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A reception was held in the Rodimer Center adjacent to St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Paterson for Bishop-elect Kevin Sweeney and invited guests July 1 prior to his ordination/installation Mass in the cathedral. Msgr. Sylva, also diocesan vicar for special projects, participated in the planning of the Mass as well as a vesper service for the bishop-elect at the cathedral the night before.

The Beacon won three awards — a first-, second- and third-place — in the annual Catholic Press Association’s Best Catholic Newspaper competition for work published in 2019. The awards were announced at the 2020 Catholic Media Conference, which was held virtually June 30 to July 2. The conference had originally been scheduled for those dates in Portland, Oregon, but was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and financial hardships many of CPA members faced and instead was replaced by the virtual conference, “Together While Apart.”

When Bishop Sweeney was growing up, his family considered prayer time sacred at their home in the Whitestone section of Queens. If kids from the neighborhood came to the door to play with the Sweeney children before they were finished praying the rosary — usually after dinner, they either were asked to wait in the foyer or accepted an invitation to pray a decade or two with them. On July 1, family members sat proudly in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist to watch one their own, Kevin J. Sweeney, be ordained and installed as the eighth bishop of the Diocese of Paterson.