Category: Catholic nerd pilgrimage

Chicago has two parishes named after Our Lady Mother of the Church, but only one had Mass today, so I headed to Willow Springs in the morning for Mass in Polish. I don’t know Polish although I can pick out a few words that are cognate with Czech (which I also don’t know). It’s a…

Today I had a choice of two churches to visit, I could have gone to the Church of the Holy Spirit (today being Pentecost) or Mary, Seat of Wisdom. Since the latter was closer and had an evening Mass (I had planned on showing up for music ministry this morning, but instead gave in to…

Today being the feast of Saint Norbert, I headed up to Northbrook for their 8.15 Mass. It was moderately attended, sans music and there seemed to be no mention of the fact that it was the parish’s patron’s feast. I suspect, given the fact that the parish’s full name is Saint Norbert–Our Lady of the…

Today is the feast of the visitation, commemorating when the newly pregnant Virgin Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth who was pregnant with John the Baptist at that time. As a result I visited St Basil/Visitation church on the south side of Chicago. The church is located in a poor neighborhood as evidenced by the fact…

Today’s saint is Saint Ferdinand, who, reading his biography, is kind of politically incorrect as saints go, being notable for “christianizing” Spain which largely consisted of military conquests on the Iberian peninsula. This is the guy who pissed off Osama Bin Laden so much, he felt obliged to mention him in his justification of the…

For some time, I’ve thought that it would be cool to get a list of all the Catholic churches in the Archdiocese of Chicago and each day visit a church whose patron’s feast was that day. Finally, I got around to downloading a list, making a spreadsheet and finding the feast days for the saints.…