In the years leading up to Deacon Angelo Volpi’s diaconate ordination in 2022, his wife Lorel Wilhelm-Volpi eagerly attended classes, too. 

“The focus, rightly so, is mainly on the men because they’re the ones that are going to be ordained,” she said. “But at a certain point, I was like, ‘Well, what about the women?’ I was just looking for some relatable role models — people who had lived a little more recently than some of the saints who are more well known. Relatable people who struggled with work and family and responsibilities.”

What started as personal research soon blossomed into a 240-page book that Wilhelm-Volpi published Dec. 12, titled “Important Catholic Women of the 20th Century: Stories of Courage and Fear, Unassuming Audacity and Everyday Drudgery, Connected by Faith.” The book is now available on Amazon in paperback for $16.99 and digitally through Amazon Kindle for $9.99.

The book features 16 Catholic women — some lesser-known — whose lives offer examples of how to bring faith into our everyday lives despite our own unique contexts and circumstances.  

Wilhelm-Volpi said the book also focuses on pieces of well-known saints.

“There are some people and saints in the book that are very well known, like Mother Theresa. I don’t know if a lot of people realize that she went through a decades-long ‘dark night of the soul.’ … Dorothy Day was a total hell-raiser when she was a young woman, and then she turned into a massive social activist. … There’s one woman I put in there — I promise she’s in the book — because she was always depressed. … There’s hope for all of us.”

The writing process took almost two years. Wilhelm-Volpi, an avid reader, realized that having a book with all of this information in one place would have helped her with her research — so she decided to compile it into a book to make it easier for the next Catholic woman looking for role models. 

“In the beginning, I spent a lot of time researching, trying to decide who would fit into the book … There were so many women who could have been included. This could have easily been a multi-part volume,” Wilhelm-Volpi said with a laugh. 

Wilhelm-Volpi said she had to develop a set of criteria for who would make the final cut, deciding that women included had to be deceased, and they were diverse stories from around the world. 

The 51-year-old admits that one of the reasons she started the book was one of the reasons it took her a while to finish — she had to balance a busy life of hobbies, work as a marketer and her role as a wife and mother of three children while looking for stories of inspiring Catholic women who had to navigate their faith lives while juggling the same responsibilities. 

“It was not easy to find the time to sit down and say, ‘Today, I’m just going to write,’” Wilhelm-Volpi said. “What I’m hoping to communicate is to not be afraid to bring faith into your everyday life, whatever it looks like, and whether you’re going to work, whether you’re raising children, whether you’re a nun, whatever it is, and bring holiness into that situation. And to bring your faith with the goal of being holy. That’s going to look different for everybody, but it’s very doable. There’s not just one way to become holy.”

Vietnamese Catholics from Sacred Heart of Mary Church and mission congregations from Rogers and Siloam Springs celebrated the Vietnamese New Year Jan. 26 with firecrackers, a Dragon Dance, Mass, a luncheon, crafts and games.

“Tết, our New Year, is a holiday similar to your Thanksgiving,” Father Tuyen Do, associate pastor for Vietnamese ministry at Sacred Heart of Mary Church, said. “It is a time for families to get together, thank God and ask for blessings for the New Year.”

The holiday marks the first day of the Lunar New Year, similar to the Chinese New Year. 

In Vietnam, where Father Do lived until he was 29, everyone would gather at the parental home on the first day of the new year. He celebrated with his 11 brothers and sisters, their spouses and children. 

“After breakfast, each of us would bless our parents, and then, one by one, we would seek forgiveness for anyone we had wronged and reconcile with one another,” he said. 

Cooking the giant feast, featuring holiday delicacies like pork and green beans wrapped in sticky rice, took nine or 10 hours.

While it is not always possible to gather with one’s whole family in the United States, Vietnamese families carry on the tradition through phone calls and occasional visits. 

Sister Maria Hoa Nguyen, OP, superior of the Dominican sisters in Arkansas, was able to visit her family in San Diego for the first time in eight years. 

“We are all safe together, far from the fires,” she said. “I am so happy to be with my family this new year.”

In 2015, Father Do immigrated to the United States via Canada to study for the priesthood at Sacred Heart Seminary in Milwaukee, Wis. While the Communists reopened seminaries, churches and schools in the 1980s, there was not enough seminary space to accommodate prospective priests.

He was grateful to have been sponsored by the Diocese of Little Rock to serve the Vietnamese community and share their rich faith and traditions.

“The actual Lunar New Year took place on Jan. 29,” Father Do said, “but we began our celebration on Sunday the 26th. We began with lighting firecrackers, not fireworks. The noise and smoke are believed to ward off bad luck and evil spirits. After that, a dancing dragon came out to entertain the people. In Asian culture the dragon is believed to be a holy animal, bringing luck and prosperity. People, especially non-Catholics, sometimes pay to have the dragon visit their homes. When they open a new business, they pay the dragon to visit and bring them luck.”

2025 is the Year of the Snake. Because animals lived on Earth before humans were created, they are believed to have special powers. The snake symbolizes wisdom. 

“Although Catholics tend to associate the snake with Genesis, in Matthew 10:16, Jesus says, ‘Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves,’” Father Do said.

In his homily, Father Do strived to give the people a biblical passage that they could put on their family altar as a theme for the new year. He chose the parable of the lilies of the field found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

“We must trust in God. When we look at the lilies of the field, we see that God takes care of us. We trust in his providence not only in this world but in eternity. If we offer ourselves and our families to God, he will bless us so we can be healthy, prosperous, and happy,” he said. “If we focus on working and on this world only we may have trouble.”

After Mass, the congregation ate traditional Vietnamese foods and enjoyed the entertainment. The celebrations continued with games and crafts for children and bingo and dancing for the adults. Children received red envelopes with “lucky money” so that they would grow and prosper physically and spiritually. 

Most families following the Vietnamese tradition continue their celebration for two more days at home. The second day is dedicated to honoring ancestors by prayer and visiting their graves. The third day is dedicated to seeking God’s blessings for work, business and financial endeavors.

In 1923, Michael John Connell left for the United States from a small town near Knock in west Ireland to escape poverty. He came to the port of Philadelphia July 4. Connell built a life, working in landscaping and gardening, marrying fellow Irish immigrant Agnes Walsh and had three sons. 

He did not talk about his life in Ireland, instead focusing on the future that, by God’s grace and hard work, he had created for his family. 

In 2024, his grandson, Father John Connell, 67, diocesan vicar general and moderator of the curia, was standing on the same ground his grandfather had left 101 years prior. 

“I wanted to look at the landscapes. When I went to Kiltimagh, I looked around and I knew the landscape didn’t change. A mountain will still be a mountain 100 years later. It was all flat marshlands. I was thinking about how my grandparents lived in this area, the struggles they would have had. There was literally nothing there.” 

Father Connell’s journey to his family’s home country is one example of how Catholics in Arkansas are sharing how genealogy — the study of family history — has helped them draw closer to God, connect with relatives and better understand the plight of today’s immigrants.

Passion for heritage 

For Libby Olivi Borgognoni, 89, a lifelong member of Our Lady of the Lake Church in Lake Village, researching her family history is more than a hobby — it’s a passion. The parish historian has spent her life immersed in her Italian heritage, compelled to share the story of immigrants who labored at the Sunnyside and Red Leaf Plantations beginning in 1895.

While Italian immigrants, including Borgognoni’s grandparents, were promised prosperity in America, they quickly were welcomed with poverty and hard labor in Arkansas. As a child, Borgognoni said, “I lived the Italian life” — meaning she picked and chopped cotton, had no running water or electricity until her teenage years and lived off the land. 

“We had nothing. We did everything we needed to do,” she said. “… We were in the fields all the time. When the sun came up and when the moon came up, we were still in the fields.”

However, the consistent thread that held the family together was their Catholic faith. 

“Family was everything. Prayer and believing in the Lord and going to church every time the doors were open whether or not you had to walk plugging through mud on the gravel road,” she said. 

She married her late husband Tony in 1956, igniting the spark to learn more about their Italian ancestry. Since 1969, she has steadfastly researched her family’s heritage and all the Italian families who founded the colony near the southern tip of Lake Chicot near Lake Village. She wrote the “Italians of Sunnyside” book in 1995, and a second edition was released last year with the help of her son, Dr. Anthony Borgognoni, including more than 300 pages celebrating more than 2,000 Italians and their families who immigrated to the area. Filmmaker Larry Foley created a two-hour PBS documentary, “Cries from the Cottonfield,” inspired by the book. 

Borgognoni visited Italy three times, the first in 1985. Her travels and research also spurred a second book called “Memories,” tracing her and her husband’s family’s lineage. 

“In Italy, I researched courthouse records of mine and (my) husband’s families, church records dating back 700 years, stayed at homes of our relatives and wrote down everything back to nine generations on my side and 16 generations were found on my husband’s grandmother’s side,” she said. “I stayed at the home of a priest, Mama’s relative, for several days who took us all over Italy to all our relatives’ homes, cemeteries and churches.” 

Borgognoni said in-depth genealogy is a commitment, and those starting out must be curious and willing to learn. 

“You just got to be embedded and wanting to know. You have to call, search and visit people,” she said. 

Most importantly, it’s strengthened her love for the Lord. 

“It’s important to know because it all goes back to the Lord in my mind,” she said. “He knew us before he created us; he knew what we’d be about, what we should do, what we shouldn’t do. There’s countless relatives of mine all over the world. I just feel like everybody needs to know where they came from, where they came to and how their lives impacted other people and what they did with their lives.” 

Here and now 

While many might research their past, visiting their place of origin and connecting to the present can be a fulfilling piece of genealogy. 

Father Connell, who is also pastor of St. Joseph Church and minister to Catholic Campus Ministry in Conway, grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, the oldest of five children. He visited his Irish grandparents every Saturday. 

“Even as a small child, I knew the importance of lineage. My grandparents never talked about Ireland. They were so poor, they didn’t share anything. They came to make a better life for themselves and their children,” he said. “What I learned from that was my grandparents were an example of why people migrate — they migrate to make their lives better. They were very productive members of society.”

From Sept. 11-20, 2024, he took his first trip to Ireland as the spiritual leader for the Arkansas Catholic pilgrimage. Father Connell visited Cuiltybo and the strip of land where his grandfather was likely born. He got to see Mayo Abbey, where his grandparents were baptized (though the church was closed), and the one-room schoolhouse where they were taught. A highlight was meeting seven distant cousins and spending the day touring the area with three of them. 

“When I met them and talked to them and listened to their stories, I knew we were related. It was a weird feeling. There’s a characteristic, but I couldn’t pinpoint what the characteristic was. … I just knew these people were related to me. There was no doubt in my mind.” 

It was a similar feeling Paul Antony, parishioner of St. Raphael Church and brother of Father John Antony, pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Fort Smith, had when he met his relatives in India — about 50 of them. Tracking his genealogy all started with writing down names.  

“It was a piece of paper and a pencil. When I went to India one time, I was sitting there and realized I didn’t know 90 percent of the people coming to visit us. So I just started writing names down,” the now 57-year-old said of a trip to India with his family when he was about 18. “My uncle would say, ‘He’s related to this person,’ and I started drawing it out in a tree.” 

Suddenly, his extended family began to take shape, and it continued to change his life. 

Antony, married with three children, emigrated to the U.S. with his two younger siblings and parents when he was 9 years old in 1976. The family soon moved to Little Rock from Texas and connected with about eight other Indian families who spoke Malayalam, the native language of the State of Kerala. 

Antony said his middle name was the primary connection to his heritage — Konuparampil. His brother, sister and father have the same middle name. 

“In India our names not only connect our families, but it connects the location of where our family is from,” he said. His parents are from the state of Kerala, in southern India. “Konuparampil references a ‘Corner of the Mountain.’”  

When he began working for Walmart in the mid-2000s to help create a software development site in India, he traveled for work about once or twice a year, staying with relatives, learning more about his family and connecting with them via social media and texting through WhatsApp. 

“I thought, wait, there’s a lot of people all over the world and in India that my family never talked about. I got to get to know these people. I’ve always wanted to have that, a broader family set. It always existed; I just didn’t know about it,” he said. 

Antony said there’s a tremendous amount of diversity in his family, and their devotion to their Catholic faith varies, much like families in the U.S. One highlight was being a part of his cousin Lovy’s wedding in 2023, while Father Antony was the celebrant. Father Antony was also there for Lovy’s First Communion in 2003. 

He admits he didn’t go “up” his family tree but across the branches to connect to those still here. 

“Everything is tied back to the family. It wasn’t just the five of us. No, it’s much bigger,” Paul Antony said. “I think that’s really important in the Catholic faith.” 

Secrecy and gossip. Intrigue and politicking. Unexpected twists and startling revelations.

It’s all perhaps the stuff of the recent U.S. elections — but also the plot machinery of the blockbuster mystery thriller film “Conclave.”

Topping $76 million in ticket sales worldwide before transitioning to streaming services, secular reviews are exuberant and Academy Award buzz abounds.

Why is the movie so popular — even if not with some Catholics?

“I think that the appeal comes from a desire to get an inside look into a process that is alien to a lot of people, particularly to secular people,” said Michael Coy, media production manager and host of the Catholic Film Club podcast at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan. “The pope is still a world figure — even if Catholicism is not as central a part in people’s lives as it used to be.”

Jesuit Father Jake Martin, a clinical assistant professor of film, TV and media studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, suggests the acclaim is owing to the film’s craft.

“I think first and foremost, it’s a really well-made film, and it’s good storytelling — it tells its story very well, just from a technical point of view,” he said. “That’s a difficult thing to do.”

“As a film scholar, I’m not taking it as necessarily a reflection of the actual Church, but as someone who’s aware of how stories need to be told, and what needs to be done in order to keep momentum and pacing and stuff like that going,” he added.

Released Oct. 25 in U.S. theaters, the film’s cast includes Ralph Fiennes, Isabella Rossellini and Stanley Tucci. It is now streaming on Peacock.

Sister Hosea Rupprecht, a Daughter of St. Paul and associate director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies in Los Angeles, agreed in her otherwise critical online review that, “from a strictly filmmaking standpoint, (“Conclave”) excels with compelling storytelling and flawed but relatable characters.”

OSV News’ media reviewer John Mulderig warned that audiences will “want to approach this earnest, visually engaging but manipulative — and sometimes sensationalist — production with caution. The ideological smoke it sends up remains persistently gray.”

The film’s advertising slogan promises, “What happens behind these walls will change everything.” Spoiler ahead — the new pope turns out to be a man who also has some female reproductive organs. Meaning that by the end of the film, the Catholic Church has just — albeit somewhat accidentally, since the secret is known only by a trio of characters — elected a pope who may describe himself as intersex.

In this way, the plot toys with the question of whether a man with female attributes could be elected pope.

The answer is clearly “no” in the case of an intersex person who is biologically female with some male attributes — and those who knowingly ordained an intersex woman would incur some serious penalties. 

At the conclusion of the film, whether or not that will happen remains an open question.

Father Martin said “Conclave” does not “demonize the Church,” and “actually at times paints it in a very positive light.”

Coy said the film attempts to wrestle with “a hot-button issue, and it asks a hot-button question, which is: Could an intersex person be the pope?”

Still, for all the reactions — annoyed, praising or sometimes both — of critics, commentators and audiences, there’s one thing to remember.

“At the end of the day,” said Father Martin, “it is a work of fiction.”

Father Emmanuel “Manny” Torres, associate pastor at Christ the King Church in Little Rock and St. Francis of Assisi Church in Little Italy, has been fascinated by art for as long as he can remember.

“It started with art,” he said. “I started painting and drawing. I remember as a kid, I laid down in my bed and just started drawing the images on the blanket. … I’ve been drawing since I was a kid. My notes in school were always full of drawings.”

Father Torres, 38, always wanted to learn to paint but didn’t think he would be able to do it, so he never took a class for it — until he came to the United States.

“I got here in eighth grade (in 1999), and I took classes in Mexico, but the classes over there were not the same. … So I always took classes, but I never took a painting class until I got to my senior year.”

It was then that Father Torres realized what a gift from God painting was.

“I’m not a great artist, but God gave me this talent where I just start painting,” he said.

Senior year of high school brought challenges to Father Torres, but art gave him hope.

“I would hide in my art,” he said. “I would say, ‘OK, God gave me this, and I’m special to him because he gave me this talent.’”

When Father Torres entered the seminary, then vocations director Msgr. Scott Friend encouraged him to continue painting. 

“He actually asked me to do a painting for the silent auction for Taste of Faith (in 2017),” he said. 

Father Torres overcame his nerves and created what ended up being one of his favorite pieces with supplies that Msgr. Friend got for him.

When Father Torres arrived at St. Meinrad Seminary in Indiana in 2016, he heard about an elective course on iconography taught by a Benedictine nun. Information about the different techniques and materials piqued his interest.

But he soon learned that iconography was different from many of the other art forms he had experimented with over the years.

“I signed up for that course, and I was so excited about it. I was looking for images of what I wanted to paint, and I was thinking about the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” Father Torres said. “… I went to the first class, and I told my professor, ‘I want to draw this.’ And she said no. I was a little upset in that moment, because I was like, I know how to paint. … And she said, ‘You are not ready to paint Jesus.’ … Later, when I went to my friend, I realized, OK, I’m not ready. I need to let her teach me — I need to do whatever she says. … (Iconography) has a process … and it’s a long process.”

Father Torres said you have to prepare the wood, then the base layer of gesso, which is a mixture of chalk, glue made from rabbit skin and water. The gesso is applied in several layers, each layer being allowed to dry and lightly sanded before the next is added. The artist then sketches the image on the gessoed surface using a pencil or light charcoal. 

Traditional icons are painted with egg tempera, a method where pigments are mixed with egg yolk and water. The egg yolk acts as a binder, holding the pigments in place. The artist will then begin layering colors, which are typically natural earth pigments mixed with egg yolk. Sometimes, gold leaf is applied to details such as halos, backgrounds or words in the icon. 

For Father Torres, the most important step in the process is praying. 

“All of the process of iconography is praying,” he said. “My professor said that I wasn’t spiritually ready to paint Jesus, because in iconography, we believe that in an icon of a saint, the presence of the saint is there. So, while she hurt my ego, I realized she was right. I’m not ready for that.”

Father Torres’ professor gave him several potential references to choose from, and he selected the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus.

“When I went to classes, usually people said, ‘Oh, that’s good, you did it well.’ And they liked what I do,” he said. “… But my professor said, ‘Oh, this is decent.’ … She was not being mean or rude, because in iconography, we are striving for perfection.”

Father Torres said he looks for the mistakes in his work now — they are more visible to him after following his former professor’s advice. 

“Even though I don’t have contact with her… when I see her icons, they are more beautiful. I told her one time that I love her icons; they’re way different from mine. She said that hers were not perfect. When I saw her teacher’s work, I was able to see what she meant. It takes a lot of time. … One teacher said he still has a long way to go, and he had been making icons for 20, 30 years.”

Since then, Father Torres, who was ordained in 2021, has donated his icons to auctions and raffles for the churches and schools that he has been assigned. He said iconography is a way for him to pray.

“When I do art, I forget about everything,” Father Torres said. “… It’s so calm, so relaxed. I use it as a way of prayer, where I ignore what surrounds me when I focus on something like painting. … I put prayer in the moment of painting.”

Father Torres’ art has been especially helpful to him as he navigates his health diagnosis, which was the reason for his recent move to Christ the King.

“I knew I was sick — I’ve had kidney problems since I was young … but the doctor had said everything was fine,” he said. “When I became a seminarian, they did a physical exam, and they noticed that my kidneys have a lot of protein. So they checked my kidneys, and they were in stage three kidney failure in 2010. Two years ago, they told me that my kidneys had been declining and that in three or five years, I would need a transplant.”

Father Torres will likely undergo dialysis until he can find a kidney transplant. 

“Sometimes I feel anxious because I feel too tired, and I cannot do my ministry as I think I should. Two symptoms I have are exhaustion and a lack of concentration. Sometimes, when I talk to people, I feel I cannot connect with them, which is very frustrating.”

Father Torres’ diagnosis was made public in September, and parishioners from his former parishes eagerly supported him, checking on him and praying for him. 

When he has the time and energy, Father Torres paints icons, finding comfort in the hobby.

“I have my art room in a big closet. Father (Juan) Guido (pastor) had helped me to put in an art studio. I love it. I was in there the other day, and it just relaxes me,” he said. “And it’s more than relaxing; it puts me at peace, which I love. I love that I’m working. I’ve been working on two icons for a long time for Father Ben Riley, and now I can finish them.”

For those attempting to bring any part of the Gospel story to the screen, whether big or small, the four canonical accounts, as books of faith, prove to be of limited help. They’re not motion-picture treatments, and their descriptions of historical details and dialogue tend to be brief.

That’s why, ever since the first filmed versions of Scripture were produced more than a century ago, their makers have introduced non-Biblical characters, dialogue and subplots, using their own research and judgment about what will appeal to audiences. The aim is to make such narratives three-dimensional and relatable.

Now, that approach has been applied to Mariology — the theological study of the Blessed Mother — in “Mary,” an earnest drama that will be available for streaming on Netflix Dec. 6. Specifically, director D.J. Caruso and screenwriter Timothy Michael Hayes rely heavily on the “Protoevangelium of James,” a text generally dated to the middle of the second century.

While not recognized by the Church as inspired, the Protoevangelium is both Mary-centric and rich in particulars. It deals with the Virgin’s life even before her conception — which it describes as miraculous — introducing its readers to her elderly parents, Sts. Joachim (Ori Pfeffer) and Anne (Hilla Vidor). 

They consecrate their daughter to God and, as a child (Mila Harris), she leaves home to live in the Temple in Jerusalem. As Mary grows up (Noa Cohen), her dedication to God steadily increases and matures. 

However, Caruso and Hayes have taken liberties with this source material as well.

The Protoevangelium has a nameless angel telling Anne that her prayers to become a mother have been answered. Now he’s identified as the Archangel Gabriel (Dudley O’Shaughnessy). Gabriel becomes a continuous presence in Mary’s life, both before and after the Annunciation, and at one point, he directly confronts Satan (Eamon Farren) to protect her.

In another visual motif, as a youth, Mary finds herself attracted to, and surrounded by, butterflies. They represent the new life conferred in baptism.

The leading topic of criticism on social media was the charge that Joseph and Mary were actually Palestinians. That’s an absurd canard, the staying power of which can be attributed to centuries of anti-Semitism. It’s been given new life, however, by anguish over Israel’s war in Gaza.

“You can’t control what other people think or believe,” Caruso told OSV News with some resignation.

His intent was authenticity. He cast Cohen, a 22-year-old former model, “because we thought it was important that Noa was from the region (in central Israel) where Mary was born.”

The online noise became so ugly, Cohen’s management would not make her available for what was expected to be a joint interview with Caruso.

Instead, OSV News had to settle for an email: “I decided to take on the role of Mary because it offered a unique opportunity to explore a side of her that hadn’t been fully portrayed before,” Cohen wrote.

Two-time Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins plays King Herod, who, in the Gospels, seeks to kill the new Messiah. But Caruso thinks Herod was a victim of his own bitterness. “Yes, he’s looking for the Messiah. Maybe not necessarily to destroy him, but because he has a hole in his life.”

Making Mary relatable, Caruso says, was his principal goal. “Wouldn’t it be great,” he thought, “for a younger person to see this movie and think, ‘These are people I understand?’ They can be role models for a younger generation. (Young women might think) ‘Mary could be my friend. Someone I could reach out to; someone I could talk to.'”

When the Morris School for Boys in Searcy closed in 1993, it was the end of an era for Catholics in White County. 

The Franciscan brothers who ran the school continued living at St. Anthony Friary, praying and taking care of the grounds. When the 200-acre campus was sold in 2000, many people considered that chapter of Catholicism in Searcy to be over.

But one piece of the puzzle remained, and the parameters around it were fuzzy — St. Paul Cemetery.

The cemetery is the eternal resting place of 11 Franciscan brothers and notable Catholic community members. But without the devotion of the Franciscan brothers who once tended to the cemetery, it became uncertain who would care for it and when. Initially, local residents Ken and Mary Cook cared for the cemetery, but as they grew older and passed away, the cemetery began to fall into disrepair. 

Father Nelson Rubio, pastor of St. James Church in Searcy and St. Richard Church in Bald Knob, arrived in Searcy in the summer of 2022. He noticed the cemetery was neglected and began encouraging the parishes — both of which use St. Paul Cemetery — to do what they could to tidy it in their spare time. 

“Even though it’s a little cemetery, we want to take care of it and leave it in a good way,” Father Rubio said. “And then the people outside can see it’s a beautiful cemetery, and it’s part of the Catholic Church.”

Several parishioners rose to the challenge. Steve Fuller, a Knight of Columbus in Searcy, became aware of the state of the cemetery when preparing for a funeral. 

“For a long time, nobody was really taking care of it,” he said. “The grass was really tall. Three years ago, there was going to be a funeral out there, so the Knights of Columbus went out and cut the grass and cleaned it up.”

For Fuller and many parishioners at St. James, the cemetery holds significant meaning. 

“There’s a bunch of brothers that used to be at Morris School and a priest and, I think, a nun buried there,” Fuller said. “And you couldn’t even see half their tombstones. They were just totally covered up with grass. So we got all that cleaned up, and after that, I took over going out there every week and cutting the grass and making sure it was kept cut. … We found that the oldest two tombstones there were marked from 1927.”

But soon, parishioners at St. James and the Knights of Columbus would do more than cut grass.

“And then in the last year, my wife Bonnie decided she wanted to repaint all the statues and get them all cleaned up and redone, so that’s just what we did,” Fuller said.

Fuller and several others began removing plaques and signs from the cemetery, along with the large crucifix, to assess their state and begin repairs. 

“(The crucifix and Christ) were in bad shape, so we took it down and cleaned it,” Fuller said. “It was warped where the weather had heated it up because it’s concrete and plaster. We repaired it in the spots that needed to be repaired and then repainted the cross and put it all back together.”

Fuller does what he can with whatever free time he has, with the majority of the beautification work taking place during the summers. 

“We’ve spent the biggest part of every Saturday or Sunday afternoon out there for most of the summer, when the weather was permitting, cleaning,” he said. “Some of the stuff we actually took home and redid, like under where the crucifix is at in that altar. There’s a little statue of Mary, and we took that home, and my wife repainted it. And then when we took Jesus off the cross, I took him home and … brought him back along with the signs and different things.”

Fuller has been joined in the beautification efforts not just by Bonnie but also by St. James parishioners Jim Palmer and Dennis Horan, who is the grand knight at the St. James council of the Knights of Columbus. 

Fuller said Horan and several parishioners help pick up trash and tree limbs in the cemetery and keep an eye on the property.

“Steve takes care of mowing and keeping up with the landscaping of the place and stuff like that,” Horan said. “Bonnie has a creative touch — she’s the arts and crafts type.”

Horan really got involved when the time came to disassemble the crucifix in the cemetery. 

“This whole thing sits up maybe 12 feet, and it was looking old and ragged,” he said. “And Jesus was pretty heavy and bolted in, so they needed some help. … We got Jesus down, and Steve and Bonnie got him over to their house, and they worked on him and cleaned him up. In the meantime, Steve came back and painted the cross itself. It took a few weeks.”

Horan said Bonnie’s artistry skills came into play when repairing a large St. Francis statue in the cemetery. 

“There was one large statue of St. Francis, and it is probably 7, 8-feet tall and pretty big around,” he said. “The whole thing weighs probably 2,000 to 3,000 pounds. At one time, a tree that grew behind it had blown down and knocked it over. Luckily, it didn’t damage it a lot. It took somebody with a big tractor to come and lift it so they could get it back in place.

“St. Francis has a big set of rosary beads around his waist and going down, and a couple of the beads had gotten damaged when it fell over. So Bonnie meticulously took concrete repair and molded them all back, and they painted it white. … They’ve dedicated themselves to taking care of the cemetery and, in the process, to work on the statues and clean them up and get them painted.”

Father Rubio said parishioners are looking ahead to plan the next repair steps. 

“We are done with the statues and cleaning everything. I think the next step is to talk with the diocese’s Building Committee … We need to build up a new fence around the cemetery.”

But spending time in the cemetery helped Fuller in his faith life more than he could have initially imagined when he set out to clean. Caring for the cemetery gave him a peaceful and meditative space while also helping him honor the history of his faith and community. 

“It’s part of our history,” he said. “What really got me started on wanting to do it was the fact that all of the brothers were there … And I had known some of the brothers over the years. They gave their life to God and Jesus, so somebody needs to take care of this. And that was my outlook on it — that I wasn’t going to let the grass grow over it. …

“I just enjoy going out there and cutting the grass. And it’s just something I feel like I need to do for the church. … I’m pretty busy with my business, and I don’t get a lot of time to do a whole lot of stuff at the church. But that’s the one thing I can do — go on the weekend and do that.”

Horan agreed. 

“It’s out on an old farm road, so it’s pretty quiet. … There’s a hereafter, and we’re told we have a better life coming. … I just feel like it’s important to maintain that cemetery because of the people that are there, the history of them, even if you didn’t know them. Everybody has a story. So even though you don’t always get to hear it, there were a lot of things that person did or could have done or was involved in. And if they dedicated themselves enough to make it to that point, then it just behooves us to try to keep it nice looking for them until it’s no longer needed.”

With U.S. household debt approaching $18 trillion as the Christmas shopping season kicks off, a Catholic financial expert is offering practical advice to enjoy the holidays without breaking the bank.

“We all know about buyer’s remorse, but I think there’s such a thing as ‘Christmas shopping remorse’ that happens in January when the Visa, the Amex or the Master Card bill shows up, and you’re like, ‘Holy cow, I spent … fill in the blank,” said Anthony Minopoli, executive vice president and chief investment officer for the Connecticut-based Knights of Columbus.

Gallup reported that this year Americans plan to spend on average over $1,000 for Christmas gifts this year — and some homeowners have even taken to paying as much as $5,000 for professionals to install their exterior Christmas lights.

But Minopoli, who is also president and CEO of the Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors, told OSV News that when it comes to holiday (and other) spending, he recommends the sage advice of his Italian immigrant father.

“One of the things that he said to us about consumption was, ‘Nobody cares,'” Minopoli recalled. “And what it meant in my dad’s shorthand was that, in terms of spending for conspicuous consumption, the reality is that nobody cares about the things you do.”

Since there’s ultimately no pressure to impress others with your holiday purchases, said Minopoli, “focus on spending within your needs.”

“Have a good sense of a budget,” Minopoli said, adding that “budgeting helps” whether you’re saving for anything from a child’s education to a vacation.

When it comes to gift-giving, temper emotion with wisdom, especially when purchasing for someone particularly dear, he advised.

“You may think, ‘Gosh, I really want to splurge.’ And then you realize afterward, ‘What hole did I dig myself into?'” Minopoli said. “And that can have a real impact on saving for things like education and retirement.”

In particular, “electronics get very expensive,” and with more kids looking for them under the Christmas tree, parents shouldn’t be afraid to have a few “frank discussions” on family spending, Minopoli said.

Start saving up for Christmas expenses over the course of the year by opening a separate bank account, or even setting aside “an envelope in the drawer that you pop $20 a week into,” said Minopoli. “By the time you get to Christmas, if you put $20 a week into for 50 weeks, there’s $1,000 in cash.”

Beware the ease of “just swiping that credit card,” since “you’re not actually seeing the cash come out of your wallet,” he cautioned.

But if you do find yourself with a bigger credit card balance than you anticipated due to holiday spending, don’t despair, Minopoli said.

“If you’re in that position, small things can mean a lot,” he said. “If you’ve got $5,000 or $15,000 in debt on your credit card, you’re like, ‘That’s an insurmountable amount; I can’t accumulate that much money.’ But you can start paying it down.”

While you’re tackling those balances, “don’t look at it on a week-to-week basis,” he said. “Look at it six months from now. When you’ve paid down some of it, you begin to get a sense of accomplishment, and you can keep chipping away at it. The more you chip away at it, then you really start seeing that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel.”

At the same time, navigating financial challenges doesn’t mean you have to sit out the Christmas season, he stressed.

“Paying down debt isn’t a lot of fun,” Minopoli said. “But as you pay down debt, you can allow yourself a little splurge during Christmas and buy that nice gift for your kid. You can stay on track. The thing that you don’t want to do is to let that spiral and to get to the point of despair where you just give up, cash in your whole future and say, ‘I’m never going to get out of this.'”

Preparation for the annual Cookie Walk at St. Peter the Fisherman Church in Mountain Home rivals the efficiency of Santa’s workshop. 

A few days to a week before the first Saturday of December, about 20 to 30 volunteers mix, roll and shape cookie dough. Giant pans lined with cookies are placed in the convection ovens at the parish’s Family Life Center and once baked, they are frosted and sprinkled. These parish baking days are in addition to the individuals making and freezing sweet desserts months before the big day.

The result is thousands of baked goods, ready for a line of customers to buy the homemade treats. The fundraiser raises about $4,400 annually for the parish’s St. Vincent de Paul Society. 

But nostalgia is the secret ingredient to the fundraiser’s success over the past 20 years.

“Off the top of my head, it’s a social thing. People don’t bake anymore. They truly don’t. These are homemade — your grandmother’s recipes, your mom’s recipes,” said Jennie Rowland, St. Peter’s parishioner and Cookie Walk chair and co-founder. “People come for the cookies. Everybody doesn’t have grandkids. They used to bake with their kids, making all the cut-out sprinkle cookies, and they’re not going to do it for just themselves. The volunteers love to come bake it at church, and others love to come and buy them.”

The inaugural Cookie Walk began in 2004 to raise money for the parish’s Family Life Center, built in 2005. Parishioner Theresa Boekholder was one of the Cookie Walk founders and continues to volunteer, donating all the ingredients for the cookies made at the parish. Individual bakers donate their ingredients.

“We were in the middle of building our Family Life Center, and I had participated in a cookie walk in Illinois, where we moved from,” Burkholder said. “And I thought, ‘Oh, we could do this here.’ So I put a notice in the bulletin ‘cookie walk meeting,’ and that’s what started it all.” 

Once the center was funded, the Cookie Walk started raising money for the parish’s St. Vincent de Paul Society, founded in 2005. 

Phil Zimmermann, the society’s president and a founding member, said they help people in the surrounding counties with basic needs, including a food pantry and money for rent, utilities, prescriptions and gas for out-of-town medical appointments. 

“We will go all out to help the people that come to us,” Zimmermann said, adding that she and many society volunteers also help with the Cookie Walk. “It’s probably our most important fundraiser of the year. We exist on donations from St. Peter’s parishioners.” 

The Cookie Walk, falling this year on Saturday, Dec. 7, is held in the Family Life Center from 8 a.m. to noon, with most items bought up by 10:30 a.m., Rowland said. Hundreds of people attend from St. Peter’s, the community and other nearby Catholic parishes, like St. Andrew Church in Yellville. In addition to what’s for sale, broken cookies are put out for people to snack on and visit with one another.

“It’s an all-parish event … this is everybody. They’re very generous,” Rowland said.

It has continued every December, despite the occasional blizzard or even the global COVID-19 pandemic, where safety measures like masking and checking temperatures were followed. After the pandemic, volunteers began wrapping most platters of the sweet assortments to weigh, price and place on the 38 round tables in the center. 

The heart of the Cookie Walk will always be the volunteers, who dedicate several hours baking sweet breads, kolache pastries, candies, brownies and cookies of every variety. Some even enlist relatives who visit from out of state or non-Catholic friends to chip in.

“We’ll welcome anybody to come with us and that’s happened a lot over the years. There’s a lot of chit-chat going on and everyone brings their own lunch and we eat together,” Boekholder said. “You forget all your troubles when you go there.” 

But that doesn’t mean it’s all fun and frosting. 

“It’s grueling. You’re on your feet when you’re baking; you’re standing. We have the banquet tables on risers, waist high when we’re standing up to roll the dough,” Rowland said of baking days at the parish, which last from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. leading up to the Cookie Walk.

About 1,000 kolaches are made yearly and go quick, along with almost that many rum balls. 

“I make biscotti, all kinds of it. Last year, I think I made 20 different kinds,” Boekholder said. “There’s always chocolate. There’s a Christmas one that has red and green cherries in it and dried pineapple and nuts. Then there’s anise, that’s a good one … I collected about 100 recipes over the years.”

As volunteers reflect on 20 years of success, Rowland said the event will continue because it’s a great opportunity for parishioners to get to know each other and raise money for a good cause.

“It’s the fellowship. Oh, we have so much fun. We get to know each other. The ministry is just to get our parish to know each other,” Rowland said. “Our church is so big. You might be coming for five years and not know anybody. But for this event, we say, ‘Come and bake with us.’ People just show up, and if they like it, they come back.”

“The Road to Family Missionary Discipleship” Ryan and Mary Rose Verret with Peter Jesserer Smith, Witness to Love (2023) 203 pages, $19.95

“Current efforts in standard (Catholic) marriage preparation are not working,” write Ryan and Mary-Rose Verret, in “The Road to Missionary Discipleship: Forming Marriages and Families to Share the Joy of the Gospel.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone disagreeing.

In the last decade, my husband and I have attended nearly a dozen wedding celebrations of Catholic couples. Only three of them took place in church — two nuptial Masses and one Liturgy of the Word.

The rest occurred at catering venues — outdoors, weather permitting. A curious journalist, I’ve always wondered to the couples (or their parents), why the sacrament was so easily sacrificed.

Many couples had already been living together for years before marrying, and Catholicism had not been meaningful to them since fleeing the pews after their confirmations. For them, Pre-Cana (or other programs seemingly unchanged since the 1970s) were deemed useless, unnecessary time-sucks intruding into their busy lives.

In “The Road to Missionary Discipleship,” the authors argue for a full-on marriage catechumenate — deep discipleship formation that takes not weeks, but years: “If the longstanding Pre-Cana classroom approach was a successful model, with its handful of meetings with the priest, we would see more than a marginal impact on Catholic divorce rates, and we would see more couples in church after the wedding.”

The idea of a marriage catechumenate is not new — Pope St. John Paul II envisioned such a program in his 1981 exhortation “Familiaris Consortio,” writing, “only by the acceptance of the Gospel are the hopes that man legitimately places in marriage and in the family capable of being fulfilled.”

Pope Francis breathed new life into the subject with “Amoris Laetitia” in 2016, which was followed by the Vatican releasing “Catechumenal Itineraries for Marriage Life” — a comprehensive presentation on “the need for a new catechumenate that includes all the stages of the sacramental journey: the times of preparation for marriage, its celebration and the years that follow.”

In “The Road to Missionary Discipleship,” Ryan and Mary-Rose Verret, along with Catholic journalist Peter Jesserer Smith, national editor for OSV News, do an excellent job of selling all the ways a marriage catechumenate could answer the continuum of ideas and expressed wishes of our three most recent popes, and they make it sound very attractive, indeed.

Who wouldn’t want to see our young engaged couples blessed with a Rite of Betrothal, their faith fed and fostered by their parish community; their marriage mentored and supported, literally for years, by the ongoing presence and prayerful encouragement of others?

But wow, that sounds like a huge commitment of time and availability by all concerned, doesn’t it?

The authors don’t deny it; they realistically and thoughtfully address the truth that in order to create a successful marriage catechumenate, the Church must possess a well-catechized flock of believers who — on fire with the love of Christ — will agree to be more than six-week volunteers but a Christian community of companions and role models, ready to go some distance on the walk of life, with a family in its tenderest years.

A marriage catechumenate is an ambitious vision, one that, given the roots it must plant and grow within the church, will take not years but decades to fully implement.

It sounds like such a necessary undertaking by the people of God, and it will require rebuilding all of our religious education programs, from the ground up.

Elizabeth Scalia is editor-at-large for OSV. Follow her on X (formerly known as Twitter) @theanchoress.