WHEELING, WV….. The St. John’s Home for Children in Wheeling, West Virginia, has rescheduled its February 20 postponed third annual Founder’s Day Mass to Friday, March 27, 2015 at 9:00 a.m. The Founders Day Mass will be held at St. Vincent DePaul Catholic Church in Elm Grove. The Reverend John Mulcahy will preside. “This year’s theme to our Founders Day Mass is “Performing God’s Works”. This annual event is open to the public,” explains St. John’s Home for Children Executive Director Terry McCormick. “We want to thank the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, Fr. Mulcahy and St. Vincent DePaul Parish, and the Congregation of St. Joseph for their working with us on making this annual event a reality. We receive so much support from alumni, friends and the community as a whole during the year, we have found that this is a way to try to give something back to all of these people. Based on our Catholic heritage and mission, what better way than to allow them the opportunity to remember or honor their loved ones during our Founders Day Mass. This year’s event will again be celebrated in collaboration with the students of St. Vincent’s Parish School. “We have such a great working partnership with St. Vincent DePaul as our physical and spiritual neighbor, so how appropriate it is that our Mass will be celebrated with children,” McCormick concluded.
In 1856, Bishop Richard V. Whelan, the first Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, brought three orphans to the Sisters of St. Joseph for care. This small step marked the cornerstone of the storied history of the St. John’s and St. Vincent’s Home. Formally founded on February 21, 1856, and older than the state of West Virginia, St. John’s/St. Vincent’s Home has been home to thousands of boys and girls over the past century and a half serving as an orphanage at its roots, and now a residential 12 bed facility that ministers to abused and troubled boys ages 8 to14. “Annually, with nearly 5,000 reported cases of child abuse and neglect in West Virginia, there remains a great need for our services,” says McCormick.
Now known as the St. John’s Home for Children, it is nationally accredited by the Council On Accreditation (COA), is licensed by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, and is funded in part under an agreement with the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, Bureau for Children and Families. For additional information, please call 304-242-5633, visit our web site at www.stjohnshomeforchildren.org, follow us on Facebook at St Johns Home or email McCormick at stjterry@swave.net.