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“I’m not going home,” replies Deacon Thiago Rodrigues Ibiapina, a native Brazilian preparing to be a priest for the Diocese of Worcester. When traveling to Brazil “I’m going to visit my parents. My home today is here. … That’s my Church.”

WORCESTER - Isabella Christie has never been to the town of Oxford, which is about 10 miles from her home. But the senior at St. Paul High School plans to spend four years in England at the University of Oxford.

SHREWSBURY – Brother J. Conal Owens, C.F.X., 93, longtime headmaster of St. John’s High School, died Saturday, May 7. His funeral is May 17, at 9:30 a.m. May 17 in the Coaches Pavilion at St. John’s High School.

STILL RIVER – An exhibition basketball game between seminarians and other young men provided an opportunity to encourage vocations – by showing that prospective priests are “regular guys.”

“Since the oral arguments in the Dobbs case were heard by the Supreme Court last winter, there has been much cautious optimism and hope that this pivotal decision could possibly overturn Roe and Casey,” Allison LeDoux, director of the Respect Life Office for the Diocese of Worcester, said.

WORCESTER – Venezuelans rejoiced as Cardinal Baltazar Porras Cardozo, archbishop of Mérida, Venezuela, brought a relic of a saintly Venezuelan to St. Paul Cathedral last Saturday.

WORCESTER – Motherhood involves accepting one’s loss of control, realizing children are a gift and, like Christ, even giving one’s body for them, Janice Chik Breidenbach told 250 people at a fundraiser for Visitation House.

LEOMINSTER – A new chapel at St. Cecilia Parish, dedicated to Divine Mercy and St. Joseph, was blessed by Bishop McManus last Saturday.

“The sexual abuse crisis in the Church, which became public in 2001,” says the bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, “was a watershed moment in the Church’s loss of positive influence in the lives of Catholics.”

BOYLSTON – The diocesan Commission for Women, emerging from the coronavirus pandemic, is again reaching out to and for women, and seeking new members.

"Why Symbols Matter. An open letter to the community about the flags at Nativity School" by Most Reverend Robert J. McManus, S.T.D., Bishop of Worcester

WORCESTER – The 5.3-acre property of the former Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on Mulberry Street was sold for $5.6 million on Wednesday, Msgr. F. Stephen Pedone, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish at Our Lady of Loreto Church, reported.

Sister Anna Marie Kane, 82, of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Springfield, died at Bethany Health Care Center in Framingham on April 29. Services will take place at Blessed Sacrament Church in Holyoke on May 3.

The Massachusetts Catholic Conference has distributed fliers to be inserted in parish bulletins throughout the four Roman Catholic Dioceses this weekend, imploring parishioners to contact their legislators to voice their opposition to physician assisted suicide.

Pope Francis: “No human being can ever be unfit for life ... Every child who appears in a woman’s womb is a gift that changes a family’s history, the life of fathers and mothers, grandparents and of brothers and sisters. That child needs to be welcomed, loved and nurtured. Always!”

On Divine Mercy Sunday, members of St. Vincent de Paul Society of Worcester recommit to faithfulness as they carry out their mission as Vincentians, according to Susan Treveloni, society president.

When Wally Connor assisted Ukrainian refugees in Poland for a week recently, the Brookfield resident met people who were relieved to escape the Russian bombs and thankful for the aid they received from strangers.

Local Catholics support the people of Ukraine with special prayers, signs of solidarity and financial contributions. 

Sister Mary Barry, R.S.M, a Sister of Mercy for 69 years, passed away peacefully at the age of 88 on Wednesday, April 20, at the Christopher House in Worcester. She served as administrator at Nazareth Home for Boys in Leicester for many years.

Sue Belfield, the Divine Mercy Coordinator at St. John, Guardian of Our Lady Parish at St. John the Evangelist Church in Clinton, believes in the chaplet’s power to bring mercy, peace and conversion to those in need.