Washington DC, 3rd Junune 2005 (CNA) - The
Dominican Friars marking their 200th
anniversary of their foundation in the United
States.
They will celebrate with a mass
June 8 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of
the Immaculate Conception in Washington. The
public is invited.
Theodore Cardinal McCarrick,
archbishop of Washington, will be the main
celebrant and homilist at the 4:30 p.m. mass.
There will also be a number of
special guests. The master of the Dominican
Order from Rome, Fr. Carlos Azpiroz Costa, the
provincial of the Dominican Friars from England,
Fr. Allan White, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of
Cincinnati, and all the friars of the Dominican
Province of St. Joseph will be in attendance.
Dominicans friars first came to
the New World in the 1500s with the Spanish
evangelizers. It was not until 1805 that the
Dominican Friars were formally established with
the creation of the Province of St. Joseph.
When the province was
established in 1805, it comprised four friars;
one was Fr. Edward Dominic Fenwick, who later
became the first bishop of Cincinnati.
Today, the province has more
than 250 friars who serve in parish ministry,
hospital ministry, campus ministry, education,
and retreat work in the archdioceses of
Cincinnati, Hartford, Louisville, New York, and
Washington, and in the dioceses of Columbus,
Providence, Richmond, and Youngstown.
The province has missionaries
in Kenya, Philippines, and the Solomon Islands.
It also operates Providence College in Rhode
Island. The provincial offices are located in
New York City.
