Island to lose two church clergy next month
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER
After delivering Mass every day of the week, attending to scores of joyous weddings and somber funerals, providing family counseling and officiating over all the other ceremonies of St. Mary's Church, Father Paul A. Caron is leaving next month following seven years on Nantucket. His last day is Sunday, June 24, when he will preside over every Mass that day and then, with a somewhat heavy heart, join his congregation in a farewell reception.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent Father Caron: "These people are my family, so it's like going away from home in a sense."

"The hardest part of being a priest is being moved, especially if you have developed an attachment," Father Caron said. "These people are my family, so it's like going away from home in a sense."

Father Caron was born and raised in Taunton, Mass., and taught at a Fall River Catholic school and in Taunton public schools before studying for the priesthood at Boston's St. John's Seminary. In January of 2000, when he was in his fourth year as pastor of St. Francis Xavier in Acushnet, Mass., and learned of an opening at St. Mary's, Father Caron visited the island on an overnight stay. While walking through the quiet town he became so enamoured with Nantucket's atmosphere he applied for the position.

"There was something so captivating about it I decided it would be an adventure," he said. Father Caron was accepted to replace Father Thomas Lopes, who had been at St. Mary's Church for about nine years. "I'll always be a washashore, but I have friends who say I'm an islander."

Father Caron was asked to leave Nantucket by his diocese bishop, and will be going to St. Rita's in Marion, Mass., where he will lead that church and, eventually, St. Anthony's Church in Mattapoisett as well, a five mile commute he likens to driving from town to 'Sconset.

"There are fewer of us now and so many things to be done," he said of his assignments. Still, he has special memories of his time here, including the completion of St. Mary's restoration that began before he was a resident and the installation of its new organ. Most of all, he treasures the relationships he has established.

"It's the events in people's lives - it's the marriages and the baptisms; you become so much a part of their lives," he said. "I feel like I'm one of them and we're all on this journey together. I'm just the one who was asked to lead them a little bit."

Father Caron's mother lives in Mattapoisett and his brother lives in Marion, so he will be able to spend more time with family. He is glad about that, but it does not take the sting out of parting with a place and a religious community he has come to cherish.

"It has been a pleasure serving the people here and I'm going to miss every one of them," he said.

Father Caron will be replaced by Father Paul Canuel, who has spent the last six years as pastor of a Honduran Mission. Father Canuel begins at St. Mary's on June 27.

June 17 is the last day that the Rev. Mark Bruce will serve as minister at the First Congregational Church. Although he could not be reached for an interview, church deacon Ken Giles said Rev. Bruce came to the church in 2002 to replace Rev. Thomas Richard as senior minister and that Rev. Bruce is moving his family to the Cape. AMay 13 church newsletter explained that two search committees are forming, with the first to find an interim replacement for Rev. Bruce as soon as possible. The committee to find a permanent new senior minister will take whatever time is needed.

"We're very sorry to see him go, and we are working on the procedures to get a replacement," said Giles of Rev. Bruce's decision to leave.

These are just the latest changes affecting Nantucket's clergy. In October, 2006 Rev. Diane Wong, the associate rector at St. Paul's Church, left to lead a church in Taipei, Taiwan. Last December, St. Paul's senior pastor, the Rev. Joel Ives, left to become rector of The Church of Our Savior in Brookline, Mass.