On Sunday (2/28), I visited the Catholic Center at Northeastern University to celebrate Mass with the students and the campus ministers from the Brotherhood of Hope: Father Paul Helfrich, Father Sam and Brother Logan. They have a very active campus ministry there that takes in not just Northeastern, but also many of the other colleges in the Fenway area. After the Mass, there was a reception at which I was able to meet and speak with some of the students. I was very pleased to see that several students had been in our vocation discernment retreat that I mentioned last week.

Catholic University of Portugal meeting

On Tuesday (3/1), I went to St. Anthony's Parish in Cambridge, for a visit by officials of the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa (The Catholic University of Portugal).

...My visit to St. Anthony's was an occasion to celebrate a Mass for Cardinal Medeiros and all the benefactors and friends of the university and also for the group from the university to announce their desire to once again strengthen their ties with the Luso-American community. To that end, they have started a scholarship program that will present five full scholarships to Portuguese Americans who would like to study at the Catholic University of Portugal. At the Mass, we were joined by the Portuguese consul and a number of elected officials. It was a beautiful celebration. St. Anthony's has a magnificent choir that sang for us. They presented us with a beautiful statue of Nossa Senhora da Sabedoria that is a replica of a medieval statue that is in the chapel of the Catholic University.

St. Anthony's, which has traditionally been an Azorean Portuguese community, has expanded their ministry to the Brazilian community of late, and now there is a very strong Brazilian community there. So, during my visit, representatives of a couple of Brazilian parish groups came to greet me. The first was a community in the parish called Shalom. There was also another group called the Men of the Rosary, Terco dos Homens. They all wear a shirt with the picture of the Blessed Mother on it.