Pittsburgh, Pa., Mar 23, 2018 / 12:39 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Through an annual initiative called “The light is on for you,” dioceses throughout the U.S. have opened their doors to welcome fallen away Catholics back to the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
“It’s an opportunity to reach out to people who may not be regularly thinking about confession and for it to spark their interest,” said Father Nicholas Vaskov, executive director of communications for the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
“This is sort of the apex of a long journey back to a regular practice with their faith. They’ve come to a point to realize without this it’s not going to be complete, just that desire to be one with God,” he told CNA.
“The light is on for you” is present in dioceses including Arlington, Va., Washington, D.C., Boston, San Jose, and Dallas. Participating dioceses pick a night in Lent when every church has a priest available for confession, some with several nights throughout the Lenten season.
For at least the sixth year in a row, the Diocese of Pittsburgh has also had one night in Lent when every church is open for confession. Since February, the diocese has promoted the event on radio stations, bus shelter signs, and social media.
As the pastor at St. Mary of Mercy Parish in downtown Pittsburgh, Father Vaskov heard confessions for three hours on March 22. Despite 10 inches of snow, he said people still lined up for the Sacrament of Reconciliation, including both Catholics who frequent the sacrament and those who had not been in years.
“I think it is a powerful experience for many who come… so often, and last night was no different, people who [had been] 10, 20, 30, even 40 years away from the sacraments” returned to confession.
The event is promoted especially as an opportunity for fallen-away Catholics to return to the sacraments without pressure, said Father Vaskov, who worked with radio stations and ad buyers to promote advertisements tailored to this audience.
The ads sought to respond to the reasons that people give for leaving the Church, such as a bad experience with a priest or why confession is necessary for forgiveness.
This opportunity is especially important during the time of Lent, said Father Vaskov, adding that confession nourishes spiritual strength and health all the more when accompanied by the disciplines of Lent.
Additionally, he said, confession accompanies a meditation on Christ’s suffering at the cross and Christ’s conquering of sin to renew our relationship with God.
“We are meditating so much during these days on the passion of Christ. … And the beauty of restoring that relationship of being one with Christ in his suffering and restoring that relationship with God through the sacraments so that there is nothing preventing us from being one with him.”
Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh, whose diocese hosts the event twice a year, said one of the greatest joys a priest can experience is the bringing fallen-away Catholics back to fold of the Church.
“We are here to welcome people back, to offer mercy and to help them experience God’s love,” Bishop Zubik said in a 2018 Lenten press release.
“One of the most rewarding experiences that any priest can have is to hear the Confession of someone who may have been away from the Church for decades, and to have a role in lifting that burden of guilt and restoring the person to spiritual wholeness.”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Denver Newsroom, Nov 18, 2020 / 06:31 pm (CNA).- The U.S. bishops on Tuesday praised a virtual exhibit created by the Diocese of Green Bay, which features portraits of racially diverse Catholics from the diocese and testimonies about their experiences.
The exhibit, Open Wide Our Hearts, was developed by Peter Weiss, the Living Justice Advocate for the Diocese of Green Bay. Weiss told CNA that his job is primarily a teaching role, seeking to promote Catholic social teaching and raise awareness of problems of injustice.
In 2017, the same year Weiss started at his current position, the U.S. bishops formed the Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism in response to increasing racial tensions and an outburst of violence in Charlottesville, when a white nationalist attacked counter-protesters of a far-right gathering, killing three and injuring 19.
Since its formation, the committee has produced an award-winning children’s book on healing and reconciliation, as well as organizing a day of prayer and fasting in reparation for sins of racism this summer. The bishops this week voted overwhelmingly to renew the ad hoc committee for another three-year period.
Weiss started to consider how he could use his position to help to bring the issue of racial justice into the conversation in Green Bay— a diocese which, he notes, is probably “about 90% white.”
“The experiences of particular racial or ethnic groups is not the same as what the vast majority of people are having within our diocese. And I think it’s important to reach out and find those stories, learn a little more, and find out what they can tell us about our understanding of ourselves as Catholics,” he said.
On a personal level, Weiss said, reports of various killings of black men by police was disturbing to him, in no small part because he has several biracial nieces and nephews.
Around 2018, Weiss attended a traveling photo exhibit in his community chronicling the experiences of racially diverse people, and was inspired to create a similar project for the diocese.
Weiss admits that he had no prior experience as a photographer or a curator of art exhibits. So, that November, he enlisted the help of several leaders of various ethnic groups within the diocese as an advisory team.
The exhibit was inspired in part by the U.S. bishops’ 2018 pastoral letter Open Wide Our Hearts, which condemns racism as a failure to acknowledge others as children of God.
The exhibit features the portraits and testimonies of African Americans, Africans, Native Americans, Asians, and others, all of whom are Catholics who live in the diocese.
One of the portraits in the virtual gallery is of Gerry Martins, who is originally from India and who came to the U.S. as a Catholic missionary.
Martins told CNA that he was glad Weiss approached him to invite him to be a part of the project, adding that he is an amateur photographer in addition to being a missionary and father.
The exhibit seeks to convey the honest experiences of diverse people within the Church, Weiss said, and is not explicitly “about” racism, though some of the subjects do talk about racism they have experienced firsthand.
Though Martins said he has not experienced any overt racism since he arrived in Wisconsin, moving to such a predominantly white area made him feel like he “stuck out” occasionally at Mass and at Catholic functions.
He said the project has been “prophetic” in a way, since the Catholic Church has, since the events of 2020, been focusing more and more on the topic of racism. Martins recently moved with his family to Savannah, and he has shared the virtual gallery with many of his fellow Catholics in his new diocese. A lot of the feedback has been positive, he said.
Martins encouraged Catholics to be open to listening to other people’s experiences, rather than staying closed in stereotypical views. He said he hopes Catholic people of various ethnicities will be open to talking about their culture and traditions.
“We need to be open to listening…it will be good to have these conversations so people feel included. We are an inclusive Church, and everyone is welcome in the body of Christ. I’m definitely hoping we can get the conversation started,” he said.
The exhibit launched as a traveling in-person gallery during November 2019, and ran until March 2020, when it was forced to close amid the coronavirus pandemic.
When protests erupted during the summer of 2020, Weiss said he was inspired to work with the diocesan communications team to adapt the exhibit into an online presentation.
Weiss said he hopes people from all around the country will find the photos and stories compelling and relatable, even if they are specific to people within Green Bay. He said he also hopes that other dioceses may see the online exhibit and be inspired to create their own.
Bishop Shelton Fabre of Houma-Thibodaux, chair of the U.S. bishops’ ad hoc committee against racism, praised the virtual exhibit Nov. 17 during the U.S. bishops’ annual fall meeting.
An Easter Vigil procession at St. Dominic Parish in San Francisco. / Credit: St. Dominic Parish/Lorelei Low
CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Five years ago this week, public health orders issued amid the uncertainty of the novel coronavirus turned Mass schedules across the country and the world upside down.
In those early days following the WHO’s March 11, 2020, declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic, the bishops of every U.S. diocese issued some form of dispensation, suspending the obligation that Catholics must attend Sunday Mass in person.
Thousands of parishes and ministries scrambled to develop plans to offer livestreamed Masses, deliver the sacraments in a “socially distanced” manner, and live out the Church’s life as best they could under extraordinary circumstances. Public Masses at most parishes were suspended entirely for a time, and those that were able to reopen were subject, in many areas, to distancing requirements and numerical or percentage-based attendance caps.
As Catholics nationwide adapted to the changes — not knowing how long this new reality might last — observers feared that many Catholics, barred from their parishes for so long and now accustomed to attending from the comfort of home, might not return after the parish doors reopened.
A study from the Pew Research Center found that most Catholics continued participating in Mass throughout the pandemic — but many were only able to do so virtually. In November 2022, when the survey was done, only about 4 in 10 U.S. Catholics said they attended Mass in person as often as they did before the pandemic.
Indeed, from the start of the COVID pandemic lockdowns in the U.S. to the declared end of the pandemic in May 2023, in-person Mass attendance averaged just 15% — a dismal figure, but not markedly lower than the 24% it was before. (The Catholic Church teaches that Catholics are obligated to attend Mass in person every Sunday, except for a serious reason such as illness or if they’ve been dispensed from their obligation by their pastor or bishop.)
Some bishops lifted the dispensations they had issued as early as late 2020, while a few held out until 2022. In lifting the dispensations they issued amid the lockdowns, many U.S. bishops implored Catholics to return to Mass in person.
While Mass attendance today among Catholics in the U.S. remains much lower than among Catholics in other countries, recent data has suggested that U.S. in-person Mass attendance levels have quietly returned to where they were in 2019 after years of uncertainty over whether they would ever rebound.
For some thriving parishes in the U.S., the lockdowns — while challenging — presented an opportunity to continue sharing the faith in a creative manner and come out even stronger than they were before.
Father John Mosimann, pastor at St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Parish in Fredericksburg, Virginia, told CNA that the parish has seen its numbers grow since the pandemic.
On a typical weekend, Mosimann and his four parochial vicars celebrate 11 total Masses in English, plus another in Spanish at a different parish where they are kick-starting a Spanish Mass ministry.
All told, roughly 3,800 people attended St. Mary’s weekend Masses on a typical week in 2019. According to headcounts, the parish had already exceeded its pre-pandemic levels by 2023, with around 4,300 attendees on average. The parish, which is about 55 miles south of Washington, D.C., has 6,700 registered families and nearly 100 active ministries.
Father John Mosimann poses with altar servers and Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia. Credit: Photo courtesy of Father John Mosimann
During the pandemic, St. Mary’s added extra Masses — since for a time, Masses were limited to a smaller-than-usual number of attendees — and continued hosting adoration. Like so many other parishes, the parish had to quickly adapt to a livestreaming paradigm in order to stay connected with the community.
“I was in the office and I was looking at Facebook and I said, ‘What if I hit this button and go live, what would happen?’” Mosimann remembers thinking as the lockdowns began.
“And so I started streaming on Facebook Live and everybody started jumping in … ’What’s going on, Father? What’s going to happen?’ And I didn’t have answers, because I wasn’t that great a prophet. But we did immediately start streaming.”
He said parishioners were grateful for the effort the priests made to stay in touch, despite the occasional technical challenge — a problem far from unique to St. Mary’s.
“If you want perfect sound and you want a studio, go to EWTN. They’ve got professional equipment. If you want to see your priests, come talk to us,” Mosimann said he told his parishioners.
“We’re not going to be anxious over having studio quality, because what’s important is for us to be connected to you. People responded to that. People were very grateful for that. It was very frequently cited by parishioners, how grateful they were for our staying in touch with them during that difficult moment.”
Father John Mosimann baptizes a child at his parish, St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Credit: Ginny Foreman
The last of Virginia’s capacity-restricting public health orders on venues was lifted in late May 2021, and Bishop Michael Burbidge of the local Diocese of Arlington in the following month lifted the dispensation he had issued, inviting Catholics to return to Mass throughout the diocese. So far, as in most U.S. dioceses, Mass attendance overall in Arlington has risen significantly but has not quite returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Since the pandemic’s end, Mosimann said his focus has been on encouraging parishioners to use their time and talents generously to help rebuild and grow the parish community.
For Mosimann, the pandemic experience was proof that by remaining faithful even through troubling and difficult times, God can and does bring good out of bad situations through his grace.
“[We] did everything we could to provide the sacraments to God’s people and to make it available as much as possible with all the restrictions. That should be the goal of every parish, every day, whether there’s a pandemic or not,” Mosimann said.
‘We are proud to be who we are’
Father Michael Hurley, OP, pastor of St. Dominic Parish in San Francisco, said his parish, which offers what he believes is the largest young adult presence in the entire archdiocese, regularly sees attendance numbers today that are similar to pre-pandemic levels.
The parish was able to safely provide the sacraments to those in need during the pandemic and had, providentially, already set up livestreaming for Masses shortly before the start of the pandemic. To this day the parish maintains a healthy online base of Dominican laypeople who tune in for Masses and prayer.
Father Michael Hurley, OP, (left) and his fellow priests from St. Dominic Parish in San Francisco cross the street in a homage to “Abbey Road.” Credit: St. Dominic Parish/Ivi Fandino
Hurley said he personally never worried during lockdown about people not returning to Mass, instead trusting that Catholics would return when they could. He said his main concern was keeping the church building open safely during the pandemic — in a state with some of the strictest lockdown measures in the country — to maintain sacramental support.
California finally lifted all capacity restrictions on religious gatherings in April 2021 after previously implementing a near-total ban on indoor services that was contested all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The sanctuary of St. Dominic Parish in San Francisco. Credit: St. Dominic Parish/Alex Mizuno
Though the demographics of St. Dominic Parish has changed somewhat, in-person worshippers, many of whom work in the Bay Area’s high-tech sector, have returned in large numbers.
“The Lord is always searching for the strays, right? … All you have to do is open the doors and do what you’re doing, and people will come,” Hurley told CNA.
That said, Hurley said he believes St. Dominic’s beautiful church building, welcoming atmosphere, and a strong sense of identity — as a Dominican-led parish that aims to “radiate the joy of the Gospel in the heart of the city” — helps to make it an attractive place for Catholics, especially young adults. They also keep the church building open for personal prayer throughout the day, a rarity in a city that occasionally struggles with crime.
“We are proud to be who we are as Catholics, and for us as clergy, as Dominicans. And that makes a huge difference,” Hurley said.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 7, 2024 / 16:00 pm (CNA).
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, signed legislation that grants immunity to clinics when they “damage” or cause the “death” of human embryonic li… […]
Leave a Reply