St. Clare of Assisi Parish

Are you an addict or alcoholic?

Do you care about or love someone who is struggling with an addiction to drugs or alcohol?

Has your life become chaotic and painful?
Do you want your loved ones back in your life?
COME FEEL THE LOVE OF CHRIST, THROUGH OTHERS, AND PUT YOUR LIFE BACK ON TRACK.

Learn from others and let them be Christ’s Arms for YOU!! 

Come out on Wednesday nights and find love, strength, and hope in them and others like yourselves.  Who should have to walk this painful journey alone? 

A prayer written by St Teresa of Avila is particularly meaningful to Maureen and Joe Vitulli  and led to the group’s name. 
It goes like this: 
 

God has no body now, but yours. 
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours. 
Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world.  Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. 
Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world.  
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes,
YOU are his body.  Christ has no body now on earth, but yours. This ministry is how they can be Christ’s body here on earth. 

Maureen and Joe Vitulli retired from their fulltime jobs and felt called by God to create an addiction ministry for the community called, Christ’s Arms for Others. 

They are not trained professionals, however, they have attended various support groups in the area over the years, have learned a tremendous amount about addiction, but as important, they both have caring hearts and are willing to share their experiences to help others find love, strength and hope to recover from addiction and the trauma that the disease impacts upon loved ones.   

The destruction and trauma that addiction can create in families. Two of their children have attended more funerals and buried more friends at their young ages of 31 and 36 than Maureen and Joe could have ever imagined doing.  A friend of their daughter’s died as recently as April 2019.  This was very uncommon, if not nonexistent when Maureen and Joe were their ages.  Both Maureen and Joe grew up in Delaware County Pa. and have come to learn that addiction was a part of their families and community.  In the year 2019, this opioid epidemic has killed off dear family and friends at an alarming rate!!!  Across the nation, 70,000 people died in 2018.  Of that number 3,163 were from New Jersey alone.  The average person likely has a friend, co-worker, neighbor, acquaintance, or family member, dealing with the agony of loving, or caring about, someone with the disease of addiction.

Maureen and Joe Vittulli have been members of the St Joseph Church in Swedesboro, the now, St Clare of Assisi Parish, since October 1986.  They raised their son and two daughters, who are now adults, sent them to Catholic school, for most of their lives, sat with them in the pews of St Joseph’s church every Sunday and holy day, and were very involved in their school and community activities. 

Contact us: [email protected]