Our Lady of Fatima First Saturday Club is the group with which Father Michael Fugee travelled annually to visit Ste Anne de Beaupre and other shrines in Quebec. The trip is conducted over a period of nine days to cover nine days of a novena. The group who make the ‘pilgrimage’ comprise in part of persons who are mentally and/or physically handicapped. The group is, at least on some occasions, accompanied the group are young people from youth groups in New Jersey.
The Msgr. Paul Boccichio referenced and quoted below is a good friend of Father Fugee. Father Thomasl Triggs , pastor of St. Mary’s in Colt’s Neck, NJ, resigned in early May 2013 after it became public knowledge that he had allegedly invited Father Fugee to join in the trips. Just prior to tendering his own resignation Father Triggs accepted the resignations of Amy and Mike Lenehan . The Lenehans , who were co-directors of the youth group at St. Mary’s, had made the trip to Quebec for years, as, it is alleged, despite legal restrictions on his ministry and interactions with children and youth, had Father Fugee.
Youth Group joins God’s Inner circle
The Trenton Monitor (newspaper of the Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey)
8/31/2012 12:00:00 AM
[pdf file of this article: Our Lady of Fatima First Saturday Club and St. Mary Parish Youth Group Youth Group 2012]
By Christina Leslie
Pleased Pilgrims – St. Mary Parish Youth Group members shepherd two of “God’s Inner Circle” through the shrine of St. Anne de Beaupré, Quebec, during their nine-day service pilgrimage to Canadian holy sites.
[This article as pdf file]
Members of St. Mary Parish Youth Group, Colts Neck, joined a contingent of pilgrims from the Our Lady of Fatima First Saturday Club on a journey to Canadian shrines and basilicas July 28 to Aug. 5. The trip was the fulfillment of a vow made by a northern New Jersey Catholic woman more than six decades ago to unite travel, adoration and service to the disabled whom she dubbed “God’s Inner Circle.”
The Club was formed by a devout Catholic named Mary Varick in 1951. Varick was confined to a wheelchair by polio at age two; her father prayed to St. Anne de Beaupré to heal his daughter, for he had heard of miracles that occurred by the saint’s intercession at her shrine in Canada. When Varick was diagnosed with bone cancer at age 40, she joined her father and brother in a pilgrimage from their homes in northern New Jersey to beseech St. Anne’s help.
Varick’s bone cancer was healed during a Mass celebrated at the shrine. In gratitude for the miracle, the young mother vowed to return each year with a group of fellow pilgrims with mental and physical disabilities she dubbed “God’s Inner Circle.” Varick led novena-length trips from the Archdiocese of Newark for another three decades until her death in 1989 at age 78. Today, her granddaughter Maryanne Adriance follows in Varick’s footsteps by leading pilgrims with disabilities, nursing staff and teen assistants on annual nine-day visits to the shrine.
Amy and Mike Lenehan, co-directors of the St. Mary Parish Youth Group, have made the Canadian pilgrimage with the group since the early 1990s and have taken their young daughters along from their infancy. This year, six St. Mary youth group teens joined the Lenehans on the trip of service, discovery and an examination of their faith.
The able-bodied teens were assigned a disabled pilgrim to assist during the nine-day journey within Canada. The group visited the St. Anne shrine located 30 miles east of Quebec City; St. Joachim de Montmorency, Quebec; St. Joseph Oratory, Montreal; and Cap-de-la-Madeleine near Trois Riviers. Tours of basilicas, Masses, Stations of the Cross, and a boat ride on the St. Lawrence River entertained both young and old as they explored the holy sites as had generations of fellow “God’s Inner Circle” pilgrims before them.
“The teens thought it was their job just to help the [disabled], but they ended up getting a lot more out of it,” noted Amy Lenehan as she detailed the friendships formed on the trip. Some pilgrims were self-sufficient, but others needed assistance with the most basic of tasks such as dressing and brushing their teeth, and the St. Mary youth group’s teens served as able assistants. Moreover, accommodations were far from plush. “We roomed in simple pilgrim houses, very basic, not technological,” Lenehan recalled with a chuckle. “The teens were shell-shocked.”
Youth group member Lizzy Mirasola, an incoming junior at Colts Neck High School, marked her second pilgrimage with the St. Mary’s youth group. Remembering her initial misgivings about the trip last year, the 16-year-old admitted, “The first time I was really weaned into it, I thought there were a lot of old people, of sick people. I was surprised they were not boring or dependent. They could be inspiring,” the teen said.
The youth group member cited the nightly garden walks and candlelight processions near the shrines as the most inspirational part of her experience and fervently recommended other teens to consider a service pilgrimage. “Absolutely, I would,” Mirasola stated firmly. “One new girl to the [St. Mary] youth group was thinking about going on the trip and I told her just to try it this year. If you don’t like it, you won’t have to go back. Well, she loved it; she did even more her first year than I did.”
Mirasola and her fellow teens were surprised by the depth of their fellow pilgrims’ appreciation for the assistance. “They were very grateful for your help. A lot of the people were the same from last year, and I was surprised they remembered little things [we did that] we had forgotten,” the teen said. “The small things had a big impact; we fell head over heels in love with them.”
First Saturday Club Lacing Up its Boots for Trek to Canada
The Catholic Advocate
21 June 2006
by Melissa McNally, Staff Writer
06/21/06
AREA-“I was born in to it,” said Maryanne Adriance of her role as co-director of the Our Lady of Fatima First Saturday Club.
Her grandmother, Mary Varick, began the club after a miracle cure of bone cancer 55 years ago. Although she had contracted polio at the age two and was confined to a wheelchair, Varick believed prayer to St. Anne de Beaupre saved her from cancer.
Inspired by this experience, she founded the First Saturday Club, now based in Morris Plains, as a way to reach out to those with disabilities, or as Varick called them, “Gods inner circle.”
Adriance and her cousin Joan Murray took the reigns of the organization five years ago, keeping the club in the family with the enduring spirit of their late relative, who died at the age of 78.
Along with meetings on the first Saturday each month at a different parish in the archdiocese, the group of 70 to 75 people makes a pilgrimage to shrines in Canada, including the St. Anne de Beaupré shrine, which is located 30 miles east of Quebec City (Web site: www.ssadb.qc.ca/en/index.htm). This year, the trip to Canada will run July 29 to Aug. 6-a novena of days, which is the tradition for the group. The group will also visit St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, Our Lady of the Cape and St. Joachim de Montmorency.
When Varick was a girl, her father prayed to St. Anne to heal her because he heard about miracles at the shrine. However, she never had money to actually visit the site. When she was diagnosed with cancer at age 40, her brother and her husband decided to make the trip to the Canadian shrine.
“Aunt Mary only had a few months to live and the doctor advised her not to go. She remembered the exact moment when she was healed. It was during the benediction and she prayed not for herself, but for her children. She thought St. Anne, a mother herself, would understand her struggle. When she came back from the trip, the doctors found no trace of cancer in her body,” Murray explained.
Thousands flock to the shrine of St. Anne de Beaupré, 30 miles east of Quebec City. Among those that visit the basilica are The First Saturday Club, which takes the mentally and physically disabled to Canada every year.
Adriance was at first apprehensive about becoming director of the First Saturday Club, an organization that includes members with both physical and mental disabilities. “I was very hesitant to take over. My mother had multiple sclerosis and passed away before my grandmother. I found it difficult to have taken care of my mother and then be involved in the club. My aunt took over after my grandmother’s death but I still came to the meetings even though I said no,” she said.
After her aunt planned to move out of state, Adriance made the decision to take over. “I wasn’t willing to let the meetings stop but I realized I couldn’t do it by myself.”
Murray volunteered to help and both ran the meetings with chaplains Msgr. Paul Boccichio, pastor of Holy Family Parish in Nutley and Father Kevin Carter, pastor of St. Nicholas in Jersey City. Msgr. Boccichio knew Varick while he was a seminarian. While he was a deacon at St. Lucy Parish in Newark, Varick lived close to the parish. When he was ordained a priest, Father Boccichio worked with the youth group,”The Seekers,” at Our Lady of Mercy Parish in Jersey City. The volunteers joined the First Saturday Club on their pilgrimage to Canada in 1973.
“Mary had incredible faith and deep conviction. Whenever she set her mind to something there was no stopping her. Even when she didn’t have the money to arrange the trip she would still have it. She was such and amazing woman,” Msgr. Boccichio said.
The pilgrimage has an affect not only on the members of the club, but the staff and volunteers as well. “You go thinking that you are going to help these people and they end up ministering to you. There was a blind woman on one of the trips who asked me how orange the sunset was. She made me describe the sky to her and it made me stop and realize how many things I take for granted. It took a blind woman to teach me how to see,” he added.
Before he became chaplain of the First Saturday Club, Father Carter was a volunteer in Msgr. Boccichio’s youth group in 1977. After a trip to Russia and Italy with the group, Father Carter joined the pilgrimage to Canada and his experiences there became an essential part of why he became a priest. “I used to help those with wheelchairs on and off the buses, helped with bathing some members of the group and fed them. In 1986 I was ordained and became chaplain.”
One of Father Carter’s greatest memories of the pilgrimage is when Varick would do the Stations of the Cross outdoors and share her reflections with the group.
“When she would get to the fourth station, where Jesus greeted his mother, she would become emotional and speak about her own experience. During that time, her daughter had died and her mother was alive but very frail. Watching her speak was the highlight of the trip,” he reflected.
Father Carter, in 1977, wrote a letter to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of the Archdiocese of Newark, to consider canonizing Varick. “Having Mary as a saint would be a wonderful image for people to see,” Father Carter said.
“My grandmother always had a joy for life. No matter what is going on, despite her disability, she was genuinely happy. Working with the people in the First Saturday Club has made me appreciate the little things in life,” Adriance said.
As a registered nurse, Adriance said she is accustomed to being a main caregiver. Her skills as a nurse are an asset when working with the physically disabled
Along with the chaplains, Murray and Adriance, two youth groups also come on the trip with 25 teenagers as well as five or six other nurses. The trip is an eyeopening experience for all involved. “When my grandmother was praying for a cure for her cancer, she did not want to be cured of everything. She said that polio was a reminder of God’s love. She embraced her disability and therefore embraced the disability of others,” Adriance said.
“Aunt Mary believed God asked something of her in a special way. She always said her disabilities weren’t for nothing and believed that through her suffering, she joined in the suffering of Christ,” Murray said.
Other members of the First Saturday Club view their disabilities not as a hindrance, but a way to enhance their spiritual life.
(Editor’s note: Our Lady of Fatima First Saturday Club welcomes donations. The organization is headquartered at 51 Jaime Court, Morris Plains, NJ 07950. Contact Joan Murray at (201) 265-5823 for more information.)