BEING CATHOLIC
TO BETTER SERVE the homeless, Jose Lopez (left) immersed himself in their world during a Vincentian Volunteer year in San Francisco. He did a “street retreat,” living without a home for a week. He is pictured here with a friend at St. Boniface Church in San Francisco, which is open daily to people without shelter.
Pope Francis wants YOU to be a missionary by Catherine O’Connell-Cahill
Catherine O'Connell-Cahill is a writer and editor in Chicago. Although now a member of Our Lady of Mercy Parish, she still lives within walking distance of St. Matthias, where she grew up.
152 | VISION 2017 | VocationNetwork.org
Catholics can never delegate the job of spreading the Good News. The joy of the gospel is meant to be shared—by you.
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HEN I WAS 12, an actual missionary came to speak to our class at St. Matthias School in Chicago. We had heard about missionaries, of course, but here in the flesh stood Father Raymond Cowell, a Chicago guy like us. He seemed old to me then, even though he was only in his 30s. He had spent the past 10 years in Bolivia, a place I knew about solely because of our 3-D mapmaking assignment on South America. Father Cowell told us stories about the people of Bolivia and what he had learned from them. He gave us his address, and he and I corresponded a few times. What a kick it was, in those days before email, to get a letter from a real live missionary in a red, white, and blue airmail envelope.
