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December 21, 2008

New Cardinal Meyer Center opens on S. Side

By Joyce Duriga

EDITOR

For the first time, the Archdiocese of Chicago will have an “institutional” presence on the city’s South Side. Cardinal George noted this development Dec. 10 at the dedication of the Cardinal Meyer Center, 35th Street and Lake Park, which will serve as one of two pastoral center locations for the archdiocese.

The other, Archbishop Quigley, was dedicated last month.

Members of Cardinal Albert Meyer’s extended family joined Bishops Francis Kane and John Manz, along with archdiocesan senior staff for the blessing service.

The Cardinal Meyer Center was originally a hospital for Civil War soldiers traveling through and to Chicago, and later as a home for disabled Union Army veterans.

In 1872, it was sold to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet after the original St. Joseph Orphan Asylum burned in the Great Chicago Fire. For more than 100 years, the sisters used the building to help children in need, first as an orphanage and later for the care of dependent, emotionally disturbed children. It closed in 2005.

In its transformation, the walls of the 1864- 1868 building were rehabilitated and readapted, thus protecting the Civil War-era construction. The result is a new, three-story facility that houses about 150 employees of 17 archdiocesan agencies that operated from the former Pastoral Center on Superior Street and other locations.

Cardinal Meyer

The Cardinal Meyer Center is named for the 10th ordinary of the Archdiocese of Chicago from 1958-1965. When he was appointed, the Archdiocese of Chicago was the largest archdiocese in the United States, with a school enrollment of nearly a half million students.

Just 16 days after assuming his duties, the new archbishop was faced with one of the worst school disasters in American history when a fire at Our Lady of the Angels School took 90 lives. Meyer began a rapid program of school modernization. Between 1958 and 1965, 69 new grade schools, 15 new high schools, 2 seminaries (Quigley South and Niles College) were built, and 30 parishes established. He also was a supporter of the Second Vatican Council.

The most compelling problems facing this leader of Chicago’s Catholics concerned civil rights. In 1959, in a striking statement to the President’s Commission on Civil Rights, Archbishop Meyer criticized racially segregated housing in the city.

In 1960, he ordered all-white Catholic schools to accept African-American children. Addressing clergy in 1961, he appealed to the more than 2,500 archdiocesan priests to “see that Negroes are integrated into the complete life of the church.” His beliefs were perhaps best summed up in his statement in 1963 that “no one can say to himself, ‘This is not my problem.’”

Michelle Martin contributed to this story.