New names have been announced for parishes that are merging July 1 in two areas of the diocese. The Diocese of Worcester has published decrees merging the parishes.

Julio Rafael Granados Alvarado wanted to be an engineer. But what did God want? Along the road to priesthood he had to find the answer to that question.

WORCESTER – Francesco C. Cesareo looks at his presidency at Assumption University as a ministry that involved his family and served students, the Church and the community.

In preparation for a eucharistic revival on the local level, Bishop McManus has convened a working group to advise and support the Office for Divine Worship.

Though abortion has become a hotbed for angry political debates, Sister Maria Regina, of the Sisters of LIfe, spoke to Holy Cross students about it with genuine love and gentleness.

“I’m not going home,” replies Deacon Thiago Rodrigues Ibiapina, a native Brazilian preparing to be a priest for the Diocese of Worcester. When traveling to Brazil “I’m going to visit my parents. My home today is here. … That’s my Church.”

WORCESTER - Isabella Christie has never been to the town of Oxford, which is about 10 miles from her home. But the senior at St. Paul High School plans to spend four years in England at the University of Oxford.

SHREWSBURY – Brother J. Conal Owens, C.F.X., 93, longtime headmaster of St. John’s High School, died Saturday, May 7. His funeral is May 17, at 9:30 a.m. May 17 in the Coaches Pavilion at St. John’s High School.

STILL RIVER – An exhibition basketball game between seminarians and other young men provided an opportunity to encourage vocations – by showing that prospective priests are “regular guys.”

“Since the oral arguments in the Dobbs case were heard by the Supreme Court last winter, there has been much cautious optimism and hope that this pivotal decision could possibly overturn Roe and Casey,” Allison LeDoux, director of the Respect Life Office for the Diocese of Worcester, said.

WORCESTER – Venezuelans rejoiced as Cardinal Baltazar Porras Cardozo, archbishop of Mérida, Venezuela, brought a relic of a saintly Venezuelan to St. Paul Cathedral last Saturday.

WORCESTER – Motherhood involves accepting one’s loss of control, realizing children are a gift and, like Christ, even giving one’s body for them, Janice Chik Breidenbach told 250 people at a fundraiser for Visitation House.

LEOMINSTER – A new chapel at St. Cecilia Parish, dedicated to Divine Mercy and St. Joseph, was blessed by Bishop McManus last Saturday.

“The sexual abuse crisis in the Church, which became public in 2001,” says the bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, “was a watershed moment in the Church’s loss of positive influence in the lives of Catholics.”

BOYLSTON – The diocesan Commission for Women, emerging from the coronavirus pandemic, is again reaching out to and for women, and seeking new members.

"Why Symbols Matter. An open letter to the community about the flags at Nativity School" by Most Reverend Robert J. McManus, S.T.D., Bishop of Worcester

WORCESTER – The 5.3-acre property of the former Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on Mulberry Street was sold for $5.6 million on Wednesday, Msgr. F. Stephen Pedone, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish at Our Lady of Loreto Church, reported.

The Massachusetts Catholic Conference has distributed fliers to be inserted in parish bulletins throughout the four Roman Catholic Dioceses this weekend, imploring parishioners to contact their legislators to voice their opposition to physician assisted suicide.

Pope Francis: “No human being can ever be unfit for life ... Every child who appears in a woman’s womb is a gift that changes a family’s history, the life of fathers and mothers, grandparents and of brothers and sisters. That child needs to be welcomed, loved and nurtured. Always!”