June 20, 2005 VOL. 43, NO. 12Oakland, CA

Outreach project Lucas Shapiro and Antonia Acquistapace of St. Catherine School in Martinez hold two of the many household items students collected last month for a local family homeless shelter. Each class, kindergarten through eighth grade, collected a specific item needed by the shelter.

New life for used shoes

Proving that there is life for used and outgrown athletic shoes, Tony Freccero, a member at St. Lawrence O’Toole-St. Cyril Parish in Oakland, is spearheading a campaign to get those shoes out of people’s closets and onto the feet of underprivileged youth in Brazil.

Freccero’s project began after he went to Rio de Janeiro to help run the Bolar Basketball School and saw kids playing basketball who were too poor to own shoes. “I saw children competing in actual games barefoot,” he said. So Freccero launched Project Shoe Assist, a campaign to collect used shoes he can deliver when he returns to Brazil in August.

Already the campaign has received more than 500 pairs of shoes, said Lou Richie, a teacher at St. Lawrence O’Toole-St. Cyril School. The two men are hoping to collect 2,000 pairs. Drop-boxes for donated shoes are set up at various locations: St. Lawrence O’Toole School, 3725 High School; Vella Locker Room sites in Oakland and Castro Valley, and West Coast Sporting Goods in San Leandro. Shoes can also be shipped to Triple Threat Academy, 1271 Washington Ave. #623, San Leandro, CA 94577. More information is available at the Academy website: www.triplethreatonline.com.

Around the Parishes

St. Anne Parish in Walnut Creek will observe its annual triduum (three days of prayer) honoring Our Lady of Perpetual Help June 27-29. The triduum will consist of Mass, homily and prayers at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. in the church, 1600 Rossmoor Parkway.

About 70 parishioners from St. Joseph Basilica Parish in Alameda will participate in the American Cancer Society Relay for Life, a 24-hour fundraising event, June 25 and 26 at Alameda’s Encinal High School. The parish community is also sponsoring an interfaith Faith in a Cure Prayer Service, tomorrow (June 21) at the Basilica, 1109 Chestnut St., at 7:30 p.m.

With the arrival of summer, Father Richard Mangini recently reminded parishioners at St. Bonaventure Parish of the Concord faith community’s summer dress code. “Dressing up” for church is a goal and “an important part of religious practice,” the pastor wrote in the parish bulletin. Among garments deemed inappropriate are caps, sports jerseys, t-shirts, sweatshirts, shorts and beach apparel, short dresses or skirts. “Yes, Jesus would have been very concerned about how he looked when he went to the temple in Jerusalem or into a synagogue,” he wrote. “There was a dress code then. He may have had only one set of ‘going to Church clothes,’ but he wore them.”

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Around the Schools

Let’s give a standing ovation for Andy Gutierrez, a sixth grader at St. John the Baptist School in El Cerrito, who is already making his mark in the world of music. He was the boy soprano for the Oakland East Bay Symphony’s production of the Leonard Bernstein Mass last month and he sang the treble solo in Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms with the Santa Rosa Symphony in December. He also helps direct the children’s choir at St. Ambrose Church in Berkeley and has spent four years in the Piedmont Choirs.

The art class at Oakland’s St. Elizabeth High School is painting a mural of St. Elizabeth on the west side of the front wing of the school that dramatically portrays the most famous miracle of Elizabeth, Queen of Hungary – that of roses tumbling from her cloak which had been filled with bread to feed the poor of her kingdom. Art teacher David Burke oversaw the painting of the mural.

Congratulations to the following student-athletes and teams who ended their athletic seasons in top form: Ke’Nyia Richardson, a sophomore at Holy Names High in Oakland, who brought home two medals for finishing second in the girls triple jump and third in the 100-meter hurdles at the California Interscholastic Federation state track and field championships in Sacramento; Lauren Rogers, a senior at Carondelet High in Concord, earned two North Coast Section titles, giving her a record-tying eight swimming titles for her career; Jayne Appel, also from Carondelet, was picked to participate in the fourth annual USA Basketball Women’s Youth Development Festival, June 15-19 in Colorado Springs, just one 36 prep girls basketball players from around the country; Bradford Goshorn of Concord’s De La Salle High, was named to the U.S. Lacrosse Secondary School All-American Team; De La Salle’s baseball team went 23-4 to capture the North Coast Section 3A championship title; the Bishop O’Dowd (Oakland) baseball team who, despite a bittersweet loss in the semifinals at the North Coast Section 3A, compiled a 25-1 record (the best in school history), won the prestigious West Coast Classic and claimed their third consecutive Hayward Area Athletic League title.

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Names, News, Notes

Congratulations to Heidi Harrison, a lector and a coordinator for union liturgies at St. Mary-St. Francis de Sales Parish in Oakland, who received this year’s Lasallian Educator Award at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory in San Francisco where she teaches.

Parishioners of two Oakland parishes, Sacred Heart and St. Mary, Immaculate Conception, joined members of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) on June 18 at Sacred Heart Church for a memorial Mass to celebrate the life and ministry of Gladys Perry who died earlier this month. Perry spent over two decades as housekeeper and cook for the Oblate community. “She was mother to Oblate seminarians at St. Mary,” said Oblate Father Jose Arong. Perry transferred to Sacred Heart Parish when the Oblates assumed responsibility for that parish in 1991 and served there until her retirement.

Planning a day-trip to San Francisco? You may want to consider a visit to Mission Dolores, where an exhibit called “Ohlone Portraits: Our Faces, Our Families, Our Stories,” will run until Oct. 1. Built in 1791, Mission Dolores is the oldest building in The City and is located at the corner of 16th and Dolores Streets.

EWTN programming: This month’s highlights on the 24-hour Catholic TV network include the audience of Pope Benedict XVI from the Vatican, Wednesdays at 12:45 p.m. and “Christ in the City” with Father George Rutler, a New York City pastor, Tuesdays at 8 p.m. A special on Bruno Camacchiola, a Rome trolley operator who planned to kill the Pope in 1947 until he experienced a vision of the Blessed Mother, will air June 30 at 10 a.m. and July 2 at 5 p.m. EWTN is carried on Comcast Digital channel 229; DISH Channel 261; Direct TV channel 422; in Alameda on channel 30; and Alameda Power channel 19.

The Concord Vet Center, in cooperation with a variety of East Bay organizations, will host a free Veterans Information Fair on July 9 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. at 5298 Clayton Road. Topics will include soldiers’ homecoming and readjustment from a combat and military environment. For more information, contact Nathan Johnson at (707) 590-3639.

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