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With more 3,000 combined years of service to the people of the Paterson Diocese, 58 religious sisters and three religious priests were honored at the annual Jubilee Mass for Religious on May 18 in St. Mary’s Assumption Church in Passaic. These religious, who are marking milestone anniversaries this year, have dedicated their lives to serve the Church through various ministries in the Diocese and beyond.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to St. Jude Parish in Hopatcong where he celebrated the vigil Mass for the Fifth Sunday of Easter May 18. During the Mass, the Bishop administered the Sacrament of Confirmation to young people of the parish.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit on the Fifth Sunday of Easter to St. Paul Parish in Clifton May 19, where he was the principal celebrant of Mass. During the Mass, he administered the Sacrament of Confirmation to young people of the parish, who had prepared for the reception of the sacrament for the past two years through the parish’s Confirmation program for the teenagers.

The annual diocesan May Crowning was celebrated in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson May 19. Bishop Serratelli led the coronation of the Blessed Mother with several priests joining him and homilies by two young diocesan priests, who were ordained in 2018 — Father Krzsyztof Slimak, parochial vicar at St. Peter the Apostle Parish in Parsippany, and Father Jader Avila, parochial vicar at Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Wayne.

Robert Gil jokes that, during 38 years of marriage, he had called his late wife, Rosie, “many things but ‘saint’ wasn’t one of them.” But Gil isn’t kidding when he speaks about his whole-hearted admiration for Rosie, who died in 2010, for her absolute devotion to God, to him, to their eight children, to the “poetry of the home.” He started to realize that there might be something more to Rosie, when priests from their home state of Alabama who knew her started calling her a “saint” and her name was brought forward when St. John Paul II was looking for an everyday housewife worthy of sainthood.

Christopher Caulfield was having fun doing something new last month: crouching down to sow various types of seeds into several trenches alongside each other that stretch the length of part of the year-old St. Isidore’s Acre garden at St. Paul Inside the Walls in Madison. Today Caulfield, co-director of the Music Ministry at St. Paul’s, the diocesan evangelization center, has been getting his hands dirty as he works to cultivate the seedlings that started to sprout on their journey to becoming a bountiful harvest.

Memorial Day is our nation’s most solemn holiday as we honor the men and women who gave their lives to guarantee our freedoms while they served our country in the U.S. military. Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day, from the days when many Americans observed the day by visiting cemeteries or memorials to war dead and decorated them with American flags or floral displays.

Bishop Serratelli ordained eight men as priests of the Diocese of Paterson during Mass on Saturday, May 11 in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson — the mother church of the Diocese. He challenged these new priests to carry out their priestly ministry “with constant joy and genuine love, attending not to your own concerns, but to those of Jesus Christ.”

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to St. Joseph Parish in Passaic and was main celebrant of the Mass May 12 for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, which was also Mother’s Day. During the Mass, 10 children of the parish made their First Communion, receiving Jesus in the Holy Eucharist for the first time.

Czarina Alfonso, 17, a parishioner of St. Philip the Apostle in Clifton, believes that vaccinations save lives. Her belief is so strong that protecting young children from serious illnesses has become her mission. A graduate of St. Philip Prep and currently a junior at the Academy of the Holy Angels in Demarest, Alfonso is founder of “Give It a Shot,” a non-profit organization that provides pneumococcal vaccines to daycare-aged children in the Philippines. According to UNICEF data, pneumonia remains the leading cause of death among children under five, killing 2,400 children a day worldwide.

Bishop Serratelli administered the Sacrament of Confirmation to young people of Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish here during the vigil Mass at which he was the principal celebrant and homilist to mark the Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 11.

It could be a photo or a precious memory. There are a few things that can still bring Mary Ramsden to tears, as she grieves — and will continue to grieve — for her late daughter Nicole, remembering the girl’s sweet laugh, bright smile, blue eyes and dirty blonde hair. It has been almost 10 years since Nicole died of complications from acute myeloid leukemia at 12 years old — an eternity for Ramsden, director of religious education at Our Lady of the Magnificat (OLM) Parish in Kinnelon, and her husband, John, whose unimaginable pain has tested the limits of their family and their faith in God.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to Annunciation of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary Parish here where he celebrated Mass for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 12, which was also Mother’s Day.

From the first note, worshippers started clapping, as they began lifting their singing voices in praise. The Contemporary Youth Ensemble (CYE) had just launched into the processional hymn of the 6 p.m. Sunday Mass in St. Kateri Tekakwitha Church here: the driving “Rain Down” — a modern song that led churchgoers into a deep sense of prayer, while also giving high-spirited voice to their joy as Catholics.

Here in New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy continues to support a culture of death, which St. Pope John Paul II condemned in his encyclical, “Evangelium Vitae,” (“The Gospel of Life”). The governor’s recent signing into law legislation that legalized assisted suicide in the state and his first act as governor to fully restore taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of abortions, attest to that.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit May 5 to St. Simon the Apostle Parish in Green Pond in the northern section of Rockaway Township where he served as main celebrant and homilist of the 11:30 a.m. Mass for the Third Sunday of Easter.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish in Hewitt on May 4 where he celebrated the vigil Mass for the Third Sunday of Easter. During the Mass, he also administered the Sacrament of Confirmation to young people of the parish.

Marking its 20th year, the Paterson Diocese hosted the annual Blue Mass to honor the brave men and women who serve in law enforcement and risk their lives every day for the protection of the communities they serve. Bishop Serratelli was the main celebrant of the Mass May 7 in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson. Many priests of the diocese, some who serve as police and fire chaplains for local departments, were concelebrants of the Mass.

Msgr. Mark Giordani, a retired priest of the Diocese, former rector of St. John’s Cathedral, and founder of the Christian Riders Motorcycle Club in 1969, celebrated the 50th annual Motorcycle Mass with Msgr. Geno Sylva, the cathedral’s rector, as a concelebrant on May 5.

With close to 2 million members, the Knights of Columbus is the largest Catholic men’s organization in the world and that membership number has just grown even higher as two new councils in the Diocese of Paterson have recently been created. The two newest councils in the fraternal organization are the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist Council No. 17254, based at the cathedral here and the Father Mychal Judge Council No. 16990, based at St. Jude Parish in Hardyston.