Profile of a Parish: Coming Together
One Sunday in July 1961, the newly established parish of The Most Blessed Sacrament and its first pastor, the Reverend Francis F. Boland, were preparing for the first Sunday Masses to be celebrated in the community. Seated on folding chairs, 455 parishioners attended services in the cafeteria of the Ramapo Regional High School. Collection baskets yielded $465.66, slightly more than a dollar per person.

THE EARLY ENVIRONMENT
Catholics were divided about where to attend Mass. Some traveled to Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Oakland, others to St. Elizabeth's in Wyckoff. There were very few churches in town then. The minister of the Methodist Church on Pulis Avenue observed his devout Catholic neighbors, the Pierce Cleary family, marching each Sunday in a line along the Susquehanna Railroad tracks toward St. Elizabeth's. "Like ducks in a row," he mused in admiration of another church's flock. By 1960 the Archdiocese of Newark, well aware of the expanding population in the town, moved to establish the parish of The Most Blessed Sacrament.

His Excellency Thomas A. Boland, then Archbishop of Newark, personally selected the parish name and assigned Father Boland to organize the parish. In the first week of July 1961, Father Boland transferred from Our Lady of The Valley Church in Orange.

THE TANGIBLE CHURCH
The green shingled house at 591 Colonial Road, provided by Urban Farms, Inc., served as the rectory. Although Sunday Masses were being said in the Ramapo High School cafeteria, there was no place for offering daily Mass. Father Boland had a room in the rectory converted into a chapel. Some parishioners recall going to confession behind a makeshift confessional screen in the living room of the rectory. Enthusiasm among parishioners was growing rapidly. Bright autumn leaves were beginning to fall when the rectory was moved from Colonial Road to the Rizzo farmhouse at 711 Summit Avenue. Combining imagination and necessity, the storage barn beside the stone farmhouse would soon be transformed into a small church. Much of the painting and decorating was done by volunteers from the Holy Name Society and the newly formed Rosary Altar Society. Other generous contractors helped in the church project.

TOP PRIORITY: A SCHOOL
During the first few months that the parish was in existence, its school children went to St. Elizabeth's in Wyckoff. Bus transportation was made available through the efforts of Clarke Folsom, then secretary of the Ramapo Regional High School. Children who attended local public schools were taught catechism by two Sisters from St. John the Baptist Parish in Hillsdale. The children were transported by a carpool of parish mothers.

During the winter of early 1962, Father Boland was directed by the Archbishop to proceed as rapidly as possible with a building program to meet the growing needs of the Catholics in Franklin Lakes. The Archbishop decided that an elementary parochial school would be the first priority; then as funds permitted, to be followed by a convent, church and rectory.

Father Boland chose the site at the corner of Franklin Lake and High Mountain Roads for the school and future church. On the 1875 map of Franklin Township, a single house, marked "Gormley," is shown on that spot.

By the end of 1962, parking was a problem at the Summit Avenue chapel. Some Masses were so crowded that people had to stand outside the front door or listen through open windows. Several parishioners remember sheep grazing in the field next to the chapel and recall hearing them through open windows during daily Mass.

Building plans for Most Blessed Sacrament School were being studied by contractors during the summer of 1963. The Reverend Gordon Byrne, pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Oakland, offered use of three classrooms in his newly opened parochial school so that some children from Most Blessed Sacrament could attend school there that September. By late August, three sisters of St. Joseph arrived to take up residence in the convent of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. On September 3, 1963, parishioners held a reception for the sisters at the Indian Trail Club. Two days later, Most Blessed Sacrament School opened, using the available classrooms in Oakland. The historic double groundbreaking for both the school and convent was held on Columbus Day, October 12, 1963.

On September 19, 1964, Most Blessed Sacrament began its school year with grades one to five still using classrooms in Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish. Sixth and seventh grades were using temporary space on the second floor of the Urban Farms Shopping Center over the barber shop.

Christmas, 1964, was another eventful date for the church. Masses were offered in the unfinished auditorium of the new school. The parish had come a long way from its first Christmas Eve Mass in the old storage barn on Summit Avenue. A few days after Christmas, the Sisters of St. Joseph moved from their temporary convent in Oakland to the new red brick Colonial style convent next to the new school. It was the final touch to what was an important and historic year for the parish. The highlight of the year was the formal dedication of the school and convent on Memorial Day, Monday, May 31, 1965. Archbishop Boland and Father Boland officiated at the ceremonies which nearly 700 parishioners attended.

NEW PASTOR
In June 1967, the parish welcomed the Reverend Joseph M. Doyle as its new pastor to succeed Father Boland, who became pastor of St. Joseph's Parish in Roselle. (He is now deceased.)

In the winter of 1968, just after the Christmas holidays, Father Doyle, in keeping with the spirit of Vatican II, appointed the first Parish Council. It replaced the Lay Finance Committee as a means of sharing the responsibility between the pastor and the laity.

On June 30, 1977, Father Carl Hinrichsen became pastor of Most Blessed Sacrament after completing six months as associate pastor. An alumnus of Princeton University, he was ordained in 1955 and served as associate pastor at St. Leo's in Irvington before undertaking graduate studies in church history at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. From 1961 until 1972, Father Carl taught at the Darlington Seminary and assisted on weekends at St. Catharine's in Glen Rock. He longed to return to full-time parish work and was assigned as an associate at Mount Carmel in Ridgewood for awhile.

In March of 1979, the Parish Council announced it would appoint a Feasibility Study Committee to begin a study of the parish's future size, needs and ability to pay for the cost of the construction of a church. By the end of that summer, progress was made with other projects as well. On October 21, 1979, Father Carl received word that Archbishop Gerety had granted permission for MBS to proceed with the development phase of a church. Meanwhile, efforts got underway to establish a Building Fund Campaign to seek pledges of at least $700,000 before attempting to proceed with a church that would probably cost about a million dollars. An indication of the strong desire for a church is the fact that about $1,400,000 was raised, covering the building cost which came to about the same amount. On Easter Sunday it was announced at all Masses that the Building Fund Campaign had reached its million-dollar goal.
In June 1980, groundbreaking for the new church took place. By midsummer all the brick work was completed on the new church. The off-white botticino marble altar, pulpit and baptismal font arrived from Italy. Installation of the pipe organ soon followed.

THE BEAUTY OF THE BELLS
One of the most impressive additions to the new church was the bell tower built to hold three large cast bronze bells. They were purchased in the summer of 1980 when the church of St. Alphonsus on West Broadway in lower New York City was about to be demolished because it was found to be structurally unsound. The bells were cast in 1875 at the foundry of Meneeley and Kimberly in Troy, N.Y. and weighed 550 pounds, 800 pounds and 1,000 pounds.

LONG AWAITED DAY OF DEDICATION
The sky was gray and there was a chilling wind from the northwest just before noon on November 21, 1981 when the first of nearly 700 people began to arrive for the noon dedication of the new church. At exactly 12 o'clock the big bronze bells pealed the entrance of Archbishop Gerety, who was met at the church door by Parish Council President David Canavan. The Archbishop was handed several symbolic gifts, among which were the results of the feasibility study, construction plans, a scale model of the church, and the traditional key to the church. Archbishop Gerety then presented the key to Father Carl as pastor. The actual dedication ceremony involved the anointing of the altar and the walls of the church, the incensing of the entire interior, and the lighting of the church. The two-hour ceremony included participation by the two former pastors, Father Boland and Father Doyle, as well as Father Granstrand and Father Serratelli, and more than two dozen other priests. Other church officials taking part in ceremonies were Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb of Mobile, Alabama, and Bishop Robert Garner, the Vicar of Bergen County.

On Tuesday, June 23, 1983, Father Carl began his homily at daily Mass in the church chapel by announcing that the day before he received a telephone call from Bishop Garner informing him that, at the request of Archbishop Gerety, Pope John Paul II had named him a "Monsignor." In June of 1994, Msgr. Carl retired as pastor. Msgr. Owen Hendry who served many years in the Air Force Chaplaincy assumed the duties of pastor. During his tenure, a parish census was undertaken, two "cottages" were added to the school facilities and a business manager was hired. Msgr. Hendry was succeeded by Father Joseph P. O'Brien, O.Carm. who sensitively cared for the parish until Archbishop Theodore McCarrick appointed Monsignor Thomas J. McDade, Ed.D, up until then, the Secretary for Education for the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops in Washington, D.C. as pastor, effective May 17, 1999. In addition to Msgr. McDade, Father Peter Palmisano served as parochial vicar.

In June of 2004 Most Reverend John W. Flesey, who served as rector and spiritual director of Immaculate Conception Seminary became the next pastor of Most Blessed Sacrament Church. In addition to Bishop Flesey, Father Michael Donovan was appointed Parochial Vicar at MBS. In June 2007, Father Renato Bautista joined the Parish staff as the second Parochial Vicar. In the summer of 2009, Father Michael Donovan was appointed the President of DePaul High School and remained in residence at MBS as a weekend assistant. In 2011, Father John Job was appointed the Parochial Vicar of Most Blessed Sacrament Parish. 

On July 1, 2018, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the Archbishop of Newark, appointed Father John Job as the Pastor of Most Blessed Sacrament. Bishop Flesey remains in residence at Most Blessed Sacrament as the Pastor Emeritus. Today, Most Blessed Sacrament (MBS) is a vibrant parish of over 2,000 families with a wonderful future as it enters the third millennium.