Upcoming Changes for Our Family of Parishes
Dear parishioners of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Immaculate Heart, St. Michael’s, Holy Trinity and St. Francis of Assisi,
As we continue our journey through the Easter season, we are quickly approaching the date of our activation as a family of Parishes.  One piece of good news I would like to share with you is the name for our Family of Parishes.  After consultation with our Transition Team, members of the Diocesan Staff and with the approval of Bishop Fabbro, the name of our family was chosen to be Rose City Central Catholic Family of Parishes.  This name was chosen as we are centrally located within the “Rose City” of Windsor.  By using the name Rose City, it also helps differentiate us from our neighbouring families of South Windsor and North Central Windsor families of parishes.
There is another piece of information I wish to share with you and that has to do with a major change that we will all notice when our family of parishes is activated.  That information is regarding our Mass times.  As we come together as a family of parishes, we are going from 4 priests serving 5 parishes to 3 priests.  As Church Law limits the number of Masses a priest can celebrate on any given day, and the fact that among the three priests serving the family, none of us is capable in being in two places at once, we are going to have to make changes to our Mass schedule.  This is a part of our reality these days as we see a changing number of active priests as well as a declining number of people at Mass even before COVID struck.
There are a number of other factors affecting our parishes as well and I hope to be able to share with you some of the difficulties we faced in making some of these decisions but for now I would like to share with you our intended Sunday Mass schedule as we prepare to be activated as a family on July 5.  These times don’t take effect until after July 5, 2022:
Saturday evening:
5:00pm at Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH)
5:00pm at Immaculate Heart
5:00pm at St. Francis of Assisi (Croatian)
Sunday:
9:00am at Holy Trinity (English)
9:00am at St. Michael’s (German) every 3rd Sunday
10:00am at St. Francis (Croatian)
10:30am at OLPH and Holy Trinity (Polish)
11:30am every 4th Sunday at St. Francis (English)
12:30pm at Immaculate Heart
12:30pm at Holy Trinity (Polish)
I understand that these changes may be hard on some people but they are necessary changes in these times.  Of course there are reasons behind the times that were chosen and the changes that were made.  They are many and they are varied but after much time and thought with the Transition Team, this was the best solution to our situation that was fair to both priests and people.  The uniqueness of our family of parishes with its many different languages and communities does complicate our situation somewhat but with an open heart and from our shared love of God, we will keep moving ever closer to the ultimate goal of bringing our part of the world ever closer to Christ
It is my hope that in the near future, we will be able to offer some insight to the decisions and changes that have to be made and to answer any questions that you may have as we get closer to our activation as a family of parishes.  For the time being though, there are more decisions that need to be made by our Transition Team and so I ask for your continued prayers during this time of transition.  Some of these decisions may be made before July 5, our activation date, and some may need to be made after but these changes are among those that will have the greatest impact and we will do our best to keep you informed.  I am personally looking forward to joining you as a part of our family.  May God bless you and keep you.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Glen Ball



‘Rose City Central’ Family of Parishes Prayer
Lord, please console and protect our ‘Rose City Central’ family of parishes.
May we become a true Catholic family.
We come to You Holy Trinity and ask You to guide our path as we become witnesses of our faith.
To Immaculate Mary our Mother, we ask for your perpetual help;
and we ask Saint Francis for peace and Saint Michael for protection.
Amen.