Parish Service Week 2013 at St. Patrick’s Parish, Roxbury. (George Martell/Pilot New Media. Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution)
Each year, the employees who work in the Archdiocese of Boston’s Pastoral Center volunteer to serve over the course of a week at an inner-city parish, providing labor and materials for needed maintenance work.
This year that work was done at St. Patrick Parish in Roxbury, one of the oldest parishes in the archdiocese and one that now serves three different language groups and ethnicities in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Boston. On Monday, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, OFM Cap., Archbishop of Boston, did his part, even mowing the parish’s lawn.
This humorous meme we created was posted to Facebook.com/BostonCatholic and received thousands of likes and shares.
Later he went over to St. Patrick’s School to meet with students and teachers, especially the classmates of Barrington Brinson, a 12-year-old student at the school, who just a few days before had been fatally struck by a van in Allston. The Cardinal said some prayers with the children and gave them his blessing.
On Friday, Scot Landry and The Good Catholic Life team joined the volunteer crews for some painting work, giving us a taste of the work done this week as well as interviews with Richard Durham, who supervises Parish Service Week for the Archdiocese, and Fr. Walter Waldron, the pastor of St. Patrick’s. We also get a glimpse at the beautiful stained glass windows of this very old church, one of the oldest in the Archdiocese.
Fr. Waldron was a guest on The Good Catholic Life, show #325, as were the Franciscan Friars of the Primitive Observance, who have a friary in the parish, on show #363.
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