BRIDGEPORT—Updates from the Superintendent of schools.

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STAMFORD—On Tuesday, March 30, sixth graders at The Catholic Academy of Stamford prepared thank you cards and small care packages for the employees at Grade A market on Newfield Avenue. Each student assembled and personalized bags that contain mints, tissues, tea bags, chapsticks, pretzels, granola bars and other goodies along with a note from the students.

The classroom mom spoke to the manager at Grade A and said the employees were very appreciative and thankful that the students want to acknowledge and thank the employees for their hard work while we all stayed home during last year’s lockdown and during this year’s continued restrictions. It can be a thankless job sometimes. Grade A is located right down the road from The Catholic Academy of Stamford so many families are patrons at Grade A and wanted to say thank you. Grade A employs many town locals who have made a career there and Grade A currently has 126 employees.

The classroom mother will deliver the bags to Grade A market on Thursday, April 1.

March 25, 2021 — Bishop Caggiano has issued the following Decree for the Creation of the Diocese of Bridgeport Cemetery Limited Liability Company.

FAIRFIELD—When Paola Peña looks back on her faith journey, she recognizes the spiritual signposts along the way, when Jesus was leading her from darkness into light. It was a journey that began in an alcoholic home and led to years of atheism and New Age practices…until the moment when, she says, “God resurrected my heart.”

Today, Paola is director of Student Ministries at St. Pius X Parish in Fairfield, overseeing programs for young Catholics. She defines her role quite simply as “somebody who wants to save souls with Jesus.” And she believes her story can help them during these troubled times.

The oldest of four daughters, Paola was born and raised in Stamford. During her early years, she went to Mass with her family at the Basilica of St. John the Evangelist, but her religious life stopped at 10 years old and was followed by a descent into New Age spirituality and atheism.

“I grew up in an alcoholic home,” she says. “There wasn’t peace or order, and you were always on edge, waiting for the next instance of abuse. It caused a lot of anxiety for me and my sisters, and by the time I was ten, my parents split for the third and final time.”

Her mother, an immigrant from Colombia, worked as a housekeeper and was given custody of the children.

“We grew up in poverty and on welfare. There were a lot of challenges because my mom was a single mom,” she said. “By the time I was 16, I had settled on the thought that this was going to be my life. There was no hope. Everyone was suffering silently, and you learned to repress it, because if you mentioned it to my mom, she would take it as something against her.”

Despite her sense of despair, Paola excelled in school and was inducted into the National Honor Society at Stamford High School.

“I realized it was my only way out,” she said. “School was the only thing I had going for me, and I used it to escape from my home life.”

The vacuum in her spiritual life was being filled with New Age beliefs. By high school, she was immersed in a culture that was characterized by tarot cards and spells. She says studies have shown that young people from broken homes commonly turn to New Age spiritualism.

Her family no longer practiced the Catholic faith, and for the most part, she was ignorant of its teachings even though she was familiar with the Blessed Virgin Mary. Furthermore, she thought of God as a supreme being whose primary preoccupation was keeping a list of her transgressions.

“The God I was introduced to was a god who had a list of your sins,” she recalled. “And I wasn’t going to believe in a god who was a dictator or a tyrant. I had a great disdain for Catholicism by this time. I wanted nothing to do with God, and the more I got into the occult, the greater my hatred for Christianity.”

Then, something happened, something she describes as “a moment of grace.”

When she was 16, her mother took the girls to Mass at St. Benedict-Our Lady of Monserrat Parish in Stamford. While they were sitting in the front pew, sunlight began pouring through the stained glass windows, illuminating the sanctuary in a yellow glow.

“I felt the light penetrating me,” she recalled. “It did something inside of me, and I started to cry. I felt what I had pushed down in my heart for so long. At that Mass, I received a very particular grace, and it made me start to feel again.”

During this time, she had been tormented by a recurring nightmare in which she was running through a city on fire.

“I was running away from something demonic, a dark being,” she said. “Then, I got stuck in an alleyway as it was pursuing me, when suddenly the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared. At that moment, I had no idea who she was, but she said to my heart, ‘God does not want this for you. Do you want to stop?’ And I responded by grabbing her hand, which was extended to me.”

The Blessed Virgin’s words penetrated her heart.

“I realized God exists and that the way I was living did not have to be my life,” she said.

She woke up weeping at 4 in the morning and knew God was real and that he had a plan for her life. She also felt a tremendous weight had been lifted off her shoulders. From that time, she began to learn more about the Blessed Virgin Mary and what it means to be a Catholic.

After graduating from Stamford High School, she enrolled in the University of Vermont’s environmental studies program. When she arrived on campus, she was introduced to the Catholic Center and began to regularly attend Mass.

At her first liturgy, she was moved by the reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans in which he said, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then, you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

When Paola returned the following week, she heard the Gospel of the Prodigal Son.

“I just don’t ever remember hearing it before,” she said. “It seemed like it was being read for me, and I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness. I’m a prodigal daughter.’”

At the university, she was also introduced to the Focus Missionaries—the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, which is an organization that brings the Gospel to students through collegiate outreach. Paola became friends with one of them named Jackie, who is now a Sister of Life.

“She mentored me and invited me to her Bible study and taught me how to pray,” she recalls. “I was overcome by the witness of the people at the Catholic Center. They just glowed they were so happy, while I only had anxiety. There was no peace in my heart, so I stuck around because I wanted what they had. At the time, I didn’t realize it was Jesus.”

She attended Mass and Eucharistic adoration and signed up for RCIA classes, and in November of her freshman year, she went to confession for the first time in a long time.

“After 11 years, I finally received Jesus in the state of grace,” she said. “Then, when we were at adoration and I started opening the Bible, I heard a voice say, ‘Look up.’ I looked up and my eyes fixated on the monstrance, and my heart was on fire. It was a consuming fire. Physically, I was enveloped by this fire. I walked out thinking that it would go away…but it didn’t.” The experience lasted 90 minutes.

“I thought God was too good to be true, and that this was going to end because I was so used to broken promises,” she said.

During counseling sessions with a priest on campus, she learned that our earthly father often becomes our image of God the Father, and in order to heal she had to revisit the woundedness and brokenness that defined her childhood.

“It was the only way to heal and invite the Lord to reveal to me where he was,” she said. “I learned that during all those years of pain, he had been there, suffering with me. Before I didn’t know that Jesus suffers with us and that when I am hurting, he is hurting.”

During a retreat, a priest prayed over her for healing and to free her from any effects caused by her involvement with the occult.

“Now, I live in the belief that I am a daughter of the King,” she says.

She later joined the Focus Missionaries and was involved in their ministry at the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut for three years. In 2015, Father Samuel Kachuba, pastor of St. Pius X in Fairfield offered her a job as a full-time youth minister.

“Just to see the fruits that have happened in the last five years and to be able to walk with people in their stories has been so beautiful,” she says. “Especially to see them enter into a place of surrender…because Jesus desires their peace and surrender.”

Now, her mission is to go out and invite people into a personal relationship with Christ so they can be saved.

“Heaven and hell are very real things, and I can’t imagine doing anything with my life other than preaching the Gospel,” she says. “It is very clear to me that I will be working with the Church for the rest of my life. The Lord is taking care of me. God has transformed my life and resurrected my heart. He has revealed his glory through my life story.”

BRIDGEPORT—The Lenten Rice Bowl program with its familiar Rice Bowl donation boxes began on Ash Wednesday, February 17, in all parishes throughout the diocese.

The CRS Rice Bowl has become  a staple on the table of Catholic families across the country during Lent. The colorful cardboard box is a tool for collecting Lenten alms—and comes with a Lenten calendar that guides families through the 40 days of Lent with activities, reflections and stories.

The Rice Bowl campaign is sponsored by Catholic Relief Services, the Church’s official relief and development agency of the United States Catholic Bishops. It  provides emergency assistance and global humanitarian aid to those in need.

“The number of those who face food insecurity, a lack of clean drinking water or adequate housing has dramatically increased because of the disruptions caused by the pandemic,” said Bishop Caggino, who serves as chairman of the board of CRS.

“During the most difficult and trying time in the lives of people around the globe, I urge people to put something aside for the poorest and most vulnerable in the world. It is a Lenten sacrifice that will bring hope and sustenance to many of our most vulnerable brothers and sisters,” Bishop Caggiano said.

Once again this year, Bishop Caggiano has asked Father Michael Boccaccio, director of Pontifical Mission Societies Office of the diocese, to coordinate this year’s Lenten Rice Bowl effort.

Father Boccaccio said Catholics in the United States have the ability to turn Lenten sacrifice into a gift. By giving something up, like that daily cup of coffee and putting the money into the Rice Bowl donation box, they can feed the hungry across the world.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our entire world. Even in the US, we have seen food lines expanding and food pantries emptying. Joblessness is historic and many families have lived with suffering and death.”

“This is an opportunity to walk in the sandals of our faith family in the developing world. Hunger, thirst, illness, homelessness, etc. are everyday realities under ‘normal’ conditions—let alone the constant threat of being imprisoned, persecuted and killed,” he said.

Father Boccaccio said donations make a difference overseas and here in the United States, with 75 percent going to CRS programming in targeted countries and the remaining 25 percent staying in the diocese to feed the hungry.

“I encourage you to participate in this most important program and invite your parishioners to do the same,” said Father Michael Boccaccio in a recent letter.

Father Boccaccio has asked people across the diocese to invite co-workers, family, friends and neighbors to check with your parish or school to find out when CRS Rice Bowls will be distributed.

Lenten Rice Bowl materials are also available and free in English and Spanish at: crsricebowl.org or crsplatodearroz.org. People can also send donations directly to the Pontifical Mission Office of the Diocese of Bridgeport, 238 Jewett Avenue in Bridgeport, 06606.

(For more information, please contact Father Boccaccio at: frboccaccio@diobpt.org or: 203.416.1447.)

TRUMBULL—Reverend Joseph F. Palacino, age 93, of Trumbull passed away peacefully on Tuesday, December 1, 2020 at Bridgeport Hospital.

Ordained at age 55, after serving his country as a veteran of two wars, working as a chemist and running owning his own market, Father Palacino is remembered for his kindness, compassion and willingness to accompany others on their journey of faith.

“Father Palacino had a long, remarkable and blessed life, and equally important he was a blessing to all those who knew him and were served by his gracious and loving ministry,” said Bishop Frank J. Caggiano. “We should all live so well, so long, so faithfully as Father Joe.”

Father Palacino is best remembered by many parishioners of St. Jerome Parish in Norwalk, where he served his final assignment. In a beautiful tribute to Father Paladino published in the December 26, 2020 parish bulletin, Father Dave Blanchfield, retired pastor of St. Jerome’s, fondly recalled Father Palacino’s courage, kindness and decency.

“Although when he came to us he was already 67, he stayed working as a full time priest for another 21 years. Our retirement age is 75, but Father Joe loved the people of St. Jerome so much that he stayed on until health issues at age 88 forced him to retire,” said Father David Blanchfield, who continues to live in residence at the parish.

“A turning point in his life was when he was drafted for the second of two wars. After already serving as a sailor during the last days of World War II, he was again drafted as a soldier in the Korean conflict. As part of God’s plan and because he was a practicing Catholic, he was assigned to guard the Catholic chaplain when he was giving what we then called ‘the last rites’ to soldiers on the battlefield. In those moments, he got to see both the power of the Sacraments as well as the difference a priest can make in people’s lives,” said Father Blanchfield.

Father Palacino was born in Bridgeport on June 14, 1927, a son of the late Luigi Palacino and Provvidenza (Allegra) Palacino. Father Palacino is survived by his loving sister, Mary Grace Corica, of Trumbull and a devoted brother, Frank Palacino and his wife Martha, of Ocala, Fla., as well as many loving nieces, nephews, great-nieces and nephews and great-great-nieces and nephews.

He was also predeceased by three brothers, Liborio, Salvatore and Angelo Palacino. Father Palacino was educated at Central High School in Bridgeport before serving honorably in both the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy. He later graduated from Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. and was proud to be a 4th degree member of the Knights of Columbus, Assembly 100 of Norwalk for many years.

Throughout his life, Father Palacino had many occupations, including owner of Palacino’s Market and he was a chemist for nearly 20 years before he embraced his calling as a priest.

Father Palacino studied Theology at Sacred Heart School of Theology in Hales Corner, Wis., before being ordained to the priesthood by the Most Reverend Walter W. Curtis at St. Augustine Cathedral, Bridgeport on December 4, 1982.

After his ordination, Father Palacino first served as parochial vicar of St. Joseph Church in Shelton. In 1987, he was transferred to St. Augustine Cathedral Parish. In 1994, Father Palacino moved to his last assignment, St. Jerome in Norwalk, where he continued to serve even after his retirement.

Father Palacino’s body was received at St. Jerome Church to lie in repose. Parishioners and friends observed social distance guidelines and greeted the family. A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated on Monday, December 7, by Bishop Caggiano. Interment with military honors followed in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Trumbull.

Memorial contributions may be made to St. Jerome Church or Father Joe Appalachian Project Scholarship c/o Notre Dame High School, 220 Jefferson St., Fairfield, CT 06825.

Editor’s Note: Fairfield County Catholic regrets the inadvertent omission of Father Palacino’s obituary in the January issue of the paper. We are proud to remember this remarkable priest servant who brought the healing of Christ to so many people in the diocese.

BRIDGEPORT—John Grosso, Director of Digital Media of the Diocese of Bridgeport, has been chosen by the Holy See’s Dicastery for Communications to be part of an international digital media program.

Grosso, a native of Stamford, was among sixteen individuals under age thirty-five from a dozen countries across the globe who were chosen to be part of the Vatican project. Since joining the diocese in 2015, he has innovated its social media program across multiple platforms and overseen the transition to live-streamed Masses and other digital initiatives during the pandemic crisis.

Recognizing the vital role of digital media, the dicastery announced “Faith Communication in the Digital World” and invited candidates to apply for the project with the opportunity to sharpen their digital media abilities and develop skills useful for work in Catholic organizations, institutions, congregations and in their local dioceses to better serve the mission of the Church.

“The diocese is very proud that John Grosso has earned this distinction and has been chosen to participate in the Vatican project,” said Bishop Frank J. Caggiano. “Through his efforts we have opened up new evangelization opportunities in the digital media, which will play an increasingly important role in the future of Church communications.”

Bishop Caggiano said that as the Catholic Church seeks to embrace new and effective ways of communication during the COVID-19 pandemic, social media and mobile applications have been utilized as key tools in communicating the Gospel message, particularly to youth and young adults.

Grosso said he was humbled to be selected for the project, and he believes that although social media can be a hostile and difficult environment, it gives the Church the ability to accompany others where they are in their life journey.

“I love the Church. I feel at home in the Church. But my whole life, I’ve watched many of my friends leave it, and I’ve been powerless to stop it. Here in my part of the United States, there is a crisis of trust in the Church, a crisis of belief in the Eucharist, and a crisis of relevancy.

When I hear Pope Francis say ‘go to the margins,’ I think of digital media. Digital media is a way to reach rich and poor, connect young and old, and help orient them towards Jesus and His Church.”

Grosso will join other young professionals in weekly virtual meetings, which include lectures by internationally renowned experts and individual coaching on specific topics related to digital communication and social media. The group will engage in individual and group work assignments throughout the project.

The 12-month program, launched digitally this month, also includes two week-long trips to Rome where the group will gather in person.

Under Grosso’s leadership, the diocese has been the architect of diocesan social media strategy with steadily growing Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Additionally, more than 50,000 people now receive the diocesan email newsletter, which includes videos from the Bishop and latest news updates. Grosso also created the “DOB Social” website to connect all parishes, schools and organizations to diocesan social media.

Based on his success in Bridgeport, he has been increasingly invited by dioceses across the United States via Zoom meetings and personal appearances to share his knowledge of social media and best practices.

Brief Bio: In addition to his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Boston College, John earned a Masters Degree in Corporate Communications and Public Relations at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. He graduated at the top of his class in August, 2017 with a 4.0 GPA.

Previously, he served as the diocesan coordinator for 2016 World Youth Day in which using social media he organized and formed a group of 240 people to Poland for ten days. John serves on the Advisory Board of two organizations close to his heart: the Murphy Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Fairfield University, and Sister to Sister: All Africa Conference.

John recently married Nicole Perone on April 27th, 2019, in a Mass celebrated by Bishop Frank Caggiano. They are members of St. Aloysius Parish in New Canaan, where they were married.