By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Jakub Olkiewicz and Matthew Walsh admit they felt a little nervous about spending the summer at Immaculate Conception Parish at 88th Street and Commercial Avenue.

Walsh, 19, from Rogers Park, and Olkiewicz, 25, who moved to the Northwest suburbs after emigrating from Poland, didn’t know how they would be welcomed in a community that’s predominantly Hispanic, with some African-American worshippers and a few older Polish people who tie the parish to its ethnic roots.

But after eight weeks, the young men talked and joked easily with the cadre of Hispanic teens that hang around the parish and are known simply as “the guys,” and they sing the praises of the tamales church women sell once a month.

The two are among 17 students at St. Joseph College Seminary who participated in the Summer Apostolate, a 10-week experience designed to show seminarians what ministering to a parish is all about.

For Walsh and Olkiewicz, duties included performing wake and graveside services, greeting parishioners after all Sunday Masses, reading and sometimes preaching at daily Masses and doing odd jobs around the parish. On Thursdays, they took over the kitchen and cooked meals to share with “the guys,” since many of the boys rarely experience family dinners.

“Of course, there’s only so much we can do, not being priests. There’s only so much we can do with the little wisdom that we have,” said Walsh, taking a break in the rectory dining room, his face ruddy in the summer heat. “You get to know the good and the bad aspects of living in a parish, what you can and can’t say, how to say things without offending people.”

“I get the opportunity to get to do things I wouldn’t get to do otherwise, if I was going on vacation or visiting my family,” Olkiewicz said.

Both Walsh and Olkiewicz just finished their first year at St. Joseph, and volunteered for the program. All students studying for the Archdiocese of Chicago are required to do a summer apostolate after their sophomore years, said Jesus Huerta, director of pastoral formation at the college seminary, although several who are studying for other dioceses or religious orders also take advantage of it. Some do it all four years at St. Joseph.

“What we try to do is have the students experience pastorally and on a practical level what parish life is like,” Huerta said. “In the seminary, it’s a whole different world. They leave with a lot of theory. This gives them a different approach to parishes and the whole diversity of the church in an archdiocese like Chicago. We cover a huge area.”

The seminary often assigns students to parishes with different cultural backgrounds from their own, in hopes of challenging them to move out of their comfort zones, Huerta said.

For example, Manuel Dorantes spent the summer at St. Ailbe Parish on the South Side, a mostly African-American community. Dorantes came to the United States from Mexico as a child and grew up in Holy Family Parish in Waukegan. Last summer, after his first year at St. Joseph, he did an apostolate at Holy Cross/Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Back of the Yards, working mostly with Mexican youths. This summer, he specifically asked for a black parish or a white suburban parish.

Living in and learning about an African-American community has been “awesome,” Dorantes said, especially experiencing the Mass.

“It’s the same sacrament, the same rules of liturgy, but the culture brings a different touch to it,” he said. “It’s a little more lively. The blessings are wonderful.”

Dorantes participated in the Mass by singing in the gospel choir, and got to know people by helping at St. Ailbe Adult Day Services, a senior day center, once a week.

“The most interesting is following Father John (Breslin, the pastor),” Dorantes said. “I get to shadow him wherever he goes—nursing homes, hospitals.

“Every priest is different. Father John—the guy is unstoppable, from daily Mass to cleaning the church to last night, we had a neighborhood cleanup. It’s very inspirational to see that first-hand. In the seminary, everything is theory. When you go out here and give life to that concept, you say, ‘I want to be part of that.’”

Students come as close as they can to living a priest’s life during their 10-weeks stays. They live and eat with the priests in the rectory, with one day off a week.

The seminary picks up each student’s $1,800 stipend and $1,200 tuition credit, but parishes assume the cost of room and board, and pastors or other priests take on the responsibility of supervising the students.

“The pastor or the supervisor makes a huge commitment,” Huerta said. “These students are basically tagging along with you wherever you go. If you get a hospital call at three in the morning, the students should go with you.”

Supervising priests also must meet with the students at least once a week for theological reflection on their experiences, he said.

Father Michael Enright said the parish benefits just by having the students around.

“It gives the parishioners some contact with seminarians, and it gives them the idea to think about the priesthood,” he said. “And they do some work, bring some life to the parish. It’s good for the guys because they get a sense of what a parish is like and a sense of what life is like.”

Byron Macias, 23, did his third summer apostolate this year at St. Agnes of Bohemia Parish in Little Village. The Ecuadorian native helped teach English to Mexican immigrant children, worked at the parish’s summer camp and went door-to-door engaging both practicing and non-practicing Catholics in conversation as part of the parish’s St. Paul Summer Mission.

The parish group goes door-to-door on a specific block or two, talking with the people and then inviting them to a street Mass in their neighborhood the next day.

“People who usually never come near a church will talk with us and come to the street Mass,” Macias said. “It’s like being back in the Acts of the Apostles again.”

Macias praised the pastor, Father Matthew Foley, for starting the program three years ago as a way to evangelize nominal Catholics.

“To me, this shows the face of priesthood, what ministry’s going to be like. This is where you discover what you’re preparing for,” Macias said. “I’m just falling in love every day with my vocation.”