Bishop Fisher Catholic Life Features

Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated at SS. Columba-Brigid

wnycatholic September 21, 2022

SS. Columba-Brigid Parish hosted a Hispanic Heritage Mass on Sept. 18, welcoming Bishop Michael W. Fisher. The multicultural parish on Buffalo’s East Side celebrated the Mass with Spanish music and a bilingual homily.

Bishop Michael W. Fisher accepts a basket of vegetables after celebrating the Hispanic Heritage Mass. The vegetables came from the SS. Columba-Brigid Parish garden. (Photo courtesy of SS. Columba-Brigid Parish)

The theme for this year’s Hispanic Heritage Mass was “Hear the Voice of Creation” as the Mass celebrated both Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15) and the Season of Creation (Sept. 1-Oct. 4). In 2015, Pope Francis invited all Catholics to celebrate the Season of Creation and to pray for our common home, the earth. It is one of the ways to put Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudato Si’” into action.

The vegetable garden at SS. Columba-Brigid was grown as an initiative of Group C of the parish council. The vegetable garden was expanded to provide fresh produce for the parish food pantry and for parishioners in response to the shooting on May 14 that closed the local Tops market for several months.

Parishioners of SS. Columba-Brigid Parish display the flags of their ancestors at the Hispanic Heritage Mass held the Buffalo parish on Sept. 18. (Photo courtesy of SS. Columba-Brigid Parish)

One basket of fresh vegetables was presented to Bishop Michael W. Fisher, the main celebrant of the heritage Mass.

“One reason we decided to present a basket of vegetables to the bishop was that we found out during his homily at the Revival the day before that as a youth he had a vegetable garden, and that he misses gardening,” said Father William “Jud” Weiksnar, OFM, pastor of SS. Columba-Brigid Parish. “We invited him to come spend time in our parish garden, which is just a mile from St. Joseph Cathedral, whenever he wishes.”

Hispanic Heritage Month is an annual celebration of the history and culture of the U.S. Latin and Hispanic communities. The event commemorates how those communities have influenced and contributed to American society at large.