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New Legion of Mary Group at St. John's |
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 St. Johns has recently begun a Legion of Mary group. What is the Legion of Mary, you might ask? Well, it is a lay catholic organization dedicated to Our Lady's work, whose members give service to the Church and neighbor, voluntarily, in about 170 countries, with several million members.
Our hope for this group is to follow in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus by growing in wisdom and love in the heart of Our Lady - to learn how to better serve God and our neighbor. Spending time together in fellowship with Our Lady, we pray the rosary and discuss weekly readings. We then bring that love and knowledge to the parish community at large, while assisting our beloved Capuchin brothers at St. John's.
Thus far, we have visited a few homebound parishioners and residents at Liberty Court, a nursing home on 15th and Lombard. The visit brought much joy and peace into the hearts of our lonely brothers and sisters. We pray that Our Lady will continue to inspire and bless our work as we continue our ministries through St. John's.
You are most welcome to join us on this journey!! Our weekly meetings are on Thursday at 7pm in the Friary.
Please email
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for more information. Please consider helping out our parish by joining the Legion of Mary. |
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Introducing Our Parish Office Staff |
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 Our wonderful friars are the "face" of St. John the Evangelist in many ways, but it takes an entire community of staff and volunteers to keep our Church doors open, our lights on, and our community vibrant.
In this new addition to our newsletter, we'll introduce you to some of the women and men whose daily efforts help to make St. John's the efficient, diverse, and welcoming faith community we love!
A St. John's parishioner since 2003, Lisa Johnson was employed with the Archdiocesan Office for Youth and Young Adults before joining the St. John's staff full time as the parish secretary in January 2008. Lisa is responsible for registering new parishioners, registering parishioners for baptism classes, creating the weekly parish bulletin, coordinating the parish space for groups and events, and a variety of other tasks. She is a liaison between parishioners and our friars, often serving as a first point of contact for parishioners in need. For example, when a parishioner is asked to be a godparent and needs a letter of eligibility from their parish, they should contact Lisa as soon as possible with the request. Lisa also takes genealogy requests for St. John's, St. Peter Claver, and Assumption B.V.M. The best way to reach Lisa is by phone 215-563-4145 or by e-mail at
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Bill Doyle has been a parishioner at St. John's since 2002. Bill has been cooking healthy, gourmet meals for our friars most weekends for several years. In June 2010, he agreed to also serve as our temporary business manager. Bill is responsible for reconciling the parish budget and paying our monthly bills, as well as depositing the weekly collection monies. The best way to reach Bill is 215-563-4145 or
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.
Lisa and Bill are assisted by a small group of volunteers who diligently serve our community each week by covering shifts at our front desk. These patient, faithful women field questions from the thousands of people who call our office phone number or knock at our parish office door each year. They help answer questions for visitors and parishioners, provide mass cards to those who ask for them, direct homeless men and women to much needed resources, greet visitors to the friary, and help with a wide variety of tasks.
We thank these dedicated volunteers -- Carol O'Connor, Anne Reilly, Lydia Arevalo and Renate Schulz -- for their service and hope that you will offer them a smile next time you visit the parish office. |
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Connelly House Construction Update |
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 Construction of The Connelly House, located directly behind St. John the Evangelist, is now 85% complete! The project, which is scheduled to wrap up this Fall, is a joint venture between Project H.O.M.E. and Bethesda Project. It will provide 79 units of affordable housing to former homeless men and women. St. John the Evangelist's new Parish Center will be on part of the first floor of the new, LEED-certified ("green") building.
Project H.O.M.E.'s Residential and Commercial Project Manager, Don Billingsley, reports that there was a "middle of the night" transfer from temporary power to permanent power just last week. The "middle of the night" transfer was a precautionary measure designed to limit the impact of a potential power outage on our Center City neighbors if something went wrong with the transfer. Luckily, there was no outage and the transfer was successful.
If you've been following the construction, you may have noticed a large hole in the building on each floor. This hole has been housing the temporary elevator. Now that the building has been switched over to permanent power, the temporary elevator can be removed and the exterior wall closed.
In spite of such great progress, the project did suffer an unfortunate setback the weekend of July 4th. Thieves broke into the project sight and stole a significant amount of tools from multiple contractors. The crime is being investigated and Mr. Billingsley requests that any parishioners who may have seen anything suspicious contact the police. |
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From Fr. Matthew: |
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Dear St. John’s Family,
By now I expect that you have heard or read that I am being transferred. I am going to be a hospital chaplain in Harrisburg. Since I have never been a full-time hospital chaplain as a priest, it’s both a bit intimidating & exciting. It was also unexpected, but life is full of surprises.
As with any place, there have been challenges. I suppose there have been time when I have presented several of you with various challenges as well. I, therefore, would like to apologize to anyone in the parish whom I have offended. It is would be a pity to leave on poor terms with anyone, if that could be avoided.
I would like to take some time to thank all of you who have been so kind to me over the last couple of years. I appreciate the welcome you gave to me as well as your support and kindness. I owe a special thanks to the RCIA team with whom I worked. You are a dedicated group who do so much for St. John’s. I would also like to thank the lectors and the acolytes who serve at St. John’s,especially those that serve on Sundays. You had to deal with my liturgical sense which tends toward “Eastern” at times. This came across particularly in my use of incense, which I am sure some of you will miss.
Thank you very much.
Forgive me if I do not list names, as it would take too long and I am sure to miss someone that I really would not want to miss. I am grateful to all those who helped so much. May God bless you.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Matthew |
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