Tag Archives: Events

Upcoming Presentation at The Historical Society of Frankford

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Save the Date! You are cordially invited and most welcome to the first event at The Historical Society of Frankford. Join us on Tuesday, September 10, 7:30 PM at 1507 Orthodox St., parking on street and usually in the lot of Frankford Friends School! Light refreshments follow!
 
The first topic of the new year sheds light on “The Church Street Quarries (Deni Playground)” presented by John Hewitt and Bob Smiley! John Hewitt is a graduate of St. Joachim Catholic School and local historian and Bob Smiley is a prominent member of Keep the Faith in Frankford and the editor of “The Frankford Gazette”. 
 
Also, meet and greet the members of “The Friends of St. Joachim Cemetery”! Pat Smiley, President and Executive Director of Keep the Faith in Frankford and Holy Innocents Parish will introduce their new effort to clean up, restore and maintain the St. Joachim Cemetery located behind the Church at Griscom and Church Streets. Joseph Taylor, Co-ordinator of “The Friends of St. Joachim Cemetery” will detail our project and upcoming events! 
This is sure to be an exciting evening! Hope to see you there!!

Friends Bring New Life to St. Joachim Cemetery!

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A very special day! Keep the Faith in Frankford launched the first project of more to come for The Friends of St. Joachim Cemetery. Joe Taylor co-ordinates this effort and he approaches it like many things he’s done before – with a list of tasks. A holdover from his Navy days perhaps but Joe has been invaluable with his lists of to-do’s and sets of plans for any project we’ve done!

Joe, your skill helped you and the Friends to be so successful today! Well done and we owe you, Maureen Taylor, and all who helped today our thanks!

Joe and Maureen Taylor are the “perfect people” to head this effort. Before the Capuchin Franciscans arrived, Keep the Faith in Frankford had a committee we called, “St. Joachim Sanitation Saints”. We would periodically clean Griscom St. along the rectory and cemetery and Church St. in front of the Church. Before this year’s Annual Feast Day Mass, Bob Smiley and I saw Joe and Maureen at their house and they mentioned being down around Church earlier that day. I asked, “What were you doing there?” and was told, they were cleaning up in preparation for Mass. Good people!

It was a hot Saturday morning in Philly yesterday – a heat alert was in effect by mid-afternoon, yet all who came out in the morning could have stayed home, done other things or nothing at all, but they wanted to help clean up the final resting place for people they might have known or for people that they didn’t know at all. As we continue this effort, we do want you to get to know the stories of the people who are buried here. These are the people who “kept the faith” for us for over 175 years.

Gina Christian, Senior Content Producer and Host of InsideCatholicPhilly.com podcast, came by, today, too! Thank you, Gina, for getting the word out there for us on Catholic Philly! Continued blessings and much success in your efforts!

Many thanks, Fr. Tom Higgins, Pastor, Holy Innocents Parish, for approving this project and for supporting it with your hard work, today, too. Father has always been supportive of our programs to honor those Veterans who are buried in our cemetery. To you, Father, Joe and Maureen Taylor, Brian McCloskey, Tom McAvoy, Julia, Lorenzo and Sal Roldan and Sean Brassil, a hearty and grateful “Thank You” for your efforts. May God continue to bless you for your generosity of time and talent!

To those who were not able to come today, we thank you for your donations of money and wanting to help, and to keep informed, you can find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/thefriendsofstjoachimcemetery/ and on the web at https://keepthefaithinfrankford.org/the-friends-of-st-joachim-cemetery/

Here’s some of what The Friends of St. Joachim Cemetery were able to accomplish today! See you next time!

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXiwfTSunrE[/embedyt]

 

 

Our Annual Feast Day Mass to Honor Sts. Joachim and Ann, July 27, 2019, St. Joachim Church, Frankford

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We are so happy that our Annual Feast Day Mass was such a special one! Over 80 people attended our 6th Annual Feast Day Mass on Saturday, July 27, 2019, 4 PM at St. Joachim Church in Frankford. We merged with Holy Innocents Parish on July 1, 2013. Keep the Faith in Frankford was established just for this purpose – to keep the faith in Frankford. Mater Dolorosa, St. Joachim and St. Joan of Arc all merged into Holy Innocents on that day. Earlier, Ascension parishioners had merged as well.

When we filed our appeal, little did we know that 3 1/2 years later, the Capuchin Franciscans would purchase our former Convent for the Padre Pio Friary and then reopen St. Joachim to house the Padre Pio Prayer Center. We started, because of Father Steve, praying to Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, at the end of every Mass during the Area Pastoral Planning Process. Once it was decided we would merge, within a year or two, Keep the Faith in Frankford was opening its weekly meetings with the same prayer! Someone heard our prayer!! 🙂

The Capuchin Franciscans of the St. Augustine Province arrived in July, 2016 and St. Joachim Church continues to serve Frankford and beyond today! God has been very good to us! This is most unusual for one of our Churches to be re-opened. Below is the schedule that was first posted!

Many people are sustanon 350 for sale owed thanks for their contributions and participation in our celebration this past Saturday. Keep the Faith in Frankford organizes, plans, provides the program and refreshment for these yearly Feast Day Masses. We would like to thank Father Thomas Higgins, Pastor, Holy Innocents Parish, for both his help, support and being our yearly celebrant! I just met Brother Alex Hostoffer, who, along with Brother Andrew McCarty, supervises and directs the efforts of the Padre Pio Prayer Center. PPPC is in very good hands. Thank you, both, for all of your help in preparing the Church for this Mass and our refreshments after. Brother Kip Ledger is the Guardian of the Friary and we thank you, Brother Kip and the Postulants for setting up and cleaning up for us. Every year, we are “wowed” with the caliber of the young men who are interested in following the way of St. Francis. There are already powerful women in the Church – we need only look at Sr. Kathleen Anderson, SSJ, Pastoral Minister, HI, Sr. Catherine Glackin, IHM, Pastoral Care, HI, and Sr. Linda Lukiewski, SSJ, for your presence and support! We are indeed very blessed! Please be assured of all of our prayers for each one of you in your ministries.

A Mass doesn’t really happen without the laity in the pews. To all of you who attended and were able to brave the heat, God bless you, we count on you! To our Lectors, Marco Osuna, Helen Greenberg and Maureen Taylor, thank you! To those who brought up our gifts – Jack Pfiel, Sabina Baker-Tegeder, Mary and Preston Moretz, and Joe Taylor, thank you! To our ushers, Bill McGeehan, Sr., Bob Smiley and Joe Taylor, thank you so much! We owe many, many thanks to our superb and St. Joachim favorite Cantor, John McCabe. John selected our beautiful and inspiring music! Well done, John! And to my very good friend, Sr. Rita Keller, IHM,who stepped in to help us as organist when we really needed her, many thanks! Your musical talent is a gift – some of the music Sister hadn’t seen until she arrived from Virginia!!

For those of you unable to attend or to just experience the joy of this day, again, please take a look at the following video! Every one of these faces in this video is special to us! Each of you showed we could really be “One With the Lord”!!! Next year is 2020! 🙂

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WAH9PvqMwQ[/embedyt]

 

 

Keep the Faith in Frankford Steps Into History!

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Our Step Into History Tours #1 and #2 were a success. Those who attended agreed that it was informative, enlightening and a good way to spend some time on a Sunday afternoon.

Our next Step Into History Tour #3 takes place on Sunday, June 5. We will be touring the sites of former mills, mansions that the owners lived in and we hope to get inside some of these magnificient edifices for a peek.

As always, each tour begins at the Grand Army of the Republic Museum for a personalized tour given by Dr. Andy Waskie. Then we visit the sites in Frankford for that particular day. We finish at The Historical Society of Frankford for a wrap-up and light refreshments.

We hope you join us! Step Into History Tours Flyer