.
We have a huge Cape Verdean community here, and they are an important part of our Church in Boston. I was happy to be with them and participate in their celebration.
The next day, April 9, three separate processions converged at the cathedral. I was there to say a few words to them before the Benediction. It was very impressive to see hundreds of young people gathered there.
On April 11, Michael Bonetti from St. Leonard’s Church in the North End visited the cathedral and presented me with a gift of an icon of St. Anthony—or San Antonio, as the Italians call him—which he brought from the shrine of Padua.
It was a lovely gift, and it was great to see him.
On April 15, I participated via video in the VIII Semana Teológica (Theological Week) in Cape Verde promoted by the Diocese of Mindelo and the Catholic University School of Cape Verde. They have done this for the last few years, and the theme this year was “Listening and Welcoming: Christ, Master of Listening and Dialogue.” This ties into the whole theme of synodality and discernment of God’s will.
They asked me to give a keynote on “Silence, Way of Encounter with God.” I took the theme from a spiritual perspective, focusing on contemplative prayer and the silence that is supposed to take place in the liturgy (which doesn’t always happen!) and the importance of silence in our life to be able to develop an interior life and a life of prayer.
I gave the talk on a big screen, and afterwards, the people could ask questions. There is always the risk of technical glitches when you do these kinds of things via livestream, but they kept asking me questions, so I guess they were able to hear me!
The outgoing President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, was also a speaker the same day, discussing the importance of listening in this Easter Season.
The week included many other interesting conferences as well. Dr. Vera Figueiredo spoke about the “Antithesis between Noise and Silence” and the challenges noise pollution creates for social coexistence. And the Bishop of Mindelo, Dom Ildo Fortes, also talked about a method of “Dialogue in the Spirit” for a Synodal Church.
It was quite an impressive program, and I was happy to participate even though I wasn’t able to travel to Cape Verde. Of course, it was just a week after I’d had the Mass for the Cape Verdeans here at St. Patrick’s. We have a huge Cape Verdean community here, an important part of our church in Boston, and so I was happy to be able to spend a little time with them and participate in their celebrations both here and in Cabo Verde.
On April 17, I traveled to St. Joseph Parish in Beltsville, Maryland, for a Mass of Thanksgiving commemorating the 70th birthday of Bishop Jerome Feudjio and his fifth anniversary as the bishop of the Virgin Islands.
This was organized by the Association of African Clergy in the United States and the National Association of African Catholics. So, the people at the Mass were mainly African, with many from Uganda and Cameroon. They, of course, had extraordinary choirs.
Bishop Jerome is the first Africa-born bishop in the United States. He’s from Cameroon, and I thought it was very gratuitous that as we celebrated this Mass for a Cameroonian bishop, Pope Leo XIV was celebrating Mass for 120,000 people in a stadium in Cameroon.
The new bishop of Houma-Thibodaux in Louisiana, Bishop Engurait, was also there. He is the second African-born bishop in the United States and is from Uganda. Of course, I castigated him because he’s not come to St. Mary’s in Waltham yet for the Ugandan Martyrs celebration, so he promised me he would come!
There were also four cardinals present: Cardinal McElroy, Cardinal Gregory, Cardinal Pierre and myself.
They asked me to give a little talk at the end of Mass, speaking about Bishop Jerome’s vocation.
I told them how, at the Centro Católico, I had started the Casa Galiléia to promote vocations among immigrants. From that community, there are now five bishops and two cardinals — it was very blessed, and Bishop Jerome is one of our “bishop alumni.”
When I was sent to the Virgin Islands, I was 30 years younger than the youngest priest on St. Thomas, and there was only one diocesan priest. So I knew I had to build up a diocesan clergy, and I invited some of my men from the Casa Galiléia to come help me and they were ordained for the diocese. Of course, the first one was Adalberto Martínez from Paraguay, who is now the Cardinal-Archbishop of Asunción, and also Father Jerome (in those days), who is now Bishop of the Virgin Islands. When he was with me in the Casa Galiléia, Bishop Jerome was the one who helped me start the Haitian Mass at Sacred Heart in Washington. It was the first Haitian Mass in the area and is still going on.
And, of course, in Boston, we have a huge African Catholic Community — Ethiopians, Nigerians, Ugandans, Congolese, and Kenyans — just thousands of African Catholics who have moved to the United States. The African Church is the fastest-growing in the world, and their fidelity to the Church is so beautiful. I shared with the people there that every time I go through London, I say Mass for the cloistered sisters at Tyburn, where the English martyrs were killed. The last time I was there, I asked the superior if it was difficult to get people there every night, all night for perpetual adoration, and she said, “Oh, no, Cardinal. The Nigerians are here all night long!”
At the celebration, it was good to see Father Andrea Filippucci, one of our Boston priests who is working in the Virgin Islands and is now the Vicar General of St. Thomas.
While I was in the Washington area, I was staying at Capuchin College. And the college, like other Franciscan churches and shrines, is currently observing the 800th anniversary of St. Francis, and it is one of the places where you can receive the indulgence.
So, one of the days, a group of students from St. Jerome’s Parish was visiting as part of a program about the life of St. Francis. They asked me to give them a little talk and take questions, which I was very happy to do.
Around that time, I also received a photo from the friars at our novitiate. Although the novitiate is in Santa Inez, California, they had traveled to San Francisco to visit the replica of the Porziuncola at the National Shrine of St. Francis for the Jubilee Year.
On April 23, I was back in Boston and had a nice visit at the Cathedral with Brother Anthony, a Capuchin lay brother who is studying to be a priest at Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary.
This past Sunday, April 26, was quite busy. In the morning, we held a farewell Mass at the cathedral for Msgr. Kevin O’Leary.
It was very impressive that Mayor Wu was there, and the Governor sent a representative. The Mayor read a declaration declaring April 26th as “Msgr. Kevin O’Leary Day.”
When I made my remarks, I said, “First of all, I want to wish everybody a happy Msgr. Kevin O’Leary Day,” and I asked if it was going to be an annual observance — and the Mayor nodded. So, we’ll see.
We wanted to express our gratitude for his ministry at the cathedral. He is a priest who never takes a day off, and if there’s a sick call in the hospital at 2:00 in the morning, he’s out the door.
Even when he got sick with cancer, he didn’t feel sorry for himself; he was ministering to all the people getting chemotherapy with him, and to the doctors and nurses as well. In his tenure, the number of people and participation in Masses has just skyrocketed.
I quoted the Emperor Caesar Augustus, who said, “I found Rome a city of bricks, and I left it a city of marble,” and that is certainly an apt description of what Msgr. O’Leary has done at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. But more than just the renovations, his community building and his outreach to the homeless have been admirable.
He’s generous with his people, and he knows everybody. I said if we needed proof for the validity of the “six degrees of separation” theory, it would be Kevin O’Leary, who knows your cousin’s brother-in-law’s sister. I also told them that people are surprised when they find out I don’t have a television set. I said, “But I don’t need a television set. I live with Father O’Leary.”
So we wish him well in all the many years we know he has ahead of him. But I warned the people that Father O’Leary will absolutely go through the roof if you tell him he is retiring, because he has no intention of retiring, and he absolutely does not want to hear that word!
Then, in the afternoon, we celebrated the 50th Jubilee of Sister Lucille Van Hoogmoed at the Pastoral Center.
Sister Lucille is a member of the Sister Disciples of the Divine Master and a Special Assistant in our Clergy Personnel Office.
There was a wonderful turnout, and everyone is so grateful for the many years of service she has given in the archdiocese. She is always so upbeat, generous, and joyful. So, it was great to be part of the celebration.
That evening, I attended the Redemptoris Mater Seminary of Boston’s Gala Dinner, which was a wonderful occasion as we marked the 20th anniversary of the seminary’s founding. The people there were so enthusiastic, and you could really feel the spirit of the community.
During the evening, they showed a beautiful video that I thought really helped people to understand the origins and purpose of Redemptoris Mater Seminary.
It is so important for the faithful to see how these missionary vocations are formed and the impact they have on the global Church. Our keynote speaker, Bishop Hector Vila, is a very good example of this.
He comes to us from the Diocese of Whitehorse in Canada, a territory that covers the very remote area of the Yukon and northern British Columbia. He is a wonderful witness to how vocations from The Neocatechumenal Way are serving the Church, particularly in those remote areas where the Church is so often underserved.
Of course, I also got to spend some time with Leo and Joanne Vercollone, who were honored during the evening with the seminary’s Evangelization Award. They have been such great benefactors and helpers for our Church here in Boston, and they truly deserve to be recognized for their tireless support of the seminary over the years.
As always, the music of the seminarians was a hit, and I noticed that they are starting to sing more things in English now. While I always have a special place in my heart for the Spanish songs, their selections went over very well with the crowd. 
I particularly got a kick out of Archbishop Henning reacting to one of the Spanish songs they performed, “No Tengo Dinero” (“I Have No Money”). It certainly was a very appropriate song for a seminary gala in more than one way!
Until next time,
Cardinal Seán