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Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to the Diocesan Shrine of St. Pope John Paul II/Holy Rosary Parish in Passaic on Saturday, June 9 to serve as the main celebrant and homilist of the 5 p.m. Mass for the 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time. During the liturgy, the Bishop administered the Sacrament of Confirmation to 62 young people of the parish.

On June 5, Bishop Serratelli gave thanks to God for his generous gift of priests to serve the Diocese and for the spiritual gifts that the Lord has given to them to help them perform their ministries during the annual Jubilee Mass for Priests, held this year at St. Peter the Apostle Church in Parsippany. The Mass honored 22 diocesan and religious order priests, who are serving or have served in the Church of Paterson and who are marking the 65-, 60-, 50-, 40-, and 25-year anniversaries of their ordination.

Last Sunday afternoon, they had so many things to see but a short amount of time in which to see them. A large group of teenagers from around the Diocese made the most of the 10 minutes they were allotted at the end of a tour of the newly renovated Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson on June 10 to take in as much of the rich architectural, historical and liturgical details of the Diocese’s majestic “mother church” as possible.

This Sunday, Father’s Day, will once again be a good day for many and a tough day for some. It’s a good day because it gives all fathers the opportunity to count their blessings, thanking God for the gift of their children, and the awesome honor it is to be their Dad. But it’s also a tough day for those of us who have had our Dad called home to the Lord.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit on Sunday, June 3 to the faith community of St. Brendan/St. George in Clifton, where he served as the main celebrant and homilist of the 11 a.m. Mass for the Feast of Corpus Christi. The liturgy was held in St. Brendan Church.

Bishop Serratelli has announced the following clergy appointments and clergy retirements, effective June 29, unless otherwise noted:

Pat W. wears a tattoo on his neck that bears the name of “Lori” — a memorial to his oldest daughter, who died of a heroin overdose in February. Sober for a year, the 59-year-old resident of the new Winter Wheat Sober Living Community in Paterson has had plenty of time to think about Lori and about the many losses in his life because of his decades of alcoholism and drug addiction. They include two failed marriages, difficulty in holding a steady job, difficult relationships with many of his nine children and almost 30 years of stays in and out of prison.

There was ceremony and solemn prayer, but also a spirited question-and-answer session as Bishop Serratelli held his annual catechesis with recent First Communicants from throughout the Paterson Diocese. More than 150 First Communicants and their families filled the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson for the celebration on June 3, the Feast of Corpus Christi (The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ).

Title X is a family planning program, designed to provide low-income women with pre-pregnancy services. In its original design, and reflected in current law, there is a specific prohibition on abortion-related activities. However, in the years since the program’s creation in 1970, it has been interpreted to require grantees to refer for abortion, thus both overtly excluding health centers who object to such referrals from applying for Title X grants and also ensuring a direct link between family planning services and the promotion of abortion. This link is exemplified by the alarming number of Title X recipients that also provide and promote abortion.

Bishop Serratelli was the principal celebrant of the annual Memorial Day Mass at 10:30 a.m. May 28 in the Calvary Mausoleum chapel in Paterson to honor all those who died while serving in the Armed Forces and all the deceased at Calvary Cemetery.

The faith community of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Swartswood welcomed Bishop Serratelli during a pastoral visit on Saturday, May 26, during which he served as main celebrant and homilist of the 5 p.m. vigil Mass for Trinity Sunday. There, he conferred the Sacrament of Confirmation on 12 young people.

Bishop Serratelli made a pastoral visit to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Passaic on May 27 where he celebrated the 10:30 a.m. Mass for Trinity Sunday. Concelebrating the Mass was Capuchin Franciscan Father Ed Henning, Mount Carmel’s administrator.

In 2000 at the dawn of the new millennium, the Wilkey family of Assumption Parish in Morristown had only started to wake up to a gradually unfolding — and bizarre — medical nightmare. Over the next few years, Liz Wilkey watched with great distress as all three for her daughters got diagnosed — and then started their struggles — with various autoimmune and rheumatoid diseases in their pre-teens through their early 20s.

Bishop Serratelli ordained nine men of various ethnicities and backgrounds as priests of the Diocese, during Mass May 26 in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson. He challenged these new priests to live out their priesthood ministry as “true icons” so as “to communicate the Divine Presence of Christ — his grace, his love and his will toward all in all they do to serve the people of God in the Diocese of Paterson.”

As we here in the United States paused this Monday on Memorial Day to honor and pay tribute to all those who have served our nation in the Armed Forces and made the ultimate sacrifice, some of our wounded warriors were in France seeking healing and peace in the waters of Lourdes.

The faith community of St. James of the Marches Parish in Totowa on May 20 welcomed Bishop Serratelli, who made a pastoral visit and served as main celebrant and homilist of the noon Mass for Pentecost. During the liturgy, he administered the sacrament of Confirmation on 19 10th-grade candidates and two candidates from the parish’s Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults program.

It was about science and more at the STEM Symposium for elementary schools in the Diocese of Paterson. These were student projects with a purpose: a demonstration on how to shelter the displaced, a better way to engineer weather-resistant roofing tiles to withstand hurricanes and vertical gardens to feed the malnourished. A dozen elementary schools from the diocese participated in the symposium at Caldwell University May 15 showcasing projects that were created over the course of the academic year and included every grade.

Prayers from near and far have been pouring in for the Salesian Sisters of St. Jo­seph’s Province after an early morning blaze on May 18 destroyed the chapel at Mary Help of Chris­tians Academy in North Haledon — a tragedy which has torn at the spiritual heart of this dynamic religious community and the school it operates.

The Diocese honored 79 religious sisters and priests, who are celebrating significant anniversaries in religious life this year, for their faithful service to God and his people, during a Mass on May 19 at St. Mary’s Assumption Church in Passaic. The liturgy also commemorated World Day of Consecrated Life in the universal Church held on Feb. 2. Bishop Serratelli, main celebrant and homilist of the well-attended Mass, thanked the honored religious and praised them for showing the Church how to live, love and minister in the context of community.

Bishop Serratelli will ordain nine transitional deacons of the Diocese to the priesthood during a Mass at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, May 26 in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson. The ordination will be live streamed on the Diocesan website, www.rcdop.org.