The Diocese of Camden boasts parishes named for saints Joseph, Mary and Thomas More, among others, all well-known Catholic monikers. However, no children of any of these parish patrons have ever been spotted at their namesake church, at least in South Jersey.
That is until St. Gianna Parish in Northfield hosted the daughter of their patroness this summer.
St. Gianna Beretta Molla, born in 1922, was an Italian physician and mother of four. She died in 1962 soon after the birth of her last child, Gianna Emanuela Molla. St. Gianna, canonized in 2004, was recognized for her heroic virtue, refusing to abort her unborn child despite the threat to her own health. That child grew up to become a gerontologist.
St. Gianna, a patroness of the pro-life cause, is just one of both modern and unusual saints’ names that now adorn many of the parishes of the Camden Diocese. In the process of consolidating parishes, new patrons were affixed to new parishes. Their names, chosen in most cases by popular vote, indicate how the pantheon of saint parish patrons in the diocese has been enlarged both via ethnic diversity and through inclusion of modern heroes of the faith, many of whom were canonized by the now Blessed Pope John Paul II.
Some, such as Our Lady of Guadalupe in Lindenwold, illustrate the growing presence of Latino Catholics in South Jersey, with the newly-formed parish adopting the name of the Mexican virgin who appeared in 1531 to Juan Diego, a young Native American man. A devotion developed at that site which cemented the presence of Mary in the New World as the patroness of the Americas. If the choice of parish patrons is any indication, Marian devotion remains strong: 10 of the 38 new parish titles have names associated with the Blessed Mother.
“Devotion to Mary is part of the church of our Camden Diocese,” says Immaculate Heart of Mary Sister Antoine Lawlor, director of pastoral priorities for the diocese, who worked with newly-formed parishes in the naming process that included a local vote with eventual approval by the diocese.
Other parishes have looked to saints, and those recently beatified, whose memory is still alive in the hearts and minds of most Catholics (for example, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Parish in Collingswood).
Some parishes selected saints who have an organic connection to their new communities.
For example, St. Damien of Molokai, the 19th-century Belgian priest who ministered to lepers on the beaches of Hawaii, is the moniker for the Ocean City parish that resulted after the merger of three churches there. Damien became known throughout the world for his work. He was canonized in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI. The selection of St. Damien as patron was hailed in an article this year in the Hawaii Catholic Herald, the newspaper for the Archdiocese of Honolulu.
Another new seaside parish, this one in Avalon, adopted St. Brendan the Navigator, the Irish monk said to have traveled much of the world in the sixth century. Some even claim he was the first explorer to reach the Americas centuries before Columbus.
When St. Bartholomew’s and St. Joan of Arc parishes in Camden merged, parishioners seeking a patron looked to incorporate the virtues associated with the African American and Latino presence in the newly-merged church. The parish selected St. Josephine Bakhita, an African saint (1869-1947).
St. Josephine was a native of the Darfur region of what is now the new nation of South Sudan. Kidnapped and sold into slavery, she endured brutality from a series of masters until one, the Italian consul in Khartoum, brought her to Europe.
There, after successfully winning her freedom in an Italian court, she entered the community of the Canossian Sisters in 1893. She spent most of her life in the northern Italian town of Schio, where she developed a reputation for sanctity, gentleness, and friendliness. There she was able to publish her memoirs, including accounts of the horrors of her slavery and the joy she found through baptism and Christian spirituality. She was canonized by John Paul II in 2000, and is the patroness of Sudan as well an exemplar of overcoming suffering and oppression.
The process of parish names, says Sister Antoine, “was a fun part of the job for me.” She says the process allowed the newly-formed communities to look back upon their past and reflect upon what kind of future they desired.
The new parish names, she says, are a sign of “a new time, a fresh time, something that helps us look in a hopeful way to the Church of South Jersey that we are building.”
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