In the summer of 2019, Daughter of Charity Sister Mary Peter Diaz left Anchorage for a new assignment on the vast Navajo Reservation in the Southwestern United States. Like all of us, Sister Mary Peter, who had worked here in both Hispanic and Native ministry, had no idea what was in store in 2020. So,…
On a cold November day, I noticed on Twitter Sister Helen Prejean, the Catholic death penalty opponent, announcing that her friend Bill Pelke had died in Anchorage, Alaska, where he had retired. He was shoveling snow when he suffered a heart attack. I had heard Bill speak years before and had tried to schedule a…
It was an April day in 2014, just a few days before Jesuit Father Frans van der Lugt would celebrate his 76th birthday. The gunmen’s knock on the door was abrupt. The beating came first, then two bullets to the head. At least once a year, I like to write something about him. The call…
Matteo Ricci, a 16th-century Jesuit, told the story of two men walking together. One of the men was extremely rich and one was extremely poor.A passerby commented, “Those two men are very close friends,” to which an ancient sage was said to have replied, “If that is true, then why is one of them rich…
CatholicAnchor.org Archbishop Francis T. Hurley of Anchorage had a vision. As the keynote speaker at a Catholic Press Association national conference in 1997, he spoke about how the Catholic press should live out its mission of proclaiming the Church’s social justice message. In the audience that day was a young University of Portland graduate, John…
CatholicAnchor.org Nothing like a good storm – or maybe an earthquake – to focus your attention. I was heading for the shower on a Monday morning when a huge gust of wind battered the house. Then all went dark, and those consoling, authoritative voices of National Public Radio were silenced. Rats! I hadn’t made my…
CatholicAnchor.org Holy Spirit Center, located in the foothills of the Chugach Mountains on 22 acres, overlooks a sweeping vista of the Anchorage bowl. One of the Archdiocese of Anchorage’s gems is now looking back on nearly 50 years of ministering to the spiritual needs of Alaskans. Today, despite financial challenges over the years, Center director…
CatholicAnchor.org One evening, returning from my walk, I detoured on to a lot where a new home is under construction, but not yet sold. The house is on my block, and it’s one of the last lots to be filled in my neighborhood. I was curious, a nosy neighbor. So I veered off the sidewalk…
CatholicAnchor.org “In the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people…” Those haunting words are the first two lines of a poem called “Quarantine” by Eavan Boland. Boland, an Irish poet and professor, died in her native Dublin at the end of April. She was 75. Twenty years ago,…
CatholicAnchor.org On April Fool’s Day, a friend discovered empty toilet paper rolls in her bathrooms, the cardboard tubes covered with the words “Ha, Ha, Ha.” She searched for the precious paper while trying to maintain a sense of humor. After all, little kids held hostage to a virus need some fun. As I write this,…