NEW JERSEY
New York Times
By JAMES BARRON
NOV. 13, 2016
NEWARK — Bishop Manuel A. Cruz opened with a head count. “Four,” he said, looking out at the four parishioners in a small chapel behind the soaring Gothic sanctuary of the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart here. “The perfect number, because it is the number we are here.”
Then Bishop Cruz said the evening Mass — the nightly service in English. Of the four worshipers, one was a lay reader, Edna Tan, who came to the United States from the Philippines 27 years ago. Also at the service was the cathedral’s head sacristan, Sister Ana Julia Frias, a nun from the Dominican Republic. The third worshiper was black, the fourth white.
Ninety minutes later in the same chapel, another Mass began, the weekly evening service in Spanish. The pews were full, about 50 people in all.
The difference in attendance illustrates one of the main challenges facing the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark as it prepares for the arrival of a new leader, Archbishop Joseph W. Tobin, currently the archbishop of Indianapolis. The cathedral is the seat of a troubled archdiocese stretching across four counties in northern New Jersey. It encompasses some of the state’s wealthiest communities, and some of its poorest.
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