BRONX, N.Y. — Holy Cross celebrated its 85th anniversary with a banquet on Oct. 20 at Villa Barone Manor in the Bronx. It was a fitting culmination to the many anniversary events that were held this year including a street fair, parish picnic, flea market, song-and-praise-concert and anniversary Mass.
More than 370 parishioners attended the celebration including several former parishioners who returned specifically for this event. After the welcome, Brennan Connelly, who himself recently celebrated a milestone — his golden jubilee in Sept. — opened with a prayer.
A few familiar friar faces from our past were also present including Michael Tyson, a former pastor of Holy Cross, Marty Bednar, who was instrumental in the parish’s youth ministry program,and Kevin Cronin who wasborn and baptized in Holy Cross Parish.
Deacon Jaime Bello served as the emcee for the evening. During the banquet we honored three members of the Holy Cross family — Noel Gonzalez, Sr. Catherine Moran and Thaddeus Sapio — for outstanding service to our community. Noel, an affiliate of HNP, has been a permanent fixture at Holy Cross for over 50 years. Not only does he help keep our church clean and running smoothly, Noel has also faithfully overseen the parish’s homeless shelter for 25 years.
We honored Sr. Catherine for her 23 years as the Holy Cross director of religious education. Sr. Catherine retired from that position last year and last month we dedicated our religious education center as the Sr. Catherine Moran Religious Education Center.
Thaddeus has served at Holy Cross for more than 13 years. He has touched the lives of many people in our parish community especially through his loving care for the sick and grieving. Each honoree was presented with a crystal award showing an engraved image of our church.
Later in the evening, we were entertained with a dance routine by Anthony Rodriguez and the Santa Luz Dancers. Anthony, a professional dancer, is the son of our deacon and Mrs. Juan Rodriguez. Throughout the evening, guests were entertained by a slide show highlighting our 85 years. During the evening, we remembered many of the friars and sisters who served at Holy Cross over the years. The evening was also filled with food, music, dancing and much celebrating.
Each guest was presented with a commemorative anniversary journal that containing a parish history, well-wishes from parishioners and other churches, and advertisements from our sponsors. We are grateful to the many Holy Name Province ministries that contributed to the journal.
Many photos from the anniversary banquet are available on the parish Web site. There is also a link to the NY Daily News story of Oct. 29 where the parish was featured in its “Faith in the City “section