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December 10, 2025Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press
GARDNER – Bishop McManus shared some of his experiences of hope on Sunday, during his tenth and final visit to a Worcester diocesan pilgrimage church for the Jubilee Year of Hope.
He also brought pilgrims the pope’s congratulations on the occasion of the diocese’s 75th anniversary, being celebrated locally this year.
Bishop McManus was preaching at vespers at Annunciation Parish’s Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church.
Throughout the year he has been celebrating such evening prayer services at the churches he designated as local pilgrimage sites for the universal Jubilee Year.
Some pilgrims who have joined him at all or most of the 10 churches told The Catholic Free Press why they did so and how it blessed them.
In his homily Bishop McManus talked about leading some members of the diocese on a pilgrimage to Rome last month. He and other bishops and cardinals got to greet Pope Leo XIV after the pope’s general audience. Bishop McManus said he told the Holy Father the diocese is celebrating its 75th anniversary and the pope said to extend his congratulations to the people of the diocese.
On that trip, Bishop McManus said, the Worcester diocesan pilgrims processed through St. Peter’s Square, he was presented with the Jubilee Cross that pilgrimage leaders use, and they went through the holy door at St. Peter’s Basilica and recited the Creed where St. Peter’s bones lie.
Bishop McManus noted that last Friday’s edition of The Catholic Free Press invited people to share how they have witnessed hope this Jubilee Year. He preached about some of the people who have brought him hope.
In January he saw college students, on fire with the Catholic faith, falling in love with Christ, joined by priests, seminarians and religious, he said, adding, “That was, for me, a sign of great hope.”
He attended the SEEK25 conference in Washington, D.C. Thousands of college students simultaneously gathered in Salt Lake City, and others met in Germany, for these FOCUS Catholic outreach conferences.
In September, members of the diocese who serve their parishes were honored during an evening at the DCU Center in Worcester.
“To me, as your bishop, that was a sign of great hope,” Bishop McManus reiterated.
Other signs of hope he mentioned included several men he is to ordain to the priesthood or transitional diaconate this year, and pilgrims he’s seen repeatedly on his visits to the pilgrimage churches.
Claudia Liotta, of St. Bernard Parish in Fitchburg, said the first time she made a pilgrimage she didn’t realize she was doing that; she was on vacation in Rome during the Jubilee Year 2000. Her mother later explained the significance to her.
So this Jubilee Year 2025, Mrs. Liotta said, she joined Bishop McManus on most of his visits to Worcester diocesan pilgrimage churches, seeking hope and finding peace.
Kenneth Campbell, of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Fitchburg, said he and his wife, Marianna, both of whom joined the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil earlier this year, made the pilgrimages for “the participation” in the Church “and just to see what’s available.”
He said they went later to the church where they missed vespers with Bishop McManus, so they could get the “passport” stamps in their “Jubilee 2025 Pilgrim’s Guide.”
Mrs. Campbell said they “got closer to God” by going on the pilgrimages and meeting different people.
Kenneth Mills and his wife, Paula Miner, of St. Roch Parish in Oxford, also rejoiced in meeting people on the bishop’s diocesan pilgrimages. He joined all 10 pilgrimages; she went to nine because she was sick once.
“It was like a family,” Mr. Mills said; they made friends and felt like they were part of the community with parishioners and priests of the parishes they visited.
Mrs. Miner said they wanted to support those communities, and to “pray for the success of the 2025 Jubilee pilgrim program” and for priestly and religious vocations.
“It was wonderful to see the immense, deep faith of the other pilgrims,” she said.
Among reasons she gave for attending were to receive hope, grace, spiritual renewal, indulgences, and go to confession.
She said the diocese’s 75th anniversary also has special meaning for her because she was born the year the diocese was established and remembers its first bishop, Bishop (later Cardinal) John J. Wright.
Marianna Riemer, of Our Lady of Hope Parish in Grafton, said she joined the bishop’s pilgrimages to gain “a deeper faith” and because of “the holiness of the places.”
“The music is beautiful,” she said. “The people who come are … devoted Catholics. … I always enjoy talking to the … priests.”
When she talked with Father Alfredo R. Porras, director of the diocesan Office for Divine Worship and Catholic chaplain at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in June, she said, he explained the importance of the sacrament of penance to her. She said she then went to confession for the first time in more than 15 years, and has gone “seven times … this year, so far.”
HISTORY: Gardner’s second parish is now the worship and pilgrimage site – again
Twenty-five years ago, the head of the Worcester diocese made his first episcopal visit of 2000 to a local Jubilee Year pilgrimage church.
Last Sunday, the head of Worcester diocese made his last episcopal visit to a local pilgrimage church for the Jubilee Year 2025.
The church was the same one – Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Gardner. But the ordinary was different.
In March 2000, Bishop Daniel P. Reilly went to Holy Rosary as Auxiliary Bishop George E. Rueger made an episcopal visit to another pilgrimage church – St. Joseph Basilica in Webster. (The only previous episcopal visit to one of the Jubilee Year 2000 pilgrimage churches was Bishop Reilly’s to St. Paul Cathedral on Christmas Eve 1999.)
This Advent, Bishop McManus wrapped up his visits to Jubilee Year of Hope pilgrimage churches with last Sunday’s vespers at Holy Rosary.
Lifelong parishioner Paul LeBlanc recalled carrying a processional cross with a corpus that he’d carved, with a one-decade rosary he made, at a celebration at St. Paul Cathedral. He thought it might have been for the Jubilee Year 2000.
Over the years, this carpenter also made a larger cross with the body of Christ for his church, and a stable for the nativity scene, among other projects.
He said some of the scene’s figures are from Holy Rosary, and some from Sacred Heart of Jesus, the first parish in Gardner.
In 2015 those two parishes, and Holy Spirit and St. Joseph parishes, were merged to form Annunciation Parish, which now uses Holy Rosary’s campus.
He said the present sanctuary lamp came from St. Joseph’s and he expects items from Holy Spirit Church, which closed in September, to be used in some way.
“We try to use many articles, as much as possible, from the other three churches,” explained Mr. LeBlanc, who last month gave fellow parishioners a presentation, from his research, of the church’s history and artwork.
Holy Rosary’s history extends back into the 1800s.
Occasional Masses were celebrated in Gardner starting in 1856, according to “History of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Springfield,” by Father John J. McCoy, published in 1900. (What is now the Worcester diocese was then part of the Springfield diocese.)
“In 1864, Gardner was made a mission of Otter River,” and in 1874 ground was broken for a church, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus the next year, Father McCoy reported. In 1880 Sacred Heart Parish was established.
By 1884 the French-Canadian population in Gardner had increased to about 800 and Bishop Thomas P. O’Reilly of Springfield allowed that ethnic group to organize their own parish.
Father Isaie Soli (in some records written as Solis or Soly) celebrated the first Mass for Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Parish in November that year.
He bought land on Nichols Street and built a wooden building, completed in 1885, that served as a church, school and pastor’s residence, Mr. LeBlanc said. In 1892 a fire damaged it, and it was rebuilt and enlarged for the school.
In 1895 a subsequent pastor, Father Alfred E. Langevin, began construction on the present church on Nichols Street. The people congregated in its basement for years.
“That church is built on one massive rock,” Mr. LeBlanc said; the lower level is slanted and there’s a stage, making for a multipurpose space.
In 1914, Father Jules Graton, then pastor, began construction of the upper church in the Medieval Romanesque style.
The architect, Onesime Nault, also designed St. Joseph, Notre Dame des Canadiens and Holy Name of Jesus churches in Worcester, Mr. LeBlanc said. Only St. Joseph’s is still used as a Catholic church.
Holy Rosary was dedicated in 1915.
The brief story of the church in the “Jubilee 2025 Pilgrim’s Guide” connects the past and present: “As we gather for Mass, our eyes are drawn to the same beautiful fresco featuring the Blessed Mother and St. Dominic that graced the back altar when the church was first built.”
Pilgrims can visit Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church of Annunciation Parish
Weekdays – Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Weekends before and after Masses
Saturday Vigil– 4 p.m.
Sunday – 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.
Monday, Friday – 9 a.m. in the church
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday – 9 a.m. in the parish center behind the rectory (Enter in the back.)
Confessions
Saturday: 2:30-3:30 p.m. in the church
Eucharistic Adoration
(private prayer) in Adoration chapel in parish center Wednesday: 6 a.m.-8 p.m.
To request a tour call the church office at 978-632-0253.