CHARLOTTE — Teenagers at St. Peter Church were busy recently for the parish’s annual “St. Peter Teen Summer Service Week.”
More than 50 teenagers performed community service projects all over Charlotte July 17-21, including cleaning up a creek, helping out at the Boys and Girls Club and at McCreesh Place, doing landscape work and building a ramp, collecting items to recycle and repair donated bicycles, and visiting Holy Angels in Belmont, among other efforts.
Each day also featured Mass, prayer and reflection time at the church. New this year was a “Take a Stand Lemon AID stand” in which they publicly advocated for a different social justice issue each day.
Every day around lunchtime the teens displayed information and had interactive activities outside the front of the church on Tryon Street about topics such as protecting the environment, serving the homeless, and aiding refugees. In one example of the new effort, the teens decorated pillowcases to be given to Room in the Inn guests later this year, and they handed out instructions to make blessing bags for the homeless with bags for people to return to St. Peter’s or give to their less fortunate neighbors.
— Photos provided by Cathy Chiappetta and Celia Denlea
CHARLOTTE — The annual “Fortnight for Freedom”– a two-week campaign focusing on the importance of religious freedom both at home and abroad— kicked off June 23 with a march through uptown Charlotte and a prayer vigil outside the Charles Jonas Federal Courthouse, where a group of Catholics prayed the Litany for Religious Liberty, the rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.
Stopping in Independence Square during their march through uptown Charlotte, speakers prayed and spoke about the threats to religious liberty, especially the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, and about the need to protect the conscience rights of others.
The 14-day observance of the Fortnight for Freedom, which concluded on Independence Day, is a call by the U.S. bishops for all Catholics in our nation to pray, learn and get involved in peaceful public action to protect the right to religious liberty, “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty.”
— Photos by Patricia L. Guilfoyle | Catholic News Herald
