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WORCESTER – Singing and dancing. A consecration to the Blessed Mother – inspired by an unexpected voice. Awards for church and city leaders. These were among ways the Ghanaian Catholic community celebrated its 10th anniversary at St. Joan of Arc Parish Sunday, Oct. 7.

SOUTHBRIDGE – The Hispanic Catholic community in town celebrated its 60th anniversay with Mass Sunday, Oct. 7, memories and ministers past and present. Bishop McManus and Father Kenneth R. Cardinale, pastor of St. John Paul II Parish, greeted the 200-plus worshippers in Spanish and they applauded.

A group of about 60 people marked the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology and the environment, last Thursday by marching to three businesses on Park Avenue in a campaign against climate change. The group, called the October 4th Coalition to Stop Climate Change, was organized by the SS. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker of 52 Mason St.

Bishop McManus said climate change is an urgent moral issue which adds to the hardship of the poor. He spoke at the Worcester Catholic Environmental Stewardship Conference Sunday held at the College of the Holy Cross and sponsored by the diocese.

Holy Name Central Catholic Junior/Senior High School held the ribbon cutting for the Joseph Tham Pham Life Sciences Biotech Learning Center Sept. 14. It was Founders Day, when the school honors the Sisters of St. Anne. After the ribbon cutting, the family and friends squeezed into the school’s tiny chapel for the baptism of Josephine Hannah Linh Yao, daughter of Han Pham and her husband, Spencer Yao.

BERLIN - Bishop McManus will be principal celebrant at a Mass of Christian burial at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2,  in St. Joseph the Good Provider  Church for Father Robert M. Spellman, 74, who died Sept. 22 at UMass Medical Center in Worcester.

Prayer, fasting, listening and teaching are among pastoral responses in the Worcester Diocese and elsewhere to the clergy sexual abuse crisis. This week Bishop McManus told The Catholic Free Press that sexual abuse is a terrible, embarrassing, dark part of the Church’s history and “people want to know that we’re doing something about it.” 

Bishop McManus is among four people from the Worcester Diocese attending the fifth National Encounter of Hispanic/Latino Ministry, or “V Encuentro,” in Grapevine, Texas, near Fort Worth. (Encuentro is Spanish for encounter.) 

“To Know Him, to Love Him, to Serve Him,” is the theme of the upcoming Worcester Catholic Women’s Conference. With this year’s slate of speakers and a variety of exhibitors, the organizers of the conference expect it to be sold out. The conference will take place Nov. 10 in the Tsotsis Family Academic Center at Assumption College. 

This fall, Gloria Josephs, who’s the youth ministry director at St. Luke the Evangelist Parish in Westborough, will help the Worcester Diocese’s Haitian Apostolateattempt to bring at least 17 new regional parishes into the apostolate’s successful twinning program that serves the Diocese of Les Cayes, Haiti. 

WESTBOROUGH - St. Luke the Evangelist Parish’s organic community garden has a waiting list. And despite the challenge of a wet, very hot summer, the Heirloom Harvest Farm continues to produce vegetables for its shareholders.

“We are grateful to God that thousands of people responded with great generosity to this year’s appeal,” said Bishop Robert J. McManus, Bishop of Worcester. The Development Office for the Diocese of Worcester release its final report today, showing that it had received 16,454 gifts and pledges totaling $5,076,252, thereby exceeding the $5 million goal for the third consecutive year.

STURBRIDGE – Facing dark times in the Church, clergy, religious and laity made a consecration to Mary Saturday in front of a new statue at St. Anne and St. Patrick Parish and St. Anne Shrine. “I think it’s time once more to go back to the Mother,” said the new pastor, Assumptionist Father Alex Castro, mentioning news reports about abuse and scandal.

NORTH OXFORD – “The bell of St. Ann’s will be silent no longer,” Father Michael N. Lavallee, pastor of St. Ann Parish, proclaimed Saturday, shortly before the church bell rang for the first time in years.

More than 100 people attended a closing dinner for Partners in Charity, held Sept. 7 at Tower Hill Botanical Gardens in Boylston. See Photo Album.

LEOMINSTER – Through summer service projects, youth from Holy Family of Nazareth Parish and Holy Trinity Chapel honored Dorothy Day, whose cause for canonization is being promoted. The Leominster youth worked at two Catholic Worker sites in Brooklyn, St. Joseph House, a men’s shelter, and Maryhouse, a women’s shelter, where Dorothy Day did most of her service, and where she died in 1980.

In response to the current sexual abuse crisis, St. Roch Parish in Oxford is planning two days a month of prayer and fasting, according to Father Michael J. Roy, pastor. He said the idea is to do penance for the sins of perpetrators and the healing of victims, especially Oxford residents.

Requests for forgiveness and perspective were responses to vandalism at St. Mary of the Assumption Church in Milford, according to the pastor, Father Peter J. Joyce. Four young men were arrested Aug. 31 after they allegedly ransacked the church.

LEOMINSTER - Bishop McManus has issued a decree making Holy Trinity Evangelization Center at 69 Lincoln Terrace a quasi-parish, effective Sept. 1. The bishop has entrusted the pastoral care of the chapel and center to the pastor of Holy Family of Nazareth Parish, Father Jose A. Rodriquez.

St. Luke’s parishioner John Ragan has been serving fellow blood cancer patients and their families since 2014. His work has also blessed many St. Luke’s faith formation students.