Father Rick Phipps and Ann Hardy, principal, thanked everyone for their help in preparing for the blessing.
Christopher Green (above) reads a display about Sister Bowman set up in the school.
Sherman Nunn Abdur-Razzaq of the Mississippi Afrocentrik Dance and Drum Ensemble performs during the ceremony.
Students spell out Sister Thea Bowman as Yolanda Henderson, sixth-grade teacher, holds up a photo of Sister Bowman during the blessing ceremony for the Sister Thea Bowman Catholic School at Jackson Christ the King Church on Sunday, Oct. 29.
Sister Pat Godri named 'Hidden Hero' EDITOR'S NOTE: Sister Pat Godri, SC, resident pastoral minister of Carthage St. Anne Parish, recently was named a “Hidden Hero” by the Catholic Church Extension Society. A feature about Sister Godri appeared on the society's website www.catholicextension.org.
CARTHAGE — Sister Pat Godri, SC, sees her role at St. Anne Parish as a “very real way to live the Gospel.”
She runs a food pantry stocked by the St. Francis Parish in Madison. It's open every day, whenever the need arises — unlike another area food pantry that is open only one day a week. “Hunger does not take a holiday,” Sister Godri said. “We tell people what we have, and then go back and get those things for them.”
A grant from Catholic Extension allowed the parish to obtain this property in a wooded, tucked-away rural area, where numbing poverty is a fact of life among the struggling residents.
The church opened a day care center in the wake of a tragic accident a while back in which a child choked to death while his mother was working at a chicken processing plant.
Determined, Sister Godri said, “We cannot let this happen again.”
Children are truly multi-cultural, from Argentina, Guatemala, Vietnam, America (Native American Choctaw, African American, and Caucasian), and Mexico. The school can only accept 20 children now. On the hallway of the day care center, Sister Godri has painted an underwater scene that stretches on for more than 12 feet. Plastic fish are pressed into the underwater scene, some of them in realistic “schooling” formation.
“I remind the children that God is as close to us as water is to the fish,” Sister Godri said.
Sister also runs a thrift store at St. Anne’s, with big trucks full of donated clothing arriving every month from generous folks in the Diocese of Paterson. Each piece of kid's clothing is 10-cents. All adult clothing items are 25-cents each. The thrift store is open on weekends and, as is Sister Godri's inclination, “Any time to meet emergency needs.” (For information about how you can help Sister Godri and St. Anne Parish contact the Catholic Church Extension Society at the web address listed above.)
