Skip to content
Chicago-based Catholic group urges prayer vigils across US to re-open churches
Stephen Kokx | May 21, 2020

Founded just weeks ago by Lisa Bergman and Joe and Ann Scheidler of Pro-Life Action League, the Chicago-based St. Charles Borromeo Society has expanded its focus from getting churches in the Chicagoland area to reopen to now serving as a nationwide resource for U.S. Catholics interested in getting churches in their own dioceses opened up again.

Bergman, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, informed LifeSite that she’s been receiving messages from Catholics across the country who are interested in hosting prayer vigils in their areas.

“There were about 100 people at the Prayer Rally in front of St. Raymond’s Cathedral in Joliet last Friday evening,” Bergman said in an email. “There were also about 70 at Holy Name Cathedral [in Chicago] and there was a police car parked on the corner the whole time watching us…they never got out of the car.”

Thus far, laity in Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, and elsewhere have already held or are coordinating prayerful protests as a way to re-open churches.

On the St. Charles Borromeo Society’s website, OpenOurChurches.org, there is a growing database of the latest decrees dioceses across the United States have implemented regarding church closings and public Mass offerings. There is also an events page, a forum, and recommendations for how churches can safely re-open.

Our Lady of Quito's Prophecies.
From 1593 for TODAY!
Click for Free Copy
Free e-book!

In her free time, Bergman, a wife and mother, runs St. Augustine Academy Press. On Good Friday last month, she organized the first prayerful protest outside Holy Name Cathedral. Its purpose was to draw attention to the fact that grocery and liquor stores were still open but churches were forced to close during the coronavirus outbreak. Fewer than a dozen people showed up. Two weeks later, however, on April 24, more than 30 Catholics prayed the rosary with her at the same location. On Friday, May 1, approximately 80 Catholics prayed outside Holy Name. Local Chicago media outlets have reported on the gatherings, which will continue, Bergman says, until churches in Chicago are reopened.

Bottom of Form

The St. Charles Borromeo Society was originally established by Bergman and the Scheidlers to encourage Cardinal Blase Cupich to intervene with Illinois’s Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker, to ease restrictions so churches in the archdiocese could re-open. Cupich had suspended all Masses in mid-March.

Although Cupich’s office refused to have a meeting with the group, the archdiocese announced last Friday, thanks to a new order issued by the governor, that Masses will be held in the near future, although no more than 10 people will be allowed to attend.

Today (May 8), the St. Charles Borromeo Society held a May Crowning ceremony of a Blessed Virgin Mary statue outside the cathedral.

Source: Life Site News

 

© Reproduction is authorized provided the source is acknowledged.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

info@TFPuk.org.uk

© All Rights Reserved 2020
China and the Vatican, two years later there is more persecution

“Compared to the Church in the south, our situation is rather tranquil. In past years we have had a relatively tranquil location; Sunday Masses, solemn Masses, and all activities of prayer proceeded in a more or less regular way. All this ended with the signing of the provisory Sino-Vatican agreement on September 22, 2018

Read More »
The Great Lessons of a Small Being

Someday, when historians study the huge crisis triggered by the coronavirus, they will ask many questions they may already have some elements to answer. Amid the crisis, with Italy still in quarantine, we cannot but ask questions. They are neither few nor trivial.

Read More »
The pandemic and the LGBT agenda

With the COVID-19 pandemic now retreating, a period of reflection begins. Can we learn anything from what happened? Among the lessons that this Chinese virus leaves us, there is one that will cause much discussion: Whatever the LGBT lobby says, men and women are not the same at all.

Read More »
The Coronavirus Is a Call to Return to God

Indeed, the management of the coronavirus crisis accepts no help from outside. God has no meaning or function inside all the efforts to eradicate it. In God’s stead, there are the immense powers of government mobilized to control every aspect of life to prevent its spread. The mighty arm of science scrambles to find a vaccine. The worlds of finance and technology are brought to bear to mitigate the disastrous effects of the crisis.

Read More »
COVID-19 is a call for the conversion of individuals and nations

If today we take a look at the institutionalised evil in our societies we are stunned by its vastness and depth. We discover that, in general, evil is committed by public authorities who imposed it as a lawful duty, forbidding the exact opposite: doing good. The sheer number of evil structures is astounding. Think about the numbers of surgical and chemical abortions that occur,

Read More »
Church Takes Fatima Statue to Quarantined Faithful

This year, due to the mandatory confinement decreed by the Government, the faithful were unable to keep this tradition to express their Marian devotion. For this reason, the Diocese of Cucuta decided to walk the streets carrying the statue of the Blessed Virgin on a caravan to visit her children.

Read More »
Open Letter to the Permanent Council of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil -Excellences: The Time Has Come to Turn the Page on Liberation Theology!

The first names of its signatories, which have become public, are representative of an episcopal current whose doctrine has clearly inspired the writing of the document. They are prelates of German descent, now retired, who in their youth were thrilled with the Marxist revolution promoted by the standard-bearers of Liberation Theology. After the collapse of the USSR, these prelates – and others of the same ideological current – recycled themselves into environmentalist and indigenous utopians.

Read More »
The World on course for a Demographic Catastrophe

By the end of the century, almost every country in the world will have fertility rates below the replacement level, 23 countries will see their population more than cut in half, and if societies do not reorganize, it will be a disaster. Finally, someone who is not labeled as pro-life (and thus discredited) has become aware of the demographic catastrophe that we are facing.

Read More »
The Sanger case proves that abortion is racism

Thus, while some are distancing themselves from Sanger and her ideas about race, this is no problem for the more than 800 abortion clinics spread throughout the United States. Eugenics, for them, is nothing more than a private belief of Margaret Sanger. Eugenics can be certainly condemned but has no affect on the “meritorious” birth control activities at Planned Parenthood.

Read More »
Why a Pro-Abortion Columnist Says the Movement Is in Tatters

A recent op-ed in the British daily, The Guardian, is an eye-opener. The author is Jessa Crispin, a U.S. correspondent for the paper and a former Planned Parenthood employee, who worked at a Texas chapter of the organization for around five years. She bitterly complains that “the pro-choice movement is in tatters” and “Planned Parenthood is part of the problem.”

Read More »
Third Fatima Apparition

Lucia writes, “Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke,

Read More »
First Fatima Apparition

“It was upon saying these last words, ‘the grace of God…’ that for the first time she opened her hands, which emitted a most intense light that penetrated our breasts, reaching the innermost part of our souls and making us see ourselves in God, Who was that light, more clearly than we can see ourselves in the best of mirrors.

Read More »
Let us recall Fatima

At Fatima in 1917, the Blessed Mother herself warned that if humanity did not change its ways and convert, the crisis that had already begun would worsen. In the second part of the secret revealed by the visionary Lucia, Mary announced chastisements that would affect temporal society, but which could be avoided if people converted, if atheism was opposed and the world was consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart. Practically speaking, Mary warned that the moral crisis would provoke a material crisis.

Read More »
Tears, a Miraculous Warning

“The Tears of Our Lady Wet my Finger” by Fr. Elmo Romagosa. It was published on July 20 in the Clarion Herald, a New Orleans weekly, distributed in eleven Louisiana parishes or counties.

Read More »
The Silence of the Faithful

The other day, during Sunday Mass in a leading parish in Milan, the celebrant revealed a chilling fact: after the reopening, in the Ambrosian diocese, only 30% of the faithful returned to the churches. “Families and children have totally disappeared, he said.” The situation in the rest of Italy is not much better.

Without malice, I thought, “you abandoned them during the most critical period of the pandemic, and they now repay you in the same manner.”

Read More »

Free e-book

Fill in & Click SEND
to Receive your free e-book!

our adress:

Milngavie, Glasgow G62 6YJ

Join us by email

We send out quartely emails which you are welcome to receive, at no cost!