I am pleased to present you with the annual financial report for fiscal year 2023-2024 (July 1, 2023-June 30, 2024). It provides a comparison of the prior fiscal year, and demonstrates the fiscal health of our parish and schools and our accountability to you in our stewardship of the financial resources you have entrusted to us for the advancement of our parish’s life and mission.
Graphics throughout this report show the level of participation of our parish families in our mission. Although our numbers are increasing, they remain lower than national averages reported by the Pew Research Center, and urge us to make evangelization and re-engagement with those who don’t practice our faith our pastoral priority and driving mission.
Our schools are strong and fiscally healthy. We have seen enrollment increases in both schools, but especially in our elementary school, as more families are choosing a Catholic education for their children.
An educational environment of faith and values is of high importance to our parents, placing it alongside strong academics that prepare students for college and beyond.
I am very grateful to our Catholic school parents who sacrificially choose all that a Catholic education can provide. Tuition still covers approximately 92% of the total cost of education in both our schools, the balance being made up from fundraisers, parish tuition assistance funds, diocesan subsidies, and our generous benefactors. Tuition assistance comes from our operational budgets, various parish or school assistance funds, diocesan subsidies awarded to qualifying families in need, and from our donors. We are blessed in the strong leadership teams we have in both schools, our dedicated, hard-working faculties, and in the good parental partnerships we have developed that help make our schools strong and fiscally healthy.
The upkeep of our parish cemetery continues to be a challenge. Shortly after I arrived in the parish, I was able to establish a perpetual care account for our cemetery, which is currently funded with $50,000. While that sum may seem more than sufficient, it isn’t. Perpetual care funds are restricted for a cemetery’s upkeep when all available ground space for burials has been used or sold and no future in-ground burials are possible. One of our challenges is to better fund both the operations of the parish cemetery and provide for its perpetual care when the cemetery can no longer accommodate burials and its care must be maintained for the decades to come.
Of course, our needs never cease. One of our primary fiscal objectives for the coming years is to better fund our capital reserves and establish well-funded endowments for our schools. While replacing a roof or failed boiler may not be an attractive project for
donors, our educational and pastoral ministries cannot be served without them.
I am grateful to those who have made automated giving their preferred way of contributing to the financial support of the parish. If you have not enrolled in automated giving through Faith Direct or through your bank or credit card company, I strongly encourage you to do so. It’s safe, easier to use than the envelope system, and creates a reliable source of monthly revenue upon which we can fund a budget. So please consider moving over to an automated giving platform if you have not already done so both for your own convenience and for the advantages it offers the parish.
Let me end with a word of gratitude. In the final analysis, money is a resource for mission and ministry. A parish can only do what its members enable it to do through their participation in parish life and through the financial support that sustains its mission, maintenance, and good operations. Every Catholic wants to see their parish thrive and grow and not just survive and maintain. We want to build on our distinguished legacy of faith, education, and service and face the future with the vision and confidence that comes from the Lord. We want healthy, unapologetically Catholic schools that not only educate students and prepare them for success, but form disciples eager to “set the world on fire” (St. Ignatius Loyola) when they leave us.
Thank you for all that you do to make mission and ministry not only possible but a reality in our parish and schools. Servus,
Msgr. Joseph G. Celano Pastor and Director of Schools
In small groups, 80 parishioners considered how to live out the mission of the Church and our parish.
The bright lights of nearly 300 dedicated Christmas trees illuminated the Somerville sky and gave witness to the miracle of Christ’s birth.
Catechists share our faith with over 370 parish children in the Children's Faith Formation program.
CHURCH OF THE IMMACULATE
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
“We want to build on our distinguished legacy of faith, education, and service and face the future with the vision and confidence that comes from the Lord.”
—MSGR. JOSEPH G. CELANO
PASTOR AND DIRECTOR OF SCHOOLS
Connection to Christ
For Tuan Bui, the journey to the diaconate converged with the journey to fatherhood, and it was a journey of many years. “Lucas was a miracle child,” Tuan and his wife, Anna, explained. The couple, who were raising a teenage daughter, were praying for a baby, and had been through a series of personal and medical trials that had led them to all but give up. The euphoria of pregnancy, finally, quickly gave way to worries about serious medical issues in utero. Then their son was born with medical issues that persisted, and the family was concerned that he would not be able to make it at Immaculate Conception School.
Fast forward: Lucas is today an honor student in advanced placement classes at ICS. Tuan told Monsignor Brennan, pastor at the time, that he had been called to the diaconate, and although he had a young family and a new job, he knew this was the right decision. After a year of serving the parish as a lector, terrified at the ambo facing the congregation, Tuan began the six-year program of study that led to his
ordination this past June.
David Lang’s path to the diaconate comes from his family’s lifelong love of the parish; he and his five siblings attended parish schools from kindergarten through high school. His family was an Immaculate Conception parish institution – his father was the first person buried from the church in 1975, when Monsignor Kelly, then pastor, rushed to have the pews installed in the new church in time for the funeral for his friend and faithful building committee member.
Like Tuan, a brush with serious adversity helped David understand his calling. In 2017, he suffered a cardiac event from which few recover. “When you come back from that, you try to understand what God is telling you,” David said. In heeding the call to the diaconate, David had the full support of his wife, Heather, who said, “I knew when I married you that this would happen.” That began what would become a five-year journey to ordination that has allowed him to become “the second closest person to a miracle every time I am on the altar at Mass.”
Tuan Bui
David Lang
116 NEW HOUSEHOLDS registered with our parish this past year
24% INCREASE in weekly Mass attendance
18% OF REGISTERED HOUSEHOLDS contribute 40% INCREASE IN REGISTERED HOUSEHOLDS participating in Sunday Mass on a weekly basis
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
SCHOOL
“Immaculate Conception School offers a nurturing, faithcentered environment that fosters academic excellence and spiritual growth. With dedicated staff, a strong sense of community, and a commitment to developing well-rounded individuals, our school empowers students to succeed academically while developing a relationship with Jesus Christ.”
—KATIE PARSELLS
‘And a Little Child Shall Lead Them….’
BRENNA HASSINGER-DAS
If you had told me ten years ago that I would be receiving sacraments in the Catholic Church, I would not have believed it,” said Brenna Hassinger-Das following her reception of the Eucharist and Confirmation at the Easter Vigil. It all started with a casual conversation with another mom from her son Avik’s class at Immaculate Conception School. Avik transferred to ICS following the COVID pandemic.
“I got very involved in school,” Brenna said. Raised a Protestant, “I hadn’t been going to church since we moved to New Jersey, but another mom invited me to
attend Mass with her, and I began to go on my own. I got a lot out of it.” She said her experience of the Catholic faith, at first through her son and then on her own, made her “want a different relationship with God than the one I grew up with – a God who isn’t ‘scary’ or ‘mad’.”
As Avik prepared to receive the Eucharist, Brenna felt “only partially there” when she attended school Mass or Sunday Mass. “That’s when I contacted Linda Wass about being part of the OCIA (Order of Christian Initiation for Adults) program,” she said.
Avik received the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist in third grade,
and feels right at home at ICS. “The kids are so welcoming,” Brenna notes. “He was aware of the idea of faith before he came here, but at this school, it is integrated into all they do, into character building and their belief system.”
While the culmination for Brenna was receipt of the sacraments and full communion with the Church at Easter, her son had his own moment of gratification this spring, too. “He received the Spartan Merit Award at school,” a recognition given to students who go out of their way for others, Brenna said – with gratitude and satisfaction.
“...another mom invited me to attend Mass with her, and I began to go on my own. I got a lot out of it.”
400 STUDENTS currently enrolled in grades
PreK–8
7% INCREASE in enrollment
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION SCHOOL July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024 2023 numbers provided for comparison.
IMMACULATA HIGH
SCHOOL
“Immaculata was built over 60 years ago through the generosity of Immaculate Conception parishioners who believed in the mission of Catholic education. Today, families well beyond Somerville’s borders choose our school, as the desire for Catholic education remains strong. The gifts of many make it possible.”
—ED WEBBER PRINCIPAL
Houses of Hope
Although for most teens summer begins when school is out, there is a group of dedicated parish families – students, Immaculata alumni, parish parents and friends – for whom summer doesn’t begin until they return from the mission trip in early June to the Appalachia region in West Virginia.
Colleen Paras
Now in its 25th year, “Houses of Hope,” the journey of hard work, sweat, prayer and joy, is a labor of love for all involved. “It’s hard to understand the things we take for granted until you see this,” said Michelle Reno, a volunteer parent who has continually participated in the trip since her own daughter attended Immaculata and graduated in 2021. She and her husband, Mike, parishioners at Immaculate Conception, remain committed as chaperones, believing that the “saddest thing would be if a van of kids didn’t get to go” for lack of adult volunteers.
The adults serve as more than chaperones, says Immaculata Director of Campus Ministry
Colleen Paras. “Teens and adults find peace in the work,” she said.
“It erases the generational differences. We need that intergenerational peace in our church.”
Visible witness to the effort comes each year to the Immaculate Conception sanctuary, when parishioners are invited to take sawtags representing needs of the group for supplies and trip support. The donations parishioners make fund the purchase of materials needed to repair, build ramps, and make habitable homes unlike any most of our parishioners have ever seen.
In addition to the June work trip, the Immaculate Conception family brings Christmas to the families in West Virginia each year, transporting gifts – and joy.
“This is a gift to our families, too,” Colleen said. “It’s fulfilling and gratifying. It helps them get to the core of who God intended them to be.”
“It’s fulfilling and gratifying. It helps them get to the core of who God intended them to be.”
537 STUDENTS currently enrolled in grades 9–12
5% INCREASE in enrollment
The Church of the Immaculate Conception and our schools, Immaculate Conception School and Immaculata High School, depend on the generosity of supporters to fulfill our mission to bring more people into relationship with Jesus Christ through the Catholic church. Gifts of all sizes and methods are gratefully accepted. You can find more information on means of giving at www.immaculateconception.org/giving or by scanning this QR code. 35
