Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Welcome to Italian Festival weekend 2005! If you are visiting our Parish family this weekend, it is indeed a great honor for us to have you with us this weekend, as we continue our celebration of our Patroness’s Feast Day. St. Maria Goretti’s actual Feast Day was this past Wednesday, July 6 th, but being a Parish community that loves to be together AND loves a good celebration, we continue to celebrate it this weekend. It is great to have so many friends, extended family members, and other visitors join us for our Italian Festival. It is also extremely nice to see old friends come back specifically for this celebration. Welcome to one and all!

This is our first Italian Festival since we opened our new church back in December of 2004. You may remember, that it was a last year’s Italian Festival, that they had just poured the new concrete floor, and during tours of the construction site, families were invited to sign the new concrete floor. Do you remember where you and your family signed the floor? Things were very different last summer. The steel skeleton was up. They were beginning to fasten the steel panels to the roof, and they were just starting the walls. If you haven’t been back to St. Maria Goretti since our last Italian Festival, I think that you will be pleasantly surprised. For the first time this year, our Italian Festival Mass is NOT being held outdoors. This year we decided to hold the Festival Mass in our new church so that many of our guests and visitors could get to experience Mass in the new worship space. The new church has become a wonderful blessing to our community. It is one of the largest in the State of Indiana. It’s main sanctuary seats just over 1500 people. The main sanctuary shares the Tabernacle and its glass screen with an attached Daily Mass Chapel that seats an additional 120 people. The lower glass panels of the glass screen that surrounds the Tabernacle, slide into pocket doors to open up the Daily Mass Chapel for additional seating for the main sanctuary. The Altar, the statues of St. Maria Goretti and our Blessed Mother, the 16-foot tall suspended crucifix, the stained-glass, the Baptismal font, the Stations of the Cross, and many other unique aspects of our new church combine together to make it a place of worship that all of us here at St. Maria Goretti are very proud of, and that we look forward to using together for many, many years. We welcome you to our new church and hope that at some time this weekend, you will get the chance to look around.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Twyla and Kyle Arnold and Ted and Carol Wells for co-chairing this year’s Italian Festival. It is a big job. Thanks also to the hundreds for volunteers that worked for weeks to get ready for this year’s celebration. We would not be able to do this without your help. It takes everybody working together to pull off something of this magnitude. Thanks to every one who had a part in it. And thanks to all of our friends and family that have come out to join us.

This Monday evening, July 11 th, begins the first of three special Adult Education classes on “Prayer in the New Catechism”. These sessions that will be led by our summer Seminarian, Rob Geisting, will take place in the Parish Narthex, beginning at 7:00 PM. The sessions are an hour long and will include time for questions and answers. This series will continue for the next two Monday evenings also, on July 18 th and on July 25 th. It is my sincere hope that as many of us as possible will be able to attend these Catechetical sessions. We all need to continue our education in the Faith. Sometimes, things can be so busy during the rest of the year that another nice thing about summer, is that it affords us the opportunity to study and learn about things that we don’t always get the chance to always study and learn about. Please do not miss this opportunity! It is a short series. It’s only three Monday nights in a row. The sessions are only an hour long. And our seminarian, Rob, is an excellent speaker. Please come and join us on Monday night. You’ll be glad that you did.

Don’t forget the Tony Melendez concert coming up on Friday evening, July 29 th. Tickets will be available after all Masses next weekend. This Diocesan sponsored event should be very powerful. Make your plans now to attend. Let us fill the new church with people that night, to hear an extraordinary musician’s gift and testimony. Remember, Tony Melendez was one of Pope John Paul the Great’s favorite performers!

Have a great week!

In Christ,

Fr. Kevin