At Our Lady of Lourdes, Queens Village

Church Gets a Summer Sprucing

By Marie Elena Giossi

The parish family that prays together at Our Lady of Lourdes, Queens Village, pitched in and cleaned together too last Saturday morning.

More than 50 volunteers, ranging from adolescents to septuagenarians, arrived around 10 a.m., willing to sacrifice a day at the beach or a picnic in the park in favor of washing marble walls, sweeping aisles and scraping gum from under pews – all in the name of restoring and beautifying their 53-year-old church building.

Newly ordained Deacon Walter Zimmermann organized this first-time effort by inviting parishioners, particularly young adults, to sign up after Masses on the two previous weekends.

Marie Elena Giossi Photos 

Worker bees were busy at Our Lady of Lourdes, Queens Village, last Saturday afternoon. Over 50 parishioners volunteered to restore and clean the church.

“This came out of a meeting we had. We saw there was work that needed to be done around the church. It became a community effort.

“The concern was to get parishioners to come out and help. It’s nice because the community is multi-cultural and it’s a wonderful thing for everyone to work together,” he said.

Deacon Zimmermann doled out cleaning supplies and assigned tasks to the worker bees, including his wife, Eleanor, two sons and grandchildren, who drove in from Westchester to help.

Wearing a baby blue polo shirt emblazoned with the parish name, Msgr. Robert Pawson, pastor, began by washing down the white marble altar table. Nearby, Joseph LoMangino, who runs the parish’s Divine Mercy Prayer Group, wiped down other marble surfaces in the sanctuary.

Since no one notices the radiator vents unless they aren’t working, newly ordained Deacon Rick Moreno removed each radiator cover so they could be thoroughly cleaned while the vents were vacuumed.
Father Mike Tedone, parochial vicar, has only been at the parish for a month and he was already ascending ladders to clean the Stations of the Cross.

Scraping chewing gum off the underside of pews was the main duty assigned to Confirmation candidates Jonel Jean-Louis, Emily Mazzola, and cousins Vanessa and Jasmine Estrada, even though they weren’t responsible for putting the sticky substance there in the first place.
Joanne Russo, parish director of religious education, informed students of this effort and was pleased when they arrived.

Seeing the young people also made 76-year-old Dan Foley’s heart swell with pride.

“I never did anything for this church for years and years and I said it’s about time,” he admitted as he tightened several screws on one of the parish kneelers. He tended to the wobbly ones first since they needed the most repair.

Foley, who moved next door to the church over three decades ago, arrived early to assess what tools were available and then went home to collect a hammer and an array of flathead and Phillips screwdrivers.

After seeing a young woman who became a Catholic through the parish’s R.C.I.A. program get involved in various parish ministries and activities, Foley said, “I felt my conscience getting to me.”

A retired system technician for the telephone company, he became an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion last year and now volunteers at church whenever he can.

Registered nurse Cora Dominguez doesn’t have much free time but she made time to give back to her church.

Her husband cared for their four-year-old at home while she and her three older children, Leila, 17, Neil, 15, and Kristina, 10, contributed buckets, mops, brooms, masks and some elbow grease to the effort.

“I mentioned to my children that they were looking for help and I said to them, ‘This is our church. We are available. It’s not every day that we do something like this,’” she said while polishing pews with Old English oil.

“I think we should do something like this annually,” she added.

That idea was agreeable to Cathy Kiszak, a member of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic faith, who regularly does volunteer work. She has attended Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes for the past several months and felt it was only right to give back and clean out the choir loft.

Beneath the loft, in a niche toward the back of church, statues of St. John the Evangelist and St. Anne received the utmost care as Carol Washington wiped them down with a gentle cleaning solution.

“I need to clean my house, but I’m here cleaning the church,” Washington said with a smile. “The older I get, the more this church means to me.”

As she worked, the middle-aged woman related that the church has been the center of her life for over 30 years. It’s where her family has gathered for countless Masses, where her youngest child was educated in the faith, and where she continues to find solace since her husband’s death a decade ago.

Her children have relocated to Arizona and her grandchildren want her to move there too, but she says, “I won’t leave my church.”

“One of the best things about today is seeing all of you and seeing how interested you are in your parish. Thank you for your time and energy,” Msgr. Pawson said to the volunteers, who were rewarded for their hard work with pizza and cold sodas.

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