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April 13, 2008

Chicagoans get ready to welcome Pope Benedict to the United States

By Tania Mann

STAFF WRITER

On April 20, Yankee stadium will be brimming with a crowd expecting something other than baseball. They will come to see Pope Benedict offer Mass, just days after his 81st birthday, during his first visit to the United States.

This Mass event is being organized by the Archdiocese of New York and the tickets for this event were dispersed throughout U.S. dioceses. They received more than 150,000 requests for only 46,000 available tickets.

Among the lucky ticket recipients are Lauretta and Liz Froelich of River Forest, St. Gabriel Parish’s kindergarten teacher Maririta McKenna, and Mundelein seminarian Thomas Boharic.

“He’s the head of our faith, he’s our shepherd and he’s coming to New York,” said Lauretta Froelich, a parishioner of St. Luke’s who will be representing the Chicago chapter of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in New York. “I want him to know we love him and that we’re delighted he’s here in the States.”

She’s also bringing along her niece, Liz Froelich of Trinity High School, River Forest.

“I want her to be on fire for the faith, to catch the faith,” Froelich said.

Liz said she “jumped at the chance of seeing the pope again,” after having seen him on a trip to Rome in 2005. She considers the experience a “once in a lifetime opportunity” that she’s getting to have twice.

“I’m just really excited and can’t wait to see him in New York, because it’s going to be interesting to see the difference in reactions from Americans and an international audience,” Liz said.

Eager for his message

Like the Froelichs, Boharic is looking forward to the trip. Boharic was one of 20 to win the lottery Cardinal George held for tickets allotted to Chicago’s seminarians.

“I know this will be a great moment historically,” Boharic said. “I’m interested in what he will say to the United States, in how he will encourage us to grow in our faith and challenge us to conversion, not only us as a church but us as a nation.”

McKenna also says she looks forward to witnessing how the pope will inspire Americans and the world.

“The people will hear him, the people will see him, and with the way we’re in a spiritual battle right now in the world, we need someone who holds up Christ and the Catholic Church,” McKenna said.

She aims to bring tokens of her experience back to her loved ones and her students, with whom she prays for the pope every day in class. She and her friends “got together and ordered 200 wooden rosaries and 500 prayer cards of Our Lady of America to be blessed by the pope.”

Teaching hope

“As a teacher I feel really honored that I can teach these 5-year-olds their prayers and about the Mass,” said McKenna. “I hope I can bring the pope’s words home to my family and my school, and just try to be a light of faith to others so they’re drawn to it, just like the pope is. [He] gives us hope for our faith, and I think that’s what it’s all about.”

Lauretta Froelich said she sees Pope Benedict as an “awesome, awesome teacher” and a great follow-up to the philosopher Pope John Paul II. She’s enjoyed his teachings so far, which “cause us to understand who we are in Christ.”

“I feel that there’s such a sweetness to him; there’s just a real joy to who he is,” she said. “And I love that he talked about Paul, and how it’s in hope that we’re saved…We already have hope in the church and it’s handed down. That’s the beauty of it. We have a pope. We’re not reinventing this every time.”

Boharic also believes in the strength of a church grounded in Christian tradition.

“I think it’s a great message to the world; it’s a visible sign to the U.S. of the church started by Christ, to see this church that Jesus founded on the rock of Peter,” he said.

Our shepherds

Lauretta Froelich sees the trip also as a way to show gratitude to a man answering Christ’s call to follow in Peter’s footsteps.

“Without Pope Benedict and Cardinal George and all our priests, we couldn’t live our lives as we love them,” she said. “We genuinely live our lives as we love them because of their ‘yes’ to Christ first. We just really want to say thank you to their ‘yes.’”

Boharic said he’s looking forward to traveling to New York in a bus with the other seminarians exploring their religious calling.

“It’s always great to have a pilgrimage and as seminarians to grow in our fellowship and our fraternity,” he said. “When we take any spiritual pilgrimage, wherever it is — anytime we come together as a church, the world really sees how united we are.”

This way, both the pope and all the Catholics who come to welcome him to the States will serve as a sign of faith and hope.

“We have faith that the apostles died for. Jesus gave us power to set the world on fire, and we can be free,” Lauretta Froelich said. “When we face the world, and we try to be countercultural, it’s because we have a hope in someone else, and that someone else is Jesus.”