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Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 17., The Roman Catholic Church in Medford. (search)
, which several of the women had made for the day's ceremony. Evergreen and spruce trees, which the young men had cut down and drawn from the hill rising just above the church, reached from the floor to the ceiling and were banked on either side of, and behind, the altar. Father Ryan, having just returned from Reading, where he had celebrated Mass, found the faithful of Medford and Malden awaiting him. We may well imagine the joy of those loyal hearts when their first pastor, on that Christmas morning, offered the Holy Sacrifice for the first time, in their first church, for the consolation and the spiritual uplift of the small struggling community. This was the earliest formal beginning of an organized Catholic society effected in this part of Middlesex County. This same structure is still in use, being a part of the large Church of the Immaculate Conception (then called St. Mary's) which you see today, standing as it does, together with the rectory, on the land provided by tho