Category: religion
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Saint Carlo Acutis (St John Berchmans)
Carlo Acutis is not the first saint in this project whose life intersected with my own, but he is the first whose life was entirely within my own (not to mention being the most recently canonized—the first I’d heard of him, in fact, was when I was making the spreadsheet of parishes, saints and feast…
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Holy Angels (Our Lady of Africa)
The parish of Our Lady of Africa was formed from the merger of five parishes on the south side, with worship consolidated to the former Holy Angels church which has been renamed to match the new parish name, but since there was no other possible Mass for today, I went to Bronzeville for the 10.30a…
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Saint Jerome
Chicago has two St Jerome churches but only one had Mass in the evening so I went to Rogers Park. I rushed to get there for the 6p start time and arrived a few minutes to what I assumed was the beginning of the Spanish Mass, but noticed that there was no priest in the…
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Catholic nerd pllgrimage: Saint Michael
Since I’ve begun this project, one of the things I’ve noticed is that it’s pretty common in a lot of parishes to recite the Prayer to St Michael after daily Mass concludes (and at one parish, they apparently also do it at Sunday Mass). This is not a prayer I’d encountered before (although apparently I…
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Saint Wenceslaus
St Wenceslaus is the good king of the Christmas carol which isn’t exactly about Christmas, but rather the 26th of December, but no mind. As the patron of Bohemia, that was presumably the reason for the name of the parish which I would guess was in what was a neighborhood with a significant Czech population…
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Saint Padre Pio
I first heard of Padre Pio through Graham Greene’s memoir where he talked about being offered the chance to meet the friar but opted not to because he didn’t want his life changed by meeting a saint. Padre Pio Parish was formed through the merger of two northside parishes, St Hilary and Transfiguration of Our…
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: St Thomas of Villanova
St Thomas of Villanova is one of those saints that people would have to look up to know anything about. To me, the name Villanova will always be connected to the pizzeria of my childhood, owned by the uncle of the kid who lived on the corner, said uncle, I was later to learn, was…
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: St Matthew (a day late)
(I forgot to do this yesterday.) I arrived at the grounds of St Matthew church in Schaumburg right at the start time of the Mass and saw a large group of people gathered around a cross outside along with a pair of priests, an altar boy or two and a bunch of men in Knights…
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Saint Robert Bellarmine
As an undergrad, I was fascinated by the English recusants so I ended up reading nearly everything by and about them and became deeply immersed in a lot of the politics and arguments around the counter-reformation vs the English reformation and the Catholic missionary movement to England at the time so as a consequence, Robert…