Go public with faith
Cardinal to lead Aug. 5
Grant Park procession

By Kristin Peterson
Contributor

Cardinal George will lead a procession and celebrate Benediction Aug. 5 in Grant Park. Catholics from across the archdiocese are being invited to take part in this public display of faith as part of the celebration of the Year of the Eucharist.

The downtown Chicago event reflects what the cardinal has said about the need for Catholics to demonstrate their faith more openly.

During the jubilee year celebration at Soldier Field in June, 2000, he said, “The church has grown aware … that celebration of this divine mystery cannot be reduced to an event within the walls of a church, and so we process into the streets of the world.”

The procession, with the cardinal carrying the Blessed Sacrament, will include the archdiocese’s auxiliary bishops, national Knights of Columbus chaplain Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., and hundreds of Knights of Columbus who will be completing a Eucharistic Congress following their annual meeting in Chicago.

Others can join the procession as it gathers at 1 p.m.
Plans are still being formed, but from the hotel, the procession will head north through the park until it reaches the field near the Petrillo band shell at Jackson and Columbus drives, where the Benediction service will be planned for about 2:30 p.m. Choirs will sing and music is planned along the procession route.

It was Cardinal George who first suggested that the event could be held in conjunction with the Knights of Columbus’ Eucharistic Congress, said Bishop Joseph Perry, vicar of Vicariate VI. He said the cardinal envisioned the public show of faith as a way to celebrate the Year of the Eucharist. It seemed logical, the bishop said, for the archdiocese to work with the Knights of Columbus, who will be holding their 123rd annual Supreme Council meeting in Chicago Aug. 2-4. While the eucharistic procession and Benediction will be open to all people, the event will also be a part of the Knights’ Eucharistic Congress celebration.

Bishop Perry, charged with coordinating archdiocesan events for the Year of the Eucharist, said he’s looking forward to the Aug. 5 Grant Park celebration.

“There have been several events for the Year of the Eucharist. This one will be a highlight of the whole year,” he said. “This event will be a public witness of our faith for the Archdiocese of Chicago.”

Cardinal George said in a recent letter to parishioners that this Eucharistic procession and benediction will be a good way to celebrate the theme of the year.

“One of the last gifts left to the church by the late Pope John Paul II was his proclamation of the present Year of the Eucharist,” wrote the cardinal. “As we all accompanied the Holy Father through the final months of his earthly life, he invited us over and over again to join him in reflecting on the theme of the year. By doing so, he called us all to focus on what is truly the center of our lives—the Body and Blood of Christ—the sacrament that fuels our hope that our intimacy with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament now will come to fulfillment in the life to come.”

Bishop Perry said he hopes there will be a large turnout for this event. Parishioners, members of lay ecclesiastical movements, representatives of the Eucharistic adoration chapels and others have been invited (see Cardinal George’s column).

“I hope to see the parishes really participate in this event and that this will be a genuine archdiocesan worship event,” he said.

Those who don’t walk in the procession can meet at the field near the band shell and wait for the procession. People will be singing hymns and praying during the wait. He suggested that people bring blankets or lawn chairs to sit on during the service.

For information, call the Office for Divine Worship, (773) 486-5153, or Bishop Joseph Perry's office, (708) 339-2474.