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Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Clifton Aug. 17 where he celebrated the vigil Mass to mark the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Concelebrating the Mass with the Bishop was Father Jeider Barraza, parish administrator; Msgr. Patrick Scott, a retired priest of the Diocese, and Father Stephen Prisk, priest-secretary to the Bishop.

The parishioners of St. Thomas More Parish in Convent Station welcomed Bishop Serratelli during his pastoral visit. During the visit, he celebrated Mass marking the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time Aug. 18.

Bishop Serratelli marked the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Our Lady of Victories Church in Paterson where he celebrated Mass on Aug. 15. The feast day observes the Assumption of Mary into heaven and it is a Holy Day of Obligation.

August brought much joy to the Salesian Sisters as 15 women either made or renewed their religious vows. Additionally, four women entered the interprovincial novitiate in Newton, entrusting themselves to the guidance of novice director, Sister Karen Dunn. The eastern United States and Canadian Province of the Salesian Sisters has experienced a strong growth in vocations, attributed to the efforts of the vocation office and the prayers and sacrifices of the sisters.

Lily Bogardus and her fellow fourth- and fifth-graders at St. Patrick School in Chatham made a fascinating discovery, after testing out a new toy — a plastic frog game — that they created on the school’s pre-k to eighth-grade student population: the younger children were able to master the game more quickly than the older children.

From his heroic efforts as the former captain of a U.S. Merchant Marine cargo freighter that saved thousands of Korean refugees to the quiet moments of prayer at a Benedictine abbey in Newton, the life of Brother Marinus LaRue is now being examined by a diocesan Tribunal panel as part of his cause for sainthood.

For their work for championing the pro-life cause above all in their lives, three people — Cheryl Holley, Marian Desrosiers and Chuck Donovan — were honored Aug. 5 at the 2019 People of Life awards for their contributions.

The parish community of St. Nicholas in Passaic welcomed Bishop Serratelli, who celebrated the vigil Mass for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time during his pastoral visit Aug. 10. The Mass was a bi-lingual English/Spanish celebration for the community.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to Sacred Heart/Our Lady Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Dover where he celebrated Mass in Sacred Heart Church for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Aug. 11. The Mass was a bi-lingual celebration in English and Spanish.

When people think of summer vacations, they think of exotic locations, tours through European cities, or the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore. But for a group of teens from the Catholic Heart Work Camp, their summer vacation meant cleaning homes, working outside and making a difference in the lives of those in need who are served by Catholic Charities.

Since the inception of the Paterson Diocese in 1937, St. John the Baptist, the titular of our diocesan Cathedral, has always been considered the patron saint of the Diocese. But, there are four other saints, Clement and Felicity, Urban and Claude, all early Roman martyrs, who might also make a claim as diocesan patrons. These four saints — two popes, a Roman maiden and a stonemason — are not well known and do not have any churches or chapels in the Diocese dedicated to them. Nonetheless, they have a substantial presence in the Diocese because the relics of these martyrs are imbedded in many of the altars of the Diocese.

A short ride on a small boat takes visitors across Lake Kinnelon to a tiny island in Kinnelon where, after 130 years, St. Hubert’s Chapel continues to make its presence known with a tall stone clock tower that rises up above the stands of lush trees that surround it on several sides. Yet its out-of-the-way location inside the Smoke Rise community here has been hiding the little-known but sizable Catholic legacy of tiny St. Hubert’s — the former private chapel of the wealthy Kinney family and the first consecrated Roman Catholic place of worship in Kinnelon in 1889.

The U.S. State Department’s newly released annual report on international religious freedom shows continued attacks and abuse by governments and societies against religious minorities, including Catholics, in many countries. Among the countries cited was Nigeria where “terrorist organizations Boko Haram and Islamic State-West Africa continued to attack population centers and religious targets.”

As the Passaic Neighborhood Center for Women marks its sixth anniversary, it continues to maintain its identity as a place to empower women — many of whom have traveled far from home to make a better life for their families here. With more than 10,000 visits through its doors in the past six years, it is evident how important the mission of the center is in serving these women.

While it is important Church leaders remain focused on serving the people’s pastoral and spiritual needs, today’s world requires them to also be connected with managing a parish on an administrative and organizational level. To better equip church leaders, pastors and business managers, the Villanova School of Business Center for Church Management is offering a church management webcast series,

Members of the youth group at St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Mountain Lakes spent July 14 to 20 on a mission trip with more than 250 teens from around the country in Boston for the Catholic Heart Work Camp (CHWC). They worked together to paint houses, build fences, and complete yard work and landscaping for needy families.

Director Michael J. Wickham gives 150 “extras” of a fictitious congregation, dressed in their Sunday best, instructions about how to make the Sign of the Cross, before shooting an Ordination Mass scene for a movie in St. Cecilia Church in Englewood. Then, he takes his perch behind a camera and yells “Action!” to start the scene, which shows the congregation clapping, as a procession, which includes a few actors playing newly ordained priests, exits the church, bathed in plumes of incense.

Resonating the lyrics of a popular reggae song, young people from St. Michael Parish here acted with “one love, one heart” to serve some of the poorest and most forgotten people on a mission trip to Jamaica. For one week in late July, the Netcong missionaries traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, the capital of the Caribbean country spending time with orphans, the disabled and those living with HIV.

In 2009, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that allowed for federally-funded research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) using embryonic stem cells. Catholic teaching respects the dignity and the equal moral worth of every human person. This view has consistently rejected research that destroys the life of some in order enhance the life of others.

The strident opening strumming of an acoustic guitar introduces “Meet Me Where I Am” right away as a driving pop-rocker, while its first verse almost seems a set up to a song about romantic love. A few lyrics later, Dan Ferrari makes it clear that he is looking to heaven for the love he seeks — and has found. The CD was written and sung by Ferrari, minister to young adults ages 21-29 at St. Paul Inside the Walls: the Diocesan Center for Evangeli­zation at Bayley-Ellard in Madison.