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SSPP Girl Scouts Service Project
Our 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade Girl Scouts delivered plants, cookies and cards to a local nursing home for Easter.
This was part of a 3-month long service project.
Garden Project
Garden Club students repotting the plants in preparation for being planted in the raised bed.
•SSPP Students Perform the Joyful Mysteries in a Musical Celebration of the Living Rosary!
• Varsity Girls Volleyball Team Wins Immaculata Tournament & Diocesan Championship!
Saint Peter and Paul girls' volleyball team coached by Mary McIntyre and Donna Postek won the regular season of the Stanton South division with a record of 10-1. They also were the winners of the Immaculata High School Tournament. 7th grader Lexi Novak was the MVP of that Tournament.
Playing in the Diocesan play offs on Nov 1 gave Saint Peter and Paul a great opportunity to focus on the quarterfinals Nov.3. SSPP played a fast game against St. John the Baptist to move on to the semifinals against St. Greg's.
Winning in two, 25-18 and 25-13 gave the team a spark to face OLBS in the finals. This was the 5th time the two teams have met this year with SSPP leading the rivalry 3-1. OLBS came out quickly with a strong lead. SSPP came back to win the game 25-23. Confidence got the best of the SSPP team as they lost the next game 21-25. SSPP came back strongly to win the last game 25-15 to win the Diocesan Championship.
Making the Diocesan All Tournament team were 8th grader Melissa Postek and 7th graders Julianna Benz and Lexi Novak. Melissa Postek was awarded the MVP of the Tournament.
• Celebrating Our 175th Anniversary...
Drums rumbled and trumpets blared Sunday afternoon inside SS. Peter & Paul Church on Main Street in Williamsville, heralding the 175th anniversary of the parish's founding in 1836 by a missionary priest who would later become bishop of Philadelphia and a canonized saint, John Neumann.
About 375 people attended a special Mass that concluded a year's worth of events commemorating the beginnings of SS. Peter & Paul, the third-oldest parish in the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo.
The congregation also holds the distinction of being the first parish founded by the Rev. John Neumann, a Bohemian immigrant who was a prolific congregation starter and creator of Catholic schools. Neumann went on to establish a total of 50 congregations and 100 schools throughout the Northeast, including several others in Western New York.
In 1977, Neumann was the first American priest to be canonized a saint.
"We are here 175 years later, still believing, still holding on, still giving of our hearts and minds," the Rev. Jerome E. Kopec, pastor, said during his homily. "When John Neumann founded this community, we became a new creation in Christ."
The celebration included a procession of two bishops, more than a dozen clergy and a uniformed and sworded honor guard of members of the Knights of Columbus.
Bishop Edward U. Kmiec of the Diocese of Buffalo was joined as principal celebrant of the Mass by Kopec and Bishop Donald W. Trautman, who served as pastor of SS. Peter & Paul in the late 1980s, prior to his appointment as the head of the Diocese of Erie, Pa.
Kmiec, who closed dozens of churches throughout the diocese in recent years in an effort to create more vibrant congregations, cited SS. Peter & Paul as an example of what a healthy parish community looks like.
"I think you've really filled the bill very well," the bishop said in remarks after the Mass.
The parish still maintains the longest continuously operating Catholic school in the entire diocese, with an enrollment of more than 400 children in prekindergarten through eighth grade.
The current church, built during the Civil War and dedicated in 1868, features a soaring steeple that is among the village's most identifiable landmarks.
The heat that built up inside the old, unair-conditioned sanctuary over the past few days of wilting temperatures prompted Kmiec to crack wise with parishioners using church programs to fan themselves.
"I'm just wondering why St. John Neumann couldn't have picked October or November to found the parish," the bishop said with a smile.
Kmiec, who submitted his resignation letter in June to Pope Benedict XVI, remembered his early days as bishop of Buffalo, noting that Kopec was the first priest he assigned to a parish in this diocese.
"I'm glad he's here," the bishop said, eliciting a round of applause for Kopec.
Kmiec also read a congratulatory letter from Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who as apostolic nuncio serves as the pope's official representative in the United States.
Parishioners spent the past year celebrating the theme of "From frontier to the future." Trautman visited last July to dedicate a new pantry. Church members took trips to see other area churches that Neumann founded in Swormville, Niagara Falls and the Town of Tonawanda, and in January they participated in a prayer service honoring the 200th anniversary of Neumann's birth and the 150th anniversary of his death.
Earlier Sunday, another area church with a fascinating history celebrated 150 years as a congregation with an outdoor worship service in Martin Luther King Park.
St. Philip's Episcopal Church, a historically African-American parish, was founded in 1861, just weeks after the Civil War broke out. It is the seventh-oldest primarily black congregation within the Episcopal Church, and it includes among its members the Rev. Michael B. Curry, the first black person elected as bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina.
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