Cardinal Seán's Blog

This week, we observed the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a terrible legacy of the terrorism and hatred in our world today that caused so much pain. We pray these deep divisions in humanity will be healed and people will be able to live in harmony and peace. We hope they can overcome the resentment and violence, which will lead them to God’s love.

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On Saturday, Sept. 27, five teams of volunteers and employees of Catholic Charities will be cycling in the Rodman Ride for Kids. For 17 years now, the Ride has been one of the largest matching gift charity events benefiting at-risk youth programs in Massachusetts.  The Ride has raised more than $31 million for non-profit programs to date.

I am pleased that for the fourth year, Catholic Charities is a benefiting agency of The Ride. The Presenting Sponsor of The Ride is Liberty Mutual, whose CEO Ted Kelly received Catholic Charities’ Justice and Compassion award this past May.

All of the money raised for Charities will fund the Teen Center at St. Peters in Dorchester, the Search Out Another Road (SOAR) program in Brockton, Sunset Point camp in Hull, the Laboure Center in South Boston, the Santé Manman Sé Santé Petit pregnancy-counseling Program at the Haitian Multi-Service Center in Dorchester, the Parent Aide program in Lynn, as well as the Education and Parenting Skills Center in Lynn. These eight programs are crucial to Catholic Charities’ mission to promote healthy lifestyle choices for our young and vulnerable.

Catholic Charities must raise $75,000 this year. Father Hehir and Father Erikson generously lent their support to Charities by sending a letter to parishes within the Archdiocese asking that information about The Ride, including posters and donor cards, be available to parishioners throughout September. Keep an eye out in your own parish for these materials.

If support the riders in this important event, or if you want to ride yourself, call Development Department at Catholic Charities 617-451-7962 for more information, or go to their web page at www.ccab.org/annual-events/2008-rodman-ride

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At the Pastoral Center, we are initiating meetings with the general staff on First Fridays after Mass and lunch.

Celebrating Mass with the staff

The new Pastoral Center in Braintree was made available to us by the generosity of the late Tom Flatley. In the near future, we will dedicate a memorial plaque to Tom in the lobby of the center as a reminder of how this man from humble beginnings was able to do so much good in his life.

The meeting was held in our beautiful conference room, which holds about 200 people. It was a chance to share with everyone the current policies.

It is also an opportunity for the various offices to acquaint each other with their various ministries. At the meetings, different offices will make presentations about themselves, like the one Sister Marian Batho gave us on her role as the Delegate to the Religious Community and on the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council.

In this photo taken last year you can see Sister Marian Batho, left, with members of the Archdiocesan pastoral Council

Before we moved into the Pastoral Center, so many of the offices were at different locales; it is a blessing for us to suddenly be together. We want people to feel a part of the mission to the Church and to feel a sense of unity and purpose in what we are doing. Father Richard Erickson, our Vicar General, came up with this idea, and everyone seems enthused about it.

At the meeting, we were very pleased to announce to the employees — and now to you here — that on Oct. 1, we will open the Pastoral Center Chapel. The chapel will be an important part of our Pastoral Center, not only for celebrating Mass, but also for private devotions. I made a personal invitation to our employees of other faiths to consider themselves welcome in the chapel to practice their own prayers.

At the end of the meeting, Victor Rios, who has been working for the archdiocese for more than 28 years, drew the names out of the hat for three sets of tickets to the Boston College-Georgia Tech football game. The Eagles lost 19-16, but next Saturday the Eagles play the University of Central Florida Knights. We are rooting for the team to get back on track. Go Eagles!

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Last Sunday we traveled up to Immaculate Conception in Salem for the church’s  150^th Anniversary Mass.

Father Tim Murphy, the pastor, has done an extraordinary job there.

Father Tim Murphy with some parishioners

The church is very beautiful. Inside there is a gorgeous painting of Mary as the Immaculate Conception over the high altar.

Outside on the lawn, there is a monument of the Ten Commandants made of marble from Mount Sinai, which I blessed at its dedication in 2006 — the last time I visited the  parish.

Immaculate Conception is one of the few churches we have with a gallery looking down on the rest of the congregation.

It is a common feature of New England churches, but rarely seen in other parts of the country.

The old practice among New England Protestants was to raise money to build and maintain a church by selling and/ or renting specific pews or family boxes. The galleries were to allow for free worship for those who did not own or rent a space on the ground floor. Over time, the practice of designating pews stopped, but the style continued.

The church was filled for the celebration and they had two wonderful choirs. The Knights of Columbus and the Order of Malta both figured prominently in the celebration.

The parish now has a large Hispanic community and a priest from Columbia, Father Carlos Gomez.

The greeting and history of the parish was given by a parishioner, Phil Moran, who is a member of the Knights of Malta and a representative on the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council. Phil is also the president of the Pro-Life Defense Fund.

One of the nice things they did for the anniversary was to organize a parish pilgrimage to Lourdes, which is also celebrating its 150^th anniversary.

The church took its name just at the time when the Church was formalizing the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, even though the doctrine goes back to the earliest days of the Church.

It was during the Blessed Mother’s apparitions at Lourdes when she identified herself as the Immaculate Conception, which explains why that title was chosen at that particular time in history.

While Father Murphy was in France, he visited the Cathedral of St. Andre in Bordeaux, where the first bishop of Boston, Bishop Jean-Louis Cheverus, is buried.

To see more photos of the Anniversary Mass click here.

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Sunday night we went to Washington for a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations, which I chair. Father Jim Steffes and Father David Toups helped me prepare Sunday for the meeting which was all day on Monday.

One of the many topics we discussed at the meeting was a report given on the Vocations Desk the committee sponsored to provide a presence at World Youth Day in Sydney.

Our Vocations Desk in Sydney last July

Thousands of young people visited with the staff of the Vocations Desk, and they even had bishops volunteer to meet with young people discerning.

One of the interesting statistics they presented at the meeting was that one-third of seminarians said participating in World Youth Day was a very significant factor in their decision to enter the seminary. It only underscores the importance of this ecclesiastical event that was the brainchild of Pope John Paul II.

Tuesday and Wednesday we held the administration board meetings to discuss and develop the agenda for our November meeting. We also took care of some business of the bishops conference that has to take place between our formal meetings. Cardinal George, the Archbishop of Chicago, is the president of the conference.

One important piece of business was the issuing of a statement from the bishops on the misinformation put out by some Catholic politicians on Church teaching. The bishops are concerned about politicians pontificating on theological questions about which they know very little.

One of the challenges facing us as Catholics is how we communicate — to our own people and to the larger community — that the question of abortion and the immorality of abortion is not simply a matter of the Church trying to impose Church doctrine on other people in a pluralistic society. Rather, it is our firm conviction that abortion, like murder or racism, is a crime against humanity and a violation of the Natural Law that flows from who we are as human beings and that can be identified through reason. That is why the Church feels very comfortable advocating for the Gospel of Life. We are not insisting that they embrace the Catholic faith, but we are insisting that they defend human rights.

Life is the basic human right. That is why it is so disturbing when politicians and others try to dismiss us as people with merely an ecclesiastical or religious sectarian point of view or opinion. It is not that way at all.

We also need to impress on people that this is not some recent opinion. These teachings against abortion date back to the earliest days of the Church and some of the oldest writings of the Fathers of the Church. Right from the beginning, the Fathers of the Church were very, very clear as to the seriousness of this crime.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Bishop William Lori, chairman of the U.S. Bishops Committee on Doctrine, issued a statement clarifying Vice-presidential nominee Senator Joseph Biden’s comments on Meet the Press last Sunday.

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Father Bob Connors, Robert Johnson-Lally, MaryAnn McLaughlin, and other members of the Bicentennial Committee, in conjunction with officials at the Boston Public Library, put together an exhibition on the history of the Archdiocese at the Cheverus Room of the old building at Copley Square that I visited Wednesday.

From left, Professor Thomas O’Connor, Henry Scannell of the Boston Public Library, Father Bob Connors, Robert Johnson Lally, MaryAnn McLaughlin and Marta Pardee-King of the  Boston Public Library

The exhibit, open until Sept. 30, was full of amazing artifacts and old photographs of churches, postcards with scenes from Catholic life and documents going back to the days of Bishop Cheverus.

For me, one of the highlights was the section of photographs titled, “Nuns Having Fun.” There were antique vestments and chalices. There were dairies from the bishops. There were even old copies of The Pilot.

Also in the Cheverus Room at the library there is one of the the world’s largest collections of books on St. Joan of Arc that was donated by Cardinal John Wright.

Cardinal Wright grew up in Dorchester and was the Bishop of Worcester before moving on to become the Bishop of Pittsburgh and then one of the highest ranking cardinals in Rome. He was an expert on Joan of Arc.

The room has two busts, the cardinal along with Archbishop Williams, and a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Bishop Cheverus.

Busts of Archbishop Williams (below) and Cardinal Wright

The painting of Bishop Cheverus is the same one that hangs in my conference room, both are copies. The original hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts.

This is the copy that hangs in my office

A closer look

Outside in the entrance hallway to the Cheverus Room are large paintings by John Singer Sargent depicting scenes from the Old and New Testament. I was taken by the power of these paintings, which are part of the library’s permanent collection.

After we toured the exhibit, we attended a lecture and discussion with Boston College Professor Thomas O’Connor, titled, “Pastoral Profiles: Bishops of Boston” held in one of the downstairs rooms in the library’s new building.

It is remarkable that in 200 years, there have only been nine residential bishops in the diocese. I was grateful his discussion of my tenure was very brief!

 

There was a decent crowd for a weekday in the city

I was grateful to see so many lay people and clergy there, including Bishop John Dooher, who is very well versed in the history of the Boston Church, and Father Bill Schmidt, the pastor of St. Patrick’s in Stoneham. Father Schmidt wrote a chapter on the history of parish life for Prof. O’Connor’s new book on the history of the archdiocese.

Robert Johnson-Lally will also have a presentation at the library 6:30 p.m. Sept. 24, “Researching Church Records for Family History.”

Joining me at the event were two friends, Gloria Clough and Jane Mosakowski, pictured here with Professor O’Connor

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Last week I was visited by Father Mirek Bartos, OFM, Conv., Provincial of the Polish Province, and the new pastor Our Lady of Czestochwa Parish in South Boston, Father Andrew Urbaniak, who is replacing Father Jarzy Auguscik.

From left, Father Andrew Urbaniak and Father Mirek Bartos

Well, that’s about it for this week. Until my next post,

God Bless

Cardinal Seán

Hello to you all!

I hope you had as enjoyable a Labor Day Weekend as I did. I visited with my family and celebrated a First Communion of a young boy from Colombia, whose family had been parishioners of mine when I was a priest in Washington.

On Tuesday, Father Jonathan and I flew down to the Virgin Islands for the installation of the new bishop of the Diocese of Saint Thomas, Herbert Bevard.

It had been a few years since I had been back, but it is always a joy to go there.

To participate in the consecration and installation of the bishop at Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral reminded me of my own consecration and installation there 24 years ago.

Many people singing in the choir were singing in the choir when I was ordained a bishop there. There was the same sacristan, Mr. Knolly Beazer, who has been the sacristan at the cathedral for 50 years.

Knolly Beazer

All of the former bishops of the Virgin Islands were there except for Bishop Ed Harper, who died in 1990. I succeeded Bishop Harper in 1985, when he retired. Besides myself there was Bishop Elliot Thomas, who succeeded me, and Bishop George Vance Murry who is now the bishop of Youngstown, Ohio.

With Bishop Thomas and Bishop Bevard

It made me feel older to realize that I was the second bishop and now they are on their fifth!

Bishop Bevard was the pastor of a very vibrant African American parish in Philadelphia and it was great to see so many of his parishioners accompanying him, as well as other members of the city’s African American community attending the ceremony. There was also a large number of priests from Philadelphia as well as the archbishop, Cardinal Justin Rigali. Another guest was the rector of Chartres Cathedral near Paris, who is an old friend of Bishop Bevard.

Bishop Bevard with his friends and parishioners from Philadelphia

The cathedral was built around the same time as our own Holy Cross Cathedral in Boston, but it is much smaller and only fits about 300 people. The cathedral was very crowded and was beautifully decorated, especially with all of the native flowers they used.

All the flowers are locally grown

Afterwards, there was a gathering at Frenchmen’s Reef, where all the bishops and other guests came together to mark the occasion and honor the new bishop.

It was wonderful to be greeted by so many people and see so many familiar faces

It is important to recognize Monsignor Jerome Feudjio, the pastor of Holy Family, who worked so hard organizing the installation.

Monsignor Jerome Feudjio

The Virgin Islands are a very special place. The people have a great enthusiasm for their faith. Their liturgies are extraordinary and joyful celebrations.

One place I visited is what had been the bishop’s residence when I first went to the Virgin Islands. It was a house built by Bishop Harper on the top of the mountain, on an extraordinary piece of land donated to the Church by Madame Bloch, a Frenchwoman.

The house is still in ruins from the devastation left behind by the several hurricanes that have stricken the islands. The house has been rebuilt twice. I rebuilt it once and Bishop Elliot rebuilt it once again. Now it is just there in ruins.

This was the view from my residence. Not too bad!

We also took pictures of what is now the Catholic Charities office. This little West Indian Danish building: it was my chancery—just a contrast from our brand new Pastoral Center that the late Tom Flatley made possible for us in Boston. I thought you’d enjoy seeing it.

Of course, my visit was a chance to catch up with so many of the familiar faces from my time there. I was able to see many of the local priests I had ordained and meet with the deacons. There is such an active diaconate program on the Virgin Islands, started by Monsignor Michael Kosak and Sister Germaine years ago.

When I arrived, he was the only diocesan priest there, all the others were members of religious orders, so I made him a monsignor!

Monsignor Kosak

In fact, Bishop Thomas started in the diaconate program and then went on to the seminary. I ordained several priests in the Virgin Islands, but the first two priests I ordained are now bishops. Besides Bishop Thomas, there is Bishop Adalberto Martinez in Paraguay.

There are three islands with parishes, St. John’s, St. Thomas and St. Croix. The largest island is St. Croix, but the capital city, Charlotte Amalie, is on St. Thomas.

The islands were discovered by Christopher Columbus who named them after St. Ursula and the 11,000 virgins.

There have been seven flags flown over the islands since its discovery in the XV century. The first to own the islands were the Spaniards, followed by the English, the Dutch and the French. AFrench king gave them to the Order of Malta to rule.

The Order of Malta ruled them for a time and then turned them back to France. The king of France then sold them to the king of Denmark. They were the Danish West Indies for 350 years and then, around the time of the First World War, the Danes sold the islands to the United States. Although there were seven flags, the longest time was under the Danish flag, so most of the places are named for Danish monarchs. There are old Danish forts on the island.

When the sun shines the water looks almost like it was painted blue

With members of the Order of Malta following the installation. The Order is a very important part of the history of the Virgin Islands

These are pictures from Drake’s Seat, where Sir Francis Drake, the pirate, would sit and look over the Magens Bay and watch for the Spanish galleons to sail through Drake’s Passage. From this mountain perch he would give the signal for his own ships to attack. Magens Bay is supposed to be one of the 10 most beautiful beaches in the world.

A view of Magens Bay

Columbus brought the Church to the Virgin Islands in 1493, but the real history begins with a French expedition which took the islands from Spain in 1650. Between that year and 1672, both French and Spanish priests served in the islands, even as control switched between the countries. It was in 1672 that the Danish West Indian and New Guinea Company took over the administration of the islands for the Danish Crown and Lutheranism became the official religion.

Eventually, the Danish government allowed Catholics to practice their faith, first in private and later in churches with relative freedom. The Church continued to grow despite hardships and disastrous fires that destroyed churches in 1804 and 1825.

Some of the local wildlife

In 1856, Pope Pius IX invited the Redemptorists to take over the Church in St. Thomas and they have served God’s People there ever since. In 1960, the prelature of the Virgin Islands was established with Bishop Harper, a Redemptorist, as the first bishop. The prelature became a diocese in 1977.

Memorial plaque in memory of Bishop Harper in the cathedral

Bishop Harper was the first bishop to live on the islands and when I succeeded him, I became the first man ordained bishop on the island. My successor, Bishop Thomas, was the first diocesan priest to become the bishop there.

My coat of arms embedded into the facade of the cathedral

A great part of the joy from my visit to the Virgin Island was to see how the programs, such as the homeless shelters, especially the Bethlehem House, we had begun long ago have grown and flourished.

The diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Islander, with the leadership of Mary Conway, and the television stations we started are now considered permanent fixtures of the life of the Church in the islands. I should also mention Krysten Winter-Green, who was very instrumental in running the shelters and expanding them.

Until my next post.

In Christ,

Cardinal Seán