Father’s Column 7/12

Posted on July 12, 2015 View all news

Laudetur Jesus Christus!
Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!
Praised be Jesus Christ!

Over the past few weeks Fr. Lawrence, Fr. Adrian, and I have been meeting with various parishioners to discuss the Archbishop’s Capital Campaign. If we have spoken to you and you have not yet returned your pledge form, please return it as soon as possible. For those that have not been contacted yet, you will be hearing more about the campaign in the coming weeks. Thank you for your cooperation with helping the Archbishop ensure the stability of the Archdiocese.

As you have hopefully seen, the Catholic Telegraph wrote a nice piece on Old St. Mary’s pursuing minor basilica status. Please keep this process in your prayers. I hope to have the application finished by the end of the summer and submit it to the Archdiocese at that time. From there, it will go to the United States Bishops’ Conference who will then forward it to the Vatican. Hopefully sometime next spring we hear their decision as we begin our 175th Anniversary year. As you should have been able to tell from the article, the Archbishop is very supportive of this.

Our Oratory project also continues to move along. As we complete a few more things and clean up the building, I will schedule a Sunday to take groups of people down to see the progress thus far. Please watch for this over the next few weeks. We will hopefully be able to apply to be a full Oratory in the coming months. Please keep this in your prayers.

A bit of bad news, I regret to inform the parish that our roof is leaking. We knew that we would need to redo the roof soon, but with all of the rain the past few weeks it has shown itself to be in need of repair sooner than later. I am currently gathering bids, but as you can imagine this will be quite expensive. We attempted to do this last year, but the Archdiocese had some requests, so we began the process over. There are several things that we are needed at Old St. Mary’s, with the roof topping the priority list. More information about how we will proceed to pay for the roof and many other projects will be coming in the next weeks and months. Our parish has survived for 173 years, and it is now up to us to help make sure that it will be around in another 173 years.

With all of this news, between the Archbishop’s Capital Campaign, the Minor Basilica application, the Oratory, and the parish’s financial needs, I would like to ask each parishioner to pray the Rosary every day. Please entrust these, along with so many other intentions, to Our Lady. With her assistance, we will succeed in all of our needs.

May God Bless you in the coming week!

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