Religious stores – places for prayer and sharing, besides shopping

By Tanya Connor  
The Catholic Free Press

Shopping and selling don’t have to be just a mad rush before Christmas. They can be an opportunity for sharing, service and seeking spiritual solace.

Just ask people who run Catholic religious shops in the diocese.

“Visit Boucher’s … You’ll feel better” has long been a slogan of Boucher’s Good Books & Gifts in Worcester, which, by the way, offers free coffee.

“Most people come in good humor, shopping and happy,” said the owner, Denise Boucher-Garofoli. “Some people come walking in crying. I let them talk.” They have a variety of concerns.

She said the store has a semi-private area with a chair and addiction-recovery merchandise, where customers can sit and read.

“Some people need to talk and we try to be here to listen … and direct them to a prayer card, a book, a medal,” noted Patricia Beu, manager of St. Anne Shrine Gift Shop in Fiskdale/Sturbridge. “They’re looking for something for themselves or a family member,” often because of sickness. “We also put them on the parish prayer line. We just ask for first names.”

A Shower of Roses Religious Shop in West Boylston provides a place for customers to talk to God.

“People come in for the chapel a lot,” said owner Patricia Quintiliani. “They may not buy anything, but they come in and pray.”

In the chapel are about 20 first class relics of saints, and holy pictures and statues, she said. Sometimes she plays on her iPad eucharistic adoration streaming live from EWTN.

She also tries to help women widowed because of the drug trade in Colombia by selling statues they paint by hand. A man in Florida makes the molds for the statues, sends her the finished products, and returns some of the proceeds to the widows, she said.

Mrs. Boucher-Garofoli told a story about helping people closer to home. A religious education teacher came and bought rosaries, booklets about praying the rosary, and pictures of the Blessed Mother for her students. Having learned about young visionaries, these children wanted to see Mary too!

“They’re all excited and they get each other excited,” Mrs. Boucher-Garofoli said.

Mrs. Beu said sometimes religious education teachers buy something for their students at St. Anne’s.

“We try to give them a little discount” when they’re using their own money, she said.

The religious shops also sell Advent wreaths and wax and battery-operated candles, Advent literature, and Advent calendars, which have a “door” to open each day before Christmas, revealing something inside, such as a picture or Scripture verse.

“We’ve been doing a lot with the Advent calendar,” Mrs. Boucher-Garofoli said. “Everybody asks for ones with chocolate.” This year, she found a religious version with the treats.
And, with the new liturgical year starting with Advent, she has annual resources, such as a lectors’ handbook, for parishes. She also recently received the liturgical book “Order of Christian Initiation of Adults” (OCIA), a revision of the “Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults” (RCIA).

Mrs. Beu said she has “The Shepherd on the Search,” a family Advent activity kit reminiscent of “The Elf on the Shelf” hide and seek game.

In addition to Advent supplies, the religious shops sell Christmas items, including ornaments, nativity scenes, and books, and merchandise helpful to give as Christmas gifts.

Among St. Anne’s offerings are Christmas-themed coloring books, jigsaw puzzles, outdoor flags, and Christmas cards. There are also Mass cards for Masses the Augustinians of the Assumption, some of whom who staff St. Anne’s Shrine, celebrate at their Brighton community.

“People come for the religious cards,” such as ones for their priest, which are hard to find elsewhere, Mrs. Beu said. “Christmas isn’t a lot of Jesus; it’s a lot of Santa Claus” in today’s world. “But we still have people that ... want to get something ... to tell the child what Christmas is about. ...

“We leave a small section of Christmas up all year, because we do get the tourists” who visit Sturbridge, she said, adding that many other places don’t have religious shops now.

For Christmas gifts, she recommended Bibles, rosary bracelets and sterling silver medals and crucifixes on chains.

Also popular are items featuring a cardinal, which represents a visitor from heaven for a lot of people, reminding them of the deceased, she said.

Mrs. Boucher-Garofoli said customers come early for new Fontanini nativity figures. She also has ornaments for specific family members and ones to hold a photo.

Mrs. Quintiliani has another way of personalizing gifts – she makes Christmas jewelry and rosaries by hand, and can take custom orders.

She said she made a policeman’s rosary with blue beads, a St. Michael the Archangel medal, Miraculous Medal and pardon crucifix for those in danger, and she included with it a policeman’s prayer.

“I have a lot of things for different professions,” she said.

She also made a rosary with an image of Blessed Carlo Acutis, a pious teenager to be canonized next year, has statues and medals of him and is looking for prayer cards, she said.

Her jewelry includes angels, but also more secularized Christmas traditions such as Santa and wreaths.

“I figure that’s all in the spirit of Christmas,” she explained. Then there are the stuffed animals that talk: reciting prayers or reading “The Night Before Christmas.”