Last Friday, I attended the wake of Marylou Parrish, the mother of Father Bryan Parrish, who had been living with her husband at St. Patrick's Manor in Framingham. She was very active in the Church and had a great devotion to the Little Flower.

She had a long and beautiful life and was beloved by her family and many friends. I was pleased to be able to tender my condolences personally to the family and assure them of our ongoing prayers.



Mother's Day Mass

Sunday was, of course, Mother's Day, and I went to St. Tarcisius Parish in Framingham to celebrate a Mother's Day Mass with the Brazilian community there.

It was a beautiful celebration with a procession of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima and wonderful music provided by the youth choir. And, of course, we had a blessing for all the mothers at the end of Mass.



Farewell dinner

That evening, I went to San Lorenzo Friary in Jamaica Plain for a farewell dinner for Father Will Tarraza, who will be going to work in the novitiate in California. Father Will has worked in the archdiocese, helping at various parishes since the time of his ordination, and we wanted to wish him well as he begins this new mission.



Press conference

On Monday morning, I joined many other local civic, government, and religious leaders at a press conference outside of the TD Garden to announce Combined Jewish Philanthropies' Face Jewish Hate campaign. This campaign aims to raise awareness of the problem of antisemitism in our community, and its symbol is the blue square emoji.

Among those in attendance were Patriots owner Bob Kraft, Governor Healy, Mayor Wu, Attorney General Campbell, and State Treasurer Goldberg, along with many leaders of the Jewish community.

Sadly, antisemitism has been on the rise in our country and throughout the world. Recently, when I met with local Jewish leaders to plan a Catholic-Jewish event for the fall, a number of the members of the Jewish community spoke about their own experiences. They spoke about having armed guards at their synagogues and having to lock the doors during their services. And, of course, we've seen a number of horrendous acts of violence against Jewish people take place recently.

This is a problem we all must face. In our Catholic schools, we have an emphasis on trying to overcome these cultural biases of antisemitism, which, like racism, have plagued our country for so long.

So, I was very happy to be there to promote this valuable initiative that has been created by the CJP and Bob Kraft, and I want to support it in whatever way I can.



Spring Presbyteral Convocation

Tuesday, we had our annual Spring Presbyteral Convocation in Framingham.

The convocation featured a keynote talk by Father Paul Turner, a liturgist from the Diocese of Kansas City. He did a wonderful job showing how celebrating the Mass according to the rubrics is so meaningful and underscores the liturgical principle of Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi -- our theology reflected in the liturgy of the Church.

He has a very appealing style of teaching that was appreciated by all our priests who had a chance to hear him.

As we do every year at the Spring Convocation, we also honored three priests selected by their peers for their outstanding service and ministry. In the past, we presented this recognition at the luncheon following the Chrism Mass, but in recent years, we have been doing it at this convocation.

We honored Father Bob Deehan, Father Paul Helferich, and Father Edmund Ugwoegbu this year. I was so glad that they chose to honor Father Edmund, one of our extern priests. It was a way of acknowledging the great service that our extern priests from all over the world give to the archdiocese.