About five dozen parishes across the archdiocese are now in the midst of the “To Teach Who Christ Is” campaign, according to Auxiliary Bishop Francis Kane, the vicar general of the archdiocese and the campaign’s chairman. The campaign aims to raise $350 million over the next three years, with $100 million coming from major gifts and the rest raised in the parishes. Of the $250 million to be raised by parishioners, 60 percent, or $150 million, will stay in the parishes in which it was raised, with the rest going to the archdiocese to create a scholarship fund for Catholic schools and provide money for school capital needs, religious education and adult faith formation. The campaign was announced in a June 5 press conference. About 15 parishes participated in the pilot program, Bishop Kane said, and about 45 will be in the first wave. The next four waves — which will include all of the remaining parishes in the archdiocese — will be larger. “Some of the pilot parishes have gone very well,” Bishop Kane said. Each parish is asked to create its own “case statement,” or explanation of what it plans to do with the money it raises that will stay within the parish. “It might be that they are working on a building — in one case it’s a tower that’s falling down, another place wants to expand their school,” Bishop Kane said. “Whatever the need, we ask them to really tell people about what they are going to do.” The other portion of the money will go toward a scholarship fund that will be large enough “to really make an impact in the diocese,” Bishop Kane said. “It will also help pay for religious education and capital needs in the schools.” At St. Mary Parish in Lake Forest, the parish share of the money will be used to offer financial aid to families who couldn’t otherwise afford Catholic school or religious education; to expand youth ministry to the middle-school level, in hopes of keeping teens active in youth ministry through high school; and to expand adult faith formation programs and make them easier to use, by, for example, offering child care. Father Michael McGovern, the pastor, said he had hoped St. Mary would be one of the pilot parishes, but postponed the campaign until the first wave because his work as general secretary of the archdiocesan campaign’s pastor’s advisory committee made it impossible to devote the time necessary to run the parish campaign earlier. McGovern expects the parish to be able to raise more than the $2.3 million goal set by the archdiocese, based on its Sunday collections. “We have a lot of people who have made the parish a priority in their donations,” he said. He also expects the archdiocesan campaign to be a success. “You have many parishes with important needs the people will respond to as they are made aware of then,” he said. Not every parish has gotten an enthusiastic response as organizers hoped, Bishop Kane acknowledged, but some have done quite well. Parishes that start the campaign in the fall might fare better, he said, since many parishioners are travelling or simply distracted by being out of their usual routines in the summer. Father Leon Rezula, pastor of St. Julian Eymard Parish in Elk Grove Village, hopes to use the money raised in the parish to enhance the parish’s religious education program. While raising money has not been easy, he said, the project has helped him identify many new active parishioners and potential parish leaders. “It was very successful in generating a great number of very generous parishioners,” Rezula said. For more information, visit www.toteachwhochristis.org.