Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church

CNA Staff, May 1, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

A group of religious sisters in Cleveland is launching a multimillion-dollar archive center that will help collect, preserve, and share the stories of women religious in the United States. 

Sister Susan Durkin, OSU, told CNA that the Women Religious Archives Collaborative will ensure the preservation of the “tremendous stories of how sisters in the United States overcame insurmountable obstacles to serve the people in front of them.”

Durkin said that when she was serving as the president of the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland, the congregation undertook a project to downsize its motherhouse. 

“In our downsizing we had to make a decision about what to do with our archives,” she said, describing the storage option in the reduced space as “not a long-term strategy.” 

Leaders in the Cleveland Diocese expressed interest in a possible archive project. The Ursuline congregation, meanwhile, was working with an archival consultant on its own collection. 

Durkin said the archivist told them: “Look, this project is bigger than the Diocese of Cleveland. You might want to reach out further.” 

The sisters began inquiring in multiple states. The Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland, meanwhile, provided seed money to help launch the project. After undertaking sustainability modeling, the project became incorporated in 2022. 

“We’re incorporated in the state of Ohio and we’re in the Catholic directory,” Durkin said. “We have a board, a board committee, bylaws, codes, and regulations. We’re an official nonprofit. We’re looking to build this heritage center here in Cleveland.”

‘Really a unique and inspirational story’

The project has already amassed dozens of collections from around the country, Durkin said. 

“Right now we have 41 collections and continue to be in conversation with other congregations,” she said. “It grew from something that was regional to something bigger.”

The collections will include historical information about why a religious community served in a certain area and why it expanded to other places, Durkin said. “There will be individual sister stories, ministry stories, and then the sisters’ influence in the arts and music.” 

One particular area of focus, she said, will be in how many congregations, post-Vatican II, experienced a shift in ministry from more institutional systems like medical care and education to broader endeavors. 

“There are so many tremendous stories of how sisters overcame insurmountable obstacles to serve the people in front of them,” she said. “It’s not just that we’re preserving history. It’s about animating those stories. The sisters aren’t going away, and we need to manage these collections in a way that becomes useful and visible.”

The centerpiece of the project is a major facility in the Central neighborhood of Cleveland, which Durkin noted is “one of the poorest per capita in the U.S.” The sisters are aiming to have the archival center revitalize the neighborhood.

“We’re making an investment there,” Durkin said, calling the effort “not gentrification, but a renaissance.”

The archival project has launched a major capital campaign to that end with the goal of raising $24 million. The building itself will cost $22 million and the sisters hope to cover operational costs for the first year. 

The facility will include research facilities for archivists and other historians as well as an exhibit space with permanent and rotating exhibits, along with multipurpose rooms and other accommodations.

Ultimately, Durkin said, the goal of the project is to ensure that people will have access to the history and the stories of women religious in the United States, offering “examples for up-and-coming generations to show how our faith motivates us and how it’s important to us.”

“I think that resilience and that determination, and just total reliance on the providence of God, is really a unique and inspirational story,” she said. “And we need to continue to tell that.”

CNA Staff, May 1, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

A group of religious sisters in Cleveland is launching a multimillion-dollar archive center that will help collect, preserve, and share the stories of women religious in the United States. 

Sister Susan Durkin, OSU, told CNA that the Women Religious Archives Collaborative will ensure the preservation of the “tremendous stories of how sisters in the United States overcame insurmountable obstacles to serve the people in front of them.”

Durkin said that when she was serving as the president of the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland, the congregation undertook a project to downsize its motherhouse. 

“In our downsizing we had to make a decision about what to do with our archives,” she said, describing the storage option in the reduced space as “not a long-term strategy.” 

Leaders in the Cleveland Diocese expressed interest in a possible archive project. The Ursuline congregation, meanwhile, was working with an archival consultant on its own collection. 

Durkin said the archivist told them: “Look, this project is bigger than the Diocese of Cleveland. You might want to reach out further.” 

The sisters began inquiring in multiple states. The Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland, meanwhile, provided seed money to help launch the project. After undertaking sustainability modeling, the project became incorporated in 2022. 

“We’re incorporated in the state of Ohio and we’re in the Catholic directory,” Durkin said. “We have a board, a board committee, bylaws, codes, and regulations. We’re an official nonprofit. We’re looking to build this heritage center here in Cleveland.”

‘Really a unique and inspirational story’

The project has already amassed dozens of collections from around the country, Durkin said. 

“Right now we have 41 collections and continue to be in conversation with other congregations,” she said. “It grew from something that was regional to something bigger.”

The collections will include historical information about why a religious community served in a certain area and why it expanded to other places, Durkin said. “There will be individual sister stories, ministry stories, and then the sisters’ influence in the arts and music.” 

One particular area of focus, she said, will be in how many congregations, post-Vatican II, experienced a shift in ministry from more institutional systems like medical care and education to broader endeavors. 

“There are so many tremendous stories of how sisters overcame insurmountable obstacles to serve the people in front of them,” she said. “It’s not just that we’re preserving history. It’s about animating those stories. The sisters aren’t going away, and we need to manage these collections in a way that becomes useful and visible.”

The centerpiece of the project is a major facility in the Central neighborhood of Cleveland, which Durkin noted is “one of the poorest per capita in the U.S.” The sisters are aiming to have the archival center revitalize the neighborhood.

“We’re making an investment there,” Durkin said, calling the effort “not gentrification, but a renaissance.”

The archival project has launched a major capital campaign to that end with the goal of raising $24 million. The building itself will cost $22 million and the sisters hope to cover operational costs for the first year. 

The facility will include research facilities for archivists and other historians as well as an exhibit space with permanent and rotating exhibits, along with multipurpose rooms and other accommodations.

Ultimately, Durkin said, the goal of the project is to ensure that people will have access to the history and the stories of women religious in the United States, offering “examples for up-and-coming generations to show how our faith motivates us and how it’s important to us.”

“I think that resilience and that determination, and just total reliance on the providence of God, is really a unique and inspirational story,” she said. “And we need to continue to tell that.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- As the Catholic Church's cardinals prepare to elect a new pope, they must be wary of "elegant speeches" that hide a subtle cruelty toward the poor and vulnerable, said the Vatican's former doctrinal chief.

Celebrating a memorial Mass for Pope Francis in St. Peter's Basilica May 1, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, former prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, warned that disrespect for the poor can be expressed not only in openly "cruel and vain" terms, but also in refined language.

"Those words" -- such as calling the poor "lazy," he said -- "are also found hidden behind other, more elegant speeches."

Cardinal Fernández celebrated Mass with cardinals on the sixth day of the "novendiali" -- nine days of mourning for Pope Francis marked by Masses. The cardinals did not gather for their general congregation meetings earlier in the day since May 1 is a holiday for Vatican City State to observe the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. It also is the equivalent of Labor Day in Italy and many other countries.

With members of the Roman Curia were seated in the front rows, the cardinal said that distorted ideas of merit and success -- what Pope Francis denounced as "false meritocracy" -- risk obscuring the Gospel truth of human dignity.

"False meritocracy," the cardinal said, "leads us to think that only those who have succeeded in life are worthy." Instead, through his ministry, Pope Francis "launched a prophetic cry against this false idea," he said, rejecting a view that sees failure as a moral fault and success as proof of virtue.

Reflecting on the life and message of Pope Francis just days before the cardinals begin the process of choosing his successor, Cardinal Fernández pointed to the late pope's insistence that every person, regardless of status or background, possesses an "immense dignity that is never lost, that in no way can be ignored or forgotten."

He recalled Pope Francis' belief that authentic help for the poor cannot stop at material aid, rather their dignity must be "promoted" by developing their God-given gifts and allowing them to support themselves.

"It is not enough to give things," the cardinal said. "Every person must be able to earn their bread with the gifts God has given them."

In this context, he said, labor is not simply an economic necessity but a path toward full human development. "Work," he said, quoting the late pope, "is the best help for a poor person."

Addressing his fellow cardinals and Vatican officials gathered in the basilica, Cardinal Fernández said the responsibilities of work apply to them as well. 

"We are workers who follow a schedule, who fulfill tasks entrusted to us, who must be responsible and make efforts and sacrifices in our obligations," he said. "The responsibility of work for us in the Curia is also a journey of maturation and fulfillment as Christians."

Concelebrating the Mass with Cardinal Fernández at the altar were four other cardinals who were senior officials of the Roman Curia under Pope Francis. 

The cardinal closed his homily by recalling Pope Francis not just as a teacher of the dignity of work, but as someone who lived it. 

"Even with very little strength in his final days, he found the strength to visit a prison," he said. 

The cardinal noted how Pope Francis famously never took a vacation, saying, "His daily work was his response to God's love, an expression of his concern for the good of others, and for these reasons work itself was his joy, his nourishment, his rest."

- - -

Reporting by CNS Rome is made possible by the Catholic Communication Campaign. Give to the CCC special collection in your diocese May 10-11 or any time at: https://bit.ly/CCC-give

CNA Staff, May 1, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA).

St. Joseph, the beloved spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary and earthly father of Jesus, is celebrated twice by the Catholic Church every year — first on March 19 for the feast of St. Joseph, Husband of Mary, and again on May 1 for the feast of St. Joseph the Worker.

While the saint’s March feast dates back to the 10th century, his May feast wasn’t instituted until 1955. What was behind it?

May Day

Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1, 1955, so that it would coincide with International Workers Day, also known as May Day — a secular celebration of labor and workers’ rights.

During this time, the Soviet Union proclaimed itself as “the defender of workers” and utilized May Day as an opportunity to exalt communism and parade its military prowess. Pope Pius XII chose the date specifically to ensure that workers did not lose the Christian understanding of work.

In his address to the Catholic Association of Italian Workers on that day in 1955, Pius XII said: “There could not be a better protector to help you penetrate the spirit of the Gospel into your life … From the heart of the Man-God, Savior of the world, this spirit flows into you and into all men; but it is certain that no worker has ever been as perfectly and deeply penetrated by it as the putative father of Jesus, who lived with him in the closest intimacy and commonality of family and work.”

He added: “So, if you want to be close to Christ, we also today repeat to you ‘Ite ad Ioseph’ — Go to Joseph!”

The Catholic Church has long placed an importance on the dignity of human work. By working, we fulfill the commands found in the Book of Genesis to care for the earth and be productive in our labors.

In his encyclical Laborem Exercens, Pope John Paul II wrote that “the Church considers it her task always to call attention to the dignity and rights of those who work, to condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated, and to help to guide [social] changes so as to ensure authentic progress by man and society.”

St. Joseph is considered a role model of this as he worked tirelessly to protect and provide for his family as he strove to listen to and obey God.

Even before the institution of this feast, many popes were beginning to spread a devotion to St. Joseph the Worker. One of these was Pope Leo XIII, who wrote on the subject in his encyclical Quamquam Pluries in 1889.

He wrote: “Joseph became the guardian, the administrator, and the legal defender of the divine house whose chief he was. And during the whole course of his life he fulfilled those charges and those duties. He set himself to protect with a mighty love and a daily solicitude his spouse and the Divine Infant; regularly by his work he earned what was necessary for the one and the other for nourishment and clothing; he guarded from death the Child threatened by a monarch’s jealousy, and found for him a refuge; in the miseries of the journey and in the bitternesses of exile he was ever the companion, the assistance, and the upholder of the Virgin and of Jesus.”

In addition to being the patron of the universal Church and workers in general, St. Joseph is also the patron saint of several professions including craftsmen, carpenters, accountants, attorneys, bursars, cabinetmakers, cemetery workers, civil engineers, confectioners, educators, furniture makers, wheelwrights, and lawyers.

This article was first publoshed on May 1, 2024, and has been updated.

CNA Staff, May 1, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA).

St. Joseph, the beloved spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary and earthly father of Jesus, is celebrated twice by the Catholic Church every year — first on March 19 for the feast of St. Joseph, Husband of Mary, and again on May 1 for the feast of St. Joseph the Worker.

While the saint’s March feast dates back to the 10th century, his May feast wasn’t instituted until 1955. What was behind it?

May Day

Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1, 1955, so that it would coincide with International Workers Day, also known as May Day — a secular celebration of labor and workers’ rights.

During this time, the Soviet Union proclaimed itself as “the defender of workers” and utilized May Day as an opportunity to exalt communism and parade its military prowess. Pope Pius XII chose the date specifically to ensure that workers did not lose the Christian understanding of work.

In his address to the Catholic Association of Italian Workers on that day in 1955, Pius XII said: “There could not be a better protector to help you penetrate the spirit of the Gospel into your life … From the heart of the Man-God, Savior of the world, this spirit flows into you and into all men; but it is certain that no worker has ever been as perfectly and deeply penetrated by it as the putative father of Jesus, who lived with him in the closest intimacy and commonality of family and work.”

He added: “So, if you want to be close to Christ, we also today repeat to you ‘Ite ad Ioseph’ — Go to Joseph!”

The Catholic Church has long placed an importance on the dignity of human work. By working, we fulfill the commands found in the Book of Genesis to care for the earth and be productive in our labors.

In his encyclical Laborem Exercens, Pope John Paul II wrote that “the Church considers it her task always to call attention to the dignity and rights of those who work, to condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated, and to help to guide [social] changes so as to ensure authentic progress by man and society.”

St. Joseph is considered a role model of this as he worked tirelessly to protect and provide for his family as he strove to listen to and obey God.

Even before the institution of this feast, many popes were beginning to spread a devotion to St. Joseph the Worker. One of these was Pope Leo XIII, who wrote on the subject in his encyclical Quamquam Pluries in 1889.

He wrote: “Joseph became the guardian, the administrator, and the legal defender of the divine house whose chief he was. And during the whole course of his life he fulfilled those charges and those duties. He set himself to protect with a mighty love and a daily solicitude his spouse and the Divine Infant; regularly by his work he earned what was necessary for the one and the other for nourishment and clothing; he guarded from death the Child threatened by a monarch’s jealousy, and found for him a refuge; in the miseries of the journey and in the bitternesses of exile he was ever the companion, the assistance, and the upholder of the Virgin and of Jesus.”

In addition to being the patron of the universal Church and workers in general, St. Joseph is also the patron saint of several professions including craftsmen, carpenters, accountants, attorneys, bursars, cabinetmakers, cemetery workers, civil engineers, confectioners, educators, furniture makers, wheelwrights, and lawyers.

This article was first publoshed on May 1, 2024, and has been updated.

The risen Christ comes to each of us all the time no matter what we are going through. He shows us His wounds that have won for us an interior peace, forgiveness, and renewed faith that we do not deserve in any way, “Peace be with you.” Let Him forgive us for all our sins […]

The post 3 Sure Ways to Experience Christ’s Peace appeared first on Integrated Catholic Life™.

A Daily Quote to Inspire Your Catholic Faith “Saint Joseph, our father and lord, is a teacher of the interior life. Place yourself under his patronage and you’ll feel the effectiveness of his power.” –  Saint Josemaría Escrivá Image (inset) credit: “St. Josemaría Escrivá” (detail) | Oficina de Información de la Prelatura del Opus Dei […]

The post Daily Quote — St. Josemaría Escrivá appeared first on Integrated Catholic Life™.

Two decades ago, Christian Smith and Melinda Denton discovered that nearly all US teens, regardless of their religious upbringing, shared a common belief system. They named this religion “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” which they summarized into the following tenets: Whether today’s Americans precisely adhere to these tenets is not in question here. (We know that these […]

We live in an age when laity, clergy, and religious are seeking holy guides. These confusing and dark days have left countless people discouraged. I repeatedly have conversations with friends in the clergy and the laity who are in search of a spiritual director but cannot seem to find one. Kevin Wells has sought to […]

ENCOUNTERING THE WORD — YOUR DAILY BIBLE VERSES “Blessed is every one who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways!” – Psalm 128:1 Please help spread the Gospel. Share this verse with family and friends on Facebook and other social media. We are grateful for your support… We welcome both one-time and monthly donations. […]

The post Your Daily Bible Verses — Psalm 128:1 appeared first on Integrated Catholic Life™.