O’Hare chapel a faith-filled oasis

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Maybe it’s the lingering fear of flying. Maybe it’s the disorientation brought on by a strange and crowded place. Maybe it’s the unexpectedness of a quiet place to encounter God, announced by public address system every day over the never-ending din of people on the move.

For some reason, the chapel at O’Hare International Airport seems to touch people at a vulnerable point on their journeys.

“The announcements are supposed to be just announcements,” said Father John Jamnicky, in his 19th year as chaplain at O’Hare. “But for some reason, a lot of people seem to take them as an invitation.”

On a summer Friday, about 20 people scattered themselves in the seats in the chapel, arranged for Mass with a crucifix, candles and bread and wine. The daily Mass starts at 11:30 a.m. to accommodate airport workers who want to attend during lunch breaks. Participants included a Chicago police officer, baggage handlers and flight attendants, along with travelers, some just arrived and some about to depart.

“It’s an unexpected service for people,” said Jamnicky. “They are so appreciative they had the opportunity to go to Mass.”

For Amy Patterson, it proved a welcome break between a nearly missed flight and an afternoon deposition in a car accident lawsuit.

“I needed to go to Mass,” said the Birmingham, Ala., resident. “It’s been a very rushed morning. My plane arrived at 11:22 and I hurried over.”

The service was short, a little less than a half hour. “We do it nicely, but it’s just the basics,” Jamnicky said. “There’s not a lot of music or the fringe things. We do preach at every Mass, but it’s got to be under five minutes. You just don’t have the luxury of time.”

Before every daily Mass, Jamnicky offers members of the congregation a chance for confession. Some, Jamnicky said, want “to get right with God” before setting off on a flight. Others want to confess to a priest they may never see again. The ones who touch him most are those who find the chapel in a moment of vulnerability, receive the sacraments and begin to find their way back.

To demonstrate, he played a message saved on his voice mail system.

The caller told him she met him a year earlier. She heard the announcement for Mass, came and decided to go to confession and take Communion after being away from the church for many years. Receiving the sacraments that day changed her life, she said in the message. Since then, she has come back to the church and found a position as a live-in companion to a blind woman.

“My life was in a very disorderly state then. But miracles have happened in my life,” the woman said. “I just want to thank you. You saved a soul.”

For some of the 200,000 travelers who pass through the airport every day, the chapel serves as a quiet oasis. For 60,000 airport workers the chapel can provide a faith community. Jamnicky has performed a sprinkling of baptisms, along with his share of weddings and funerals, and even more memorial services for airport workers.

Jack Curtis of Des Plaines, a retired United Air Lines employee, returns to the airport for services.

“I go back far enough that I remember the chapel in the sub-basement,” Curtis said. “They used to refer to it as the catacombs.”

Forty years ago, the chapel began as an informal arrangement for airport workers and airline personnel who worked odd hours. A priest from a nearby parish would come and say Mass.

After much persuasion, said Jamnicky, Cardinal Cody agreed to assign Father John Keough to the airport in 1966. Cardinal Cody appointed Jamnicky chaplain in 1982 after Keough retired.

Jamnicky has helped mentally ill people find treatment, and generated much publicity for his efforts to help the homeless population at O’Hare in the mid-1980s, before the city closed the airport to all but ticket-bearing travelers and employees between midnight and 5 a.m.

In his first month on the job, Deacon Luis Trevino found himself getting a meal for a young man AWOL from Great Lakes Naval Training Base, then calling the base and arranging for him to return.

When Jamnicky started as chaplain, he was dealing with three of the world’s most complicated bureaucracies: the City of Chicago, the U.S. military and the Catholic Church. But the chapel had no official standing at the airport, no lease, no permission to be there.

“Everything was done on a handshake basis,” he said. “And I kept trying to get the ground rules down, because I didn’t know what I could do and couldn’t do. But everyone kept saying to me, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”

Eventually, it did get fixed, with the formation of the not-for-profit Interfaith Chapel Corp., which leases the chapel space now on the mezzanine level of Terminal 2.

The new chapel opened in 1991. It has been home to regularly scheduled Catholic, Protestant and Muslim services ever since.

The chapel features two glass walls, providing a measure of visibility for an area that’s open 24 hours a day. A tabernacle holds the Eucharist, but the crucifix is displayed only during worship services. For Protestant services, it is turned around so the corpus does not face the congregation. A prayer rug is available for Muslims.

“On many occasions, I have walked by the chapel and seen a Muslim kneeling on the prayer rug, a Christian on his knees before the Blessed Sacrament and a Jew with his prayer shawl, all praying to the same God,” Jamnicky said.

On Fridays, about a half-hour after daily Mass ends, Trevino begins stacking the chairs in the chapel to clear the floor. By 1:15 p.m., nearly 100 Muslim men stand and kneel on a clean sheet, participating in the Juma prayer service.

The archdiocese recognized the airport chapel’s importance to Chicago by naming it one of 43 jubilee sites, where pilgrims can obtain a plenary jubilee indulgence.

That designation came as a surprise to Maiya Henson of Overland Park, Kan., who was just received into the Catholic Church at Easter.

“I didn’t know the chapel was here,” said Henson, who was waiting for relatives before flying on together to a family reunion when she heard the Mass announcement. “But one of the wonderful things about the Catholic Church is its universality. You can take part in a Mass anywhere. It’s a wonderful way to feel like a pilgrim all the time.”

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