Around the province

Service with smiles and caring hearts

A group of Creighton University students prepares to hit the road for St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Grand Couteau, Louisiana. They were among the 140 students who took part in the Creighton Center for Service and Justice's annual Spring Break Service trips. Groups this year traveled to 17 sites in 12 states as far east as West Virginia and as far west as New Mexico.

This group worked at the parish's Home Health and Supportive Services Thensted Center, performing a variety of high-energy indoor and outdoor maintenance tasks. They also visited families and the elderly, and tutored students. Grand Coteau is a small town of about 1,200. The mostly black Catholic community introduced students to the Cajun culture and the struggles against poverty and injustice that affect a rural area lacking in industry and public transportation.

Introducing Casa Romero

  
Fr. Eugene Dutkiewicz, SJ (left) applies a fresh coat of paint to a room at Casa Romero, a new urban Catholic retreat center on Milwaukee's South Side. Fr. Dutkiewicz was among a group of Province staff who volunteered earlier this year to help Fr. David Shields, SJ, Casa Romero director, in his efforts to renovate a vacant convent into a spiritual resource in what is predominantly a Hispanic neighborhood.
      The chapel (center) is on the main floor of the three-story building. An open house was held in late March to familiarize area residents and friends of the center with the new facility.
      Open house attendees (right) congregate on the retreat house rear staircase. More than 70 people came to the event for a community prayer service in honor of martyred Archbishop Fr. Oscar Romero, SJ on the 21st anniversary of his assassination. "The center is for the people of the South Side and for people who love the people of the South Side," Fr. Shields says. Now open for limited programs, the center will be fully operational by early summer.