Pilgrims from the Archdiocese of Chicago will have the opportunity to learn about and celebrate the church’s teaching on families — and participate in a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis — at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia in September.
The event is something like a World Youth Day for family life, said Frank Hannigan, director of the archdiocese’s Marriage and Family Ministries Office. Hannigan attended the most recent meeting, in 2012 in Milan. The Philadelphia meeting will be the eighth such event since St. John Paul II convened the inaugural session in 1994.
“It’s an opportunity to see the global breadth of the Catholic Church,” Hannigan said. “I think the size of it is an amazing thing. Being with people from all parts of the world who are passionate about their faith is a wonderful thing.”
The archdiocese’s Marriage and Family Ministries Office will sponsor two pilgrimages to the meeting. One, which includes the entire conference with all of its talks and workshops, runs Sept. 21-28. Another covers only the weekend Festival of Families, which includes witness talks, celebrations and the papal events, said Amanda Thompson, who is coordinating the pilgrimages for the family ministries office.
Hannigan said he found the Festival of Families portion of the week to be a powerful experience of seeing the universality of family and faith.
“You start to think about what the experience of folks who are not from the Archdiocese of Chicago is like,” he said.
This year’s Festival of Families and Mass with Pope Francis will take place on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, with the main altar for the Mass on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, made famous in the movie “Rocky.”
Among the first people to register for the archdiocese’s pilgrimage to the conference was Deacon Steve Rynkiewicz of Most Blessed Trinity Parish in Waukegan. He plans to attend with his wife, Lupe.
“We didn’t go to New York when Pope Benedict was there a few years ago, but when we heard that Pope Francis was going to be in Philadelphia, we wanted to go,” Rynkiewicz said.
The couple is active in marriage preparation and annulment ministry in the parish, and they serve as field advocates for the metropolitan tribunal. Rynkiewicz is hoping that the meetings and workshops will be helpful for the work they do.
But mostly, he said, he and his wife hope to benefit spiritually from the pilgrimage.
“We enjoy pilgrimages, because it’s a chance to get away from your everyday life and get closer to God,” he said.
Members of both pilgrimage groups will have hotel accommodations in Trenton, New Jersey, and daily bus transportation to Philadelphia.
Presenters at the meeting include cardinals, bishops, priests and married and single laypeople, along with some representatives of other faiths.
Father Robert Barron, rector/ president of Mundelein Seminary/ University of St. Mary of the Lake, will give the opening keynote talk.
Also from the archdiocese and presenting at the meeting are Andrew and Terri Lyke, founders of the Arusi Network, Inc., a notfor- profit organization that educates African Americans on the skills and benefits of Christian marriage. Andrew Lyke is also director of the Office for Black Catholics in the archdiocese, was coordinator of marriage ministry for the Marriage and Family Ministries Office and the principle writer of the marriage ministry guidelines used by the archdiocese.
Catholics in the archdiocese can prepare for the meeting with a number of events, starting with the June 14 Catholic Family Day at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee. Discounted tickets will be available through the website, and participants can attend a 9:30 a.m. Mass before the gates open celebrated by Father Ron Hicks, the archdiocese’s vicar general.
Parishes are expected to hold a variety of their own activities over the summer, and then the archdiocese will hold a Catholic Family Celebration on Sept. 5, the Saturday of Labor Day weekend.
Hannigan said he would encourage anyone interested to join the pilgrimage to Philadelphia.
“If their faith is important to them, if they want to get a much broader perspective on what it means to be Catholic, I would say, definitely go,” he said.
To learn more about the pilgrimages, visit www.familyministries.org.