Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Wellsville's Committee To Save Immaculate Conception Keeps Plugging Away


Monday – August 15: While it seems the whole City of Rome, Italy, is away vacationing for the month of August the Committee to Save Immaculate Conception Church keeps plugging away. They are holding weekly prayer services outside of the church their Diocese locked them out of and every Monday evening they bring everybody up to date on their petitions.

The prayer service is held every Saturday afternoon at 4:30 PM in front of the Blessed Virgin statue along Main Street. At last Monday's meeting members voted to keep everything the same as long as weather permits. Co-Chairman Nunzio Lombardozzi announced he is working on an alternative site for inclement weather. The services are open to the public.

Also, at last Monday's meeting it was announced that the Committee now has their own web site, courtesy of Haugh Designs. Haugh Designs is a web developing business owned and operated by Wellsville residents Jeff & Susie Haugh. At an earlier meeting Wellsville Councilwoman Haugh offered any support she could give to the Committee in their efforts to keep the Immaculate Conception Church as a place of worship in Wellsville. That offer included a free page on “the Wellsville site” that was developed and is maintained by Haugh Designs. Haugh went one better than that and with tears in her eyes, Beverly Hentzell announced that the internet company has developed a completely independent web site for the Committee. Naturally it is titled “Committee to Save Immaculate Conception Church”. The web address is www.saveicc.com. The site was donated by Haugh Designs.
Anybody with submissions for the site is advised to contact Hentzell.

Some tickets are still available for the $100 gas card. That drawing will be held at the meeting of August 29. Proceeds go toward the legal costs incurred for the appeals. Discussions on having a “Parish Coverdish” were discussed. There will be more information on that later. Lucky John Mahon once again won the 50/50 and as he did the last three times, donated it back to the Committee.

The next meeting will be Monday, August 22, at 6 PM. The start time was moved up a little to give time to those that want to eat. Members are opening the kitchen for anyone wanting to eat before the meeting. The proceeds go to the SOI Lodge to help defray the cost of utilities for the weekly meetings. The actual meeting is scheduled to begin at 6:30 PM. It is held at Wellsville's SOI Lodge 657 located at 327 Main Street.

Pictured above is some of the participants at one of the Saturday prayer service.

ole nib

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Peter Haladej is not above the law.
(live a lifestyle beyond his means)

Priest charged with stealing $143,000 from Swissvale parish

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11251/1173110-100.stm

The Allegheny County district attorney's office today charged a
Swissvale priest with pocketing more than $143,000 in church funds
over the course of more than a decade.

The Rev. Francis J. Drabiska, 50, of the Word of God Parish told
investigators that between 1999 and 2009, he stole as much as $180,000
in loose cash from the church collections, which he said he used "to
live a lifestyle beyond his means," according to a criminal complaint

The district attorney's office charged Rev. Drabiska with felony theft
but only for the offenses he is said to have committed in his role as
a parish priest in charge of church funds. He resigned in November,
and Bishop David A. Zubik appointed the Rev. John Lyman to oversee the
Swissvale parish.

Investigators said Rev. Drabiska deposited tens of thousands of stolen
dollars into his personal accounts. An accountant for the Diocese of
Pittsburgh became concerned in 2005 when he noticed a decline in cash
offerings, the complaint says.

The diocese tried to solve the problem with different procedures for
collecting and counting offerings and began using tamper-proof money
bags, which Rev. Drabiska stopped using after less than a year.

Rev. Drabiska surrendered and was arraigned this morning before
District Judge Ross Cioppa, who released him on a nonmonetary bond. A
preliminary hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.