by Fr. Nereo B. Agaloos

Second to California, the state of  New Jersey has the most Filipinos living in the United State ; a good number of them reside in Jersey City.  The Filipinos in Rahway have been slowly growing; many of them are nurses employed at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.  As a chaplain of the hospital I meet them everyday.  The Filipino community of St. Mary’s parish was formally organized only more than three years ago in the summer of 2005. We started with a monthly Mass, an all Tagalog liturgy every third Sunday at 5:00pm followed by a fellowship dinner, to socialize and get to know more each other. It had a humble beginning with a few number of Filipino families and as time went by it was slowly growing and spreading to surrounding parishes through the efforts of the Filipino parishioners themselves, and now even some of our kababayans living as far as Borden town, NJ as well as New York come to join us time and again.

The Filipinos being a part of the parish community of St. Mary have been actively involved in the parishes’ various activities, extending assistance in anyway they can to the needs of the parish. For instance the group has been helping raise funds for the parish by organizing a dinner dance twice a year.

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