Join Us for 160th Anniversary Bash

Friar Christopher is
the featured speaker.

St. Joseph Fraternity is celebrating its 160th anniversary by honoring three people with the Mother Marianne Cope Award on Sunday, Aug. 18.

The celebration begins with 10:30 a.m. Mass at St. Joseph-St. Patrick Church, 702 Columbia St., Utica, NY. The awards dinner follows at 12:30 across the street from the church at the new Irish Cultural Center.


Dinner tickets may be reserved here, or by sending a check to St. Joseph Fraternity of the SFO, c/o Katie Koscinski, 11 Matthews Ave., Utica, New 13502. Tickets are $30 per person (there is a slight surcharge if ordered online).

The featured speaker is Franciscan Friar Christopher Panagoplos, TOR. Father Christopher is a national spiritual assistant to the U.S. Secular Franciscan Order.

The fraternity will present the Mother Marianne Cope Award to three individuals:

• Edward Morgan,, director of Mother Marianne's West Side Kitchen, which serves daily lunch to the homeless, the unemployed and the underemployed.
• Marion (Duffy) Geary, OFS, who ministers to prisoners and who coordinates food pantry and clothing ministries. She also has volunteered in serveral soup kitchens. Duffey is affiliated with Holy Family Fraternity in Vernon.

• Betty Frank, OFS, who is celebrating 70 years as a professed Secular Franciscan and who played key roles in starting the Perpetual Adoration Chapel, the Divine Mercy celebration and the Mother Marianne Prayer Group at St. Joseph-St. Patrick Parish. She is believed to be the longest, living professed member of the Order in the U.S.

The Mother Marianne Cope Award is named after parish daughter St. Marianne Cope, a Franciscan sister who spent the last 30 years of her life caring for leprosy patients and their families in Hawaii.