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St. Ann’s Community in Marietta, GA steps up to aid Afghan families
Parishioners of St. Ann Church, Marietta, Georgia are lining up to serve anticipated evacuees from Afghanistan, who will be living on the parish grounds. A three-bedroom guest house on the Marietta church campus has been spruced up to welcome the expected family with young children.
This is who we are
La Salette Father Ray Cadran said the faith community embraced the chance to show hospitality to the family, just as in the 1990s when the building was home for a family from war-ravaged Kosovo. “This is us, this is who we are,” said Father Cadran, the church’s pastor. This opportunity is life giving, in contrast to the “heavy haze” of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.
Afghan families who fled the Taliban takeover of their country are soon to arrive in cities and towns across the United States. Those settling in Georgia will find Catholic volunteers ready to help. Vanessa Russell, CEO of Catholic Charities Atlanta, said the agency is anticipating the arrival, lining up resources and examining needs. An Amazon wish list of socks, shoes, buckets, mops and other needed items has been set up.
“We expect now, in the coming weeks, to start receiving more people who were really caught up in the most dire situation. We’ve been told these will be families with children mostly,” said Russell. “We are gearing up to be prepared to help them the best way we can.”
Read more St. Ann’s Community in Marietta, GA steps up to aid Afghan families
Honoring Our Lady of La Salette in Hartford, CT
Fr. Joe O’Neil, M.S., near the La Salette Facsimile; photo: Aaron Joseph/Catholic TranscriptOn a peaceful autumn afternoon on September 19, 1846, high in the French Alps, a Beautiful Lady appeared to two children who were herding their cows on the hillside. She gave them a message for the entire world, a message of reconciliation and hope that still resonates in our 21st century.
The Beautiful Lady, dressed in white and gold, was seated on stones with her face in her hands, weeping. She told the frightened girl and boy, “Come nearer, my children. Don't be afraid. I am here to tell you great news.”
The Lady, who appeared on Sept. 19, 1846, in La Salette, France, came to be known as Our Lady of La Salette, Reconciler of Sinners, and her message is as urgent today as it was 175 years ago, says Father Joseph M. O’Neil, a priest of the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette and Pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Hartford, Connecticut. “Her message is important because there is a strong similarity between 19th-century France after the Revolution and twenty-first-century North America, where there is a dramatic decline in religious practice,” Father O’Neil says. “Basically, her message invites us to come back to God, to come back to her Son, Jesus.”
Her merciful message
The Beautiful Lady told the children—Maximin Giraud, 11, and Melanie Calvat, 14: “If my people refuse to submit, I shall be forced to let fall the arm of my son. It is so strong and so heavy, I can no longer hold it. How long a time I have suffered for you. If I want my son not to abandon you, I must plead with him without ceasing. And as for you, you pay no heed. However much you pray, however much you do, you will never be able to repay the pains I have taken for you.”
The Face in the Mirror—A Story about the La Salette Feast
Editor: The visuals accompanying this imaginative story are from the early years of our La Salette ministry from 1902-2004 in St. Francis de Sales Church in Phoenicia, NY
The religion teacher decided to ask her religion class to meet together for an hour at the small La Salette Shrine across from the main church in Phoenicia, New York.
Rectory with La Salette Facsimile to its left in Phoenicia, NYIt was mid-September but the weather felt like velvet. Paradise could only be like this. Mrs. Romero, the Parish Religious Education teacher, then led the class to the facsimile of the Apparition with its three sets of stone statues of the Weeping Mother and young Maximin and Melanie.
Everyone fell silent. The stone statue seemed to have captured one of history's most solemn moments when the Mother of the Lord appeared and two little children listened with all their hearts.
The teacher asked the class, “Why do you think Mary wept during her apparition at La Salette?”
One girl shyly responded: “Usually when somebody cries, something is going wrong.”
“That’s right,” the teacher responded. The girl continued, “This was a religious shrine, and religious people have this big thing about sin,” thought the girl. She decided to get into the spirit of the place and quickly added: "She must be crying because of our sins."
Read more The Face in the Mirror—A Story about the La Salette Feast
Catholic actors begin film on priest's life
Filming has begun on "Stu," which tells the story of a Father Stuart Long, a onetime boxer who became a priest and died in 2014.
Catholic actors, Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson, star in the project, Wahlberg as the priest and Gibson as his father. Variety, a show business magazine, reported Wahlberg has added a lot of weight to play the role.
A Jefferson City Pastor’s Impressions of the Holy Mountain
Rt. Rev. Msgr. Joseph A. Vogelweid, then-pastor of St. Peter's Church, Jefferson City, Missouri
Editor: The following letter was sent to the parishioners of St. Peter's Church, Jefferson City, Missouri, by their pastor, Right Reverend Monsignor Joseph A. Vogelweid. Visiting Europe in the summer of 1949 he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain of La Salette and gives his impressions of the Shrine from his visit. He was an influential friend of La Salette and instrumental in allowing the La Salette Missionaries to establish their seminary in Jefferson City, Missouri.
Up to the Holy Mountain...
After an interesting and most edifying visit with the French stigmatic, Martha Robin, we returned to Grenoble, from which we boarded a bus to Corps, the nearest town to La Salette. The ride through the French Alps was very scenic It was still daylight when we started out for the La Salette Sanctuary, a distance of about ten miles, but as we went on, the sun gradually gave way to the moon so that the rugged mountains and hamlets showed up even more beautifully in the soft, silver glimmer of the queen of the firmament.
Dangerous as the road appeared to us at the time, we would certainly not have ventured to make this trip without an experienced driver, such as operate these cars. After a most thorough shake-up, provided by the rough roads and the fears that took hold of us at the perilous curves and very narrow lanes, we breathed a sigh of relief when we finally stepped out of the bus at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of La Salette.
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Catholic Charities Transforms La Salette Chapel in Jefferson City, MO
Work progresses on transforming the former La Salette Seminary Chapel and Gymnasium in Jefferson City, Missouri into a headquarters and state-of-the-art hub for services for Catholic Charities of Central and Northern Missouri. We visualize it being a hub of outreach in the diocese in a lot of different ways.”
(left) Aerial view of La Salette property in Jefferson City 1948;
(upper right) Entrance to property; (lower right) La Salette Chapel and buildings in 1960
A Renovated “Net Zero” Building
Catholic Charities of Central and Northern Missouri’s (CCCNMO) new headquarters in Jefferson City will be one of the most energy-efficient buildings around. The renovated and expanded former La Salette Seminary chapel and gymnasium will include an array of solar panels and a geothermal heating and cooling system.
“That will make this one of the first ‘near net zero’ buildings in central Missouri,” said Dan Lester, executive director of Catholic Charities of Central and Northern Missouri (CCCNMO). Not only will that mean lower utility costs, it will be much easier on the environment.
Purchase, Renovation and Fundraising
(from left) Old entrance in 1948; architect’s rendering of view of new administrative offices for CCCNMO: photo: Dan Lester“As Catholics who take to heart the call to be stewards of God’s creation, we’re pleased to be able to incorporate this important teaching into our everyday work and witness,” said Mr. Lester. CCCNMO purchased the building, known since 1983 as the Shikles Auditorium, from the Jefferson City Housing Authority in 2020.
Work began in November to renovate and substantially expand the building and transform it into the agency’s new headquarters. It will include a full-service food pantry, a community wellness clinic, and space to integrate and enhance services to the local community and the entire Jefferson City diocese.
The $4 million project, funded through an ongoing capital campaign, is on target for completion in July, 2021.
“We want everyone in the diocese to be excited about the reality of this moving forward,” said Mr. Lester. An anticipated blessing and opening in August would coincide with the 65th anniversary of the building’s original construction.
Generous support for CCCNMO’s “Open Hearts, Open Doors” Capital Campaign, coupled with a $225,000 grant from the Sutherland Foundation of Kansas City and a $750,000 challenge grant from the Mabee Foundation of Tulsa, Oklahoma, brings the project to within $769,453 of its goal. A $1.5 million matching gift toward programmatic efforts has been offered when people donate to the “Open Hearts, Open Doors” renovation. This dollar-for-dollar match, along with the Mabee Foundation challenge gift, ultimately means donations have tripled the impact. “We’re very pleased to have found these new avenues of support in which a $10 gift turns to $30,” said Mr. Lester.
Many services under one roof
Once completed, the 16,000-square-foot complex will bustle with activity. The former chapel will be home to classroom, meeting and event space, a health clinic and other community services. The expanded former gymnasium downstairs will become a food pantry, including a waiting room, shopping area, demonstration kitchen, warehouse, loading dock and packaging area. New administrative offices for CCCNMO will be built in a mezzanine area overlooking the food pantry. A large parking lot will be added, providing full access for people with disabilities.
More than 12 weeks into the building’s transformation, Mr. Lester is amazed at the progress. Workers recently poured the concrete foundation for the 4,500-square-foot, two-level addition, which will include the food pantry’s warehouse. The food pantry, to be operated in partnership with The Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri, will be a “marquee ministry,” attracting people from an area of concentrated need in the city.
While there, clients will also have access to health and nutrition services, disaster response and preparation, and immigration services. “Integrating all of these under one roof will make it easier for us to make referrals, giving people access not just to healthy food but also immigration help or mental health or a flu shot,” said Mr. Lester.
Inside and outside
(from left) Long view of La Salette Chapel; Rear Sanctuary Wall with La Salette painting of Jesus, Mary, and the Pope surrounded by the poor and sufferingThe COVID-19 pandemic has revealed both the need and potential for other services, including mental health. “This location would be ideal in that we’ll have space that could be used for group therapy and help for individuals and families,” said Mr. Lester.
Catholic Charities personnel are laying the groundwork to offer the same services remotely through a secure Internet connection. “That would mean having a trained mental health provider in Jefferson City provide services to someone as far away as Knox or Clark or Hickory County,” said Mr. Lester. That’s just one of numerous ways the building could be used to provide services far beyond its physical footprint.
“The more we can figure ways to do things remotely or provide delivery of services in the community, the better for the people we’re trying to serve in the long run,” said Mr. Lester. “We visualize it being a hub of outreach in the diocese in a lot of different ways,” he said. “As eager as we are to use this space to offer services to people who come to us, we’re realizing how necessary it will be to find ways to take the help to people where they are.”
He hopes the integration of technology and a growing volunteer base will expand options for the food pantry — from online ordering and pick-up to at-home delivery to people who are elderly or homebound. “We’ve had practice with the monthly senior food boxes,” he noted. “We’ve had volunteers from a number of faith-based groups and other groups who have been helping with delivery.”
Still Holy Ground
(upper visual) Entrance road bordered by three phases of the La Salette Apparition; (lower visual) Men’s Retreat Group with (from left) La Salette Fathers Bill Crane and Ed Barry hosting visiting parish priestMr. Lester contacted the Communications Director for the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette, which built the former chapel and gymnasium in 1956 as part of a high school seminary it operated from 1948-69. The Communications Director made digital images of scores of photos of the chapel and surrounding buildings in use by the seminarians and local Catholics who made retreats there each year. After the seminary closed, the property became part of a surrounding neighborhood built and maintained by the Jefferson City Housing Authority.
Mr. Lester is eager to incorporate artistic echoes of the building’s original use into its redevelopment. He’s pleased about plans to include a small chapel in the area that once served as the building’s sanctuary. “We anticipate making that available to people who come here as a place for silent reflection,” he said.
Good neighbors
Catholic Charities offers a variety of services to residents in need throughout the thirty-eight counties of the diocese, providing care and creating hope through compassionate social services that respect the dignity of each person and engage the local community. “There are lots of great things going on all over the diocese, and we’re really blessed to be a part of that,” said Mr. Lester.
Mr. Lester looks forward to Catholic Charities sponsoring events that draw the building’s neighbors along with people from nearby Helias Catholic High School into fellowship. “There will be opportunities for community-building as well as providing social services,” he said.
He believes the new headquarters will unite people from various walks of life in helping others while growing in their relationship with God. “Bishop W. Shawn Mc Knight has really instilled within our whole diocese a sense that we are better when we’re working together,” Mr. Lester stated. “It is my prayer and my hope that this space will become a truly shining example of that ideal.”
To contribute to Catholic Charities’ “Open Hearts, Open Doors” renovation, visit Catholic Charities of Jefferson or send a check payable to “CCCNMO” at P.O. Box 104626, Jefferson City, MO 65110-4626
(From Left) view of La Salette Chapel with students in 1957;
that same area in the present process of reconstruction: photo: Dan Lester
(Reprinted with permission of the Catholic Missourian)
Read more Catholic Charities Transforms La Salette Chapel in Jefferson City, MO
La Salette in Argentina
Editor: We hereby republish sections of the Centennial Booklet, “La Salette—1846-1946: Ten Decades with Our Lady,” edited by Fr. Emile Ladouceur, M.S., describing the first hundred years of making Mary’s message known. This is the eleventh of twelve articles.
"La tierra de la promesa, la tierra del futuro"— thus do the Argentine people love to speak of their country: “the Land of Promise, the Land of the Future.”
Argentina is a rich country and for the most part its people are the descendants of Spanish and Italian immigrants. It is a Catholic country and it has harbored many a Polish refugee. The lack of clergy has prevented the development of the Church among the scattered population of the hinterland. Hence a great field of apostolate lies open in Argentina.
The Origin of our Mission in Argentina
La Salette Memorial Hospital in Loreauville, Louisiana
Editor: The history of La Salettes in Louisiana began in 1918 and lingers still in the hearts and minds of the Catholics in “Cajun country.”
Loreauville is a little town hidden in the Evangeline country of Louisiana. Ancient live oaks, dripping with festoons of Spanish Moss, line the quiet streets, and the inhabitants of the town go serenely about their daily task of cultivating the sugar cane and the other farm products which grow lavishly in the rich, black soil.
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La Salette Attleboro’s 2020 Christmas Festival of Lights
The words "Come nearer, my children" are not only those Mary spoke at La Salette in 1846. They are the motto that has been lived each day at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Attleboro, Mass., for almost 70 years.
Our Welcome Wreath indicating the 175th anniversary of the La S alette Apparition (1846-2021)On Sept. 19,1846, the Blessed Mother appeared to two shepherd children, Maximin Giraud and Melanie Calvat, in La Salette, France, and left them with the message of reconciliation to be spread to all people in the world. Six years later, the apparition of Our Lady in La Salette led to the founding of a Religious Order, the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette, founded to serve as a perpetual remembrance of Mary’s merciful apparition.
A long history of Missionary service
Two La Salette Missionaries originally settled in Hartford in 1892 but later the La Salette Missionaries bought the Attleboro property in 1942 to be used as a Major Seminary. In 1952, construction for the Shrine on that property began and officially opened on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Dec. 8, 1953.
The National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette discerns new opportunities to make Mary’s message of hope and reconciliation known to those who visit. “It is an amazing place to minister as a priest,” says Father Flavio Gillio, M.S., Shrine Director. “It is a very creative place to minister and the only limit this place has is its own creativity.”
Read more La Salette Attleboro’s 2020 Christmas Festival of Lights
La Salette in Northwest Canada
Archb. Louis Philippe Adélard Langevin (1855-1915), a Canadian Oblate priest and Archbishop of Saint-Boniface.
Editor: We hereby republish sections of the Centennial Booklet, “La Salette—1846-1946: Ten Decades with Our Lady,” edited by Fr. Emile Ladouceur, M.S., describing the first hundred years of making Mary’s message known. This is the fifth of twelve articles.
In the waning months of the 19th century, the first Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette arrived in Northwest Canada to begin their long years of mission work among a people all but forgotten in that vast and lonely prairie land. Fiction writers have made the great Northwest familiar to us as a trackless country where the famous Canadian Mounted Police ranged about in grim pursuit of the man they never fail to get.
But what of Christ's faithful Mounties searching for lost souls, leading lonely lives, unknown and unsung? What of the joys and sorrows of these silent Men of Faith, living on the fringe of civilization, fighting against overwhelming odds to implant the faith securely in the hearts of a widely scattered flock?
What a saga might be written on the heroic lives of these priests of the Northwest riding the ranges through heat and cold to bring the consolations of religion to a neglected people; braving the sandstorms and riding out blizzards that God may be made known and loved.