By Michelle Martin
STAFF WRITER

When Bertha Renschen started attending Mass at St. Benedict Church on Irving Park Road last year, she discovered one big problem: She couldn’t hear the homily.

Bertha Renschen uses an assisted-listening device to help her hear the homilies at St. Benedict Church on Irving Park Road. Photos by David V. Kamba

“I’ve always been hard of hearing, ever since the seventh grade in school,” said Renschen, 85, who lives in the Laboure House retirement home near the church. “With the Mass prayers, I got along pretty good because I’d hear a little bit and follow along. But when Mass was out, I never could tell you what the sermon was about.”

That all changed about a month ago, when Renschen found out that the parish would provide her with an assisted-listening device to use in church. The device—a headset that Renschen calls a “church hearing aid”—is set to the same frequency as the public address system in the church, and amplifies the words so she can hear them.

“I was so glad,” said Renschen. “They had a baptism last Sunday, and I could hear everything the priest said and all the responses. Without that, I probably wouldn’t have even known there was a baptism going on, because I’m also legally blind.”

Recent renovation at St Benedict Church included an elevator and other facilities to make it easier for people like Helen Walters to get around in the building. Walters uses a walker following knee surgery.

St. Benedict this year won the Pathways Awareness Foundation Grand Open Hearts Award for the efforts it has made to include parishioners like Renschen and others with all kinds of disabilities into the church’s life.
The Archdiocese of Chicago highlights the efforts of all parishes on Inclusion Sunday Oct. 15.

Pathways Awareness Foundation exists to heighten public awareness of inclusion of children and adults with physical disabilities. It created the Open Hearts Award to raise awareness of the need for inclusion in church life. This year, three Catholic parishes were honored: St. Columbanus, for affirmation of the role of people with disabilities; St. Nicholas in Evanston, for accessibility; and St. Benedict, for its overall inclusion efforts.

St. Benedict Parish Nurse Mary Fitzgerald wrote the application for the $1,500 award. St. Benedict’s commitment to including everyone started long before she arrived, she said, and was part of the reason the parish decided to hire a nurse two years ago.

“I do lots of things to try to keep people safe and connected to the spiritual life of the parish, and to help them stay independent as long as possible,” said Fitzgerald, whose schedule includes home and hospital visits, arranging speakers and surveying parishioners to discover their needs.

A big part of St. Benedict’s push toward inclusion came with the $900,000 renovation of the church, which added an elevator to make both the body of the church and its basement accessible to people who use wheelchairs.

“The church is close to 100 years old, and no one in those days was thinking about people not being able-bodied or elderly,” Fitzgerald said.

The renovation also included a ramp to the sanctuary, shortening pews to make room for wheelchairs in the front, middle and back of the church and making bathrooms accessible. Other accommodations include having large-type missalettes, increasing the type size in the parish bulletin and having a portable microphone for readers who use wheelchairs.

“It’s all part of the same philosophy that faith and community don’t just mean getting healthy people to church on Sunday,” Fitzgerald said.

Getting people to church on Sunday—and on other days—is the crux of the St. Columbanus Parish project that won the Pathways Open Hearts Award for affirming the role of people with disabilities.

Pastor Father Matthew Eyerman found that many of his elderly parishioners had stopped attending services and were considered homebound. When he visited them, he discovered that most were not bedridden, but they lacked safe, secure, wheelchair-accessible transportation. They needed someone to take them from their homes directly into the church, not just from curbside to curbside.

“The homebound were extremely nervous about traveling with strangers,” Eyerman wrote in his application for the award. “They would not travel with anyone they did not fully trust and who was not strongly connected with St. Columbanus.”

Enter Deacon William McKinnis, who took the issue on as his ministry, finding and purchasing a 25-person, wheelchair-accessible bus and starting Uncle Mac’s Transportation. To compensate him for time, mileage and fuel, St. Columbanus pays $20 for each person brought to and from church.

The long-time parish secretary called homebound parishioners to vouch for McKinnis, and on Easter, 15 people were able to attend Mass who otherwise would not have.

The best thing about the $1,000 award is that it will pay for 50 round trips for homebound members, Eyerman said.

The $1,000 Open Hearts award for accessibility, went to St. Nicholas Parish. The parish was in the midst of renovating its church last year when leaders announced there would not be enough money to build a ramp to the new main entrance. People who used wheelchairs and scooters would have to use the old ramp, which entered directly into an ushers’ closet.

Carol Gaetjens, who has multiple sclerosis and uses a scooter, wasn’t happy about it, and neither were others who felt relegated to a second-class entrance. They started an ad hoc committee to discuss the issue, and came up with a plan to make the wheelchair entrance more welcoming. The old baptismal font—replaced by an immersion pool near the new main entrance—fit neatly in the small room, as did a variety of religious art. The group also helped design a truly accessible bathroom, Gaetjens said.

“Coming out of this whole episode, I got to lead a procession on my scooter when we blessed the church and sprinkled people with holy water,” Gaetjens said. “People are still talking about that.”

Now that the church renovation is finished, the group has turned its attention to making other parish buildings accessible. The money from the Open Hearts award will be put towards a new ramp for the St. Nicholas Social Hall, which is used for adult education and receptions.

“I was confirmed at the last Easter vigil,” said Gaetjens, who converted to Catholicism. “I couldn’t go to my own reception.”