Orphans No Longer
Today, July 1 2021, is the effective date of my parish of Holy Rosary merging into the parish of Saint Ann. It is a bittersweet moment. On the one hand, I am told that a decree officially suppressing Holy Rosary parish and merging it into Saint Ann will be published today, and it truly does seem like the final end to this sad chapter in the life of my parish.
On the other hand, many good things are coming out of this merger. For one, our church building and grounds is now to be managed by an actual Tacoma parish. The vestments and liturgical items we had wanted to use for the Corpus Christi Mass and procession almost a month ago will now be available.
But most importantly, we are no longer orphans. We have a pastor: Rev. Tuan Nguyen. Father is a good and faithful priest, and he has been most welcoming of the Holy Rosary parishioners, as well as those from the other merging parishes. I can’t even begin to say what a relief this is to me. Holy Rosary has not had a priest pastor since the death of Father Wagner, back in 2018. So more than three years.
Francine and I have been attending Saint Ann regularly for some months, and I’ve been serving at the 9:45AM Sunday Mass since Pentecost.
Father has asked me to take charge of the altar servers. During the pandemic, I had been working on extensive revisions of my Altar Server Training Manual, and yesterday I sent both the Server version and the Trainer version to the printers for proof copies.
If I’m reading the guidelines correctly, altar servers will be able to resume all of their Mass functions at the beginning of August. So we’d best get cracking on that re-training!
I invite all Holy Rosary parishioners to Saint Ann for Sunday Mass. Please come home! It may not look like home quite yet – there’s a lot to do. And I’m certainly aware that many of our parishioners have scattered over the past year to parishes near and far.
But home is where your family is, and I hope that many of our Holy Rosary family will join us.
Edited at 6 PM to add:
Holy Rosary parishioners have now received by email a letter from Archbishop Etienne and the decree dissolving our parish. For convenience, I’ve posted the links below.
