Category: News

La Huerta, Parañaque — (Kring Loquias/ Parish Formation Department) His Excellency Most Rev. Jesse E. Mercado closed the Year of the Eucharist and the Family, and launched the Year of the Parish as Communion of Communities in the annual Diocesan Day held last December 10, at the St. Andrew’s School Gymnasium. The event aimed to gather all parishes and to take a look at how the diocese celebrated the Year of the Eucharist and the Family, which is the fifth year in the Decade of New Evangelization declared to prepare the diocese for the fifth centenary of the first Eucharistic Celebration and the first Baptism in the Philippines in 2021. It also aimed to orient the parishes on next year’s theme, “The Parish as a Communion of Communities,” particularly on what it should mean to the local church.

Pastoral Exhortation of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines to open the Year 2017 as the Year of Parishes, Communion of Communities

BELOVED people of God:

We welcome the year 2017 in our “novena-years” of preparation for the grateful celebration in 2021 of the five hundredth anniversary of the first coming and first receiving among our people of the Gospel of Christ Jesus and of His holy Church.

That forthcoming 2021 celebration, recalling the first Mass and first baptisms in our shores, should be a new and joyous explosion in our lives of faith, hope and love throughout our country. Surely such will be our response to the free and gracious gift from the heavenly Father which made the year 1521, for us Christians first of all, a memorable and incredibly significant “new beginning” in our history.

During the Installation Mass held at the St. Peregrine Laziosi Diocesan Shrine officiated by the Bishop of the Diocese of Paranaque – Most Rev Bishop Jesse Mercado, DD, Fr. Joel Ma. Morata, OSM professed his faith and publicly expressed his fidelity and obedience to the Diocesan Bishop. Bishop Mercado then handed him the keys to the tabernacle symbolizing his acceptance of the responsibilities as the new parish priest of the St. Peregrine Laziosi Parish.