Ellexa Menezes, an 8th-grader from Trinity Catholic Academy in Southbridge, shows her sister, Ava, her project about hydroponics at the Worcester Diocesan Science Fair Thursday at Assumption College.

As Partners in Charity sits less than $1 million from its goal, the appeal director is most encouraged by the number of new donors this year.
“We have received 876 new gifts and pledges from individuals who have never previously supported the annual appeal. This group alone has given a total of $102,000,” according to Michael Gillespie, director of the Office of Stewardship and Development. So far, about 15,000 people have donated.
“It is quite evident that our pastors and lay volunteers are recruiting and inviting new individual donors,” he said.

WORCESTER – The results of a study being conducted on Catholic schools in the southern part of the diocese will be released next month, said Superintendent Delma Josephson.
She said the study will provide a clear view of “our current reality” to assist in future planning.
Findings from schools in the greater Worcester area, as well as the northern part of the diocese, will be available in the fall, she said.
The study is being done by the Wisconsin-based Meitler Consultants Inc., a firm that specializes in collecting and analyzing data from Catholic parishes and school systems.

WORCESTER – Amanda Bollacker came to her graduation ceremony hoping to be inspired by Boston FBI leader Richard DesLauriers. She wasn’t disappointed.
“I enjoyed how he talked about the values of the college and his accomplishments here,” the Assumption College graduate said, standing in the rain with her classmates and family members outside the Plourde Recreation Center following the May 11 ceremony.
“It showed how the values here will bring us to great places if we follow them,” Bollacker said.

Our Lady of Czestochowa Parish welcomed home its native son Archbishop Michael W. Banach Sunday. Joy permeated the proceedings from the formal greetings at the beginning, to the children in traditional Polish dress presenting him with gifts at its conclusion. The parish which nurtured his vocation to the priesthood added to the homecoming with prayers and hymns sung by the Polish choir in its native tongue.
Archbishop Banach is home for a short time before he travels across the world to take up his new mission for the Church as apostolic nuncio to Papua New Guinea. There he will be the representative of Pope Francis.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Listen to the Holy Spirit because he is giving people the good news that God loves them and can renew, purify and transform their lives, Pope Francis said.
The Holy Spirit is the living water that “quenches the thirst in our lives because he tells us that we are loved by God as his children, that we can love God as his children and with his grace we can live as children of God, like Jesus,” the pope said May 8 at his weekly general audience.
Speaking to more than 80,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis continued his audience talks about the affirmations of faith in the creed, focusing on the Holy Spirit.

BERLIN – Olivia Willis, a sixth-grader from St. Joseph the Good Provider Parish, didn’t know what to expect.
She was headed for Haiti to meet Sterline Michel, a fifth-grader sponsored in her name through the Worcester Diocese’s Haitian Apostolate.
She had 13 boxes of supplies and 39 backpacks she’d collected to give Sterline’s schoolmates and school, St. Anne’s in Chardonnieres, and the dispensary operated by the Sisters of St. Anne who staff the school.
Olivia encountered the unexpected – and left expectations behind her – on the April 10-17 trip.

Many people have met the young men from Colombia serving at different parishes throughout the diocese. Only a few, though, have gotten to know their mothers.
Jean Lawler of Leominster is one who has. She’s had an opportunity to spend time with several of the Colombian priests, and their extended families.
Last June she traveled to Colombia for the first Mass of newly ordained Father Hugo Cano, offered at his home parish, in a town outside Medellin. While there, she met his mother and dozens of his relatives.

Father Richard P. Hokanson Jr., 64, a priest of the Diocese of Charlotte, N.C., and formerly a Worcester Diocesan priest, died April 29 at his home in Ocean Isle Beach after a brief illness.
A funeral Mass was to be held at 10 a.m. Friday in Our Lady of the Rosary Church, 7 Church St., Spencer.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Israeli President Shimon Peres officially invited Pope Francis to Israel, telling the pope “the sooner you visit the better, as in these days a new opportunity is being created for peace, and your arrival could contribute significantly to increasing the trust and belief in peace.”