Hello and welcome!
On Saturday, the Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary celebrated their 175th anniversary of the departure of pioneer Marie Francoise Perroton from Lyon, France. She worked with Blessed Pauline Jaricot, the foundress of the Propagation of the Faith, and she answered the call to go and work in the islands of the Pacific in a group of 11 French women. That was the beginning of the Marist Missionary Sisters.
I mentioned to the sisters that our archives have letters of Bishop Fenwick, written in beautiful penmanship and elegant French, to Blessed Pauline Jaricot, asking for help for the missionary diocese of Boston from her newly founded Propagation of the Faith.
That period was a very interesting time, in the decades after the French Revolution. When the Diocese of Boston was established 200 years ago, our first bishop was a refugee of the French Revolution. It was a very difficult time for the Church, but immediately afterwards there was a great flourishing of the faith and an energy of evangelization coming out of France. Part of it was the creation of so many different religious orders, and figures like St. John Vianney, the Curé of Ars. It was out of that extraordinary revival of the Catholic faith and spirituality in France that Marie Francoise and the Marist Missionary Sisters emerged.
It was wonderful to be able to celebrate their 175th anniversary as a community. I was very blessed to have the Marist Missionaries with me when I was bishop of the West Indies. One of the sisters, Sister Amora, was actually there on Saturday.
She had worked with me when I was bishop of St. Thomas. We also celebrated the 50th anniversary of Sister John Paul Chao, a sister from Taiwan who studied for her doctorate at the Catholic University of America. She is an anthropologist, and she served for many years in Papua New Guinea, where our Capuchin friars are. She was actually in the town of Goroka, which is very famous for the coffee grown there. A number of Sister John Paul’s family were able to join us for the Mass in celebration.
Sunday I celebrated the Spanish Mass at Holy Family Parish in Dorchester. They have a vibrant Spanish community. Father Shawn and Father Currie concelebrated the Mass.
One of the musicians at Mass was John Barros who is a very familiar and well known figure in the community.
For many decades they have had a homeless shelter there in the lower church. It’s part of the wonderful ministry that takes place there.
I was happy to be able to be with them for their Sunday liturgy.
This week has been a time of a number of deaths and funerals that I was involved in.
This is an image of the death of St. Francis from the Capuchin parish, St. Augustine’s, in Pittsburgh. In it, the friars are carrying St. Francis outside so he could bless Assisi before he died. Of course, Francis, in the beautiful canticle of “Brother Sun,” refers to death as “Sister Death,” who escorts us into the presence of our heavenly Father. So, this week, “Sister Death” has visited different people, among them Brother James Gavin, Father Paul Rouse, and eight-year-old Dan Sheehan from Marshfield.
First, I attended the funeral for Brother James Gavin, who was a classmate of mine at the novitiate.
Brother Jim was from County Monaghan in Ireland and represented that deep Catholic culture and faith of those generations of the elderly people that I grew up with when I was in the novitiate. He was much older than the rest of us, and we all admired his great piety and life of prayer. In so many of his ministries he was able to exhibit that closeness to the people that characterized so many of our lay brothers in the history of the order. For many years he worked in Philadelphia at St. John’s Church, and he would spend almost all day in church praying. He called himself the “temple guard” to make sure no one would steal the poor box or the candlesticks, and he would speak with all the people who came to church and pray with them. He was an extraordinary human being and presence in our parishes and in our monasteries. The funeral was a very beautiful sendoff. We were very blessed to have Brother Jim as part of our community. He was such an example of the contemplative aspect of our vocation as Capuchins.
In Pittsburgh, the German parish has a cemetery, and we have a plot within that cemetery where our friars are buried.
The next day I attended the funeral of Father Paul Rouse.
His dear friend Father Daniel McLellan, a Franciscan from Holy Name Province, was the homilist. His brother Richard gave the eulogy. Both did a wonderful job to hold up the themes of the life of Paul Rouse, who was such an extraordinary pastor. The church was filled, and many priests and several auxiliary bishops were there for his funeral.
The Mass was at Gate of Heaven Church in South Boston. That was his parish, where he had his first Mass, received the sacraments, so it was a beautiful venue for his funeral Mass. The church is such an extraordinary place, a beautiful space for worship and prayer.
I mentioned in my remarks that when I went to Haiti after the earthquake there, I was so moved by the fact that hundreds of people living in refugee camps would be singing hymns in the middle of the night. It was like St. Peter in chains, in the Acts of the Apostles. At midnight he got up in the dark and sang hymns. So often it is music that unites us and gives us courage in the face of darkness. And certainly, the great gift that Paul Rouse had received was his great musical talent, and he shared that gift with others. It brought joy and beauty into the liturgy and into the community. His parishioners had such a deep respect and affection for him in all the different places where he had served.
Wednesday was the wake of eight-year-old Danny Sheehan at St. Christine’s in Marshfield.
Danny passed away on August 8 after battling brain cancer for four years. I was amazed at how his death moved the whole community. When I went to have a wake service with the parents, grandparents, and other family members, with Father Sean Connors and Mother Olga, I was quite moved to see how many police and state police were there, and there was a group of young men on the local hockey team who were there. His death really touched people’s hearts, and it was very moving to see how the whole community has rallied around the family.
Apparently, Danny had a great affection for the police officers, and they made him an honorary policeman.
There were scores of police who came to the wake, and they even had a policeman’s cap on his coffin.
On Wednesday evening I had dinner with Monsignor Paul McInerny who is visiting from Rome. He is at home for a summer visit. He has been teaching canon law at the Beda College and he is the canon of the Basilica of St. Mary Major. So, it was wonderful to be able to have him visit us and hear him out firsthand about what is happening at the basilica.
The Brazilian bishops had invited me to give them a day of recollection for the last day of their plenary session. Originally, I was supposed to go to the Basilica of Our Lady of Aparecida for that, but we did it by Zoom with about 300 bishops.
They very graciously sent me this lovely statue of the patroness of Brazil, so I can say that I did not go to see Our Lady of Aparecida, but she came to me.
Dallas Jenkins, director of The Chosen, and Jonathan Roumie, the actor who plays Jesus, were anxious to be able to present the Holy Father a copy of the TV series. We reached out, and they were able to attend this past Wednesday’s audience at Paul VI Hall.
They were able to personally present their television series to the Holy Father. Bishop Reed is very pleased that we have permission to air that series on our Catholic Television station, which will be a great instrument of evangelization. Also, there was a very nice article in Crux about the audience, and it commented how so many people who had seen the series were present at the audience, recognized the actor, and kept calling out to him, “Jesus! Jesus!”
Until my next post.
Cardinal Seán