It was like a homecoming last night in Jim Thorpe when His Excellency, the Most Rev. Bishop Thomas J. Welsh of the Diocese of Allentown, came home for the first time since his appointment as the successor to retired Bishop Joseph McShea.

More than 500 people jammed St. Joseph Catholic Church in that community for the Eucharistic celebration hosted by the parish and its pastor, Msgr. Joseph Marzen, and the Carbon Deanery.

Bishop Welsh, a native of Weatherly, spent the prior nine years serving in the same capacity in Virginia.

Concelebrants of the celebratory Mass were Msgrs. Marzen, Agnello Angelini and Joseph Dooley, the Rev. James Torpey, a deacon at St. Michael Church, Lansford, and 16 priests from the county’s parishes.