Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Now only completing my third year as your pastor on October 1, we sure have been through a lot together! I continue to be impressed by your response during a pandemic to the extraordinary needs of our church home and recent “Moving Forward in Faith” capital campaign. The Parish Council has completed a lot of work and deliberation with Heart to Heart to look at our priorities and goals for the next five years. We have hosted concerts and extraordinary gatherings of Catholic Movie Nights, Divine Mercy Holy Hours and have kept up our bread-and-butter operations too, literally through our hunger programs, but also through our faith formation classes and liturgies. The least amount of weddings we have seen during my pastorate is 15 in a year!
So… “What’s next?” I am so glad you asked! I am proud through this letter and webpage to introduce to you an effort called (Re)Engage.
(Re)Engage gets its name from one of the five priorities our parish council identified for the next five years: Engagement! The other priorities are: Worship and Prayer, Sacraments and Faith Formation, Outreach and Evangelization and Servant Leadership. Through (Re)Engage, I hope to introduce many more modes of regular communication such as email blasts, YouTube videos and an overall stronger sense of community and connection within our own parish via fun and festive celebrations. We are also looking to sponsor teams, such as a parish bowling team, to get out into the community more as a parish. (If you have an idea for such a team, let’s hear it!)
Thank you in advance for participating in this latest and greatest effort of our parish, now in its 160th year of life in the heart of Downtown Akron! See you Soon!
With a Prayer,
Fr. Chris Zerucha
Pastor, St. Bernard Parish
With over 50 parishioners regularly spending time to keep our ministries well-led and organized, we see this as a greater model for what St. Bernard can be in the Greater Akron area.
This past year, we held six different retreats for different groups of the parish, began a new Downtown Akron young adult group, began a new high school youth group and began operating our Parish Council under a refreshed set of bylaws, protocols and procedures.
The goal for this priority this year is greater organization and greater general access to all that we do as a parish.
Even during the pandemic, our Hunger Programs, Catholic Lighthouse Media booth and live stream of the Mass have continued. So far this year, we have fed 487 households through the food pantry, representing 1,172 people helped. We passed out over 3,000 sandwiches and bagged lunches. We made and distributed close to 3,000 hot dinner meals.
We also sponsored various special collections for the poor of the world and those in need and supported Akron’s Embrace Clinic for babies and their mothers and families.
This year’s goals are to make sure we are connecting well with our homebound parishioners, have workshops on topics like Evangelization and invite the Greater Akron community to our larger events like Mardi Gras, Our Lady of Guadalupe, etc.
With some of the most beautiful Masses and Holy Hours anywhere, a dedicated core of parishioners succeeded in making our main church an effective but tasteful anti-COVID-19 environment. This required the roping off pews, sanitizing pews after each Mass, changing how we do the Communion Rite and making sure we had a strong supply of masks and hand sanitizer readily available.
We cannot thank enough all those who made these things happen! Over 500 Masses were prayed in our church in 2020. Close to 40 regular adorers signed in to adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in our 24/7 Adoration Chapel. Rosary and the chaplet of Divine Mercy are prayed each day after 12:10 p.m. Daily Mass. We once again gathered on Divine Mercy Sunday to sing the chaplet of Divine Mercy and have a holy hour. We had a procession from St. Vincent DePaul to St. Bernard with the Blessed Sacrament while praying a rosary for our country.
We gather every third Friday for Adoration with Praise and Worship music and Confession. We continue our traditions of three beautiful Masses in English each weekend, 4:30 p.m. Saturday, 10:00 a.m. Sunday and 8:00 p.m. Sunday (what some call Summit County’s “Last Chance Mass”), as well as a Mass in Spanish (12 Noon Sunday).
This year, our goals are to have parish-wide formation on the Mass, better formation for our liturgical ministers and a handbook for training and reference on how to do each role at Mass.
Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, through remote options if necessary, we had many enlightening evenings and afternoons of Adult Faith Formation, Lenten retreats, Bible Study, High School PSR, High School Youth Group, booklets at the doors, Catholic Movie Night and all the wonderful things available on formed.org.
We had our first ever men’s retreat with 28 men in attendance, our first high school youth group retreat with 19 in attendance and a women’s retreat combined with St. Mary Parish that had over 40 women in attendance.
We celebrated 22 funerals. In 2020, we prepared for Baptism and baptized 38 people, celebrated first Reconciliation and first Holy Communion with 19 people, prepared for and celebrated Confirmation with 21 people and witnessed 22 Marriages mostly in our main church but some in our Eucharistic Chapel as well.
This year, the goals are to learn more about the Mass, have a quarterly workshop of some sort, learn more about the Saints and provide adequate answers to the parishioners’ questions of “Why do Catholics do that?”
There are over 400 registered families in our parish and many more who regularly come for Mass or just visit from time to time. Whether a visitor or parishioner, we at St. Bernard continue to express that all are welcome, what we have we offer and that we hope you find it feels like a family.
This past year while checking on families in the sudden shutdown of COVID-19, we were able to complete a census and refresh our database! We hope to take this information in the year to come and use it wisely to promote efforts such as this (Re)Engage campaign, concerts by the Summit Choral Society and Apollo’s Fire, or Parish events and special presentations.
Jake Herron, son of our parish and Communications Major at The University of Akron is working during his internship here to upgrade all the ways we can engage in the parish life. Besides that big goal, our goals this year for (Re)Engage are to have two fun-and-fund raising events, host quarterly welcome receptions for new parishioners and make Parish Council members more recognizable, accessible and active in being representatives of the parish.
Offertory Income: $372,682.25
Ministry & Program Income: $78,889.23
Other Operating Income: $64,066.20
Salary & Benefits Expense: $280,379.13
Facilities Expense: $157, 429.05
General Operating Expense: $108,076.14
Ministry & Program Expense: $34,386.22
Total Operating Expense: $580,270.54
Net Operating Surplus/Deficit: -$64,632.86
Visit our portal to give electronically:
stbernardakron.weshareonline.org
Mail To:
St. Bernard Parish
44 University Ave.
Akron, OH 44308
Make a stock gift. Call the Parish Office to learn more:
330-253-5161