Issue of March 5, 2006

The following items are condensed. For the complete article, please read the print edition of The Catholic New World. To subscribe, call (312) 655-7777.

NewsUpdate

Kids, schools rally for support

About 2,000 children, teachers and parents descended on Springfield Feb. 22 to rally in support of non-public schools.

More than 90 schools from around the state were involved, including several busloads from the Archdiocese of Chicago. The rally, called “All Kids Count! Give Us a Choice,” sought to educate legislators on increased support for private and parochial schools. In addition to Catholic schools, private and other Christian and Jewish schools were represented.

The rally was organized through the Catholic Conference of Illinois and included several lawmakers among the speakers. Nicholas Wolsonovich, archdiocesan superintendent of schools, took part. “It was encouraging to be with so many parents and children,” he said. “I hope our legislators can understand the benefits to all taxpayers for supporting opportunity scholarships.”



Pastor resigns

Father Mark Sorvillo resigned as pastor of St. Margaret Mary Parish in mid-February following allegations of financial irregularities.

A letter from Bishop Francis Kane, vicar for Vicariate II, was read at parish Masses the weekend of Feb. 18-19 to inform the congregation. The letter said the archdiocesan Financial Services Department would conduct an audit.

Sorvillo, 53, had been scheduled to leave the parish on a sabbatical July 1. Vicar for Priests Father Vince Costello read the letter.

He said Cardinal George has named Father Dominic Grassi to temporarily administer the West Rogers Park Parish. Already scheduled to take over in July is Father James Barrett, currently pastor of St. Joan of Arc, Evanston.

“I know that sudden transitions like these are difficult in the life of a faith community,” wrote Bishop Kane. “Please know that you are in my prayers and in the prayers of Cardinal George.”







News

Prayer, fasting and postcards

Priests commit themselves to spend Lent

working to reform immigration laws

The Catholic Church in Chicago was built by immigrants, and now draws much of its life from immigrant populations.

Dozens of priests in the archdiocese will honor the church’s commitment to immigrants this year during Lent, starting with an Ash Wednesday fast for immigrant rights.

“We’re doing this because otherwise, we could all be in jail next year,” said Father Don Nevins at a Feb. 24 meeting to announce the plans. Nevins’ parish, St. Francis of Assisi (Roosevelt Road), hosted a Feb. 28 commissioning ceremony for the priests, who have committed to a day without any food, unlike the traditional Ash Wednesday fast which allows at least one full meal. “One of the things we can do as priests is do some things publicly. … This is a season in which, by our prayer and by our fasting, we’re hoping to change the hearts and minds of our legislators.”



As his day nears, St. Paddy would be proud

“The signs used to warn ‘No Irish Need Apply.’ Now they say ‘The Irish Applied Anyhow and Thank God They Did,’” Tim Egan told a Sunday, Feb. 26, “Celtic Cosmos” symposium at the Irish-American Heritage Center, 4626 N. Knox.

Widely considered to be the country’s most successful ethnic group, the Irish have come a long way in an unbelievably short time, said former Illinois Lt. Gov. Neil Hartigan.

“In my own lifetime I can remember when you couldn’t find any Irish in the boardrooms of any major corporations,” said Hartigan, noting that as late as 1986, a newspaper said he was unsuitable for the job of Illinois attorney general because he was an Irish Catholic Democrat from Chicago, “which I thought were all good reasons for my having the job.”



Pope names 15 as cardinals; two from U.S.

In his first set of major appointments, Pope Benedict XVI named 15 new cardinals, including U.S. Archbishops William J. Levada, head of the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation, and Sean P. O’Malley of Boston.

The pope announced the names at the end of his general audience Feb. 22 and said he would formally install the cardinals at a special consistory March 24.



Don’t be used by pols, Polish bishops tell media

Polish bishops urged their country’s largest Catholic radio and TV stations to respect church teaching and told them not to be used as political tools.

“Politicians have a natural right to use the mass media—but this doesn’t mean media run by church institutions can let themselves be used instrumentally by some political option,” the bishops’ conference said in a letter to the provincial of the Redemptorist order, which owns the stations. “We feel a duty to remind you the mission Christ bequeathed the church wasn’t a political, economic or social one. The purpose he assigned it was religious.”



Making a difference

Ask Buddy Bell if college students are likely to embrace social activism, and you get a qualified answer.

Some of them, says the 23-year-old DePaul University student. Sometimes.

“It’s pretty encouraged by the university itself,” said Bell, who enjoyed the companionship of fellow students last November when he traveled to Georgia to protest at the former School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, at Fort Benning. “But most people don’t get involved. They are either apathetic or they don’t think it will make a difference.”



Amate House: more than service hours

Every spring, thousands of young adults graduate from college, degrees in hand, ready to change the world. Gina Mitterholzer was feeling like that when she graduated from University of Dayton, so she decided to make a difference by devoting a year of her life to service at Amate House.

As she began working with at-risk and incarcerated teenagers through Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation on the Southwest side, she realized that service was not all about her giving to others.

“Initially, I felt that I had so much given to me that I should give back,” Mitterholzer said. “Now, I realize that I’m not helping anyone; I’m working with them. I get as much out of it as they do.”



Laboring for justice in Katrina’s aftermath

When Martin Zechariah volunteered to spend a week of his winter break helping Katrina victims in New Orleans, he didn’t really know what he was in for.

Zechariah and Julie Lipinski, both seniors at Northwestern University in Evanston, joined 10 other students, a campus minister and Father Ken Simpson of the Sheil Catholic Center on the trip, which was no vacation. The group stayed at Covenant House, usually a shelter for young people who have run away from home, and were taken to the homes they would work on every day.



Protestors came to Saint Xavier—both for and against the speaker

“Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan may not have converted many of the raucous hecklers who tried to drown out her Feb. 16 talk at Saint Xavier University. But by the time most of pro-war protesters walked out chanting the Pledge of Allegiance as she read her daughter’s anti-war poem, they learned she was no pushover.

When a man in the audience criticized her lack of respect for President George Bush, the California housewife who camped outside Bush’s Texas ranch demanding an end to the war that killed her 21-year-old son, Casey, quietly retorted that people who lie to persuade the American people to support an unnecessary war don’t deserve respect.