News - January 2023 RSS Feed

As we all know, the attendance at Catholic Churches (as well as many other religious communities and fraternal organizations) has declined to the point that parishes are now contracting.

You can’t always tell from the outside what people are dealing with on the inside. Our inner journey is a lot more private, a lot more personal. . . . Whenever you’re down, for whatever reason it is, there needs to be a glimpse of hope, a glimpse of life, that is refreshed in us by those around us, who care for us.

Last month we received a donation in memory of Archbishop Hunthausen. I think the Archbishop was a lamb of God for his holiness, his gentleness, the way his lived The Way and for his treatment by the Vatican. The donors wrote the following memorial:

Allison Chappell’s funeral was held at St Therese on December 23, the morning that the city was covered in ice. Allison had taken her own life a month earlier. Deacon Greg talked about his own battles with depression and how even when depressed, he put on a performance when awake. “You can’t always tell from the outside what people are dealing with on the inside,” he said.

Editor’s note: Allison Chappell grew up at St Therese where her parents and grandparents were parishioners, went nine years to our school, served as a CYO camp counselor and became a school counselor. She fell into a serious depression about the time COVID hit and took her own life last November. Her tragedy has left many people deeply shaken. This eulogy is by Jim Valiere, a former teacher and administrator at St. Therese School. Many of us will spend the rest of our lives trying to process this grief.