Restoration work at Abbey church 
March 16, 2018
Yes, go hug a tree
March 16, 2018

St Joseph celebrates feast day

The St Joseph’s RC Church, St Joseph will celebrate its Patronal Feast Day with a solemn procession of the statue of St Joseph to First Capital Park at 8.30 a.m. followed by Mass with Archbishop Jason Gordon, 9 a.m. today. The actual feast day is observed March 19.

St Joseph’s RC Church will also celebrate the launch of its bicentennial book St Joseph RC Church, St Joseph 200th anniversary, 1815–2015. Sr Sandra Xavier OP told Catholic News that the book launch is one of several initiatives undertaken in celebration of the church’s 200th historic milestone.

The book was written by Dr Everard Johnston, retired senior lecturer at the Theological Institute, Seminary of St John Vianney and the Uganda Martyrs and Dr Glenroy Taitt, chief librarian at The University of the West Indies (UWI).

The book states that the St Joseph’s RC Church is the oldest Catholic Church–indeed the oldest existing Christian place of worship–in Trinidad and Tobago.

Construction began in 1815-, as the imposing foundation stone with the year etched in Latin, attests. The building was erected on the site previously occupied by two earlier parish churches.

The church also covers the graves of two sets of missionaries killed at Arena and in the Orinoco delta respectively and whose remains were buried in the early eighteenth century.- KJ