For, in addition to taking pastoral responsibility for St. Scholastica Parish, the Companions of the Cross are also — at the invitation of Archbishop Allen Vigneron — making Detroit their U.S. base of operations, relocating it from Houston, Texas.
Fr. Syrenne will be joined by two other Companions of the Cross priests this fall — Fr. Sean Wenger, who will be working for the Archdiocese of Detroit in the field of evangelization, and Fr. Simon Lobo, who will become the new Catholic chaplain at Wayne State University.
Also coming will be three of the community’s seminarians, who will be studying at Sacred Heart Major Seminary. “That is where all of our seminarians will be studying in the future,” Fr. Syrenne said.
The priests and seminarians will reside at St. Sylvester Monastery, the 13-bedroom former Benedictine monastery on the St. Scholastica grounds. The parish was formerly staffed by Silvestrine Benedictine monks, but the order has now consolidated its local operations at St. Benedict Monastery in Oxford.
The Companions of the Cross is an Ottawa, Ontario-based community founded in 1985 by Fr. Bob Bedard.
Describing the community, Fr. Syrenne said, “Our four pillars are Magisterial, Eucharistic, Marian and Charismatic, and our charism is the New Evangelization.”
The New Evangelization is the term coined by Bl. John Paul II for the re-evangelization he believed was needed within the Church to renew and re-invigorate the faith among those who were already, at least nominally, Catholics.
“That plays out in a whole bunch of different ways — working with youth, with the poor, with lapsed Catholics, with the people in the pews, and also to show Christ or be Christ to everyone we meet. Evangelization is not just a Sunday thing or something you do at a conference; it should part of our everyday lives,” Fr. Syrenne said.
So, priests of the Companions of the Cross can be found serving as pastors, as teachers, as chaplains, and conducting parish missions. Fr. Carlos Martins, CC, was in Detroit recently, conducting his special ministry of relic expositions.
“Our founder, Fr. Bob Bedard, has always urged us to preach: ‘Give God permission to do what God wants to do — give God permission, and then get behind it and support, not do what we what to do.’ How will that work out? Wait and see,” Fr. Syrenne said.
Fr. Syrenne, 52, a native of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, said he had been a part of the Charismatic movement since his early teens. Then, as a young adult in the early 1980s, while serving on a NET Ministries team for two years, traveling from parish to parish with other young adults conducting youth retreats, he heard about the Companions of the Cross.
(NET stands for National Evangelization Teams, and more information about it can be found in the story, “Livonia teen to join evangelization team,” in the July 29 Michigan Catholic, or online at www.themichigancatholic.com.)
“When I later felt a calling to the priesthood, I remembered the Companions of the Cross, and I became a part of the society in 1990,” Fr. Syrenne continued.
He was ordained in 1997.
