Sunday’s 100th anniversary mass at St. Giles Catholic Church was a celebration that viewed time in two directions.
The mass, presided by Cardinal Blase Cupich, drew approximately 700 people, many who have attended the church for decades, but also younger people who have found a spiritual home there, many with children.
One of the key points Cupich made, echoed by the Rev. Carl Morello, pastor of both Oak Park parishes, St. Catherine-St. Lucy and St. Giles Parish, and Ascension and St. Edmund Parish, is that it’s fun to look back, but it’s just as important, if not more so, to consider the future.
Oak Park resident Peggy Plastina was a reader at the mass and said she can see in both directions.
“You can’t deny the past,” she said at the fellowship gathering after the mass. “You can’t deny how much these people wanted to have a place where they could worship in this community. That’s really important and very important now.”
Maudette Carr has been attending St. Giles for about 13 years. Prior to that, she was a member of St. Catherine-St. Lucy.
“It’s changing,” Carr said of St. Giles’ evolution. “It’s becoming more diverse. Not just African Americans, but Hispanics.”
The history of St. Giles
According to Archdiocese of Chicago archives, Cardinal George Mundelein directed the Rev. Lawence W. Frawley to organize St. Giles at Columbian and Greenfield avenues in 1927.
A portable church was used for more than a year before a combination church and school was completed and dedicated by Mundelein in October 1928. Within a decade, the church increased from 100 to 750 families. That led to the conversion of the original church into classrooms, with the cornerstone of the current church laid in July 1938.
The book “The Archdiocese of Chicago: A Journey of Faith,” noted that the lower section of the church was completed that year, with the rest finished by 1950, reflecting a modernized Spanish mission style.
In a brief interview Friday in the St. Giles sanctuary, Morello mused about key data points about the church, such as the strong likelihood there have been well over 3,000 weddings there over the last century, considering that in modern times there are about 30 per year, and more couples were married in church in its first 50 years.
While Morello said he’s not a historian, he does have an appreciation for the ongoing ministry, but there is something more important.
“Over the course of these years that I’ve been the pastor now with these unified parishes, I’ve come to know the people, I have a deeper appreciation for the rootedness of these communities in the generations that have been here. and all of these parishes,” he said.
“We’re celebrating 100 years, but as the pastor of these two new communities, what I recognize so importantly is that what we’re celebrating is this Catholic community of faith in Oak Park and our neighbors, because that’s what we call ourselves.”
‘The mission is still the same’
Cupich added in his homily, which focused on discipleship, that, “Today, as you celebrate 100 years, remember all those people that were part of building this community, but also have the courage to come here with your own woundedness, your own subjects, and realize that you are offering your body as a sacrifice for the redemption of the world.”
Morello said Friday that “the mission is still the same.
“To worship, welcome people and walk with them through life. Keeping them connected to God. Keep it simple,” he said.
Maria Allori, director of stewardship for the Oak Park Catholic parishes, said getting to the century mark is no small feat.
“It is a celebration to all that came before us with an eye on the future, with eyes wide open for the future,” she said. “In terms of discipleship, it’s really the people, so for me that it was a celebration of all that came before us and the people today.”
Sidebar:
A conversation with the cardinal
The vibrancy of the Catholic parishes in Oak Park is due to the fact that they draw from a variety of local communities, said Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, in an exclusive interview with Wednesday Journal before presiding at Sunday’s 100th anniversary celebratory mass at St. Giles.
“This is a good example of how parishes come together, especially when they’re smaller, and support each other,” Cupich said of St. Catherine-St. Lucy and St. Giles Parish, along with Ascension and St. Edmund Parish.
“What I’m really encouraged by is that people see beyond the boundaries of their own church building,” he said. “They see the mission of Jesus to be taken up. They care about passing on the faith to the next generation. And I think as long as we keep our focus on that, we’re going to be a healthy church.”
A good example, he said, is The Neighborhood Bridge, the nonprofit created in 2023 to connect Chicago’s West Side residents with area human services. That organization is based in the rectory of the former St. Catherine-St. Lucy church that closed in June 2025.
“I think anything can always build community and keep in focus the importance of the common good, I applaud,” he said.
Cupich also spoke about the impact Pope Leo XIV has had on Catholicism in his native Chicago and globally.
“I would say that he has gone beyond expectations and surprised people,” he said. “Because he wasn’t an individual who drew attention to himself before he was elected pope. In fact, many people tell me that they did not expect him to be on even the short list. And yet, he stepped into the role right away and seems to take it with a firm hand. So I’m pleasantly surprised by that.”
While the pope has spoken out about many things in his short tenure, one that has impacted Cupich and many Catholics is his encyclical on safeguarding humanity in the time of artificial intelligence, titled “Magnifica Humanitas.”
For Cupich, the encyclical is a call to monitor how this technology can develop, but always in a way that respects human dignity.
“That has to be taken into consideration,” he said, “for instance, for cybersecurity, for job displacement, for ways in which privacy is going to be respected. But also, in a way that does not allow this technology to overrun the capacity of human beings to control it.”
Another key issue throughout Chicagoland has been the church’s ability to flourish post-pandemic.
“We still have some pockets where it’s lowered, some places where it’s higher,” he said. “But we have seen in the last couple of years an uptick in people coming into the church, joining the church at Easter., especially in the demographic of young people who are post-college to about 35. And so something’s happening in that demographic.”
-Gregg Voss