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St. John the Baptist and St. Joseph parishes took the opportunity to actively engage in faith outreach amid the pandemic. (photo: Andrea Alberti/St. John the Baptist and St. Joseph Parish Collaborative)

A parish collaborative known for its welcome and faithful Catholic teaching transformed its whole future with a movement to put Jesus Christ first.

By Peter Jesserer Smith, EWTN News, March 25, 2021

Peter Jesserer Smith Peter Jesserer Smith is a staff reporter for the National Catholic Register. He covered Pope Francis’s historic visit to the United States in 2015, and to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in 2014. …

Peter Jesserer SmithQUINCY, Mass. — With 10 to 36 months of savings left — and no lifelines available from the Archdiocese of Boston — the St. John the Baptist-St. Joseph parish collaborative in Quincy needed a miracle when the pandemic shut it down in March 2020.

“We started talking and praying because this was critical,” Father Matthew Williams, the pastor, told the Register. The obvious choices presented themselves: Lay off staff, cut programs, do a parish fundraising appeal, or have an increased offertory campaign.

“It has to be a movement,” Father Williams explained. The Church in Europe, he knew, is most alive in its movements, such as Focolare or Communion and Liberation, and he wanted “something that’s going to rally people into the next generation.” ….

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