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August 21, 2020By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press
Whether it’s a parish patron, a favorite of parishioners, or a family member, local priests are seeking help during the coronavirus pandemic – from those who’ve gone before us.
“I pray to my aunt every single day,” Father James B. Flynn, pastor of St. Matthew Parish in Southborough, told The Catholic Free Press. “She’s a saint. She gave her life.”
He told the story like this.
In 1916, as a teenager, his father’s oldest sister, Mary Flynn, joined the Congregation of St. Joseph in Canton. She was given the religious name Sister Mary Berchmans, after St. John Berchmans, a Jesuit born in Diest in Brabant in 1599, who died in Rome in 1621.
Father Flynn said he’s heard that St. John Berchmans worked with pandemic victims in his day.
After the Massachusetts governor asked religious communities for nuns to help with Spanish flu victims, in 1917 his aunt was sent to care for patients in Canton, he said. She and the other sisters worked with them outside, under a tent. After a couple years of service, she caught the flu herself and died a year or two later. She took her final vows on her deathbed.
While his aunt has not been canonized, Father Flynn said, “I consider her a saint, so I’ve been praying to her and St. John Berchmans,” since before the coronavirus pandemic. He’s continuing to do so.
He even added a stained glass window in her honor when St. Matthew’s was renovated several years ago, and someone donated the money for it in his honor, he said. The window depicts St. John Berchmans and St. Maria Goretti, both young saints, as role models for the youth of his parish.
ST. Padre Pio
Msgr. F. Stephen Pedone, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Worcester, said earlier this month the parish held a triduum to seek the intercession of St. Pio of Pietrelcina for an end to the coronavirus pandemic.
Explaining why, he said many favors have been attributed to Padre Pio, an Italian stigmatist who lived from 1887-1968, and he is popular with Italians, including his parishioners.
At Masses at St. Roch Parish in Oxford, Father Michael J. Roy, the pastor, leads the congregation in novena prayers to St. Roch, patron of those afflicted with infectious diseases.
St. Roch
“We’re continuing to beseech our patron to keep us safe,” Father Roy told the congregation at Mass recently. He knelt before the statue of St. Roch at the front of the church to lead the prayers.
The parish holds a novena annually the Mondays and Wednesdays of Lent, he told The Catholic Free Press.
“This year I just decided, with everything that’s going on, that we would just keep going until we are over this” pandemic, he said.
Father Roy said he wants to publicize their patron, whose feast day is Aug. 16. He told The Catholic Free Press the story of St. Roch, who lived in the 1300s, as follows.
The son of a lord, or governor, in Montpellier, France, Roch dispersed his wealth after his parents’ death and went on pilgrimage to Rome.
On the way, he stopped to care for people infected with a plague. On the way back, he did the same, and contracted it himself.
“Both in the window and the statue (at St. Roch’s Parish) … there’s a wound on his leg indicating that he was a victim of the plague,” Father Roy said. “He oftentimes has a stick and a shell; those indicate that he was a pilgrim.”
He said the saint did not want to take up a bed in a hospital, so he went into the woods to die.
“But, every day, a dog brought him a loaf of bread,” he said. “Eventually the master of the dog followed him to find out where his bread was going, and he brought St. Roch into his home and cared for him, and, miraculously, Roch recovered.” Many of the people St. Roch had taken care of also made what were considered miraculous recoveries, Father Roy said.
When Roch returned to Montpellier emaciated, people did not believe he was the son of the deceased lord. Thinking he was a spy, they threw him in jail.
“He was in jail for five years and he took care of the other prisoners,” Father Roy said. “And when he did die … on the upper part of his chest was the birthmark that identified him as the son of the lord.
“So they gave him a big state funeral. And soon after he was buried, at his grave there were many miracles of healing. To this day, miracles still take place there.”
