Q & A with Patty Bailey This year, Patty Bailey began her 10th year working in youth ministry at Maternity BVM parish in Bourbonnais, IL. And her efforts are turning heads. Monsignor Gregory Ketcham, director and chaplain of the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center at the University of Illinois in Champaign came to one of the parish’s teen liturgies, just to see where so many of his youth ministers honed their skills.
Q. How did you become so involved with youth ministry?
A. I taught CCD for years and
slowly began to do some things in youth ministry. When Br. Belanger was preparing to go to the seminary, he suggested I work with him for two years, before taking it over. At the time, I was teaching religion at Bishop McNamara High School.
Patty, who is married and the mother of five adult children, takes no credit for their leadership. But she concedes there is a secret ingredient at work: the Viatorian charism, which she has come to embrace as her own. The fact that their passion for their faith resonates when these teens go off to college doesn’t surprise her. They continue to stay involved in youth ministry even after they return. In fact, of the 750 young adults she works with, 150 of them are college students.
Q. So you drew from your experience as a mother and as a teacher, in
Over their Christmas break, Patty gathered some of the college students at her home for a Mass on New Year’s Day, before leading them on a Habitat for Humanity trip in Georgetown, South Carolina.
A. Yes, that and experience on the job. I just kept trying to raise the
order to shape your role as a youth ministry director?
bar and get the kids to do more service.
“They have a month off, so you have to get them when they’re home,” Patty says. “They love it. It builds character.”
Q. Your signature service project, Camp Mosh, is it modeled after
Working in a parish led by Viatorians, including Fr. Richard Pighini, CSV, pastor, and Fr. James Michaletz, CSV, Patty sees herself clearly in partnership with them. “I am living the Viatorian mission,” she says simply. “And it’s a busy mission, at that.” We caught up with her recently, just long enough for her to answer some of our questions.
Catholic Heart Work Camps?
A. In some ways, but mostly I kept thinking about it and dreaming about it. In my mind, I wanted to design a week where the kids did service projects during the day — right in their own community — and a revival-type event, for the whole parish, with lots of good motivating speakers and music, at night.
Q. When did it occur to you that you were in fact living out the Viatorian mission of working with young people in the formation of their faith?
Q. It worked out so well and drew so many people to become involved; will you do it every year?
A. Although I worked in youth ministry with Br. Daniel Belanger,
A. No, I don’t want to burn everyone out. We did it two years in a
CSV, for a number of years, it wasn’t until we held our first Kairos retreat, that I felt I could say, “I am Viatorian.”
row, but now we’ll do it every other year. This summer, we’ll head to Chicago for a week of service, where the kids will stay in the International Youth Hostel. It’s affordable and it offers them a different slice of life, and they still get to visit Chicago.
Q. Why is that? What did the Kairos retreat have to do with it? A. Our students traveled to
Q. Finally, was there anything about the Viatorians that drew you to work with them? A. I teach the kids about Fr. Louis Querbes and how he felt a
Saint Viator High School in Arlington Heights in groups of threes and fours, to attend Kairos and later to be trained as leaders. If it wasn’t for campus minister Betsy Fons and the campus ministry department there, we could never have held our own Kairos retreats. This summer, we will hold our seventh Kairos and we’re still the only parish in the Diocese of Joliet to hold one. I’m pretty proud of that.
calling to work in faith formation with young people. I realized that I am working on that same mission. I know that it is such an important part of the charism, and I feel honored to be able to carry it on. Eileen Daday
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