Just in time for the holidays, a group of priests in New York City (Staten Island, to be precise) is embarking on a mission to bring wandering Catholics back into the fold.

Take a look:

Since the summer, Monsignor Edmund Whalen has been encouraging his parishioners at St. Joseph-St. Thomas in Pleasant Plains to invite people who have fallen away from the Catholic church to attend mass with them.

“It’s been amazing,” the monsignor said. “It’s been very successful.”

Parishes all over the borough are hoping for that same success as they embark on an Staten Island-wide parish mission this week.

Thirty-five priests from the Redemptorist order, and one Augustinian, have taken up residence at two dozen parishes for the mission that officially kicks off tomorrow and runs through Thursday.

Most parishes will have a mission service in the morning and another at night. The service is not a mass but instead an hour or so of lively preaching, centered around a different theme each day.

Leading the mission for the Redemptorists is the Rev. John Murray, the author of four open letters to lapsed Catholics that ran as advertisements last week in the Advance. One letter emphasized that even women who have had abortions or people who have been divorced are welcome in church.

“They think they are unforgivable,” he said. “But they’re not. They can come to church.”

Father Murray said the church takes such a strong stand against abortion but “never emphasizes the forgiveness part of it. They don’t invite the second victim, the woman, back to church, and they should.”

The priest said divorced Catholics often believe, erroneously, that they have been excommunicated. It’s true that someone who has been married in the church and then divorces and remarries is no longer allowed to receive the sacraments, while those who have received church annulments may still receive. But it’s often the case that a church annulment is not necessary.

“Say you have a Catholic celebrity who gets married before a justice of the peace and then divorced,” Father Murray said by way of example. There is no need to annul that marriage because it did not take place in church. So even if that celebrity remarries, he is still welcome to receive communion.

“Come to the mission, talk to a priest,” he advised. “Don’t believe what your hairdresser or anyone else tells you.”

Another open letter in the Advance is directed at those who have not been to confession for years or even decades. “This is the route back,” said Father Murray, a native of Bay Ridge who was ordained 35 years ago.

In meeting those who have returned to church at St. Joseph-St. Thomas, or to a previous parish in the Bronx, Monsignor Whalen said he very rarely encounters someone angry about the priest pedophile scandal.

“Unless they were personally part of that, or had a family member who was a victim, that is generally not the reason people are unhappy,” he said.

Staten Island is believed to be somewhere around 55 to 62 percent Catholic, according to Monsignor Peter Finn, co-vicar for Island Catholics and pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church in West Brighton. But church leaders say up to 150,000 of those Catholics are inactive. It’s those people mission organizers most want to see in the pews, with their church-going families, friends and neighbors.

“The mission will be a short course in the fundamentals of our faith,” Father Murray said.

Once a person returns, he or she becomes a powerful evangelist.

“It’s like a pyramid scheme,” Monsignor Whalen said. “There’s no one more fervent than the one who’s been brought back. Then they bring more people back with them.”

If the mission works as hoped, other churches should experience what Monsignor Whalen is seeing in his parish’s two churches.

“Since the summer, we have been having banner crowds,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s the economy or what, but our masses are SRO.”

Photo: by Hilton Flores/Staten Island Advance