Devotees of St. Jude follow the statue of the saint through the streets of South Chicago on his feast day, Oct. 28, 2024. One of the six solemn novenas held by the National Shrine of St. Jude culiminates on the feast day each year. (Photo by Angel Saldivar, courtesy of St. Jude League)
For the devotees who pray at the National Shrine of St. Jude in South Chicago, the apostle, often known as the patron saint of desperate or impossible causes, is a symbol of hope. They send petitions in the mail and online, or they come in person or pray during livestream services, for all kinds of things: for the health of a new baby, for a loved one’s cancer diagnosis, to pass the bar exam, for a new job, for a direction in life. “They are looking for hope,” said Claretian Father Byron Macias, codirector of the shrine. “A pilgrimage is always motivated by this innate search for hope. In this jubilee year, Pope Francis has said we are pilgrims of hope. People are looking for hope, they are looking for healing, they are looking for something they can hold on to as they go through the good things and bad things of life.” The shrine is housed at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, 3200 E. 91st St., founded as the first parish for Mexican Catholics in the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1923. The following year, Cardinal George Mundelein asked the Claretians to take over administration of the parish, according to Kevin Goodwin, senior director at the St. Jude League. The first Claretian pastor, Father James Tort, had a great devotion to St. Jude, who was then a little-known saint, and he established the shrine, Goodwin said. Tort led the shrine’s first novena to St. Jude in February 1929, just months ahead of the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression. The devotion to St. Jude, one of the apostles and known as a friend to Jesus, grew, and, with the help of parishioners, Tort started the St. Jude League in the basement of the church to spread the word across the archdiocese and eventually around the country and the world. The St. Jude League now sends out 110 direct mailings in English and Spanish to tens of thousands of people each year, Goodwin said, and they receive millions of responses. Also of interest... Looking to St. Jude since 1960 Ron Owczarzak encountered the National Shrine if St. Jude the way many pilgrims do: by finding a prayer card, in his case, while waiting to make his confession in his family’s home church in Hammond, Indiana. It was 1960, the summer after Owczarzak graduated from Bishop Noll Institute. He hadn’t excelled academically there, and told his parents he intended to get a job instead of going to a college. His mother got him a job at the factory where she worked, Junior Toy Company, and he started to rethink his options. “She must have told them to give me the most menial, the most miserable jobs,” he said. His mother also told him to go to confession, and he found the St. Jude prayer card. It had the address of the National Shrine, not far away in South Chicago, so he decided to drove over and check it out. When he got there, there was only one small, older woman inside, Owczarzak said. She immediately pegged him as a newcomer and took his arm to guide him to the shrine altar and the relic of St. Jude. “She said, ‘You pray to St. Jude,’” Owczarzak recounted. “’He’ll take good care of you.’” So Owczarzak kneeled in front of the relic and prayed. “This was my prayer to St. Jude: ‘I’ll tell you what, pal. I’ll make you a deal. You take care of me, and I’ll never forget you,’” he said. Sixty-five years later, Owzarczak is still praying to St. Jude. Later that summer, a friend persuaded him to try college. A priest at Bishop Noll took a look at his transcripts and refused to release them – “He said they wouldn’t help me,” Owczarzak said – but recommended that he enroll in a local campus of either Indiana University or Purdue University, which at the time would take any Indiana high school graduate. “He also told me the first semester was the flunk-out semester, so I had to work hard then,” Owczazak said. He chose Purdue’s Hammond campus, which had an emphasis on math and engineering, and two years later he was ready to graduate with an associate’s degree and a job offer from Argonne National Lab. But driving back from his interview at Argonne National Lab, he took a wrong turn, and ended up at the gates of Wisconsin Steel, 15 minutes from his home. He had a job there as an hourly supervisor by the time he left, embarking on a career working in steel mills in northwest Indiana, Chicago and Chicago Heights, retiring as a vice president of Chicago Heights Steel and starting is own small scrap brokerage. “It was like St. Jude and my guardian angel were working together,” Owczarczyk said. “Every wrong turn took me where I needed to be.” Working only a mile and a half from the national shrine, Owczarczyk started to attend the perpetual novena services on Wednesdays and then the solemn novena services. He married and had three kids, and he continued to pray, asking for help for medical problems for some of his eight grandchildren, among other things. Donations are used to support shrine, Our Lady of Guadalupe parish and school and other Claretian ministries. “It’s really, first and foremost, to have people send their petitions to the shrine,” Goodwin said. And they do, with hundreds of thousands of prayer requests coming each month. Those requests are read and opened at the Claretians’ Loop offices before being placed under the shrine altar and prayed for during services. The Claretians in Chicago are part of the USA-Canada Province of the global Claretian congregation of priests and brothers whose charism is to tend to the religious and pastoral needs of vulnerable communities. Rooted in prayer, Claretians try to uplift the dignity of all people, especially those who feel overlooked or forgotten, according to Karen Skalitzky, senior communications director. The Claretians also have staff members to answer the phone for callers, many of whom just want someone to listen, Goodwin said. Most of the in-person services don’t draw as many people, according to Goodwin and the shrine’s co-directors. There are five solemn novenas a year, with daily novena services in English and Spanish, and perpetual novena services every Wednesday evening, at 5:30 p.m. in English and 7:30 p.m. in Spanish. Special prayers are said for those with cancer on the first Wednesday of the month. The biggest liturgical event at the shrine each year is the culmination of the October novena on the feast of St. Jude, Oct. 28, when thousands of people come to follow the shrine’s largest relic — a fragment of St. Jude’s tibia — in a procession through the neighborhood in addition to the regular service, Goodwin said. Claretian Father Augustin Carrillo, shrine codirector with Macias, said he grew up around the devotion to St. Jude because he was raised in Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish. That devotion grew when he returned to the neighborhood in early 2023 to care for his mother, who had been diagnosed with cancer. “St. Jude had taught me how to hope,” Carrillo said. “Sometimes hope can be seen as something passive. Hope is the love that resides in the heart. We hope because in our heart lies the trust that has been given to us through Jesus Christ. Even in the midst of pain, there is hope, as in death there is life.” Macias said he became aware of the shrine and the devotion to St. Jude after his family moved to Chicago from Ecuador when he was a child. “My mother found a holy card from the Shrine of St. Jude,” Macias said. The family dealt with many difficulties as they went through the process of migration and acclimation to their new home, and his mother prayed to St. Jude. “When my dad got a car, the first thing my mother wanted was to go to the shrine of St Jude.” It took a couple of tries and a detailed road atlas, but when they made it, “I remember my mother just coming in and crying,” Macias said. “She was so close to the relic of St. Jude. She joined the League of St. Jude. When I would go visit with her, there all these things in her house, these images if St. Jude, and little did I know I was going to be on the other side of the shrine, helping bring that hope to other people.” Perhaps the best-known devotee of St. Jude, entertainer Danny Thomas, also learned of the shrine through a holy card, that one left in a pew at St. Clement Church in Lincoln Park. Thomas, then a nightclub performer, would be out all Saturday night, then go to 6 a.m. Mass at St. Clement before going home. He prayed for direction and to make something of himself to support his family, according to the Shrine of St. Jude website, and promised that if he succeeded, he would “so something big” for St. Jude. He did succeed, and he founded St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Macias and Carrillo read testimonies from others whose prayers have been answered at the shrine novena services and invite people to share their own stories, in hopes that others can find hope. “People are searching for comfort,” Carrillo said. “One of the things the devotion to St. Jude brings is the sense of being heard, of being helped. I have not met a shy devotee of St. Jude. Everyone has a story to tell. Through prayer and faithfulness, they’ve been guided through their difficulties. It brings a sense of community.” For more information, visit shrineofstjude.org.