The North Star Catholic / August 2015 - The North Star Catholic

Anchorage’s Dominican priests set for annual ‘Friar’s Fest’ at cathedral

Saturday, Aug. 8, rain or shine, will be a festive day at Holy Family Cathedral as parishioners and guests celebrate the 4th annual Friars’ Fest in the parish courtyard. The Friar’s Fest is part of a year full of events celebrating the centennial of Holy Family Cathedral, which started in 1915 with the purchase of two lots in the initial land sale in the then tent-city of Anchorage. The upcoming festival event coincides with Anchorage’s summer centennial festivities.

Religious brother was a savvy media point-man for Anchorage Archdiocese

Brother McBride initially came to Alaska in 1979 to work at St. Theresa’s Camp, the summer youth camp on the Kenai Peninsula. But then-Archbishop Francis Hurley tapped him to be the media point man for the event that to this day is still regarded as the largest gathering of people ever in Alaska: Pope John Paul II’s visit to Anchorage in February 1981. Brother McBride was communications director after that, a position he described as mostly “feeding and comforting the press.”

Longtime Alaskan friends cherish 60 years as religious sisters

In 1955, Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald’s, the Vietnam War began, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus. And two friends — Loretta Leucke and Joan Oberle — professed their first vows as Sisters of the Most Precious Blood in St. Louis, Missouri. This month, Sisters Leucke, 80, and Oberle, 79, celebrate 60 years of religious life — the last 25 spent in the Archdiocese of Anchorage, Alaska.