September 5, 2008
Rockville Centre at 50
Diocese still strong in spirit
Six hundred Catholic worshipers crowded beneath the soaring ceiling vaults inside St. Agnes Cathedral yesterday in Rockville Centre. Sixty priests joined them, along with five auxiliary bishops, for a service conducted in half a dozen languages.
A presence to millions
Many forces, seen and unseen, have shaped modern Long Island -- Gold Coast wealth, East End beauty, all that pavement, all those malls. For cultural resonance, however, nothing can match the Roman Catholic Church, and its agent here, the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which Sunday marks its 50th anniversary.
More than a religion
Pedro A. Quintanilla, 38, grew up going to Mass in Spanish -- first in his native El Salvador, then in Hempstead, where he moved when he was 11.
Schools' new look
If Anand Siva had been a student when the Diocese of Rockville Centre formed 50 years ago, his presence at a Catholic school would have been very unusual. Siva, 17, is Hindu, and if he had been attending catholic School on Long Island in 1957, he would have shared a classroom with more than 70 students, a nun probably would have been at the helm and few students would be of his faith, or any other non-Catholic religion.
The class of '57
For starters, there was no church. Which meant that every other Saturday night, Rev. James Hannon packed several cartons of bread, wine and books into his secondhand Ford and drove over to the Syosset Theater on Jericho Turnpike.
Transcript of Murphy interview
Bishop Murphy, what do you view as your greatest achievement in the dioceses and what are your goals for the future?
Lessons for a Bishop
Nestled into Bishop William Murphy's prayer book is a photograph of an alter boy dressed for church. Murphy says the boy's mother sent him the picture after her son, abused at the hands of a priest, killed himself at age 22.
A ministry for the suburbs
Police on motorcycles accompanied Walter P. Kellenberg as he made his way in a convertible through the streets of Nassau County to St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre, where cheers rose from a throng of 10,000. It was May 26, 1957.
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