BOSTON -- "Do you know him?" Archbishop Richard Henning asked Bishop Cristiano Barbosa as they observed the room at the 140th anniversary gala for St. John's Seminary on Nov. 14. "I think he teaches at Providence College," the archbishop joked.
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DORCHESTER -- Robert Credle likes to say that before Roxbury was ghettoized, and before it was gentrified, he was there. The Credles were the third Black family to move into Roxbury. They settled at 39 Quincy Street, the heart of an Italian and Jewish enclave. Robert Credle was born in the welfare ward of Boston City Hospital and raised with his four siblings by a single mother. He grew up surrounded by gang activity but got in a fight and "decided the gang life was not for him," according to his biography. His high school girlfriend brought him to St. Hugh's Church in Dorchester and introduced him to Msgr. James Haddad, who served as Credle's mentor. Msgr. Haddad bought Credle a suit and drove him to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester to meet the college president, Father Raymond Swords. Credle received a full scholarship and was the only African American in his graduating class.
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BOSTON -- Archbishop Richard Henning celebrated his first Catholic Appeal Mass of Appreciation at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Nov. 18. The annual Mass is celebrated for the Caritas Society, which is for those who make an annual gift of $1,000 or more to the Appeal. The donors were eager to meet the new archbishop, and the line to greet him after Mass stretched from one end of the cathedral to the other. Donors waited for up to 30 minutes to shake Archbishop Henning's hand and wish him well. One woman gave the archbishop a Ziploc bag containing Divine Mercy prayer cards. Another showed him her purse, which had the Virgin Mary on it. A third asked him whether she should refer to him as "Your Eminence" or "Your Excellency."
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