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Issue of July 6th – July 19th
Pope John Paul II’s secretary pays a visit
Polish Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, archbishop of Krakow, spent three days making pastoral visits to Chicago’s Poles
Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Archbishop of Krakow, visited the Windy City June 27-29 and provided Catholic Poles with a historically memorable feast. As a friend and long-term personal secretary to their beloved Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Dziwisz came to Chicago as a guest of Cardinal Francis George and Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki, the liaison to Polish people in Chicago.
Chicago was one of a few places the Polish cardinal visited while traveling to North America for the International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City, Canada, as a representative of the Polish Bishops’ Conference.
Interview with Cardinal Dziwisz
Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz’s visit to the city was highly anticipated within the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Polish community. The former secretary of the beloved Polish pope shared his thoughts with the Catholic New World on life with Pope John Paul II and his life now as archbishop of Krakow by responding to written questions.
New school breaks ground on West Side
The audience of about 200 people at the June 26 groundbreaking for the new Christ the King Jesuit College Preparatory School included movers and shakers, prominent business leaders, civic leaders, officials and church prelates.
The speakers on the dais included Cardinal George, the pastor of more than 2.3 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of Chicago, and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.
But the person who got the most attention when she approached the microphone was 13-year-old Shaquocora Henderson, a recent eighth-grade graduate from KIPP-Ascend Charter School, who is among the 120 students who will make up Christ the King’s founding class.
Confirmation gives us armor to be Jesus’ soldiers
God calls each of us to be soldiers of Christ. We are challenged to boldly proclaim the Gospel, and as Pope Benedict XVI recently reminded us, even in the most challenging of settings — the streets of the world.
Soldier-saints like Joan of Arc and Ignatius Loyola knew they could not withstand battle without protection. Neither can we engage in the dramatic spiritual battle that surrounds us unless we arm ourselves.
Through baptism, we become adopted sons and daughters of God. Yet, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that: “by the sacrament of confirmation, [the baptized] are more perfectly bound to the church and are enriched with a special strength of the Holy Spirit. Hence they are, as true witnesses of Christ, more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith by word and deed (No. 1285).”
Start your engines — Belmont Abbey College is small and unabashedly Catholic in the heart of Protestant NASCAR -land, 10 miles from Charlotte, N.C. An article in Our Sunday Visitor tells how Belmont is competing against larger schools. In 2006 it started offering a unique academic program focusing on the marketing and business sides of motor sports. It’s a nutsand- bolts idea from board member H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler . (His father was the school’s athletic director for 40 years.)
Oh, to be four years old again.
Free of the complications that come from dealing with the outside world.
Open to all the experiences to come.
On top of the world.
Or maybe that’s just the way my niece Skylar looks at her life.
At a recent birthday party for her and her soon-to-be 2-year-old brother (with one may birthday and one July birthday, my sister split the difference and had a joint party in June), my brother — her uncle — greeted her by asking how she was.
Judith Stegman, president of the the United States Association of Consecrated Virgins, drove from her home in Lansing, Mich., to Chicago for the June 28 consecration of Diane Zervos at St. Thomas More Church. Zervos became one of a half-dozen consecrated virgins in the archdiocese in a ceremony that bears some resemblance to a wedding.
Stegman, 52, was one of many guests, welcoming Zervos to the way of life she embraced in 1993. There are about 200 members of the Order of Virgins living in the United States; Stegman, a CPA by profession, spoke with assistant editor Michelle Martin about what it means to be a “bride of Christ.”
