YOUNGSVILLE — The Rev. Michael Russo, pastor of St. Anne Catholic Church in Youngsville, has celebrated his personal Italian heritage for 32 years by sharing the custom of the St. Joseph Altar wherever he’s been known as as a priest. It’s a part of the Solemnity of the Feast of St. Joseph, celebrated yearly on March 19.
Russo will rejoice the event Friday, too, when his parishioners will collect first for 8:30 a.m. Mass after which proceed to the church corridor, the place they’ll admire this 12 months’s St. Joseph Altar and an extra show that traces the Russo household again to Corleone, Sicily, the place his ancestors lived. As a younger priest, learning in Italy, he celebrated Mass within the church the place his ancestors worshiped and the place his nice grandparents married.
“That is my thirty second altar,” Russo mentioned, which incorporates these at pastoral stops in Rayne, Opelousas, Franklin, Lafayette and Youngsville over the course of his priesthood. He has launched the follow at some church buildings the place parishioners, many Cajun, weren’t acquainted with the custom.
Russo is a local of Patterson in St. Mary Parish, the place the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19 was of nice significance to the native Italian-American inhabitants. Sicilians dealing with hunger within the Center Ages prayed to St. Joseph for assist, and credit score him with their survival. In gratitude, the Catholics provide St. Joseph Tables or Altars and share a bounty of meals.
There will likely be no meal this 12 months — no conventional “Tupa Tupa” dinners — due to security issues associated to the pandemic. However Russo mentioned meals will likely be displayed and St. Joseph honored. On Thursday, the altar included tiers representing the Holy Trinity, conventional Italian desserts, breads in symbolic shapes, and fava beans, the legumes credited with staving off hunger. There have been shamrocks and Easter bunnies, and meals on either side had been balanced with matching meals on the opposite, which symbolizes steadiness on the world’s creation, Russo mentioned.
The Feast of St. Joseph falls close to the top of the Diocese of Lafayette’s Yr of St. Joseph, which opened Aug. 16 and can conclude with the Feast of St. Joseph the Employee on Could 1. It’s being held to mark the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Pope Pius IX declaring St. Joseph patron of the common church.
“Throughout this 12 months, we as a diocese will meditate on St. Joseph’s life, befriend him in prayer and search his safety,” the diocese mentioned. Most Rev. Douglas Deshotel, bishop of Lafayette, will rejoice Mass at 9 a.m. Friday at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Patterson, the place Russo grew up, and on the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Lafayette at 5:30.
Blue Rolfes, diocesan spokesperson, mentioned the yearlong schedule of occasions deliberate for the celebration has been compressed due to Gov. John Bel Edwards’ “stay-at-home” mandates tied to COVID-19. Nonetheless, the 122 church parishes within the diocese — they embrace 13 named for St. Joseph — have marked the yearlong celebration in numerous methods.
Rolfes mentioned as a result of the Feast of St. Joseph falls this 12 months on a Friday throughout Lent, Catholic Church regulation in Canon 1251 frees Catholics on that day from abstaining from meat or different meals, corresponding to a meals {that a} explicit Catholic could have abstained from throughout the remainder of Lent.
