We’re asking all Holy Cross parishioners to pray the Holy Spirit Novena for the parish during the nine days leading up to Pentecost Sunday.

The novena begins on Friday, May 10th and can be found www.praymorenovenas.com.

Go to the site, enter your name and email address, and you’ll get the novena prayers for the day delivered to your inbox.

You can also go directly here to get the Holy Spirit Novena prayers if you don’t want to sign up for email deliveries.

Please pray for our pastor, our staff, and an ever increasing growth in faith for our parishioners.

Of course, you can pray for any personal intentions as well.

Last weekend began the 2013 Annual Diocesan Appeal.

Our goal this year is $77,991. Much less than last year.

We easily met last year’s goal so I’m sure your generosity will carry us through this year as well.

The Annual Diocesan Appeal is a very necessary fundraiser for our diocese and our parish. Basically, it’s how the diocese pays the bills. You financially support the parish, and the parish financially supports the diocese.

There are many services you benefit from in giving generously to the Diocesan Appeal. Funds are used to:

• Educate our future priests
• Support retired clergy
• Fund Catholic Charities relief services
• Pay salaries and fund programs in the departments of Catholic Schools, Religious Education, Evangelization, and Family Life
• Support the Catholic Newman Centers on the many college campus’ around the diocese
• Support the office of Divine Worship ensuring the integrity of our Catholic liturgies

Your financial gift is necessary for the administration, oversight, services, and programs that run our diocese and keep our parishes running smoothly. It would be impossible to operate this large operation spread across the entire east/west borders of Illinois without these funds.

Please consider giving generously to this year’s Annual Diocesan Appeal. And don’t worry that you’ll give too much and go over our goal. If that happens 100% of the funds go back into the parish.

You can get donation slips in the back of church or in the parish office. Call 352-8748 for more details.

Thank you for your support.

Save the date!

The 5th Annual Catholic Connected will be on Saturday, June 1st.

This year the guest speaker is author and radio personality Elizabeth Ficocelli. Elizabeth is the author of 14 books including Seven From Heaven: How Your Family Can Find Healing, Strength and Protection in the Sacraments; Lourdes: Font of Faith, Hope & Charity; Shower of Heavenly Roses: Stories of the Intercession of St. Thérèse of Lisieux; and The Imitation of Christ for Children.

Elizabeth is a frequent guest on EWTN television as well as on Catholic radio. She is the host of “Answering The Call” on St. Gabriel Catholic Radio AM 820, in which she interviews priests, deacons, and religious about their spiritual journeys.

Elizabeth talk is called, “The Year of Faith: Encountering Christ Through the Sacraments.”

We hope every Catholic wil plan to be a part of this great event.

In mid-May, the Parish Office will have free tickets/name tags for attendance.

Unless you were really media sequestered, you already know the white smoke signaled the election of a new Pope yesterday.

The College of Cardinals elected Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio as the 266th Pope. He took the name Francis!

And, there’s a lot of firsts for him:

• The first Pope to be called Francis
• The first Pope from the Americas…he’s from Argentina, so he’s also first Latin American Pope
• The first Jesuit Pope (the Jesuits are priests of the Society of Jesus, the religious order St. Ignatius Loyola founded)

He’s quite unprecedented and a bit of a departure from recent Popes.

As a bishop in Argentina, he always lived very simply. He took the bus to work every day and lived in a modest apartment where he cooked his own meals.

He’s very unassuming but firm. He has a profound love of the poor and marginalized. He’s also staunchly pro-life and a strong defender of traditional marriage. He vigorously fought marriage equality and same-sex marriage laws in Argentina.

You can read some articles about him here and here to get an idea of his personality and what kind of man he is.

It was amazingly humble for him to ask for prayers from the faithful first before he blessed the people. Read his opening address from the balcony of St. Peter’s below:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Good evening.

As you know, the duty of the conclave was to appoint a bishop of Rome, and it seems to me that my brother cardinals have chosen who is from far away. Here I am.

I would like to thank you for your embrace, also to the Roman Catholic Church and the bishops, thank you very much. And first and foremost, I would like to pray for our bishop emeritus, Benedict XVI

Let us pray together for him so that he is blessed by the Lord…

Let us begin this journey together… this journey for the Roman Catholic Church. It is a journey of friendship, of love, of trust, and faith. Let us pray always for one another. Let us pray for the whole world. Let us have a big brotherhood.

I wish that this journey for the Church, which we will start today… will bear fruits for the evangelizing of this beautiful city.

I would like to offer you my blessing. But I would like to ask a favor first. I would like to pray to the Lord so that the prayer of the people blesses also the new pontiff. Let us pray in silence your prayer for me.

It seems that just because he donned the white robes, it didn’t mean he was going to change his way of doing things. Instead of taking the Papal limousine back to the hotel, he rode the bus back with all the cardinals.

Dolan said most of the cardinals had taken buses back to their residence in the Vatican and had lined up to greet the new pope as he arrived for their last meal as a group.

They were expecting him to arrive in the limousine that they had seen waiting for him at the base of the Apostolic Palace.

“And as the last bus pulls up, guess who gets off? It’s Pope Francis. I guess he told the driver ‘That’s OK, I’ll just go with the boys.’”

Read the rest of that article here.

Finally, check out this video of a press conference Cardinal Dolan gave in Rome last night after the election of Pope Francis.

Please remember to pray for the Pope today and this week as he settles into his new job of leading the Roman Catholic Church. It’s a big job! He’ll need all the prayers and support he can get.

We trust the Holy Spirit will continue to guide and protect Holy Mother Church through the intercession and leadership of Pope Francis.

The Papal Conclave begins on Tuesday, March 12.

Are you wondering how the whole choosing a Pope thing works?

Here’s two quick and fun to watch videos on how the Papal Election process works.

Watch these and you’ll be up to speed on what’s going to happen next week.

After that, all you have to do is watch for the white smoke…don’t know what that means? Watch the videos and see!

On March 12th, the Papal Conclave begins!

And, you need some way to keep up the news and be the first to know when the white smoke appears.

Well fortunately, there’s an app for that.

Logos Bible software just released an app for iPhone and Android that helps you keep up with all the conclave happenings and information next week from the Sistine Chapel.

• Live video feed from St. Peter’s Square to see the white smoke
• Bios and background information on all the cardinals in the conclave arranged in order of New Advents picks for frontrunners
• Links to news sites like the National Catholic Register, the National Catholic Reporter, and Zenit.
• Get the buzz on what people are saying on Twitter with the conclave feed.

Click here for links to download on iTunes and the Android Store. You can also sign up to get an email when the new Pope is elected.

Need a Catholic Bible app? Check out the one from Lighthouse Catholic Media

It’s free to download and includes the following:

FREE – Full text of the Catholic Bible (RSV-CE), Old and New Testaments

FREE – Audio of the Gospel of John from the Truth & Life Bible (amazing!)

FREE – Over 11 hours of audio biblical commentary from Dr. Scott Hahn and the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology

$20 – Complete dramatized Truth & Life audio New Testament

Ability to purchase and download over 50 Lighthouse talks, delivered straight to your mobile device.

Click your platform below to download the app for free! (or learn more here)

iTunes Store | Google Play Store | Amazon App Store

This video tribute prepared by Life Teen International shows various scenes of Pope Benedict interwoven with quotes.