Hired: Lauren Mazzari is the new head of school at St. Patrick School, Norfolk. Her nearly 30 years of experience includes the last five years as head of upper school at St. Luke’s School in New York. She holds a master’s degree in educational administration and certificates of eligibility for principal and supervisor from Caldwell University, a teaching certification from Montclair State University and a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University.
Dollars help young scholars: The Social Ministry Committee from St. Jude, Mineral, and Immaculate Conception, Bumpass, recently presented Thomas Jefferson Elementary School a check in the amount of $1,275. Donations were collected in the annual school “supply” drive collection.
Now, they can picnic: It might not have been a picnic while they were doing the hard work, but thanks to the Knights of Columbus and members of Catholic Campus Ministry at Hampden-Sydney College, parishioners at Sacred Heart, Mehrrin, and others in the Central Virginia Cluster can picnic in their repaired and upgraded picnic pavilion. The Knights and CCM students did the work on Saturday, Sept. 10.
Deeply planted: Although it was written in 2015, parishioners at Immaculate Conception, Hampton, continue to hear and practice what Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical “Laudato Si’.” They recently gathered for their annual tree planting project, which is tied to the parish’s commitment to create as many carbon offset locations as possible. For every 1,000 trees the parish has purchased — 15,000 to date for farmers in Kenya — the parish plants a tree on its own property as an act of solidarity and support, especially with people struggling to improve the land and make a living.
Speaking of support for those who struggle… The Church of the Redeemer Knights of Columbus in Mechanicsville, in cooperation with Hanover Evangelical Friends Church and the Central Virginia Food Bank Feed More program, is in its 20th year of collecting and distributing food to those in need. They, too, have taken to heart Pope Francis’ words from a 2019 address to the European Federation of Food Banks: “Waste reveals an indifference toward things and toward those who go without. To throw food away means to throw people away.”