Former school classroom repurposed into a chapel

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

WORCESTER – Bishop McManus blessed a newly created chapel in the old St. Stephen school building Aug. 21, and expressed appreciation that religious items from elsewhere were used for it.

Deacons and laity rejoiced in the opportunities for prayer that the chapel provides.  
The Chapel of Divine Mercy – Capilla de la Divina Misericordia in Spanish, Capela da Divina Misericórdia in Portuguese – is in a former classroom of the old St. Stephen Elementary School at 355 Grafton St.

The school was closed in 2020, in the face of decreasing enrollment and challenges brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. It was the school of St. Stephen Parish, which in 2023 was merged with Holy Family Parish at St. Joseph Church to form the present St. Joseph and St. Stephen Parish.  

The parish now uses St. Stephen’s former school building for its offices and religious education classes.

Msgr. Robert K. Johnson, pastor, said the parish needed another chapel. Our Lady of Aparecida and All the Saints Chapel in St. Joseph’s Church is used for adoration in Portuguese on Thursdays, the Brazilian youth group’s gatherings on Fridays, and English-language Masses on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. English Masses on Mondays and Fridays, and Spanish Mass and eucharistic adoration on Thursdays, were held in St. Stephen’s Church and are now held in the Chapel of Divine Mercy.

“Everybody’s in need of smaller liturgical spaces,” Msgr. Johnson said. He said the parish’s Haitian community is looking for space for a prayer group.

St. Stephen’s school had been spruced up after it closed, he said, and he and other staff members and parishioners finished setting up the chapel there a couple weeks ago, then began using it.

They added air conditioning and used pews from St. Stephen’s choir loft, since the choir wanted chairs instead, he said.

He said the altar, pulpit, stained glass windows, lights, crucifix, and statues of the Madonna and Child and St. Joseph came from the former Holy Name of Jesus House of Studies for seminarians, which closed last year. The building that housed it, once the rectory of Holy Name of Jesus Parish, is an asset of St. Joseph and St. Stephen Parish because of closings and mergers.  

After blessing the Chapel of Divine Mercy during the Spanish Mass there Aug. 21, Bishop McManus said he was delighted that things were used from the House of Studies.

Closings and mergers also provided for the chapel Stations of the Cross and other reliefs from the former Holy Name Church and Holy Water fonts from the former Notre Dame des Canadiens Church, Msgr. Johnson said.

He said the present parish already had the tabernacle and candlesticks, and the tabernacle stand was made from unused St. Stephen’s pews.

The Divine Mercy image in the chapel was donated by Deacon Franklin B. Lizardo and his wife, Barbara Lizardo, who serve at the parish, he said.

“I love it,” Mrs. Lizardo said of the chapel, describing it as a “little place” to go and be alone with Jesus. As the parish’s administrative assistant, she has an office in the building.

“What I love about the chapel – this is going to enable parishioners to come weekdays during office hours from 10 a.m.-3 p.m.” to pray by themselves, said her husband. “And probably we will do other activities in the chapel, all related to adoration, the holy Eucharist.”  

“Our youth group [for Hispanics] actually has our meetings down the hall,” said the Lizardos’ daughter, Brenda Lizardo. “And so we can be in the presence of the Lord” by using the chapel for prayer.

“I go every Thursday” to St. Joseph and St. Stephen’s Spanish Mass, said Luz Almonte, from St. Paul Cathedral. She called the new chapel, where Mass has been celebrated for a couple weeks, wonderful.  

“It’s good for the prayer,” she said. “It’s quiet. I feel God’s presence.”

“For the Hispanic community, it’s been very helpful,” Deacon Israel Fernandez, who serves at St. Joseph and St. Stephen Parish, said of the chapel, noting that they’ve had air conditioning there during the heat of the summer.

The air conditioning is not too expensive, and the smaller worship space saves the parish money on heat in the winter,  Deacon Lizardo said.

“We also have the Divine Mercy group that we started,” Mrs. Lizardo said after the chapel blessing. “They started today to do the rosary during adoration” that precedes the Thursday Mass, a practice they plan to continue monthly.

“We started [the group] without the chapel,” she said. “Two years ago during Lent we prayed, at 3 p.m., the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and then we celebrated Divine Mercy Sunday.” That’s why they wanted to name the chapel Divine Mercy, she explained.