BELMONT — On the Sisters of Mercy campus, just minutes away from downtown Belmont and behind some trimmed bushes that spell out H-O-L-Y A-N-G-E-L-S, there is a different kind of place called Holy Angels.
“People say they pass our bushes all the time and they have absolutely no idea what goes on behind them,” smiles Sister Nancy Nance, vice president of community relations of Holy Angels.
Pictured: For eight weeks this summer, from June through August, hundreds of excited blue-shirted “volunteens” aged 13-18 visited the Belmont campus to experience the joy at Holy Angels for themselves.
(Photos by Lisa Geraci | Catholic News Herald)
Holy Angels has been around since 1955, and is a “heaven-like place on Earth,” according to CEO Regina Moody. It is a place filled with people who are full of joy: 88 residents, ranging from infant to 80 years old, who have intellectual developmental disabilities and delicate medical conditions. They are cared for by medical professionals 24 hours a day. Holy Angels provides a higher quality of life to the residents by supporting them physically, educationally, socially, spiritually and emotionally. In return, the residents inspire love, faith, persistence, friendship and trust in everyone they encounter.
For eight weeks this summer, from June through August, hundreds of excited blue-shirted “volunteens” aged 13-18 visited the Belmont campus to experience the joy at Holy Angels for themselves. They met residents and formed new relationships with people known to be “different” than themselves. The teens from local high schools and middle schools played games with residents, read them stories, helped them work at Cherub business localities – basically helping out wherever they could lend a hand, two to three days a week for three-hour shifts.
“The thing I love about this place – it is about respect, it is about awareness, it is about helping students connect with someone that is different. How do you connect with someone who may not be verbal? Maybe they are not verbal but they are able to speak to you in different ways. The difference we are seeing in these young people is incredible because they are able to go to the real world and deal with people that may be different than us,” says Volunteer Services Manager Donnie Thurman. “At Holy Angels, culture here is about loving, living and learning. You got a different level of kid here. The kids that are coming here have a servant’s mind and a servant’s heart. This is a generation of change, and if we just keep influencing them they are going to make a difference.”
Holy Angels’ motto is “loving, living and learning for the differently able” and for teens like Molly Sly, Jack O’Gorman and Maggie Ferguson, this message was heartfelt once they began interacting with residents.
Sly, who is 16 and has been volunteering for the past three years, explains, “The residents show you that if you want to do something you can do it. These residents go through challenges every single day and they’re still smiling and having a good time. There are people like this in special classes, and I have become closer friends with them at school because of coming here. I love being here. I actually want to be an orthodontist when I grow up, and when I get my own practice I want to come here and do free dental work.”
O’Gorman, who is 15 and volunteening since the seventh grade, says, “I like hanging out with the residents and being able to play games with them and basic stuff you do with your friends. It’s cool getting to meet new people and getting new experiences.”
Ferguson adds, “I am 15. I started the summer after seventh grade when I was 13. My mom had told me about it and in the beginning I was a little reluctant because it was out of the ordinary. But, on the other hand, I had cousins with special needs so it was something I was already interested in. So I came, and now I just come here all the time! I fell in love with it. They just can’t get rid of me. I come two days a week and I am either in the office, at a Cherub location, or at Life Choices. Honestly, this place just teaches you to be a better person. It is just so eye-opening. Being around the residents, it is like the best feeling ever.”
Moody encourages the interactions to help more people understand that being different is beautiful. She suggests using the term “differently abled” when describing the residents because what they may lack in one area they make up in another.
“What we are really trying to do here is to change a generation and that starts one person at a time, one experience at a time, where it is positive and where people who are differently abled can do more than whatever was expected,” she explains. “The community has embraced us and they understand the residents. Volunteens, who are involved in our program, take what they learn from our folks and bring it back into their own communities. The customers that come to our cotton candy factory, come to our café, come to our gallery, are all learning about the population that was for so many years shunned and hidden. So we feel we are educating the public about people that may be different or be seen as different.”
The Volunteen Summer program has been a win-win for residents and teens alike. This new “transparent” and “open” way of visiting the residents helps the community respect and love every person. “Differently abled” angels give back in ways others may not be able by helping employees, volunteers, community members and students feel Christ’s love through their own perspectives.
Fifteen-year-old Volunteen Maggie Ferguson calls the residents of Holy Angels living examples of Christ’s love for us, describing Holy Angels as “the best place ever” where just being around the joyful residents rejuvenates her.
— Lisa Geraci, Correspondent
More online
At www.holyangelsnc.org: Learn more about Holy Angels and how you can volunteer or support their work
CHARLOTTE — The Diocese of Charlotte Office of Development has hired Barb De Mase as the new associate director of development. She takes over from former associate director Kerry Ann Tornesello, who held that position for more than four years before leaving this month to start a new business coaching people and businesses on leveraging their talents.
De Mase comes to the diocese after working most recently with United Way of Central Carolinas for over four years. She was part of their development team, working on annual workplace campaigns. Her efforts there helped raise more than $25 million for Charlotte and the surrounding communities.
Before that, De Mase worked for more than 20 years in the business world on a variety of direct marketing campaigns that drove revenue while acquiring and retaining customers. Fifteen of those years were with Bank of America.
De Mase is a registered parishioner of St. Matthew Church in Charlotte, and as she now lives in southeast Charlotte, she splits her time between St. Matthew Church and St. Gabriel Church.
She is a graduate of the 2013-’14 JustFaith educational program at St. Matthew Church and currently serves as a co-facilitator for the JustFaith program at St. Gabriel Church.
De Mase also volunteers her time in the Special Religious Development program at St. Matthew Church, serving as a catechist since 2014. SPRED focuses on meeting the spiritual needs of people with developmental disabilities and intellectual challenges.
“I’m excited about this new career opportunity within the stewardship and development team,” De Mase said. “I’m proud to be part of the Diocese of Charlotte family. It’s right where I need to be.”
“I’m so grateful for the work that Kerry did to support our parishes and parishioners,” said Jim Kelley, diocesan development director. “And I am excited that Barb has joined us. She brings knowledge and experience that will benefit our work in serving the people of the diocese.”
De Mase can be reached at 704-370-3302 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
— SueAnn Howell, senior reporter
CHARLOTTE — Bishop Peter Jugis issued a statement Aug. 17 in response to recent allegations of sexual misconduct against Church leaders, including a retired archbishop of Washington, D.C., and the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing child sexual abuse by hundreds of priests in six dioceses of that state.
One of the 301 priests named in the Aug. 14 grand jury report, Spiritan Father Robert Spangenberg, served at St. James Church in Hamlet for about three years in the mid-1990s.
“Over the past few weeks we have been presented with a lot of shameful revelations about the conduct of leaders and others in the Catholic Church,” Bishop Jugis said. “I have been hearing from many people who feel betrayed and wonder what is going to happen next to our beloved Church.”
Bishop Jugis said he “fully” supports the statement by Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Read the statement.
In that Aug. 16 statement, Cardinal DiNardo called for an investigation into the allegations against Archbishop McCarrick, “an opening of new and confidential channels for reporting complaints against bishops,” and “better procedures” to resolve complains made against bishops.
“We are faced with a spiritual crisis that requires not only spiritual conversion, but practical changes to avoid repeating the sins and failures of the past that are so evident in the recent report,” the cardinal wrote. Those changes will include input from laity, experts and the Vatican, he said.
Details are expected to be considered at the U.S. bishops’ next meeting in November.
— Catholic News Herald
Related story: Allegations of sexual misconduct by priests, cover-up by Church leaders have people talking
CHARLOTTE — The Diocese of Charlotte has found itself connected to the growing scandal surrounding Archbishop Theodore McCarrick. The diocese was mentioned in a former Vatican ambassador’s letter claiming Pope Francis and other Church officials ignored sexual abuse allegations against the retired prelate.
Greg Littleton, a priest who was removed from ministry in the Charlotte diocese in 2004, was named in the Aug. 25 letter by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who served as apostolic nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016.
Archbishop Viganò accused Church officials, including Pope Francis, of failing to act on knowledge of Archbishop McCarrick’s alleged sexual misconduct and abuse. He cited Littleton as one of the first to try to bring to light evidence of Archbishop McCarrick’s “grave misdeeds,” in 2006.
Archbishop McCarrick resigned July 28 from the College of Cardinals and was ordered by the pope to maintain “a life of prayer and penance” until a Church trial examines allegations that he sexually abused minors. McCarrick, who retired from active ministry in 2006, has said he is innocent.
Littleton, who lives as a private citizen in North Carolina, did not respond Aug. 27 to requests for comment on the allegations against Archbishop McCarrick.
Littleton’s story has been detailed in blogs that identify him by name and news reports where he is referred to as an unnamed priest. It began in 1987 when Archbishop McCarrick, then head of the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., allegedly abused an unnamed Metuchen seminarian while in New York City.
In 1994, Littleton wrote an account of abuse at the hands of Archbishop McCarrick and claimed that it led to his inappropriate touching of two boys.
In 1997, Littleton came to the Charlotte diocese from the Diocese of Metuchen, where he had received treatment for his 1994 admission and was regarded as a priest in good standing.
Returning priests to ministry after psychological treatment was the practice at the time, diocesan spokesman David Hains said.
Littleton served at St. John the Baptist Church in Tryon and later at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Charlotte.
In the fall of 2002, then Bishop Paul Bootkoski of Metuchen ordered a review of priest personnel files as part of a national investigation of sexual abuse of children in the Church. As a result of the review, in October 2002 the Metuchen diocese sent portions of Littleton’s psychological assessment to the prosecutor’s office in Middlesex County, N.J.
At that time, the Charlotte diocese was made aware information was sent to the prosecutor, but Littleton’s status as a priest in good standing was not changed because no other information about his fitness for ministry was supplied to the diocese.
Unlike the diocese’s current “zero tolerance” policy, the policy in 2002 said the bishop needed a specific allegation in order to take action against a priest — something the diocese did not have in connection with Littleton, Hains told the Catholic News Herald in 2004.
“Today, an investigation would warrant the priest’s removal from active ministry,” he noted in the Feb. 27, 2004, edition, as called for in the U.S. bishops’ “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”
In mid-February 2004, Bishop Bootkoski relayed new information regarding Littleton to Bishop Peter Jugis, who had only months before been installed as the fourth bishop of Charlotte.
Bishop Bootkoski said he was including Littleton among Diocese of Metuchen clergy counted in the John Jay study – a nationwide review of abusive clergy by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, under the mandate of the Charter, to investigate the scope of the sexual abuse of minors by priests from 1950 to 2002.
Littleton’s name was on a list of priests of the Metuchen diocese who had been investigated for sexually abusing minors in the 1990s.
After reviewing the new documents sent from New Jersey, Bishop Jugis removed Littleton from ministry as pastor of Our Lady of the Assumption Church that same month.
For the approximately seven years Littleton served in the Charlotte diocese, no complaints were filed against him.
The Middlesex County prosecutor later declined to press charges in the matter.
Archbishop Viganò’s letter came on the heels of a New York Times report regarding two seminarians who said they had been abused by Archbishop McCarrick and received financial settlements in the mid-2000s.
The Archdiocese of Newark, where Archbishop McCarrick served from 1986 to early 2001, contributed to an $80,000 settlement payment to Robert Ciolek, who was ordained a priest after the abuse began, but eventually left the priesthood to marry.
The Metuchen diocese made a separate $100,000 settlement in 2007 with an unnamed priest who said he had been abused by Archbishop McCarrick and others.
This priest had submitted one of the earliest written complaints about Archbishop McCarrick, according to the New York Times.
In his letter Archbishop Viganò names this former priest as Littleton.
He said Littleton “recounted his tragic story of sexual abuse by the then-Archbishop of Newark and several other priests and seminarians” and forwarded information to about 20 people, “including civil and ecclesiastical judicial authorities, police and lawyers, in June 2006.”
Archbishop Viganò continued, “The facts attributed to McCarrick by Littleton were of such gravity and vileness as to provoke bewilderment, a sense of disgust, deep sorrow and bitterness in the reader, and that they constituted the crimes of seducing, requesting depraved acts of seminarians and priests, repeatedly and simultaneously with several people, derision of a young seminarian who tried to resist the Archbishop’s seductions in the presence of two other priests, absolution of the accomplices in these depraved acts, sacrilegious celebration of the Eucharist with the same priests after committing such acts.”
He said he shared this information in a memo to his Church superiors in 2006, recommending that an “exemplary measure be taken against the Cardinal” to prevent public scandal to the Church, but he never received a response.
Archbishop Viganò's letter and other allegations of misconduct against Archbishop McCarrick have raised enough questions, the head of the U.S. bishops’ conference said Aug. 27, to warrant action.
Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, said in a statement Aug. 27 that the questions raised by Archbishop Viganò “deserve answers that are conclusive and based on evidence.” He reiterated an Aug. 16 call for an apostolic visitation, working with a national lay commission granted independent authority, to investigate the “many questions surrounding Archbishop McCarrick.”
“Without those answers, innocent men may be tainted by false accusation and the guilty may be left to repeat sins of the past,” he said.
— Patricia L. Guilfoyle, Catholic News Herald; Catholic News Service
SIGNIFICANT DATES
1987 — Archbishop McCarrick allegedly abuses unnamed seminarian for the Diocese of Metuchen in New York City. The former priest received a settlement from the Archdiocese of Newark and Diocese of Metuchen in 2007, as reported by The New York Times July 16, 2018.
1994 — The unnamed Metuchen priest writes a letter to Archbishop McCarrick's successor in Metuchen, Bishop Edward T. Hughes, stating that abuse he allegedly endured from Archbishop McCarrick and other priests triggered him to touch two 15-year-old boys inappropriately. In the letter he also claimed he saw Archbishop McCarrick having sex with a young priest and that the archbishop invited him to be next. The letter was in a file the priest provided to the Times on the condition his name not be used.
2004 — Unnamed priest who wrote letter to Bishop Hughes of Metuchen in 1994 claiming abuse by Archbishop McCarrick resigns under the U.S. church's new zero-tolerance policy against child abuse, based on his admission of having abused children in the 1994 letter.
2007 — Unnamed former priest of the Diocese of Metuchen who was allegedly abused as a seminarian in 1987 in New York by Archbishop McCarrick receives a secret settlement of $100,000 from the Diocese of Metuchen and the Archdiocese of Newark.
2018, July 16 — The New York Times publishes a front-page story detailing alleged abuse of two seminarians who became priests in the Diocese of Metuchen, by Cardinal McCarrick in the 1980s that resulted in settlements to both men. These are the settlements concerning "sexual misconduct with adults" as described by the Newark Archdiocese and Diocese of Metuchen June 20.
2018, July 28 — Pope Francis accepts the resignation of Cardinal McCarrick from College of Cardinals and suspends him from public ministry. The pope orders him to a "life of prayer and penance" until the accusations against him are examined in a canonical trial.