CHESTER – Often we are asked: “What are you doing in Chester?” We can answer with the same words written by Ven. Bishop Aurelio Bacciarini on March 21, 1912 to Father Leonardo Mazzucchi: “Here, good has to be done outside the church rather than inside… Are we announcing a First Communion? The announcement made in church and published in the bulletin is just a dead word. We have to go family by family not once but even two or three times, because such is the Roman indifference. Is there a conference for men and youth? We have to go to their homes and pull them out of there. When we visit a sick or an elderly person we must climb the stairs of a house dozens of times. The same thing happens when it involves a marriage, a subsidy, youngsters who were not yet confirmed or have not received First Communion, the enrollment of children in catechism classes, the spreading of Catholic literature, and so on. If we do not do that, we would be here just to hear the confessions of a few women and let the majority of people sleep in a dreadful religious indifference.” Archbishop Chaput asked us to formally apply for this new commitment in the City of Chester. His availability to allow us to canonically cooperate in the local Parish of St. Katherine Drexel will be a new way of evangelization as our Founder invited us, going in the streets in order to “prepare people to populate Paradise, to lead to God hearts created to love and bless Him forever.” (February 1896)
Servants of Charity 