SPARTA Before his death on Sept. 3, 2015, Father Patrick Rice, beloved pastor of St. Tekakwitha Parish here, designed and paid for a new stained glass window in the church, which features images of his favorite saints and others, who serve as life role models. Manufactured and installed by Holy Land Art Co., the window is located on the left rear side of the Church. Dedicated by Bishop Serratelli on Sept. 29 at a Mass to celebrate the parish’s 30th anniversary, the window depicts the following prominent Catholics:
• Helder Camara, a Brazilian Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, who served from 1964 to 1985, during the military regime of the country. He is remembered for his political work for human rights and democracy through non-violence.
• Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, an American Ruthenian Sister of Charity, who was born in 1901 in Bayonne and died at the age of 26. She was beatified by the Church in 2014, during the first such ceremony to take place in the U.S.
• Father Michael McGivney, a priest from New Haven, Conn., who founded the Knights of Columbus, the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization, to serve as a mutual aid and fraternal insurance organization.
• Blessed Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, who was murdered in 1980, while celebrating Mass in the chapel of The Divine Providence cancer hospital where he lived. Pope Francis will canonize him this Sunday, Oct. 14 in Rome.
• Jean Donovan, lay missionary from the U.S., who was beaten, raped and murdered with three fellow missionaries in El Salvador on Dec. 2, 1980.
• St. Kateri Tekakwitha, patroness of the St. Kateri Parish, who was canonized as the first Native American saint in 2012.
• Venerable Matt Talbot, patron of men and women struggling with alcoholism.
• St. Columbian, an Irish missionary, who founded numerous monasteries in early medieval Europe from around 590 A.D. in present day France and Italy.
• St. Marie Guerin, a Catholic convert, who was married to St. Louis Martin and was the mother of nine children, five of them girls who became nuns, the youngest of whom was St. Therese of Lisieux. St. Marie was canonized a saint in 2015.
• Dorothy Day, a journalist and social activist from New York City, who became a key figure in the Catholic Worker Movement, a pacifist movement providing direct aid to the poor and homeless.
SPARTA Bishop Serratelli helped to celebrate 30 years of tireless faith at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish here — inspired by its Native American patron saint — with an anniversary Mass in the church, where he had blessed two stained-glass windows on Sept. 29. One of them — a newly renovated window — symbolizes the prayers of its parishioners rising up with the intentions of all God’s people like the smoke from incense. The other — a new window — had been dedicated to their beloved late pastor, Father Patrick Rice, and depicts many of his favorite saints and others who serve as role models.
During the 5 p.m. Mass on that Saturday, the faith community of St. Kateri filled the church — nestled deep within the vast cornucopia of natural beauty of rural Sparta — to celebrate Christ as the center of the parish, present at Mass in the Eucharist, and its decades of dynamic outreach: compassionate hands and hearts of parishioners, who give their time to the needy. While commemorating its 30th anniversary that night, the parish also celebrated the dawning of a new era with its new pastor, Father Vidal Gonzalez Jr., who arrived in June.
“This 30th celebration of our parish is a time for joy. Many have made great sacrifices to make this House of God a reality. We must see today as a calling for us to be more closely conformed to what Christ calls us to be as Church. Prayerfully, may we seek God’s guidance and strength that truly we may become ‘light for the world,’ so that Christ’s kingdom may be found among us and through us,” Father Gonzales said. After the Mass he told The Beacon that he started to feel the “warm welcome” of St. Kateri in no time. “I like that this parish is active and vibrant. It’s a welcoming community. People also are generous in giving their time, talents and treasures,” he said.
During the 30th anniversary Mass, Bishop Serratelli served as main celebrant and homilist. The following priests concelebrated the liturgy: Father Gonzales; Father Daniel Murphy, a retired diocesan priest and St. Kateri’s founding pastor; Msgr. Herbert Tillyer, pastor of St. Peter the Apostle Parish, Parsippany; Father Martin Glynn, pastor St. Mary Parish, Denville; Timothy Dowling, pastor of Good Shepherd Parish, Andover; and Father Kevin Corcoran, diocesan vice chancellor and the Bishop’s priest-secretary. Deacon Glen Murphy of St. Kateri assisted with the liturgy.
The Bishop blessed the two stained-glass windows, including the one dedicated to Father Rice, pastor here from June 2009 until his death on Sept. 3, 2015. He was known as a loving, compassionate and deeply pastoral priest [see related story for a description of the window’s images]. The Mass was followed by a dinner celebration at Perona Farms, Andover. These events followed St. Kateri’s other 30th anniversary observances, which also included a Mass on June 24 to mark the 30th anniversary of the parish’s first Mass and a liturgy and picnic on July 15 to honor St. Kateri, whom Pope Benedict XVI canonized a saint in 2012 in Rome.
Also on the day of the Mass, St. Kateri received the honor of hosting the National Running of the Silver Rose — the annual program of the Knights of Columbus to encouraged devotion to the Blessed Mother — as part of its anniversary celebrations. The parish hosted one of eight sculpted Silver Roses that are currently traveling from Canada and then throughout the U.S., finishing their journeys in Mexico City on Dec. 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. After Mass, the Silver Rose remained in the sanctuary for parishioners or guests, who wanted to spend some quiet prayerful time, Father Gonzales said.
No doubt, the fearless St. Kateri — known as the “Lily of the Mohawks” — would have appreciated witnessing Jesus in the spirituality and in the ministries of this rural parish, including an active youth ministry and faith formation program, which is centered on the Eucharist. The parish has been involved in ministries such as those for migrants, unwed mothers, the hungry, the homeless and poor parishes. Among other outreaches, young people have participated in summer service trips and in the Squires and Roses, a group for young men and ladies, developed by the Knights of Columbus, according to the parish.
“St. Kateri Parish lives out its mission as a community of baptized Catholics, using their gifts and talents to spread the Good News of Christ. The parish encourages people of all ages to volunteer and serve the common good. Here, people have a strong sense of social outreach. Here, the Word of God becomes concrete — Incarnate,” Father Rice told The Beacon in 2013 for the parish’s 25th anniversary.
The 30-year legacy of faith at St. Kateri started, when Bishop Emeritus Rodimer established the parish on June 24, 1988 to meet the needs of the growing Catholic population in Sparta and Byram townships, and appointed Father Murphy as pastor. The parish is named for St. Kateri, a Catholic convert at 20 years old from upstate New York, who lived a life of austerity until her death at age 24 in 1680. The first Mass at St. Kateri was celebrated a day after its founding at St. Mary Episcopal Church with about 200 families becoming the new parish’s first members, according to the parish history.
Lacking a church building, St. Kateri held liturgies in rented or borrowed spaces at St. Mary’s; the gyms of Pope John XXIII High School and the Alpine School and Helen Morgan School. In 1988, eight acres were purchased at 427 Stanhope Rd. for St. Kateri. In 1990, the parish center with staff offices, a chapel, meeting rooms and a priests’ residence, was completed. Then, the 20,000-square-foot, $2.8 million church was finished in May 1993, the parish history states.
Continued growth caused St. Kateri to enact a $300,000 expansion plan to outfit the lower level of the church with a large community room, a kitchen, an emergency food pantry, a youth center, a library, two pre-school religious education rooms, a counseling center and additional storage. The project was completed in September 1994. About three years later, St. Kateri realized that the parish center no longer provided enough space for the parish staff and the two priests at the time. So, it purchased a private home on Cherry Tree Lane in Sparta to provide living space for the pastor, according to the parish history.
A parishioner for 28 years, Frank Cannistra remembered that, early on, he and his wife, Mary, liked that St. Kateri offered a dynamic youth ministry and religious education program — perfect for their two young daughters at the time. He also recalled that, at the first Mass he attended at Helen Morgan School, a balloon was tied to each folding chair, Cannistra said.
“When I saw that, I thought, ‘This is unlike any Catholic parish that I’ve ever visited.’ It’s open and welcoming,” said Cannistra, who had run St. Kateri’s Welcomers’ Ministry and Ministry Fair. “Father Dan had a strong sense of church back then. Today, with Father Vidal, St. Kateri still has a strong sense of community,” he said.