PRIEST PLUNGES FOR SPECIAL OLYMPICS:Father Steve Giuliano, the pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Middletown, joined fellow Knights of Columbus Feb. 5 for the annual Polar Bear Plunge, in which people jump into
the cold Atlantic Ocean to raise money for Special Olympics. Father Giuliano said this was his third plunge and that the large contingent of Delaware Knights of Columbus raised more than $17,000 through pledges. Overall, more than 3,600 people took a dip, raising $650,000. He said he began participating after open-heart surgery four years ago – with an OK from his doctor. How would he describe the experience?
“It looks like a large crowd of sand crabs that scurry to the water and then rush right back,” he said. “The biggest source of cold that invades your body is not the water, but the sand. Your feet go a little numb and sometimes you actually stumble in the water. It takes a while to warm back up, but even so, I will definitely do it again.”
ST. ROSE BACK IN SERVICE AND LOOKING GOOD: Back at the office, Father Giuliano has been busy overseeing repair work at St. Rose of Lima Church in Chesapeake City, Md., one of two mission churches of St. Joseph’s. An old plaster skim coat on the ceiling was removed and a new one applied, and the entire interior of the church and sacristy was repainted. The Old Bohemia Council of the Knights of Columbus donated the cost of the paint and about 500 work hours of service. One Knight, Gerald Woerner, does this work professionally and donated his services and that of a crew to assist plastering, Father Giuliano said. A $25,000 job was completed in three weeks at no cost to the parish, he added. While work was going on, Mass was held in the hall at St. Rose.
ST. ELIZABETH PIPE ORGAN ALMOST DONE: St. Elizabeth Parish hopes to celebrate Easter with an improved sound thanks to a new pipe organ. According to a recent bulletin insert, the old pipe organ was removed last February, and in the year since, the new organ’s components have been crafted by C.M. Walsh Organs of Sharon Hill, Pa. The new organ will include more than 1,700 pipes from St. Elizabeth’s original, plus some that were obtained from the organ at the former St. Stanislaus Church. According to Brian Wasilewski, the parish’s choir director, the pipe organ being renovated and enhanced was installed in the 1980s. With the work, and by adding new ranks of pipes, “the renovated pipe organ will look and sound totally different than the previous organ,” Wasilewski said. The total cost of the work is approximately $250,000, funded by a parish “organ campaign” and by the “Bringing the Vision to Life” campaign of several years ago.
