On Thursday, Nov. 19, St. Dominic’s cardiologists and cardiovascular surgeons performed a rare surgical procedure by placing a prosthetic heart valve inside of an existing valve that had been replaced surgically 15 years ago.
This transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) allows physicians to guide a heart valve from a small needle stick in the groin into the heart replacing the malfunctioning heart valve. While this procedure carries a certain amount of risk, as do all procedures, it will now allow the 70-year-old patient to have a normal life expectancy.
“At St. Dominic’s we are excited to be leading the way in bringing all of this exciting new technology to Mississippi and we are committed to continuing to provide access to these cutting edge techniques to our community,” said Antoine Keller, M.D., FACS, cardiothoracic surgeon at St. Dominic Hospital.
“When this patient received treatment 15 years ago, heart valves were replaced through much more invasive, open procedures,” Keller said. “Now with this lifesaving technology, we are able to perform heart valve replacement using only catheters and wires, dramatically reducing the amount of discomfort patients feel and the length of time it takes to recover.”
Gray Bennett, M.D., cardiologist at St. Dominic Hospital, said TAVR has been a breakthrough in care for patients that are at the highest risk for death surrounding a valve replacement. “We are offering them an alternative to the traditional surgery, which has worked in the past for the lower risk patient,” he said. “But by using a team approach with cardiothoracic surgeons and interventional cardiologists, we can even offer TAVR to patients who have had a previous valve replacement and lower their risk.
“We are lucky to have the team, the talent and the technical skill that it takes to offer patients much more advanced treatment,” said William Crowder, M.D., cardiologist at St. Dominic Hospital. “TAVR enables us to provide lifesaving treatment to high risk patients who otherwise could not be treated.”

By Maureen Smith
LOUISVILLE – Lay Ecclesial Ministers (LEM) from across the Diocese of Jackson met Wednesday and Thursday, Dec. 2-3, with Bishop Joseph Kopacz, Father Kevin Slattery, Vicar General; Father Mike O’Brien, Vicar for Clergy and Fran Lavelle, director of Faith Formation.

Lay Ministers from across the diocese met to discuss their ministry and future formation opportunities Dec. 2-3.

The informal meeting, held at Lake Tia O’Kahta, was the first of many planned gatherings for the group. There are currently 13 LEMs in the diocese who care of the pastoral needs in parishes where there may not be a full-time priest. In 2005, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) wrote a document called ‘Co-Workers in the Vineyard,’ as a resource for bishops and those in pastoral ministry.
Bishop Kopacz went through some key points of the documents with those gathered and asked them to share their stories of how they got into ministry. Next year, the diocese will offer them a formation program called ‘Tending the Talents.’
The LEMs appreciated the gathering and learning more about one another. “As a whole, we all got into this ministry because we felt a call to become a lay minister,” said Deborah Holmes, Lay Ecclesial Minister for Bruce St. Luke the Evangelist. She said that up until now, she did not know the stories behind her fellow LEMs’ vocations. She also said she is very excited about the opportunity to gather with them again for formation. “The opportunity for growth for us is very important,” she said. Sometimes, a pastor or an LEM can feel isolated, so the chance to exchange ideas and learn together is welcome. “It makes us feel like we are unified,” said Holmes.

Bishop Kopacz uses his smartphone to read a letter from St. Francis Xavier at the closing Mass for the Lay Ecclesial Ministers. (Photo by Cathy Edwards)

James Tomek, LEM for Rosedale Sacred Heart agrees. “Just being alone and working, I don’t know what everyone else is doing and I don’t know if I am in tune with what else is going on,” he said. He said he sees his role as keeping his community together. He encourages lay participation on all levels in his parish.
Tomek, a retired professor for Delta State, said he is glad the bishop plans to make the gathering a regular one. “It’s vital. We’ve got emails and all that stuff, but every now and again, real presence is what’s needed,” he said.
At the closing Mass for the event, Bishop Kopacz noted that it was the feast of St. Francis Xavier, one of history’s most successful evangelizers. He read from a letter the saint wrote in India about how hungry people were to learn about the Christian faith, its prayers, rituals, scripture. Saint Francis said he could hardly rest or eat thanks to all the work he had before him. Bishop Kopacz thanked the LEMs for all of their work and dedication to the people of God in Mississippi.

Father Albeenreddy Vati is appointed Parish Administrator of Madison St. Francis Parish.

Father Matthew Simmons is appointed pastor of Meridian St. Patrick and St. Joseph Parishes.

Father Arokia Stanislaus Savio is appointed pastor of Grenada St. Peter Parish and Sacramental Minister of Charleston St. John Parish.

Father Alphonse Arulanandu is appointed pastor of Leland St. James Parish and the missions of Anguilla Our Mother of Mercy and Hollandale Immaculate Conception.

Father Joe Tonos is appointed Canonical Pastor of Bruce St. Luke Parish, but will remain pastor of Oxford St. John Parish.

Father Tim Murphy is appointed Sacramental Minister of Bruce St. Luke Parish.

Father Henry Shelton is appointed pastor of Brookhaven St. Francis Parish.

Father Juan Chavajay is appointed pastor of Yazoo City St. Mary Parish and Belzoni All Saints Parish.

Father Brian Kaskie is appointed Seminarian Director, while remaining pastor of McComb St. Alphonsus Parish.

Father Brian Kaskie is appointed Seminarian Director, while remaining pastor of McComb St. Alphonsus Parish.

Father José de Jesús Sánchez is appointed Promoter of Vocations, while remaining associate pastor of Meridian St. Patrick and Meridian St. Joseph.

We welcome two new priests from India, Father Panneer Sevam Arckiam and Father Xavier Jesutaj. They have not yet been assigned to parishes.
All appointments
are effective Feb. 1
+Joseph Kopacz.
Bishop of Jackson

By Mary Margaret Halford
CARY— As a schoolteacher for 38 years in Cary and Rolling Fork, Mary Hazel Weissinger took advantage of her Christmas and summer breaks and usually spent that time traveling the world. On a Christmastime trip to Alaska with her late husband, Charles Hyde Weissinger Sr., Mary Hazel stumbled across a nativity that she wanted to add to her small, but growing collection.
“I’ve always had a special feel for nativities,” said the 88-year-old parishioner of Our Mother of Mercy in Anguilla. “Every time I visited another country, I tried to find a nativity. I saw a little bitty one that caught my eye in Alaska, and it keeps growing from there.”
Weissinger’s nativity collection dates back to the early 1960s when her brother and cousin were living in Germany and sent her a Hummel nativity in pieces.
“It seems like it’s been always,” Weissinger said with a laugh, “like I’ve always had the nativities.”
As time went on, the collection grew into hundreds of pieces as Mary Hazel’s travels continued and friends and family picked up on her hobby, sending her nativities from around the globe.
“I have a cousin that is a Catholic missionary priest in Peru, and about 10 or 15 years ago, my mother asked if he would send back a nativity that was indigenous to that area. He sent her back the most beautiful ceramic long neck,” said Maryanne Smith, one of Mary Hazel’s six children. “He had to carry it in a backpack hiking down the Andes to get back to a town where he could put it in the mail. Some of the lengths these nativities have gone through just to find their way to us… It’s amazing.”
The handmade nativity that made its way to Mary Hazel from Peru was broken in route from the post office, but repaired.
“They all have a story,” Smith said. “They’re all catalogued. You can’t imagine the inventory control you have to do on this to get them stored and put out every year.”
And each year at Christmas, Mary Hazel would proudly display her nativities throughout her home, going so far as to adding furniture to her home to hold them all. “She had bookcases built, but still you couldn’t even see them all because there were so many,” Smith said.
“The living room was full, the den was full,” Mary Hazel said. “Maryanne said it was just selfish not to share them.” “In 2009, we convinced her (Mary Hazel) to start putting them on public display,” Smith said.
“The family had been creating the displays, packing and unpacking the nativities, and viewing the end product,” Smith said. “It was a shame that such a beautiful and unique collection should only be seen by a small number of people each year. It needed to be shared. Although it took a little bit of convincing, Mom finally embraced the idea.”
So each year around Thanksgiving, the family sets up her nativities at Goodman Memorial Methodist Church just off US 61.  At the first year of the display, there were approximately 200 nativities that all fit in the main room of the church’s Family Life Center. Just as it did in the Weissinger home, the collection has grown into a need for more display cases and rooms at the church. Today, there are about 400 on display.
“When people see the display, they say it’s not at all what they expected,” Smith said. “Some are origami, some are baking sets, others are pillows or ornaments; it’s just every shape, form, and fashion. It could take you hours to go through and see all the ones she has.”
“Some of them are what you’d call ‘whimsical’,” Mary Hazel said. “One of them is a jigsaw puzzle, one is made out of pencil erasers. I’m always looking for anything different, and my friends know I’m interested, so they bring them to me, and that’s added a lot.”
The nativities are on display at Goodman Memorial Methodist Church off US 61 in Cary the first three weekends in December on Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. and Sunday from 1 p.m. until 4 p.m. There is no entry cost to see the nativities.

By Maureen Smith
NATCHEZ – The kindergarten students at Holy Family Parish probably do not realize the significance of the history they acted out Sunday, Nov. 22, but hopefully, in time they will appreciate their place in the story of this community. The play depicting the 125-year history of Holy Family Parish was the closing activity to a celebration of the 125th anniversary of the parish.
Holy Family is the oldest parish for African Americans in the state, founded on the heels of the third plenary council of Baltimore, at which American bishops decided they should found parishes specifically for black Catholics. Prior to the council, black Catholics in Natchez worshiped in the basement of St. Mary Basilica.
Duncan Morgan’s grandmother sang in the choir the day the parish was dedicated in 1894. His grandfather was on the committee that polled black people to see if they even wanted a parish. The day he was born a pair of sisters walked to his house to check on the baby.
History shows that the parish was the center of the Civil Rights Movement in Natchez. Morgan said the Josephite priests and Franciscan and later Holy Spirit Sisters unwittingly started on it long before the turbulent 1960s with their focus on education. “Even in the worst of times with Jim Crow and segregation, if you were at Holy Family you were treated with dignity. You were prepared with the best education possible,” he said. “Our graduates became lawyers, doctors, military officers,” he added. Morgan said this education and respect prepared community members. “It laid the groundwork for what happened in the 1960s – they already had self-respect.”
Father William Morrissey, SSJ, played a pivotal role in guiding those parishioners as well as the community at large through the Civil Rights Movement. He let the NAACP use the parish hall for office space, serving as the only white officer in the state chapter of the organization. He led the effort to get black people admitted to the National Democratic Party. “Father Morrissey could help balance them (community leaders) from going overboard and at the same time, meet with city and state officals on an equal basis,” said Morgan. The priest sponsored interracial gatherings and encouraged his parishioners to integrate schools in Natchez.
“He sacrificed his own school to integrate Cathedral School,” said Valencia Hall, catechist and parishioner. She and her sisters were some of the first African Americans to attend Cathedral. Her family made the decision to try it for a year when she was 11. “I vividly remember sitting at the dinner table telling my Daddy, ‘I don’t want to stay,’” Hall recalls. He told her he thought it was best she stay. “It was best, it built my character. It was from that experience that I learned all people are persons of dignity and integrity.” The transition was hard at times, she was the only African American child in the fifth and sixth grade.
“There were a couple of people who I felt welcomed by. To the day I die, I will be indebted to those who made me feel welcome,” she said. Hall helped organize an effort to renovate the church several years ago, helping secure a grant from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in recognition of the role the parish played in the Civil Rights Movement.
Current pastor, Father James Fallon, SSJ, said the celebration was meant both to honor the past and plant seeds for the future. “We try to look at this as the intersection of the past and future,” he said. “We want to recognize the people like Father Morrissey, who made headlines, but we also want to advertise the lady who said her rosary and made it to daily Mass,” he added.
Today the parish boasts a multicultural congregation and an Early Learning Center. Both Hall and Morgan hope the celebration is a sign of a vibrant future here. “I would like to see our Catholic faith deepened and for others to see the struggle our church had to go through to have a place of worship,” said Hall. Father Fallon said one of the challenges is regaining the sense of sacrifice and pride the whole community once felt about its church. He considers part of his vocation to inspire faith in the young people in his community.
The original Holy Family was in a wood frame structure on the edge of town. The founding pastor went on a tour of the Northeast to raise money for the present brick structure, located on a hill in what was then a growing neighborhood of families. St. Katherine Drexel was one of the donors. “Holy Family has always been a beacon. It was sitting on a hill for a reason, I guess,” said Morgan. “When there was no leadership anywhere else, you could get it here,” he added.

By Maureen Smith
TUTWILER — Sister Maureen Delaney, SNJM, has used a simple philosophy in her almost 30 years at the Tutwiler Community Education Center: listen to what people want and try to help them make it happen. This approach has changed lives in this small Mississippi Delta town.
Sister Maureen has earned a spot as the leader of the U.S./Ontario Province of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. Early next year, she will move to Portland, Ore.
She was working in California in the late 1980s when she heard Sister Anne Brooks, who runs the Tutwiler Clinic, was looking for someone to do outreach work. According to Sister Maureen, Dr. Brooks takes a comprehensive approach to patient care. “I think she tries to treat the whole person – if a person falls down on their porch she asks ‘what can we do to get the porch fixed?’ Whatever the problem is she asks if there a broader problem with them or the community. Can we help that person be more healthy,” said Sister Maureen.
Sister Maureen started her work in the back room of the clinic in 1987.
“What I do is community organizing. I will talk to people about what kind of things they want to have happening,” said Sister Maureen.
Dr. Brooks explained that people didn’t even have a place to gather to talk about ways to make the town better. “Tutwiler at that point was pretty pitiful. There was no inside plumbing, people lived in shacks,” said Dr. Brooks. “There was a lot of need,” she said.
“I thought people were going to say ‘I want housing, I want employment.’ I am sure they wanted that, but the needs were very simple and basic to start with, so that was quite amazing to me,” she said.
The first order of business: a town cleanup.  “It was fairly spectacular,” said Dr. Brooks. “There were street vendors selling their wares, a flatbed truck for the mayor to stand on to give a speech, they asked me to speak. Everyone was there, black people, white people, everyone working alongside one another. It was breaking down barriers people didn’t even recognize as barriers,” she added.
The next thing people wanted was a Christmas parade for the town. Again, all Sister Maureen had to do was get people together and offer to help organize the event.
“That project brought the whole town together, black, white, all the people,” said Genether Spurlock, an employee at the center. A nearby town had thrown away their Christmas decorations so Sister Maureen got them and volunteers painted and refurbished them.
“The people wanted to have a Christmas parade. And I thought, ‘A Christmas parade? Ok.’ That’s what I have learned, you take people where they are,” said Sister Maureen. “If that’s going to bring people together, that’s what I’m going to do and that’s what we did and we had a great Christmas parade,” she said.
“People wanted very basic things and what I kept thinking – anything to get people together – to get people to work together, to get a spirit and end up with a product,” said Sister Maureen.
It became apparent early on that Sister Maureen needed more than just a back room at the Tutwiler clinic so the organization repurposed a set of storefronts. The completed Tutwiler Community Education Center (TCEC) has administrative offices, a small kitchen, a community room, a computer lab, music room, fitness equipment and the gym. It operates as a separate organization than the clinic.
In the ensuing years TCEC and the citizens of Tutwiler worked together on a number of civic projects. The phone company needed to run new lines to the town, the river would flood because of dredging issues, the town needed street signs. Sister Maureen, her staff and volunteers took on project after project.
“There is a saying about teaching a man how to fish. Sister Maureen and Dr. Brooks taught us how to fish. They taught us to do things for ourselves,” said Spurlock. “This center has always kept the needs of the people out front,” she added.
Lucinda Berryhill has worked for the center for 23 years. “I knew people and people knew me,” she said. Sister Maureen let Berryhill use her talents to serve her own community. Berryhill drove a van to bring people to medical appointments, and recruited people to come to the center for projects. “I would go find them and they appreciated that,” she added. She appreciates the fact that children who come to the center get more than just a safe place to play. “They come to get education, they learn morals and values here,” said Berryhill.
The programs have evolved as needs and wants have changed. One early request was a playgroup for preschool kids because the Head Start in the area did not have enough slots. As the Head Start expanded, that program dropped off. Today two dozen children aged seven -12 come every day for an after school program. It includes   snack, time in the computer lab, group discussions on good choices and behavior and time in the gym. A couple days a week a trio of musicians comes to the center to teach blues music. The kids have gotten so good, they have their own band. They played at the opening of the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale and the rededication of the courthouse in Sumner to honor the memory of Emmitt Till.
Twice a week teenagers come in the evenings to use the fitness equipment and learn life skills. Some of those teens get hired as teen helpers. They assist in the after school care program, learning job skills and acting as role models for their young counterparts. Junior Kayla Reynolds said her work as a teen helper has helped her mature and learn responsibility. She wants to be a social worker and help children when she grows up.
A group of seniors meets at the center, sharing meals and taking trips together. This summer candidates used Tutwiler for a forum so citizens could ask them questions before the election.  There is a summer program for children. The center sponsors sports leagues and tournaments for kids and adults alike.
And then there are the quilters. Another legacy that started with one conversation.
Tutwiler resident Mary Sue Robertson invited Sister Maureen to see the quilt tops she made in her home.  “Mary Sue lived in a humble shack in the back of somebody’s property that she used to work for.  Inside she had piles of quilt tops,” said Sister Maureen. The elderly woman would sell her work if someone wanted to buy them. Sister Maureen wondered if the hobby could become a cottage industry. She and fellow workers Mary Ann Willis and Sister JoAnn  Blomme, OP, found more than two dozen quilters in the area and a business was born.
“From the beginning we wanted to help these ladies make money and also preserve the quilting tradition of this area. We started by saying they would get 80 percent of the price and 20 percent would go into the program,” she explained. The original quilters used scrap fabric, including old clothing. Today, they use new fabric, to make placemats, tote bags, cell phone cases and oven mitts in addition to quilts, but they still keep 80 percent of the profit. Fewer women learn the craft from their mothers, so the center has started a class for those who want to learn. Willis is still involved in the quilting program, checking the quilters work, traveling across the country to sell the products and handling the books. “I love to go out and sell their work because I know the more I sell, the more they can work. This might be their income. They depend on it to pay their bills,” she said. The program has also expanded Willis’ horizons. “I would never have gotten to travel had Sister Maureen not offered me the opportunity. I’ve been to some beautiful places,” she added.
Doctor Brooks thinks Sister Maureen has done nothing short of help transform a community, not by giving them things, but by offering imagination and hope. “People’s lives here will continue to improve because they take the initiative,” she said. When people feel empowered, they can take care of themselves and their community. “It takes a person with knowledge, excitement, talent and dedication to strike the match that’s inside everyone’s heart,” said Dr. Brooks.
Good attitudes, she said, are contagious and she believes TCEC will continue to spread the transformation. “There are not enough words to explain or compliment her and not enough hugs to give her as a thank you.”
The board of directors is looking for a new leader, meanwhile, the work continues. To learn more about TCEC or purchase a quilt online, visit www.tutwilercenter.org.