7/24/20
Dear St. Joseph Parish Family,
I want to give you a lot of updates on things happening at our parish, so here goes:
New Trustees:
•We have 2 new trustees for the parish this year! Tanya Travers is continuing as a trustee, and Catherine Morgan is beginning her first term as a trustee. Trustees serve 1-year terms for a maximum of 3 consecutive terms. Trustees are specific to New York law, which requires churches to have a board of trustees. For each Catholic parish, there are 5 trustees– the bishop, the vicar general (the #2 in a diocese), the pastor, and 2 parishioners. Functionally, trustees sit on both the parish and finance council ex officio. Thank you Tanya & Catherine for your generosity to our parish!
Construction Projects:
•The exterior restoration of the church is complete! This week the scaffolding is coming down.
•Work is about to begin on the school building in order to repair the exterior walls and the roof.
•We’re about to begin the bidding process for the McGuire Hall project. I wanted to be at this stage in March, but the pandemic has delayed everything. We are moving forward though.
•The rectory elevator replacement is almost complete, so we’ll be up to code there.
Masses & Ministries:
•Mass attendance is still low, around 30 to 40 at each Sunday Mass. I hope it recovers as the year progresses and the pandemic fades.
•We haven’t restarted any ministries yet– we can consider restarting them when Fall approaches and the parish season restarts.
•We are just now starting to get new couples preparing for marriage and baptisms, so there are signs of life returning.
•Installation of a permanent live streaming system for Masses should happen in August.
•CCD (children’s religious ed) begins this Fall and will be online at least until the beginning of 2021.
Finances & Parish Office:
•We are looking to reopen the parish office in September. Currently, the parish staff is working from home.
•Mass collections are down. We don’t have all the data in yet, but I do hope things will stabilize as the year progresses and people return to NYC and to Mass.
•We have placed collection boxes in the church, by the main glass doors leading to the nave, that are more secure than the baskets we were using at first.
Pandemic Protection:
•We are in compliance with city and state regulations and I believe that all is going well as can be expected.
My quarantine ends this Monday and I eagerly look forward to seeing everyone again at St. Joe’s!
In Christ,
Fr. Boniface