religious life
OBLATE SUSAN
Lubas and Prior
Peter Funk bow
their heads in
prayer during an
oblate meeting.
A SOLEMN can-dlelit procession
(facing page)
precedes a dark
Friday night
Mass at the
Monastery of
the Holy Cross
in Chicago.
Contemplation in the city
On the South Side of Chicago a group of Benedictine monks have
created a prayerful presence in the heart of the one of the city’s oldest
neighborhoods.
PHOTOS I N 1988 THE THREE founding BY KELLY brothers of the Monastery of the BRYAN Holy Cross, after having spent several years of mission work in Haiti and
TEXT Brazil, decided God was calling them to
form a community of prayer. The community initially settled in the diocese
of Crookston, Minnesota, where they
served in parish work.
Then, in 1991, Cardinal Joseph
Bernardin invited the community to
Chicago to establish a contemplative
presence in the city. The closing of some
40 parishes in 1989 had left a number
of church buildings unused, and given
COMPILED
BY JOEL
SCHORN
Kelly Bryan‘s photos were part of her senior project at Columbia College in Chicago.
Joel Schorn is managing editor of VISION.
a choice of these buildings, the brothers
chose the former Immaculate Conception church, in the Bridgeport neighborhood, both for its nearness to the city’s
downtown as well as its beauty.
This beauty was partly hidden, however, because during the two years of its
being closed the church had been used
as a warehouse and had suffered a good
deal of damage. The initial years in Chicago were spent renovating the church,
including the construction of a loft in
the church attic as a space for guests, and
establishing a rhythm of liturgical life.
The community was poor in its early
days, and today there are fond memories of truckloads of potatoes arriving
from friends in rural Minnesota to help.
During these early years the community
earned its keep through chaplaincies at
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VISION 2009
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