BRAINTREE -- The Archdiocese of Boston will join dioceses throughout the world in observing 24 Hours for the Lord, an annual period of continuous eucharistic adoration lasting from March 28 to 29. "It's an opportunity for us as Catholics to adore the Lord in person, to encounter him," Archdiocese of Boston Evangelization Consultant Melissa Kalapkgian told The Pilot on March 12.
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BOSTON -- More than 450 catechumens took their next step into entering the Catholic Church at the Rite of Election, presided over by Vicar General Bishop Mark O'Connell at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston on March 9, the first Sunday of Lent.
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BRAINTREE -- Father Steve Josoma never asks refugees for their stories, but they have a way of coming up on their own. Father Josoma is the pastor of St. Susanna Parish in Dedham, part of Parishes Organized to Welcome Immigrants and Refugees (POWIR), an initiative of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Since 2018, Father Josoma has helped resettle nine refugee families in Boston, most recently from Guatemala and Myanmar (Burma). The patriarch of the Guatemalan family needed special walking shoes due to an unspecified injury, so Father Josoma made sure he had some. While packing donated winter clothes with Father Josoma, the Guatemalan man pulled up his pant leg to reveal his injury: a hole in his leg bigger than a golf ball. When he was nine years old, the man was shot in the leg by soldiers. He watched his father and mother be murdered before his eyes.
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At the request of Archbishop Richard G. Henning, parishes across the archdiocese will announce the 2025 Catholic Appeal during all Masses on the weekend of March 15-16. Commitment Weekend, during which thousands of Catholics from across the region are asked to provide their philanthropic support, takes place the following weekend, March 22-23. Each gift to the appeal provides essential funding to the many ministries, schools, and parishes that grow vibrant communities of faith and fulfill Christ's mission to help the most isolated and vulnerable.
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BRAINTREE -- "We just happened to be a bunch of guys that wanted to help and did something about it." That's how Scot Landry describes the founding of the Boston Catholic Men's Conference. Landry was part of a group of Catholic men who met at St. Paul Parish in Cambridge in the early 2000s. They were looking for a way to strengthen the faith of their fellow men, especially as the clergy sexual abuse scandal and its aftermath plagued the Archdiocese of Boston. Several of the men in Landry's group mentioned how much they loved the Worcester Catholic Men's Conference. They decided to establish something like it in Boston and presented their idea to Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley, who loved it. The first Boston Catholic Men's Conference took place in 2005. The guest of honor was "Passion of the Christ" star Jim Caviezel.
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BOSTON -- "This is a little bit like conducting a 747," Richard Clark says as he looks out over the 250 fourth through 12th-grade singers filling the pews of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston on March 8.
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BRAINTREE -- "We just happened to be a bunch of guys that wanted to help and did something about it." That's how Scot Landry describes the founding of the Boston Catholic Men's Conference. Landry was part of a group of Catholic men who met at St. Paul Parish in Cambridge in the early 2000s. They were looking for a way to strengthen the faith of their fellow men, especially as the clergy sexual abuse scandal and its aftermath plagued the Archdiocese of Boston. Several of the men in Landry's group mentioned how much they loved the Worcester Catholic Men's Conference. They decided to establish something like it in Boston and presented their idea to Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley, who loved it. The first Boston Catholic Men's Conference took place in 2005. The guest of honor was "Passion of the Christ" star Jim Caviezel.
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DORCHESTER -- Beginning the solemn season of Lent on Ash Wednesday, March 5, Archbishop Richard G. Henning celebrated the first of his three public Masses of the day for the 1,500 students of Boston College High School in Dorchester.
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FRANKLIN -- Time has made it easier for Father Bob Poitras to forgive. In October 2024, his parish, St. Mary in Franklin, was severely damaged by an arson attack. The perpetrator remains at large. Four days after the fire, Father Poitras celebrated an outdoor Mass steps away from the imposing century-old church building. His homily at the time described two forces at war within his heart. The Bob Poitras, who grew up in Lowell's hardscrabble Acre neighborhood, was filled with anger and wanted revenge. The Holy Spirit, however, spoke louder: "Have mercy, have forgiveness."
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SOUTH BOSTON -- The lives of Matthew and Martin Mullen depended on a flipped coin in Florian Hall. The twin brothers were South Boston natives, baptized in Gate of Heaven Parish. They always wanted to be firefighters like their grandfather and great-grandfather before them. Many of their male relatives were firefighters or police officers. When they grew up, they moved across the country to California, where they played hockey and worked in the film and television industry.
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BOSTON -- When Mary Sullivan found out that she had won the Cheverus Award, she was embarrassed. "I was uncomfortable and embarrassed about it," she told The Pilot on Feb. 27. "That's really the truth."
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BOSTON -- Seniors graduating from Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Boston got the chance to meet the people who supported their education at the annual CSF Celebration of Excellence, held at the PwC building in Boston's Seaport District on Feb. 28.
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BRAINTREE -- The faithful throughout the Archdiocese of Boston, both clergy and laity, were praying for the health of Pope Francis as he continued his stay at Rome's Gemelli Hospital Feb. 26. Those The Pilot spoke to after Mass at the Archdiocese of Boston Pastoral Center's Bethany Chapel in Braintree on Feb. 25 said they have been avidly following the ongoing media coverage of the 88-year-old pope's health.
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CHESTNUT HILL -- One is covered with autographs, the others are not, but the footballs all have the same words on them: "Father Jack." The game-used footballs take up plenty of space on a table in Jesuit Father John Butler's office, located in Boston College's Bourneuf House. Along with being BC's Haub vice president for University Mission and Ministry, Father Butler has been chaplain for the Eagles football team since 2010. Most people on campus, including the football players who gifted him with the balls, simply call him "Father Jack."
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BOSTON -- The jazz was hot, and the joint was jumping. On the night of Feb. 18, a standing-room-only audience crowded into a dark basement on a narrow side street of Boston's North End to hear what was promoted as "the best clerical jazz fusion quartet west of the Tiber."
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DORCHESTER -- St. Katharine Drexel Parish in Dorchester, hub of the Archdiocese of Boston's Black Catholic community, hosted a Mass in honor of Black History Month on Feb. 23. The Mass was celebrated by the parish pastor, Father Oscar Pratt who filled in for Jesuit Father Gregory Chisholm who could not attend due to illness.
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Abstinence -- Catholics over 14 years of age are bound to the obligation of abstinence. Abstinence is to be observed on Ash Wednesday (March 5) and on all Fridays of Lent. On days of abstinence, meat may not be used at all.
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(OSV News) -- Catholic bishops throughout the U.S. are calling on faithful to pray for Pope Francis, now in critical condition in Rome's Gemelli hospital amid a week-long battle with respiratory illness.
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BOSTON -- As he watched a chapel ceiling be painted, Father Jeremy Paulin saw the glory of God. Father Paulin, an Oblate of the Virgin Mary, has been the director of the St. Francis Chapel in Boston's Prudential Center since June 2024. The chapel has recently undergone a series of renovations, which are now mostly complete, including the repainting of the walls and ceiling. Father Paulin was brought to tears from seeing the ceiling be painted -- not with elaborate frescos or gold inlays, but simple, pure white (it helps make the chapel look bigger).
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LOWELL -- When he was a parishioner at St. Rose of Lima in Chelsea, there was one thing Bernard Ba wanted to know from his pastor: The meaning of the phrase "I'll kick your ass." Ba was a newcomer to Massachusetts. A native of Cambodia, he had spent three years on the brink of starvation in a Khmer Rouge concentration camp. Both of his grandfathers, four of his 12 siblings, and his two-week-old son were killed. After a stay in the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp, he was brought to Massachusetts with the help of Sister of St. Joseph Eustace Caggiano, known as "the saint of the South End" for her work with immigrants and refugees.
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BRAINTREE -- Ryan McLean likes to say that Malta Camp USA is "everything that the world is not." McLean, a native of Hingham, has cerebral palsy and cannot walk long distances. Climbing steep hills and staircases is also difficult for him. Since 2017, he has attended Malta Camps, weeklong summer camps sponsored by the Order of Malta that provide outdoor adventures free of charge to young adults with disabilities. Attending the annual Malta Camps took McLean to Austria in 2017, England in 2018, and Germany in 2019.
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BRAINTREE -- Father Paul Soper, director of clergy personnel for the Archdiocese of Boston, was honored with the Avery Cardinal Dulles Ad Intra Award at the Priests for an Apostolic Age Conference in San Antonio, Texas, on Jan. 23.
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