October 1, 2021
My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
On September 23, Archbishop Lucas appointed Fr Mario Rapose Associate Pastor of Mary Our Queen Church. Fr Mario has been living in residence with us for the last few months and we have been blessed with his Pastoral Ministry. Fr Mario’s native home country is India. He was ordained a Priest for our Archdiocese in 2000. Fr Mario has previously served as Associate Pastor in St Robert Bellarmine Parish and St Patrick’s Parish in Fremont and as Pastor of St Francis Borgia in Blair, St John the Baptist in Fort Calhoun and St Philip Neri-Blessed Sacrament Parish. We are truly blessed to have Fr Mario in our Parish.
We started the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd last year in our Early Childhood Education and Youth Center offering the program for our preschool children. With the development of the program, we have established a new atrium that will be located in the Bride’s room in the Kenny Center. This new atrium will provide the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd for our kindergarten students in our Parish beginning with our 5-day school kindergarten students. We are hoping to offer it members in our Parish community for children ages 3 to 6 in the near future.
We started a new season of RCIA last Sunday. RCIA stands for Rite of Christian Initiation for adults and not Roman Catholics in Agony. It is a journey of faith that is shared for all who are interested in entering the Catholic Church or interested in learning about our faith. We meet on Sunday mornings. If this is something you might be interested in, kindly call the Parish Office.
Over the last few years, our School have worked with Catholic Charities to provide mental health services for our students by a licensed mental health practitioner in a confidential manner as referred by the administration of the school. Realizing that life brings on sets of challenges that can be difficult to navigate, we are working in partnership with Catholic Charities to provide such services to help members in our Parish to navigate some of life’s most difficult challenges. Thanks to Catholic Charities, we are able to offer therapy services here in our Parish for individuals, couples and families by a mental health practitioner at no cost. It will require a referral from me. If this is a service that you currently need, kindly contact me at the Parish Office. All referrals are handled confidentially.
We removed our Tabernacle in our Blessed Sacrament Chapel so that we are able to install the Lunar insert in it. Once that is done, we will relocate our Tabernacle so that it to be both visible and accessible in our Church as well as to have the Eucharist to be exposed in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel. A temporary Tabernacle is currently in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel.
We continue to pray for all those affected by the new strain of COVID-19. We also continue to do our best to keep everyone safe. We have opened our Parish for meetings and for groups to gather. While the mask mandate of our city has been lifted, we have made available the left side of our Church for those still wanting to social distance. We continue to request that mask be used when coming forward to receive Communion. Thank you for kindly working with us. We will reevaluate these protocols on a week to week basis. As a reminder, please monitor COVID-19 symptoms. As always, if you or a family member has a fever, chills, body aches, headache, sore throat, cough, and loss of taste and smell, they should stay home from school or church until symptom free.
Please check out our Weekly Updates via email. If you have not received an email, kindly call our Parish Office and we will add you in our email mailing list. Thank you again for supporting us during this time. We continue to keep all those affected by this virus in our prayers.
God’s Blessings,
Fr Marc