A beautiful place to visit! The little gift shop is very nice. The monks have big dreams to complete the construction of their new monastery.
Please give generously - this is a worthy cause - so that this monastery may be completed in a timely fashion.
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, pray for us!
http://www.carmelitehermitage.org/Site/
Few schools can claim an Olympic athlete among their alumni base.continue at Crux
Even fewer schools have more than one, especially from the same family. But Hill-Murray High School in Maplewood and St. Odilia School in Shoreview - both Catholic schools - are proud to make this claim.
That’s because Hannah and Marissa Brandt, graduates of both schools, play on women’s Olympic ice hockey teams competing in this year’s PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
Hannah Brandt, a recent standout with the University of Minnesota women’s hockey team, is a forward for the U.S. Olympic team, which defeated Finland 3-1 on Feb. 11 and will play Olympic Athletes from Russia Feb. 13. Marissa Brandt, who was adopted as a baby from South Korea, used her birth name, Park-Yoon Jung, for the Olympics and plays defense for the combined Koreas, which lost 8-0 to Switzerland Feb. 10.
The St. Paul Cathedral. pic.twitter.com/odOwXQMRs8— Everything Minnesota (@EverythinginMN) September 7, 2017
A beautiful place to visit! The little gift shop is very nice. The monks have big dreams to complete the construction of their new monastery.
Please give generously - this is a worthy cause - so that this monastery may be completed in a timely fashion.
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, pray for us!
http://www.carmelitehermitage.org/Site/
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| C.O.P.s Clergy on Patrol |
Mike Scioscia, veteran manager of the Los Angeles Angels, visited the press conference room at Target Field on Sunday morning, but it wasn’t to announce a trade.continue at Pioneer Press
Instead, Scioscia was among perhaps 30 worshipers attending a Roman Catholic Mass the Twins will be offering for all Sunday home games this season. Catholic Athletes for Christ, an organization based in Alexandria, Va., approached the Twins about the idea this offseason.
Twins President Dave St. Peter, who joined the club in 1990, couldn’t remember Mass being held at Twins home games during his tenure.
“When this was brought to my attention in the offseason, I was amazed that I wasn’t aware of this organization,” St. Peter said.[All the more shocking considering his last name!] “I really didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t add it to Target Field. Not just for players and coaches and media, but for our game-day staff and front-office staff.”
continue at The CompassST. PAUL, Minn. — A seminarian with a powerful conversion story is leading the University of St. Thomas football team to the Division III national championship game Dec. 18.
Three years ago, Jordan Roberts was enjoying life as a star running back for the University of South Dakota in Vermillion.
But in October 2012, his girlfriend of seven years broke up with him. Less than 24 hours later, his best friend committed suicide.
His fragile faith seemed woefully insufficient for this double whammy, like a quarterback trying to escape an all-out blitz.
“Those two things combined was probably the greatest pain that I’ve ever experienced as a human being. I was just screaming, I broke a bunch of stuff. It was bad, it was really bad,” Roberts, 22, told The Catholic Spirit, newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. “I really had nowhere to turn. I hit rock bottom, and I looked for answers.”
In the purchase and subsequent consumption of what’s playfully dubbed “Irish Holy Water,” fans of Finnegans beer are feeding the hungry in Minnesota, which has included clients of Catholic Charities in the past.
Since its beginning 15 years ago, the Minneapolis-based beer company has centered its business model on the common good, contributing 100 percent of its profits to alleviate hunger.
Finnegans’ formula is simple: It starts with “good beer” found at local restaurants, bars and liquor stores, and puts that profit into the Finnegans Community Fund, which buys fresh produce from local farms. In turn, Finnegans donates the fresh produce to food shelves to be distributed to people in need. Paying for the produce at market-rate, Finnegans provides farmers with an income and people in need with healthy food.
“I know that in the last decade, we’ve seen the number of people going to food shelves double,” said Finnegans founder and Chief Executive Officer Jacquie Berglund. “The largest growing segments are military families and college students. We need to work harder and have our citizens meet their basic needs.”
Up until two years ago when Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis stopped operating food shelves, it had benefited from Finnegans’ outreach.
This lovely, historic, little church is once again threatened - by developers.continue at Abbey Roads
I saw it on local news. Developers want to build a huge apartment tower and the corner, adjacent to this lovely jewel of a church. It was originally built by Univeralists in 1857 - a year before the Blessed Virgin Mary even appeared to the little St. Bernadette at Lourdes. French Canadian Catholics purchased the church twenty years later in 1877.
The redevelopment of the riverfront area was initially opening up the area to commercial and residential use in the late 1970's, and historic buildings were subsequently reinforced, especially after the construction of apartment towers and condos overlooking the Mississippis and downtown Minneapolis which altered the stability of existing structures. It's a beautiful area of the city, adjacent to downtown. It is my understanding that the structural integrity of church was threatened by excessive shaking and had to be reinforced during the construction of new buildings and underground parking. Before that, the church was also threatened with closure by the archdiocese. To avoid confusion and misstatement about that history by me, let me reprint an excerpt from Our Lady of Lourdes website on the history and what is happening.
What is Minnesotans’ image of a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis today? Many likely think of gray-haired men performing empty rituals for dwindling congregations in the shadow of the recent clergy sex-abuse scandal. They may imagine young men recoiling from the prospect of a life of “thou shalt nots,” leaving seminaries empty.continue at Star Tribune
Folks with this view probably haven’t met the Rev. Andrew Brinkman, 29, assistant pastor of Nativity of Our Lord Church in St. Paul. As a boy, Brinkman dreamed of becoming a professional skateboarder and thought being a priest was “the scariest thing I’d ever heard of.” Today, he still rides his board weekly, doing “360 flips” while wearing his priest’s collar.
Or how about the Rev. Marcus Milless, 27, of All Saints Church in Lakeville? At 15, an acquaintance asked him to help with a child with a disability. “I was 4 foot 11, weighed 85 pounds and had a big mouth,” he says. His first thought was mercenary: “How much money could I make?” But over time, his work of feeding, bathing and caring for children with disabilities taught him the power of love and helped lead him to the priesthood.
Then there’s the Rev. Spencer Howe, 28, of St. John Neumann Church in Eagan. As an adolescent, he says, he was a rebel, searching for something on which to stake his life. On a trip to England at age 18, he was inspired by the English martyrs of the 16th century — priests who risked their lives to bring the sacraments to others in a hostile environment.
“I realized this was a lot more dramatic than I had thought — it was not ‘a church for grandmothers,’ but had a kind of fighting spirit,” he says. “Standing before a cathedral, looking up at that great edifice of faith, I recognized the call extended even to me.”
We travel to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. We’ll visit St. Augustine Church in South St. Paul, where one of the first Tridentine Masses to debut after Vatican II was established in 1984. We’ll stop by the Church Music Association of America’s Sacred Music Conference at St. Agnes, Church in St. Paul, a parish where a full orchestral Latin Mass is offered on 30 Sundays of the year. And we’ll explore the region’s two majestic co-cathedrals: the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis and the Cathedral of St. Paul.
A Minnesota man in need of a miracle found it in the most unlikely form -- at a rundown and abandoned old church that was as much in need of repair as he was.continue at HuffPo
Three years ago, Greg Thomas of Montgomery, Minn., was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in both his head and neck, reported KARE 11 News.
"When I found out that I had cancer, they told my family to go ahead and start planning my funeral," Thomas told KARE.
Thomas -- who was 57 at the time of diagnosis -- was soon let go from his job delivering propane, and starting taking long walks though the rural Minnesota countryside with his dog.
[Fr.] Rice worked as a "spiritual director" at a St. Paul school for Jesuits-in-training and offered counseling to others, including priests. [Fr.] Stitts (accused of abuse) came to him seeking direction. "Whether or not I responded to him, I am not free to say," Rice said.full story at Pioneer Press
His attorney, Paul Engh, argued Thursday that there was no record Stitts ever gave his consent for other priests to share information, and the privilege "doesn't evaporate on death."
Archdiocese attorney Thomas Wieser said "there's nothing more sacred in the Catholic Church" than the confidentiality of the confessional.
Noaker wants Judge John Van de North to order Rice and two other priests to answer additional questions about Stitts. Van de North took the matter under advisement Thursday.
John Doe 104 sued the archdiocese in 2013, alleging Stitts sexually abused him in the 1970s at St. Leo's in the Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul and at St. George's at Long Lake while Stitts was serving at Long Lake.
FSSPThe Most Reverend Andrew Cozzens, Auxiliary Bishop of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, has generously offered to confer the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Extraordinary Form in the Cathedral of St. Paul at 10am on Saturday, October 11, 2014. Bishop Cozzens will confirm over 40 children from the Archdiocese using the ancient rite of the Church.
A Traditional Solemn High Mass celebrating the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary will follow the Confirmation ceremony. The majestic and beautiful Cathedral of St. Paul, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year, has not seen the Traditional Latin Mass celebrated in such glory in decades, and the Catholic faithful are welcome and very much encouraged to attend this historic event.
Bishop Cozzens will make his entrance into the Cathedral at 9:30am and will be assisted by members of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter and seminarians from St. Paul’s Seminary. We offer in advance our sincere thanks to the good bishop for his generous assistance with both the Mass and Confirmations.
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| Joseph Grodahl of Richfield prays at the Cathedral of St. Paul on Wednesday, July 9, 2014. "This is where I found a real home,." Grodahl says of the Catholic Church, which he joined in 2009. (Pioneer Press: Ginger Pinson) |
Priests bear witness to the best and worst of times: baptisms and weddings, illnesses, troubled marriages, deaths. Some have become the subject of news because of their crimes. Many others log exhaustive hours for subsistence pay, not perfect but nonetheless committed to walking the talk of Christian ministry.continue at Pioneer Press
This is the story of six of them, as described by those whose lives they have touched.
Maronite John Nasseff is one of the finest and most interesting Catholic gentlemen you will ever meet. As a kid I often saw him in downtown St. Paul. Always with a smile. He constructed the new Maronite parish in Minneapolis in 1999. He is a pious, saintly, and generous man. Now in his 90th year, the Lord reward him a thousandfold.Image
He just donated 10 million dollars to my alma mater...
"Nasseff was one of seven children of Lebanese immigrants who settled on St. Paul's West Side. He started working at West Publishing in 1946 unloading boxcars and sweeping floors. He rose quickly by suggesting ways the legal publisher could save money on its printing operations, and he invested in company stock. When West was sold and he retired as a vice president in 1996, his share was worth about $175 million. Since then, he has been giving it away."
Source: http://www.twincities.com/education/ci_25995421/st-agnes-alums-10m-donation-build-student-activity
continue at Flower FundA fire broke out on Wednesday, April 9 around 4pm in the sacristy of St. Gabriel Catholic Church in Fulda, Minnesota.
The fire happened at about 4 PM on Wednesday, April 9, 2014. Fortunately, the fire was mostly contained to the south sacristy; however, that is where many vestments, candle sticks, and other such things were stored. Most of them are irreplaceable.
The cause of the fire was officially declared undetermined, but they eliminated arson.
Extent of the Damage
The fire was contained to the south sacristy, but the flames leaped out of the open door to the sanctuary and damaged the wall and the ceiling above the high altar. However, the smoke and the smell means that everything has to go – the pews have been taken out to be cleaned, the Stations, the organ and all of the pipes, the carpet will be replaced. New hardwood will be restored back in the sanctuary,
The heroic firemen used some 750-1,000 gallons of water, most of which ended up flowing into the basement carrying with it soot and ash. Therefore, the kitchen downstairs needs to be totally redone. The ceiling tiles will have to be replaced, the linoleum, and the carpet in the gathering space in the basement.
continue at Cardinal Newman SocietySaint Agnes School hasn’t been exempt from challenges in its 125-year history, but the journey has made the Catholic school that much stronger.
This year’s Catholic Schools Week is especially joyous for Saint Agnes—the coed, K-12 school in St. Paul, Minn., marked the feast of its patron, St. Agnes, last Tuesday and welcomed home alumni to kick off its celebration of 125 years of excellence, with a renewed commitment to strong Catholic identity, according to the school’s new website.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has designated January 26th-February 1st as Catholic Schools Week with the theme, “Catholic Schools: Communities of Faith, Knowledge and Service,” according to the bishops’ website.
Saint Agnes’ history as a community of Faith began in 1888, when it was founded in a small Austro-Hungarian neighborhood by a congregation of religious sisters. By the 1970s, the school had grown into a large, regional k-12 institution, and the faculty began to switch precipitously to nearly all laypeople. Financial difficulties and low student enrollment in the late 1990s and 2000s forced the school leaders to consider possibly closing in the spring of 2007 if issues were not addressed.
“It was a real crossroad,” Saint Agnes Principal James Morehead told St. Paul Pioneer Press about the school’s desperate situation. “There were a couple benefactors who stood up at the last minute and saved the school.”
