Bishop McManus makes fourth Jubilee pilgrimage – to St. Matthew Church, Southborough

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

SOUTHBOROUGH – “It’s amazing,” Dee Kerner says of her parish, St. Matthew, which is welcoming pilgrims this Jubilee Year.

What is amazing?

“Father Flynn.”

Father James B. Flynn, 87, has been pastor there for nearly 32 years.

“Father Flynn is a young person’s magnet,” she said.Processing into the church for Sunday’s vespers service are parishioner Loraine Bradley; Father James B. Flynn, pastor; Msgr. Francis D. Kelly, homilist; Bishop McManus, and Father Alfredo R. Porras, director of the Office for Divine Worship, above.

“He remembers everything about everyone in this parish,” interjected Margo Boland. Every time he sees her, he recalls the essay she wrote as a high school senior in 2017 for the college scholarship she received from the parish, she said.

Mrs. Kerner said she herself has never been so involved in a church where she wanted to be involved; she’s taught religious education and done youth ministry at St. Matthew’s and is now a eucharistic minister.

When Bishop McManus exited the church after celebrating vespers (evening prayer) for his Jubilee Year pilgrimage there, Mrs. Kerner told him, “Father Flynn was the biggest instrument,” encouraging youth and adult leaders from the parish who helped with rebuilding in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“He was behind us; he was there in spirit,” she told The Catholic Free Press. She said they went there annually for 15 years.

“It’s such a special place, pilgrimage aside,” Christian Mucha said of his parish, where he played the organ for vespers, as he does for the 6 p.m. Sunday Masses. “A lot of that has to do with Father Flynn being here for over 30 years and building a multi-generational community, where he’s baptized people he’s later married.”

Mr. Mucha’s mother, Paula Mucha, is a secretary there, and his uncle Richard Cunningham is pastoral associate.

“It’s amazing,” Father Flynn said of the interest in this pilgrimage church. “People are coming during the day, wanting to get the stamp,” a rubber stamp they can apply to their “Jubilee 2025 Pilgrim’s Guide,” like a passport. “If I’m not busy, I’ll come up and talk to them.”

But it helps if people make an appointment ahead of time. If groups do that, he will offer them a prayer service and tour and tell them about the parish’s history, he said. So far this Jubilee Year, three groups – two from different parishes – have come.

Among special features of the church are its stained glass windows.

Father Pasquale D. Biscardi, a former pastor, added windows of the sacraments during a major renovation he oversaw in 1970, Father Flynn said. He said one shows Bishop Bernard J. Flanagan, then Worcester’s bishop, confirming teenagers, and another shows Jesus giving first Communion to two children from the parish.

Father Flynn said that when he himself oversaw the 2017-2018 renovation and expansion of the church, he added more stained-glass windows.

One honors his aunt Sister Mary Berchmans Flynn, a Sister of St. Joseph who took her final vows on her deathbed, having contracted the Spanish flu while caring for patients infected with it, he said. Part of the religious name given her when she took temporary vows was for St. John Berchmans, a Jesuit seminarian who died as a young man in the 1600s. The window depicts him and Maria Goretti, another saint who died young, both patrons of young people. Father Flynn calls it “the teenagers window.”

Another window depicts St. Anne, commemorating the relationship between St. Anne and St. Matthew parishes in town.

Father Flynn said he also added a window of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, to honor teachers. He himself has a doctorate in the history and philosophy of education. He worked in education different places, including as headmaster of Notre Dame Prep School and St. Bernard Central Catholic High School, both in Fitchburg. He was appointed to the faculty of Holy Name Central Catholic High School in Worcester in 1990 and was the senior guidance counselor until 2020.

The vespers service Sunday triggered a new idea in Father Flynn.

“I was so impressed with the response,” he said , adding that he is considering offering such a service regularly.

Msgr. Francis D. Kelly, a retired priest of the diocese, gave the homily at Sunday’s service, as he has for some of the bishop’s visits to other pilgrim churches. But this time, he had other highlights to add to his information about Jubilee Years.

After having mothers and mothers-to-be stand for a Mother’s Day blessing, Msgr. Kelly said, “This week has been an extraordinary one. … Imagine, the 267th direct successor of Peter the Apostle,” to whom Jesus gave the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Msgr. Kelly marveled that “our new pope” (Pope Leo XIV, elected May 8) is the first American pope, having been born in the United States, and also served humbly in Peru.

Msgr. Kelly recalled Jesus’ words to Peter, “Feed my sheep,” and a picture he saw of Pope Leo climbing a mountain with food and medicine for a village. That’s the kind of shepherd we have, he said.

“Let our vespers service … be a special prayer for him, so that he may serve the Church for many years,” Msgr. Kelly said.

He noted that the service fell within the Easter Season, a special time of joy, thanksgiving and hope; Jesus’ death and resurrection gives us reason for hope.

St. Matthew Parish history tells of ‘bold’ ecumenism, expansion

“This church has been here since 1877,” Msgr. Francis D. Kelly, the homilist, said Sunday, as Bishop McManus made his pilgrimage to St. Matthew Church, one of the diocese’s Jubilee Year pilgrim sites.

“But, thanks to Father Flynn, he has supervised its expansion, doubling its size,” Msgr. Kelly, a retired priest of the diocese, said of the church building. Attendees applauded the pastor, Father James B. Flynn.

The church building in the Cordaville section of Southborough served what was a mission, a parish, a mission again and a parish again.

“The first Mass said in Cordaville was said at Wilson’s Hall, which could be hired for the purpose,” Father John J. McCoy wrote in his “History of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Springfield,” published in 1900. “This Mass was said in 1860 by Rev. Patrick Cuddihy. He said Mass at intervals thenceforward until 1864, when Father Barry came.”

A history in St. Matthew’s Feb. 25, 2018 “Blessing of Renovation & Expansion” booklet, says: “In 1870 when the Springfield diocese was founded, the Cordaville/Southville sector of Southborough was serviced as a Catholic mission from a base in Milford.” Then it became a mission of the Westborough parish.

Father Flynn said Wilson’s Hall is the upstairs of what is now Cordaville Market. He told The Catholic Free Press that a plaque explaining this is to be put up at the store this fall.

The hall was named for Herbert Wilson, owner and operator of the local mill property, who in 1872 deeded a half-acre of land to be used as a Catholic church site, Father Flynn said. He said Irish and Italian Catholics built St. Matthew Church after working in the mills all day.

The church was completed in 1877 under Father Cornelius Cronin. The parish history says St. Matthew’s got a permanent pastor when Father John F. Redican was appointed in 1886 and the mission became a parish.

Father Redican led the people of Southborough Center and Fayville in building St. Anne’s Church in town, a mission of St. Matthew Parish. He served both churches.

During the pastorate of Father William T. Finneran (1893-1902), a new parish residence was built adjoining St. Anne’s Church, and the parish headquarters moved. St. Anne’s became the parish, and St. Matthew’s its mission.

After the mills closed, people moved away, Father Flynn explained.

“They left St. Matthew’s open as a mission church,” he said. “They had a 9 o’clock Mass” Sundays that drew 50 families. For “all of the other sacraments they had to go to St. Anne’s.” Mary Aikens, an early parishioner, and relatives of other early parishioners, told him this, he said.

St. Matthew’s remained a mission until 1956.  

On Aug. 18, 1956 St. Matthew’s was established as a new parish in the Diocese of Worcester (which had been separated from the Springfield diocese in 1950). Father John J. Bakanas was appointed administrator. A year later, Father Eugene Archey was appointed the first pastor of the new Cordaville/Southville Catholic community, the parish history says.

Under Father Pasquale D. Biscardi, pastor in 1970s, the parish made some unusual ecumenical moves. A March 6, 1970 Catholic Free Press article says, “The parish council of St. Matthew’s Church … is believed to be unique among councils in the Worcester diocese in that it has a Protestant member” – Mrs. Paul E. Brekfa, a trustee of the First United Methodist Church of Framingham, and ecumenism chairwoman of St. Matthew’s council. Her husband was a communicant at St. Matthew’s.

“It was a bold step, but one we felt could bring about faster results in our ecumenical efforts,” Raymond Leahy, the council’s liturgy chairman, was quoted as saying.

Then Worcester’s bishop, Bishop Bernard J. Flanagan, a member of the American Catholic Bishops’ Commission on Ecumenism and Interreligious Affairs, and Bishop John M. Burgess, of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, participated in a “conjoint confirmation” at St. Matthew’s. A May 7, 1971 Catholic Free Press article says St. Matthew’s parishioners and members of St. Mark’s Episcopal parish received the sacrament of confirmation in separate ceremonies.

“While there was no crossing of ecclesiastical lines during the service, it was believed to have marked the first time that bishops and clergy of the Catholic and Episcopal Churches had participated in such a sacramental rite,” the article said.

The town’s two Catholic parishes also collaborated with each other. In 1992 they started a new venture with their summer religious education programs. Members of both parishes were allowed to attend or teach at either session – one at St. Matthew’s, one at St. Anne’s, says a July 17, 1992 Catholic Free Press article. A July 4, 1997 article tells how they were still collaborating, but each parish offered two sessions that year. Father Flynn said now each parish has its own program, no longer in the summer.

He said when he became pastor in 1993, St. Matthew’s had about 250 families, but very few attended Mass.

When people started moving into town, “we were the beneficiaries of that” – the number of parishioners grew, he said. “Now it’s stopped, because it’s so expensive” to live in Southborough. But, he said, the parish now has 900 registered families, 650 of which are active.

Because of the growth, Father Flynn said, he oversaw the building of the parish center to supplement the hall in the church basement.

When he blessed the new center in 1999, a year after the fundraising drive opened, parishioners were credited with making it possible – by sharing their time, talent and treasure.

Later Father Flynn oversaw the expansion of the church building to nearly double its size in 2018 and the $1.1 million cost was paid-for, construction having been done in less than a year.