Food pantry gets a blessing

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press 

A scare turned into a blessing – just in time for a holy day and the holidays – at North American Martyrs Parish in Auburn.  

A couple months ago the phone rang at the parish. The town’s director of public health was calling. The pastor was anxious about the reason for the call. 

“We just opened the church again; now they want to shut us down!” thought Father Frederick D. Fraini III, who was working hard to keep worshippers safe in the face of the coronavirus. 

“The board of health does some good things too,” said Darlene Coyle, the public health director.  

She was calling North American Martyrs to say that the parish was getting $10,000 for its food pantry, Kateri’s Kitchen.  

The town of Auburn had applied for the money from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, called CARES, to help with food security, she told The Catholic Free Press. 

“We have two food pantries in town,” she said. The other is part of Auburn Youth and Family Services.  

Ms. Coyle, who worships at St. Peter Parish in Worcester, is also director of the town’s Department of Development and Inspectional Services, so she had a relationship with both pantries because of granting their food permits, and, after the pandemic hit, referring people in need to them. 

The town created a program earlier this year, also called CARES (Community Assistance Relief Effort Strategy), to coordinate help for senior citizens and provide a hotline that residents could call when in need of food or other necessities because of the pandemic, she said. So it was important to support the resources – like food pantries – that were helping to sustain the community. 

The town applied for the federal grant money and got $10,000 for each pantry, Ms. Coyle said.  

“I was completely surprised,” she said. “When you apply … for different … funding mechanisms, you don’t always get them. … For my staff and I it has been like a bright light. … Our department has been handling some heavy responsibilities. We feel blessed that we can help the community with this.” 

She wasn’t the only one who felt blessed.  

Father Fraini said he didn’t want to tell the parish until the check was in hand. On Oct. 17 Ms. Coyle presented it, and that night and the next day he announced it at the Masses. 

“People were delighted; they thought it was the best news they could hear,” he said. “I’m delighted. It couldn’t have come at a better time,” with Thanksgiving and Christmas approaching. And, providentially, it came just before the parish’s patronal feast, he said. Oct. 19 is the feast of the North American martyrs.  

“If people know we have a tremendous resource, more people will come” to Kateri’s Kitchen, “especially … for Thanksgiving and Christmas,” he said.  

The pantry is named for Kateri Tekakwitha, the first native American from the United States and Canada to be canonized. She was born in 1656, near Auriesville, New York, nine years after North American martyrs SS. Isaac Jogues and Jean de Lelande were killed there. 

“Kateri’s Kitchen subsists strictly on donations” of food and money to buy food, said Ann Marie Lucas, pantry coordinator. Most donations have come from the generous parishioners, and memorial gifts, she said. 

The first of the food purchased using the grant money was given out Oct. 31, when 15 families came, she said. It included items for Thanksgiving dinners.  

“We have bought 40 turkeys and, hopefully, we’ll be able to give them through Thanksgiving, and ... Christmas,” she said. If she runs out of the pre-ordered frozen turkeys, she’ll give out something else, like ham, along with non-perishable foods, she said. 

Mrs. Lucas said the previous pastor, Father John F. Gee, came up with the idea of the pantry about 14 years ago, and asked her to be the coordinator. Food is given out there from 10 a.m. to noon each Saturday.  

It was originally meant to be a source of food in case of an emergency, she said. A family would receive at least three days’ worth of food once every four weeks. Clients were asked for their name, address and social security number. 

“Now, with COVID, I tell them when they come, ‘Come back when you need food,’” she said. “Anybody who needs food can come.” The people drive up and she and other volunteers put the food in the trunk of each vehicle.  

Clients come from Auburn, Worcester and surrounding towns, Mrs. Lucas said, sometimes six on a Saturday, other times 25.  

“It’s families that we’re feeding,” she said, although individuals can come too. 

With the grant, they can serve more people, and give more food to the people they serve, she said. 

Father Fraini said the parish has until Dec. 30 to spend all the money and “we don’t have the means to store $10,000 worth of food.”  

Mrs. Lucas said they are buying the food from Park ’n Shop supermarket in Auburn. 

“If we need room, they will store it for us,” she said. “They have been very cooperative and very kind.”