Extension magazine - Summer 2023
Our president, Father Jack Wall, met Pope Francis in a private audience in Rome as part of a Catholic Extension delegation that included our chancellor, Cardinal Blase Cupich; our vice chancellor, Bishop Gerald Kicanas; and more than 60 women faith leaders. The Holy Father thanked Catholic Extension for "caring for the needs of the poor and most vulnerable."
Our president, Father Jack Wall, met Pope Francis in a private audience in Rome as part of a Catholic Extension delegation that included our chancellor, Cardinal Blase Cupich; our vice chancellor, Bishop Gerald Kicanas; and more than 60 women faith leaders. The Holy Father thanked Catholic Extension for "caring for the needs of the poor and most vulnerable."
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<strong>Extension</strong> | <strong>Summer</strong> <strong>2023</strong> 25<br />
Poor faith communities need your help<br />
BELOW<br />
Michelangelo’s<br />
“Pietà” in St. Peter’s<br />
Basilica in<br />
Vatican City<br />
LEFT Jean Fedigan,<br />
from Tucson, Arizona,<br />
reaches out to the<br />
pope in the name<br />
of the thousands<br />
of homeless and<br />
trafficked women she<br />
has served.<br />
‘<br />
Continue<br />
THE POPE TO WOMEN LEADERS:<br />
to express<br />
God’s style’<br />
MORE THAN 60 religious<br />
sisters and lay women leaders<br />
traveled to Rome on pilgrimage<br />
with Catholic <strong>Extension</strong><br />
and gathered for a<br />
private audience with Pope<br />
Francis. All of these women<br />
have walked the painful<br />
pathway of the pietà to follow the risen<br />
Christ.<br />
Michelangelo’s “Pietà” is a mystery. Placed<br />
at the right-hand side of the entrance to St.<br />
Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, it almost overwhelms<br />
the rest of the church. It certainly<br />
overwhelms anyone attempting to take it in.<br />
Mary is so young. She had no idea what her<br />
promise, “May it be done to me according to<br />
your word” (Lk 1:38), would come to mean.<br />
Her son, Jesus, the blessed fruit of her womb,<br />
lies battered, beaten and broken in her lap.<br />
Her motherhood has taken on a new and terof<br />
love and compassion<br />
PHOTO VATICAN MEDIA<br />
Catholic <strong>Extension</strong>’s support for ongoing ministries<br />
in this Native American parish represents a true miracle for<br />
a community in a desperately poor area.<br />
Donate today<br />
Text “<strong>Extension</strong>” to 50155 to make a gift<br />
catholicextension.org/give<br />
rible dimension. She is<br />
the Mater Dolorosa, the<br />
Mother of Sorrow.<br />
Her right hand supports<br />
her lifeless son,<br />
trying to delay the final<br />
pull of gravity. Her<br />
left hand, open and extended,<br />
points downward.<br />
Is she trying to say, “Look at what you<br />
have done to my son!” Is it a plea for<br />
mercy? A cry for help? Is she offering up<br />
that which has been so brutally taken? Being<br />
a great work of art, the “Pietà” means<br />
all of those things and more.<br />
Sister Clarice Suchy, STJ, from Sacred<br />
Heart Parish in Uvalde, Texas, joined us in<br />
Rome. She has been caring for the victims<br />
of the mass shooting on May 24, 2022, at<br />
Robb Elementary School, which left 19<br />
children and 2 adults dead.
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