In February 1999, St. Mary’s Church in suburban Boston celebrated
its 125th anniversary. Cardinal Bernard Law oversaw the festivities,
including a mass where parish children were summoned to the altar for a
special blessing.
Sister Ann Daylor, a Dominican nun and St. Mary’s director of
religious education, glowingly told a reporter that the celebration
would launch a yearlong program in which the Catholic young’uns would
learn “the importance of their place in the future of the parish.”