Blessing Brady Park
The new track and field complex at St. Mary’s
High School in Berkeley is in full use after it was blessed earlier
this year by Father Jayson Landeza ’79 (right) and Deacon Jorge
Angel Arias (center). With them are Thomas Brady ’54 (far left),
teacher, administrator and first lay president at the school, and
Adrian Mison Fulay, director of campus ministry. The athletic field
is named for Brady who served at the school for 35 years. Arias, a
member of All Saints Parish in Hayward, was the project superintendent.
Father Landeza is pastor of St. Columba Parish in Oakland. |
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Children helping childreng
Second-graders at Our Lady of Grace School in
Castro Valley sell baked goods on campus that raised over $1200 for
the George Mark Children’s House in San Leandro, the nation’s
first and only residential palliative care facility for children with
serious or terminal illnesses and their families. |
CCEB employee honored
Millie Burns, Measure Y director at Catholic
Charities of the East Bay (CCEB), received the Community Service Diamond
Jubilee Award for Youth and Family Services from the Berkeley Bay Area
Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, March 28. Burns was cited
for her longstanding involvement with CCEB and the role she played in
coordinating the Katrina Evacuee Program and her most recent work directing
the Crisis Response Support Network.
Recycle and help SVDP
Attention, Spring Cleaners! Recycle those electronics
that you no longer use or need and help fund St. Vincent de Paul employment
programs at the same time. WasteNot, a social enterprise of the Society
of St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County, is collecting unwanted or
unusable electronics free of charge at all SVDP retail locations. Bulky
pick-ups at homes or offices are available if seven or more items are
donated. SVDP will receive the revenue from the recycled electronics.
For a list of accepted items and store locations, visit: www.svdp-alameda.org.
Call (510) 638-7600 to arrange for bulk pick-up.
Honor for Habitat group
Habitat for Humanity East Bay recently earned
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold Certification
for three homes it built at its East Oakland housing development on Edes
Avenue. Several parishes in the Oakland Diocese provide financial and
volunteer support to Habitat East Bay, which is the organization’s
first affiliate in California to receive the LEED recognition for building
“green” homes.
The LEED Gold homes are part of a 54-home development that Habitat East
Bay is constructing in East Oakland, transforming a former blighted auto
salvage yard into a community for low-income families. Habitat East Bay
has already completed 26 of the homes and hopes to build 20 more by the
year’s end.
Around
the Parishes
St. Patrick Parish in Oakland observed the final
festivities of its 130th anniversary, with a dinner April 4 that included
Divine Word Father Carl Seewald, pastor from 1980-89, as a guest.
Mass on April 5 included another former pastor, Jesuit Father Tim Godfrey,
who served the parish from 1999-2004.
The local organizing ministry (Oakland Community Organizations) at St.
Louis Ber-trand Church in Oakland, hosted a special workshop in the
church gym for those in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure.
More than 60 fourth graders at St. Perpetua Parish in Lafayette celebrated
the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the first time last month.
St. Raymond Parish in Dublin hosted a March 28 information event,
sponsored by the Veterans Administration (VA), to help military veterans
and active duty personnel and their families determine which benefits
they are eligible for.
During Lent the Cathedral Parish of Christ the Light in Oakland
sponsored weekly collections (canned food and toiletries) for the less
fortunate.
On April 19 Oakland’s Sacred Heart Parish will celebrate
the 10th anniversary of the completion of its present church, which was
dedicated on Easter Sunday, April 4, 1999, replacing the parish’s
venerable 90-year-old church that was rendered unusable following the
1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. That structure was razed in April 1993 following
an emotional Good Friday farewell ceremony.
More than 40 members of St. Columba Parish in north Oakland helped
serve dinners to homeless senior citizens at St. Mary’s Center in
downtown Oakland from December through March.
St. Monica Parish in Moraga received a letter of love and gratitude
from Carondelet Sister Maureen Lyons, co-director of A Friendly
Place/Manor which ministers to homeless women in downtown Oakland,
for a recent donation of $609.95. “We appreciate all you have done
over the years to support our ministry to homeless women,” she wrote.
Twenty units of blood were collected during a blood drive at St. Leander
Parish in San Leandro last month. The units may help up to 60 patients.
St. Agnes Parish in Concord held its annual blood drive on Good
Friday.
Speaking of blood drives . . . St. Patrick Parish
at 907 Seventh St. in Rodeo will host a blood drive on April 25, 9
a.m. to 2 p.m. in the parish hall.
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Around
the Schools
Nicholas Quinones, Carmela Val-der-rama, Michael
Johnson and Galen Soria, students at St. Joseph Notre Dame
High School in Alameda, received outstanding musician awards at the
Chabot College Jazz Festival last month. The Concert and Advanced Band
Jazz Ensembles played a collection of jazz charts for the judges and received
excellent ratings.
Students from St. Bernard School in Oakland, Corpus Christi School
in Piedmont and Christ the King School in Pleasant Hill were
among 200 singers performing the National Anthem at the San Francisco
Giants game, April 8.
At St. Bernard’s, the school’s annual festival April
26 will include an inaugural scholarship raffle to raise funds to help
families with tuition costs.
Congratulations to the following students who participated in the 33rd
Annual Contra Costa County Spelling Bee sponsored by the Contra Costa
Times. They are: Zoe Tacderas, Holy Rosary School in Antioch; Katie
Molyneux, St. Agnes School in Concord; Matthew Cyril Dioso, St. Francis
of Assisi School, Concord; Connor Asercion, St. Jerome School, El Cerrito;
Isabel A. Valdelomar, St. Joseph School, Pinole; Matthew Grazzini, St.
Mary School, Walnut Creek; Sophie Brown, St. Perpetua School, Lafayette;
Charmaine Santos, St. Peter Martyr School, Pittsburg; and Madeleine
Lopez, Wood Rose Academy, Concord.
Seven students have been selected to attend Oakland’s Holy Names
High School through the Achieve program, a four-year high school scholarship
and enrichment program. They are Ana Ascencio, Amber Gonzalez, Brenda
Loza, Rocio Ochoa, Katherine Robles, Sara Sologaistoa, and Jennifer
Urdaneta. The program, which is also offered at Riordan and Mercy
High Schools in San Francisco, is funded by Gerson and Barbara Bass Bakar,
San Francisco philanthropists.
Miranda Felix, a senior at Salesian High School in Richmond,
was recently selected to receive the full four-year Trustee Scholarship
from Oakland’s Mills College.
Also at Salesian High, some 600 students, faculty and staff left
the campus March 27 to participate in a variety of community service projects
during the second annual Day of Service.
May 1 is the deadline to order an honorary brick to be displayed at the
new Brady Park track and field complex at St. Mary’s High School
in Berkeley. Visit www.bradypark.org
or contact Joanne Howe at (510) 559-6227 or jhowe@stmchs.org.
Proceeds benefit the park’s construction.
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Among the Religious
Deacon Alfonso Perez has been transferred from
St. Edward Parish in Newark to Corpus Christi Parish in Fremont,
effective April 1.
Redemptorist Father Don MacKinnon, director of the diocesan Kmhmu/Laotian
Pastoral and Cultural Center in the Oakland Diocese, recently showcased
his skills as an author in his new book, “Gospel Parish in the Modern
World,” published by Perfect Page Publishing in Orinda. He recounts
the life of a small mission church in San Francisco’s Hunter’s
Point neighborhood in the summer of 1968, in the midst of one of the most
turbulent times in the nation.
Salesian Father Timothy C. Plough has been named provincial superior
of the Salesian’s San Francisco Province for the six-year term.
He succeeds Salesian Father David Purdy. The San Francisco Province
has 104 Salesians and includes foundations in Laredo, Texas, and the California
cities of Aptos, Bellflower, Berkeley, Oakland, Los Angeles, Richmond,
Rosemead, San Francisco, Stockton, and Watsonville.
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Names, News, Notes
Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit, former
bishop of Oakland, recently visited the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn,
Mich., one of the largest mosques in the U.S. The archbishop’s visit
was part of a continuing outreach by Catholic leaders to the Muslim community.
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County will honor
its volunteers April 19 during National Volunteer Appreciation Week. The
event takes place from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the SVDP Community Center,
2280 San Pablo Ave. in Oakland. RSVP is required. Contact Kate Nauer,
volunteer coordinator, at (510) 877-9237 or knauer@svdp-alameda.org.
The residents and staff at AlmaVia of Union City are already seeing
results from a recycling program begun last month, reducing its waste
by approximately 25 percent. Each resident at the assisted living and
dementia care community received a container for trash and a recycle bag
with a list of instructions of what belongs in each. AlmaVia is affiliated
with Elder Care Alliance and co-sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy of
the Americas, Regional Community of Burlingame, and the Sierra Pacific
Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
The San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition is hosting a photo
exhibit in San Francisco to raise awareness about the ongoing genocide
in Sudan. The photos are on display through the end of April at the downtown
campus of San Francisco State University, 835 Market St., 6th floor.
The St. Thomas More Society of San Francisco, the oldest fellowship
of Catholic lawyers, law students, paralegals and judges in the West,
is seeking new members. Information: www.stthomasmore-sf.org,
or contact Greg Schopf, Society president, at gschopf@nixonpeabody.com.
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