Parish roundup: From Montana to the world; blood drive feat; fields blessed

Archbishop Wilton Gregory poses with two boys after celebrating Mass at St. Augustine Church in Washington, D.C., June 2. (CNS/Catholic Standard/Andrew Biraj)

Archbishop Wilton Gregory poses with two boys after celebrating Mass at St. Augustine Church in Washington, D.C., June 2. (CNS/Catholic Standard/Andrew Biraj)

A member of St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Laurin, Montana, dentist Tom Bartoletti is founder of Montana Dental Outreach Teams, a nonprofit that has delivered free dentistry and humanitarian aid to impoverished children and adults around the world. Students often accompany the teams as assistants and to gain firsthand experience of emerging world realities.

Also from Montana: Parishioners of the Helena Diocese have been given a report on a recent visitation to the diocese's Guatemala Mission, which was founded in 1964. Ministries include a medical clinic and school.

Holy Redeemer by the Sea Parish in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, knows how to put on a blood drive!

The historic mother church of African American Catholics in Washington, D.C., St. Augustine, provided a moving welcome June 2 to the U.S. capital's new archbishop, Wilton Gregory. Gregory is the first African American to oversee the archdiocese.

Blessing of fields and seeds at planting time — and later the crops — is a big deal for parishioners of Nebraska's St. Peter Parish in Newcastle, St. Patrick in Jackson, and St. Joseph in Ponca.

Ordained a permanent deacon for the Philadelphia Archdiocese on June 8, Steven Javie is a retired National Basketball Association referee and finds it helpful to continue to wear his referee's whistle to parish functions. He and wife, Mary-ellen, belong to St. Andrew Parish, Newton, Pennsylvania.

It appears the battle between the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, over where the remains of famed orator and media giant Archbishop Fulton Sheen should rest reached culmination with a June 7 ruling from the New York Court of Appeals. Peoria won. The diocese opened Sheen's cause for canonization in 2002.

Involved in the five World War II major battles in the European theater and recipient of three Purple Hearts and five Bronze Stars, Carl Mann Sr. was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, June 6. Long active in Holy Spirit Parish, now Annunciation Parish, in Evansville, Indiana, the former Army sergeant had requested D-Day interment in honor of his fallen comrades.

[Dan Morris-Young is NCR West Coast correspondent.]

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