The annual tradition was also celebrated at the University Church at Rose Hill on Dec. 8, bringing together voices from the combined University choirs and the Bronx Arts Ensemble. President Tania Tetlow lent her own voice to the festivities, joining the choir singers and performing a solo of “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

St. Paul the Apostle, Lincoln Center

University Church, Rose Hill

The annual tradition was also celebrated on Dec. 3 at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, adjacent to the Lincoln Center campus, and featured the University choirs and dance performances by students in the Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. in Dance program.

Michael Schultz, FCRH ’04, and Lauren Rearick Schultz, FCRH ’05, welcomed a daughter, Abigail Frances Schultz, on July 21, 2019. She joined her brother, Noah Lincoln.

Thomas Porrovecchio, LAW ’06, and his wife, Maria Pasqua Palladino, welcomed their son, Carlo Giuseppe, in November.

Mark Haslinger, GABELLI ’06, and Erin Mills were married at a New Year’s Eve ceremony in Hopewell, New Jersey.

Sarah Dreher, FCRH ’07, and Tim Dinneen, FCRH ’08, GSAS ’16, were married on Aug. 16, 2019, at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan, where they first met at the University’s annual Festival of Lessons and Carols concert five years earlier. Both bride and groom served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps after graduation. Sarah now manages a mental health clinic for Goodwill Industries, and Tim is vice president of philanthropy at the Bank of New York Mellon.

Vijay DaCosta, GRE ’10, and his wife, Erin, welcomed their daughter, Esmie Jean DaCosta, into the world on June 23, 2019. Vijay is a middle and upper school religious studies teacher at the School of the Holy Child in Rye, New York.

Christopher Gannon, FCRH ’11, married Helen Felker in Washington, D.C., on April 6, 2019. The couple lives in Philadelphia, where Chris is a public defender and Helen is a speech language pathologist.

Eleni Koutroumanis, FCRH ’11, and Brian McArdle, GABELLI ’11, were married on July 6, 2019, in Orange, Connecticut.

Randy Eliezer Garcia, FCLC ’13, and Sharai Marie Rivera, GSE ’13, were married at the Now Onyx resort and spa in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

Annie O’Hagan, GABELLI ’14, ’15, married Matthew Coughlin, GABELLI ’14, at the Fordham University Church on Nov. 23, 2019.

Meredith Summers, FCLC ’15, and Joseph Harris, FCLC ’14, were married on June 22, 2019, in Charleston, West Virginia.

Did you get married or welcome someone new to your family? Share your news and photos with us at fordham.edu/classnotes.

In addition to musical performances by the Fordham University Choir, the Fordham University Schola Cantorum, the Fordham University Women’s Choir and the Bronx Arts Ensemble, Saturday’s program featured a performance by students from the Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. in Dance Program.

Photos by Argenis Apolinario

The choral program, with an instrumental complement by the Bronx Arts Ensemble, inspired solemn interludes of reflection in which the goodness and light of the season brought to mind the miracle of Jesus’ birth.

The annual concert, with its carols and biblical readings, has been a Fordham tradition for more than a quarter-century. But another tradition has been taking shape in connection with the concert—and it could be seen in the front pews, filled with 20 retired Jesuit priests along with the Fordham students who have been regularly visiting and assisting them.

The priests—who reside at Murray-Weigel Hall on the Rose Hill campus—have been making group visits to the concert for the past few years, accompanied by student volunteers who visit with them weekly and help them with daily tasks like getting around in wheelchairs or checking emails.

The students benefit as well. “We’re able to serve them and also learn from them,” said one of the student volunteers, Bernadette Haig.

The concert is inspired by the beloved British Christmas tradition that began in Cambridge, England, in 1918. Christmas favorites, including “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” and “Ave Maria,” were performed by the Fordham University Choir, the Fordham University Schola Cantorum and the Fordham University Women’s Choir with the Bronx Arts Ensemble. The women’s choir not only sang “Silent Night” but also performed it in sign language during the last verse.

Jeanne Moccia, FCRH ’76, GSAS ’78, who arranged the Jesuit priests’ excursion, has been volunteering at the retirement home for 11 years. A former banker, she became involved after visiting two family friends who retired and moved into Murray-Weigel Hall.

“A couple of years into it, I started doing some things for the men,” she said, “like taking them on walks and accompanying them to events.”

Moccia also helped expand the student volunteer program, now 40 strong, and find new ways to integrate the older and younger generations who live on the Rose Hill campus. Murray-Weigel Hall, perched near Fordham Road on the southern edge of campus, houses an average of 60 Jesuits from widely different backgrounds. Some are retired educators and administrators from Catholic colleges throughout the Northeast; others worked as missionaries around the world.

“One of the perks is that the students can meet individuals who have led very interesting and service-oriented lives,” Moccia said.

Haig, a Fordham College at Rose Hill junior, couldn’t agree more. She accompanied Richard Hoar, S.J., to the Festival of Lessons and Carols this year and has been visiting him weekly at Murray-Weigel since she was a sophomore.

A Long Island native, Haig is double majoring in engineering physics and classical civilization, and especially enjoys discussing her theology and philosophy classes with Father Hoar. She said she writes letters for and reads to the 90-year-old priest, who holds a degree in physics and served as a missionary in Micronesia for 23 years.

Juliette Dixon, a Fordham College at Rose Hill sophomore, pays weekly visits to George Restrepo, S.J., who just moved to Murray-Weigel from Canisius College in Buffalo. He holds a master’s degree in film from New York University, and worked in Baltimore and Puerto Rico earlier in his career.

“Jeanne does such a great job of matching people,” Dixon said. “Father Restrepo is very interested in music, film, and dance, and I am as well. So we always have something to talk about.”

Dixon, a ballet dancer who studies communications at Fordham, also helped organize a talent show for the priests last spring. Another group of students plays music for a small group of the priests each week.

The Festival of Lessons and Carols was a perfect outing for the priest-student pairs, who seem to share an appreciation of the arts.

In his remarks after the concert, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, told the audience that among them was a very special member of the Fordham community. Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., GSAS ’68, president of Fordham from 1984 to 2003, was seated in the front row with Jacqueline Tobin, a Fordham College at Rose Hill freshman who’s been visiting Father O’Hare at his Murray-Weigel residence since the fall.

“The concert gives us a chance to put a framework around these times of transition,” Father O’Hare said after returning to Murray-Weigel. “As we end one year and begin another, this is an opportunity for all of us, young and old, to reflect. It’s a nice tradition.”

—Claire Curry

AUDIO: WFUV, Fordham’s listener-supported public media service, will broadcast a recording of the December 4 concert at 10:30 p.m. EST on Christmas Eve. And you can listen to it anytime here on WFUV’s website.

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Following the celebration, Joseph M. McShane, SJ, recognized Minotti for 25 years of musical service to Fordham, where he has garnered international recognition for the choir and and created the Schola Cantorum chorus that sings weekly at the University Church Mass.

“He took a struggling program and turned it into the hottest Christmas ticket in town,” said Father McShane.

Update: WFUV Audio of Lessons and Carols

The sounds of the Christmas season also reverberated on the Rose Hill campus on December 7, 2014, as the Bronx Arts Ensemble joined the University Choir for the Festival of Lessons and Carols at the University Church. Members of the Fordham community lent their voices to the chorus in celebration.  You can listen to this program any time, or on 90.7 FM, WFUV on Christmas Eve at 10:30 p.m., followed by Midnight Mass from the University Church.

— Janet Sassi

A holiday service of Lessons and Carols, A New York Christmas to Remember, featuring host Regis Philbin, the puppetry of the late Jane Henson (wife of Muppets creator Jim Henson,) and the Fordham University Choir will be broadcast on Tuesday, Dec. 24 at 11:30 p.m. on the CBS network.

The University Choir will be joined by the National Children’s Chorus and the St. Paul the Apostle Choir at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, which sits a stone’s throw from Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

Throughout the hourlong special, Philbin will read biblical stories intercut with the puppet performances of the Henson’s daughters, Heather and Cheryl Henson. Like her husband, Jane Henson, who died last year, had a long history of working with puppetry. While studying theology, she was taken with medieval three-dimensional nativity scenes. She creatively blended her two interests into a new format, which her daughters will utilize to bring the nativity story to life.

A shimmering curve of Christmas trees lined the apse of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle on Dec. 7, setting a festive tide for one of Fordham’s holiday-season staples. The annual Festival of Lessons and Carols was performed by the University choirs and the Bronx Arts Ensemble in the Manhattan venue first, and again on Dec. 8 in the University church at Rose Hill. Both venues were filled to capacity.