Peace Be With You in the North End

A group of faithful followers were inside Saint Leonard of Port Maurice Parish on Wednesday. Father Antonio Nardoianni and Father Claude Scrima gave the noon Mass.

It was a cold day but the church was blazing with good will and warmth was generated by the artistic interior.

The Peace Garden was open, as always, to anyone who wanted to sit there.

“The Peace Garden was started by Franciscan friars since 1873,” Father Antonio said after the Mass.

“Peace is the message that the Franciscan family – after the footsteps of St. Francis – has been spreading throughout the world for the last eight centuries.”

Peace is a value very central to the Gospel, Father Antonio explained.

“The very starting of the garden was a modest means by which we try to spread the word of peace,” he said.

You enter the garden through a wrought-iron fence off Hanover Street.

In the fall, roses bloom.

More recently, there’s been a lot of snow covering the sign that explains the edifice was the first Roman Catholic church in New England built by Italian immigrants in 1873.

Birds enjoy the garden every season and flock to the statue of St. Francis.