St. Benedict Parish to Celebrate Pope's Visit

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Pope Francis’ visit to the United States is of great interest to Catholics and the public in general, escalating this week with his Year of Mercy statement calling on priests to forgive the sin of abortion.
Still, area Roman Catholic churches have been slow to organize any events to celebrate the pontiff’s trip. Pope Francis will be in the U.S. from Sept. 22 to Sept. 27, with appearances in Washington, D.C., New York City and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
This week The Two River Times reached out to 10 Two River area Catholic Churches to see what has been planned. Those who responded to phone calls said nothing has been planned.
One parish, however, St. Benedict, 165 Bethany Road, Holmdel, sees an educational opportunity. The seventh and eighth graders in the accompanying school will participate in a “Pope Watch Party,” and watch Pope Francis’ historic address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday, Sept. 24, the first Catholic Pope to do so. During the session, teachers will be live tweeting on Twitter about their students’ reaction and the event with the hashtag #pope2congress, according to Denise Contino, St. Benedict’s director of religious instruction. This is being done in conjunction with the Ignatian Solidarity Network, which describes itself as a national social justice education and advocacy network inspired by the work of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
Contino plans to repeat the viewing the following week for the non-St. Benedict religious instruction students.
This summer St. Benedict had emailed to parish and student families information about “Flat Francis” – an approximately one-foot cutout of the pontiff – asking them to honor the pope’s coming visit by taking the good-natured photos with the cutout while on vacation or traveling, sending photos to Catholic Extension, a Catholic charitable organization, by way of the Twitter hashtag #FlatFrancis. “There’s ton of pictures on that already,” Contino said.
Rayanne Bennett, director of public relations for the Diocese of Trenton, acknowledged this week while many individual Catholics have obtained the tickets for Pope Francis’ appearances in New York City and Philadelphia, “it’s slow in coming,” for the diocese’s various parishes to organize events in recognition of the visit. Given in August things slow down as many take their vacations, there wasn’t much in the way of organizing, Bennett pointed out. But now, she suspected church groups and parish volunteers will likely be working on get-togethers, watching parties, to catch the Papal events with friends. “And I think more are in formulation,” to be announced shortly.
The diocese will put together a list of various parish activities to commemorate the Pope’s visit. That will be released to the media shortly, according to Bennett.