Save the date, October 19, 2024. The party begins with Mass at 12:00 noon followed by a celebration dinner at Saint Joan of Arc, 570 Lincoln Street Worcester MA. It’s our 45th anniversary of service to the “least, the last and the left out.”

Can you imagine the result of Kathy and I saying yes when Fr. Paul Tougas, the then director of the Permanent Diaconate Program, asked if anyone would like to be part of a committee to sponsor a refugee family from Vietnam. It is from this little act of charity that the Lord has continued to bless our ministry, and it has grown a hundredfold.

We started by sponsoring families from Vietnam and then we sponsored their relatives and then we helped bring families to Worcester as part of the family reunification program. With all these families coming in we needed the proverbial ton of furniture and household items. Our storage space in the basement of Saint Catherine of Sweden rectory was fast filling up. We also noticed that our refugees weren’t participating in any of the city’s Christmas gift programs for their children. So the Christmas Giving Program was born. We passed out gifts to twenty-six children the first year.

Meanwhile we were also working with Tom Doughton and Ann Herredan, two Catholic workers who had decided that there should be a place in Worcester where people could get free clothing, the birth of the Little Free Store. After six months of trying to make a goal of it they decided to close the store down. Kathy and I thought their idea was a good one, but it needed donors to help with the expenses. We received permission from Fr. Bill Sanders, our then Director of the Permanent Diaconate, to give it a try. And so we had the birth of the Little Store. We were charging ten cents a pound for clothing.

We soon ran out of space on Fruit Street so we moved to the corner of Chandler and Piedmont Streets. We recruited volunteers to staff the store. We now had entered the larger community of families needing help as well as our refugee families that we sponsored from Vietnam, Cambodia, Russia, Poland. It wasn’t very long until we had to move again. Off to 731 Main Street in the basement of the Honda building. We now had 12,000 square feet of space at a rent of $2,000 a month (if I remember correctly). Given all this room we started our bottles and cans for food program. Our Food Pantry program was born. As we continued to grow, we were forced to leave 731 Main Street and go to 27 Chandler Street for the next seven years. While we were at 27 Chandler we met Deacon Patrick Driscoll. Pat introduced us to Edwin Lee whom Pat had met while working for his company in China. When we needed a new truck Pat got Ed to donate $25,000 to help pay for the truck. A relationship was born. From that relationship we now work in a space of 18,000 square feet and we rent it for $1 a year.

With all of this interaction within the community we soon came to another realization. When one of the families we were helping in our programs had a death in their family and no had money to pay for the funeral expenses the need for some pastoral outreach became apparent. Not only did we help financially, but we also did the funeral service and burial for them. Our Pastoral Outreach program was born.

And then along came Steve. First it was setting up a fund for people who need help with school and sport items or immigration help. Then he donated monies to buy a three decker so newly arrived refugees would have a place to live with rents well below the market asking price so they would be able to save enough to buy a home of their own within eight years. Then he donated monies to set up a Student Incentive Program for students who are on the honor roll. They volunteer at the Urban Missionaries of Our Lady of Hope on Saturdays for three hours and they receive a stipend of $30.00. The Saint Stephen Housing Initiative and the Student Incentive programs were born.

Now we had the Little Store, Sr. Alice Petty, R.S.M. Vocational Training and Immigration, Pastoral Outreach, Saint Stephen Housing Initative, the Student Incentive Program, and Christmas Giving Program. To support all of these programs we started our annual Sustainer Appeal Drive to help support the staff we needed for all of these programs.

So here we stand forty-five years later and when we start to add up the numbers, pounds of food passed out, number of Christmas gifts passed out, the number of new citizens we helped, the number of pickups of household items, the number of deliveries to our customers’ homes, these numbers are staggering, along with the blessings we have received along the way. As we have given so we have we received.

I hope you now understand why we are so excited about celebrating this anniversary with a Mass of Thaksgiving followed by a fellowship dinner. We hope you will be just as excited and join us in person or via Zoom, or with a donation.