Novena of Grace marks 100th anniversary

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

WORCESTER – The St. Francis Xavier novena that still draws crowds to St. John Parish on Temple Street marks its 100th anniversary this year.
The March 4-12 devotion survived the coronavirus pandemic and has drawn prominent preachers and longtime devotees. It has also been tied to significant family events and even to Pope Francis.
The Novena of Grace in honor of St. Francis Xavier lasted this long because of God’s grace and St. Francis Xavier’s example and intercession, said Father John F. Madden, pastor of St. John Parish.
The saint’s example challenged him after he arrived at St. John’s 19 years ago. He was about the age of St. Francis when the saint died, and realized he hadn’t done nearly what the saint did in his lifetime of fewer than 50 years.
St. Francis Xavier was born in Spain in 1506, spent time in other places in Europe and co-founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) with St. Ignatius of Loyola. In 1541, St. Francis set sail for India as the first Jesuit missionary and later evangelized in Japan. He reportedly baptized more than 11,000 people before his death in 1552.
The novena’s origins are traced to the saint and the missions.
“This miraculous novena is said to come from Italy, where a 17th-century Jesuit priest vowed to go to Japan during the great persecutions, but was severely injured when a hammer accidentally fell on his head,” says the website jesuits.org. “Near death, he had a vision of Francis Xavier.”
A booklet for St. John’s novena says Father Marcellus Mastrilli was injured in

1633 while adorning an altar. The booklet and website tell of St. Francis telling him terms for the novena, which included asking the saint’s intercession for nine days and receiving the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist. Father Mastrilli was healed and went to Japan, where he was martyred. Other people too have received grace from this novena, which became a tradition in parishes.
 St. John’s has held the novena each year since 1924, even when COVID-19 hit, according to those involved. The novena concluded just before public Masses were stopped because of the virus in March 2020. By March 2021, public Masses had resumed.
Long-time novena-goers remember earlier times.
The saint and devotion have been important to Francis R. Carroll, novena committee chairman, who volunteered to help Father Madden with the devotion 15 or more years ago. Mr. Carroll, who won’t reveal his age, said he hoped for years that God would keep him alive for the centennial – and beyond.
A prominent Worcester businessman, Mr. Carroll said he started attending the novena as a student at St. John Grammar School and continued throughout his life, missing it when out of the area.
“When you got back to Worcester you started going to the novena again,” he said. “I was drawn to it.” He even took Francis Xavier for his confirmation name.
“Later in life … I bought every book on Francis Xavier I could find,” he said.
The building where the parish serves free meals is named the St. Francis Xavier Center “because of  St. John’s devotion to him,” Mr. Carroll said.
“We are the only church (in the United States) to our knowledge” to hold the annual novena continuously for 100 years, he said.
Timothy J. Cooney, 82, a former Worcester mayor and city councilor, also remembers early novenas.
When he was a student at St. John Grammar School “the nuns used to take us across the street” to the novena, he recalled. In his days at St. John’s High School “we kind of went on our own, or with family.”
He said he belonged to various churches in Worcester, including St. John’s, before moving to Cape Cod and Florida, and he has prayed the novena on his own.
“It was always (an) annual rite of spring,” Mr. Cooney said. “It was a major event. … Back in those days, people were a lot more religious,” and they filled the church. “We’d love to see it come back where it was … when it was packed. The world needs the novena more than ever.”
While not as crowded now, the novena still draws more people than many Masses do. St. John’s was packed in 2016 for the visit of Cardinal Seán O’Malley, archbishop of Boston.
Bishop McManus, continuing the tradition of his predecessors, preaches at the novena too. On opening day in 2013, he asked worshippers to pray that God would raise up a new pope with zeal for evangelization - like St. Francis Xavier.
The day after the novena ended, Pope Francis was elected. Father Madden said even though he chose the name for St. Francis of Assisi, the Jesuit pope must have also had St. Francis Xavier in mind.
At the 2014 novena, Bishop McManus mentioned Pope Francis’ election and the pope’s calls for all Catholics to be missionaries. The bishop also spoke of receiving answers to other prayers since he himself started making the novena as a child in Providence.
The novena has been held in other places in Worcester too. A 1951 newspaper item said, “More than 18,000 persons are attending novenas of grace in honor of St. Francis Xavier at four city churches and Holy Cross College. … St. John’s, as in other years, has the greatest number,” estimated at 13,100. “Our Lady of the Angels Church has about 1,800... and Sacred Heart, about 1,200. The fourth church is St. Margaret Mary. At Holy Cross, about 1,850 students, members of the lay faculty and employees are making the novena.”
Philip Niddrie, 73, of St. Peter Parish in Worcester, recalled attending the novena at Our Lady of the Angels as a student in the parish’s elementary school.
“Everybody at the school went,” he said. “I have good memories of going there. It was different than going to a Mass. It was more of a reflection time,” with a sermon and Benediction. (He later worked at central Catholic schools – St. John’s-Ascension, Worcester Central Catholic and St. Peter-Marian High School; the Chamber of Commerce; the city’s school committee and city hall.)
When he and his wife, Judy, were dating, and after they married, they attended the novena at St. John’s, he said; he thought Our Lady of the Angels no longer held it then. Later, busy with work and children, they stopped going to St. John’s novena, but plan to return this year.
“I’m looking forward to going,” Mr. Niddrie said; it’s a midday opportunity to slow down and reflect.
Some people wouldn’t miss the novena – except maybe for a baby.
A 1991 Catholic Free Press article began, “The popular St. Francis Xavier Novena at St. John Parish in Worcester meant so much to one woman that the year she couldn’t attend because her son had just been born, she named him after St. Francis.” That devotee, Lucy Zarette, of Our Lady of Mount Carmel-St. Ann Parish, said she’d been making the novena for years.
A 2010 Catholic Free Press article told of Muriel Chaisson, of Christ the King Parish, praying at the novena as a teenager for “a good Catholic husband” and promising to name her first son after the saint. She ended up marrying a man named Francis Xavier. In 2010 the couple had recently celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary when they attended the novena with one of their daughters, Joanne Ethier, who brought some of her students from St. Peter-Marian Central Catholic Junior High School. Other Catholic schools brought students too.
Father Madden credited Msgr. Francis J. Scollen, who served at St. John’s from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, for keeping the novena going when the Jesuits could no longer come. Msgr. Scollen, now St. Peter’s pastor, got diocesan priests to preach.
Father Madden credits Mr. Carroll for bringing Jesuits back, including some in prominent positions. Also preaching, along with diocesan priests, were members of the Congregation of St. Francis Xavier.
This year Bishop McManus, five Jesuits and five other priests are scheduled to preach.
Mr. Carroll is especially highlighting the March 11 visit of Jesuit Father Mark Lewis, rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He preached and gave a talk at St. John’s novena years ago and served in various capacities in Rome and as provincial superior of the Jesuits’ New Orleans Province.

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