St. Teresa’s Parish “Saturday Evening” choir performed on Sunday afternoon, February 28 in the Church Choir group at the Kiwanis 2010 Festival held in St. John’s. About thirty five men and women were directed by Mr. Robin Williams and accompanied by Mrs. Brenda Mooney. The adjudicator praised their performance of Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus and Leo Nestor’s Virgin, Great and Glorious, giving them top marks against a competing choir. Sister Loretta Dower, a Sister of Mercy, St. Teresa’s Convent
is a choir member and was delighted with the
choir’s performance. A number of Sisters, family and friends of choir members attended to cheer them on. The pastors of St. Teresa’s Parish were there too. Congratulations to Sister Loretta and to St. Teresa’s.
The Kiwanis Music Festival is an annual event beginning with a two-day festival in 1952 with 193 entries and two adjudicators; in 2010 it spans 12 days, with well over 6,000 participants and nine adjudicators. It is the largest festival in eastern Canada.
Musicians young and old have come to appreciate the “Festival” and enjoy this competitive opportunity to showcase their musical talent and their love and commitment to voice, instrumental and choral music. Every performer or group has the opportunity hear and learn from the instant evaluation of their performance by the expert and professional adjudicators. The adjudicators speak to them in order to teach and encourage. Marks are given, even though sometimes an adjudicator admits difficulty in giving marks to one group over the other.
Sisters of Mercy and their students in St. John’s and area schools have been part of the Kiwanis Music Festival since its foundation. Thousands of the sisters’ students – solists, duos and trios and combinations of the same, choirs, choral speech groups, instrumentalists, orchestras and bands from St. John’s, Bell Island, Goulds, Bay Bulls, Brigus, Conception Harbour and from as far as Marystown have entered the festival and have excelled.
Much is owed to the music teachers of our Congregation and of the Presentation Congregation for their commitment to music and culture and for nurturing the innate talent of the youth of our province. They are the true and consistent pioneers of our musical heritage. Some of them have rightly been inducted as members of the Hall of Fame of the Music Festival Association. There are no sisters taking groups to the Festival these days but their many students are doing that now. The baton has been passed and is calling forth the best of music in the next generations!
The setting was the beautiful chapel of Mercy Convent, a space so appreciated and loved by all of our Associates over the years. The occasion provided an opportunity for all to mingle with the Sisters of Mercy Convent community, with the members of the Congregational Leadership Team and with other Associates who were present.
made their commitment as Mercy Associates in a moving ritual service in the chapel at Conception Harbour. Sister Elizabeth Marrie accepted the statement of commitment of the new Associates, presented their pins and certificates of membership and welcomed them on behalf of the Congregation.
ther are called to bring to fruition the commitments of our Proclamation – to deepen our relationships, enhance our ministries and strengthen our visible presence as instruments of God’s mercy in our world. The energy and dedication of new Associate members give renewed impetus to our efforts”.
opened Centre. 
In the ensuing days the owner of the property told the committee who came to examine the house and land that a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes that was in the grotto had originally come from the local parish school, which had been administered by Sisters of Mercy, Our Lady of Lourdes School. The owner said that he had just recently offered the statue to one of the Mercy Convents because of the pending sale of the property. A short while after that the sisters learned that the statue had been warmly and gratefully welcomed at McAuley Convent and would eventually be ensconced in the garden there. When the Mount Scio property was finally purchased plans were made that the statue would be sent back to be installed in the empty grotto. Our Lady of Lourdes has returned 
to her former abode. Through her intercession we pray that the Mercy Centre for Ecology and Justice will be blessed in its ministry in care for the earth and for all of creation and in its efforts to promote the cause for peace and justice locally and globally. (The Centre is ideally located in Pippy Park, a huge green space in the center of St. John’s.)
The values represented through the posters – Healing, Caring, Respect, Compassion, Excellence, Collaboration, Integrity – flow from the mission of St. Clare’s in its care for sick and suffering people. The posters are testimony to the commitment and service of so many dedicated staff, physicians and volunteers in carrying out the mission of St. Clare’s. The setting for the photography was St. Clare’s; the people in the posters are staff/volunteers/patients of the hospital. Seven of the posters will be displayed in various areas of the hospital; an eighth poster, a composite of these seven, will be placed in the main entrance area. 
in an attempt to assist the people of Haiti. Through a fund-raising campaign of a few hours, $2,000 was collected. This amount has been forwarded to “Doctors Without Borders” to assist physicians and coworkers in their efforts to save lives and to control infection and disease.
From the Opening Prayer/Ritual, where we heard the call to acknowledge the presence of God within us, among us and in all creation, to the welcome, where we were challenged by the words of the poet, Mary Oliver ‘Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so…Be ignited, or be gone’, to the Litany of Blessing where we were reminded that we are blessed as custodians of the open table, symbol of creation’s abundant resources, from which no one is ever to be excluded, we heard the same call, to be agents of change, to engage in a more expansive way of living, a more integrated way of being.
Conlon spoke of the effects that a culture of greed, oppression and domination lead to – widespread unemployment, violence, substance abuse and ecological devastation. Yet the message was a call to hope. The brokenheartedness is not about despair but rather the call to break our hearts open so as to become people of compassion, leading to joy in the struggle and faith in the fulfillment. Drawing on the spirituality, the wisdom, the teaching of a number of our great thinkers, mystics, teachers, scientists, Conlon laid out for us a new way of being, a new way of living. The stars tell the great cosmic story; the streets tell our human-based hopes and dreams. He reminded us that we are genetically coded to live as community and that humans have the choice as to what the community will look like; it is all about Story and Dream. He challenged us to become geo-justice people, honoring each other’s gifts and respecting soul life.
