What started out to be a nice 4.5-mile hike out into the Alaskan wilderness this month turned out to be a seven-mile nightmare. I had a GPS flag on my Garmin Pilot App of Mariano’s cabin. Within the first half hour I lost the path for eight hours and started to panic. I almost drowned in a sinkhole.
Deacon Mick Fornelli, the director of the office of deacon ministry, said formation is a five-year process in which candidates continue to ask themselves, “Is God calling me to function as a deacon?”
Although World Youth Day in Panama isn’t until the summer of 2019, Alaskan youth and young adults are already making preparations for the long journey. While there has always been an Alaskan contingency at past World Youth Days, this time, one group is making a stop along the way for a mission trip in Costa Rica.
It’s been 52 years and counting that St. Michael Church in Palmer has operated its Slippery Gulch eatery at the Alaska State Fair (Aug. 24 to Sept 4). The blue metal building with white trim is located on the Green Trail, near the midway and the Rate Race booth, Slippery Gulch is run entirely by parish volunteers to raise money for the church and its outreaches.
After a contented life in Southern California, Alan Rice began to drift — both away from God and through the Western part of the country. He finally hit the road to Alaska six years ago. He describes the consequences of sin and poor decision-making as a descent into dishonesty and self-absorption that eventually landed him on the streets of Anchorage and at the doorstep of the Brother Francis Shelter in the winter of 2012.
Five young religious women traveled from New York to Alaska earlier this summer to share their lives with youth campers at St. Therese’s Camp in Wasilla.
Our closest friends have seen our virtues and our warts, our acts of kindness and our petty pride. Hang out with someone long enough and you notice the fruits of their life. In these cases, it is not enough to think of evangelization as reacquainting a once Christian culture with the long-forgotten Gospel.
Last month, Anchorage’s St. Patrick Church unveiled a large bronze sculpture of David — the fourth statue installed in the parish’s outdoor cloister by the renowned sculptor and painter Roberto Santo. Santo creates original work as well as fresh interpretations of classical works by much older masters.
Mat-Su resident Sharon Lasselle knew her Catholic Relief Services trip to Ethiopia wouldn’t be a luxury vacation. “We would be walking a lot, we would be traveling on very bumpy roads, it would be very hot,” she remembers the application stating.
The Catholic Anchor was recognized nine times for excellence in journalism at the national competition sponsored by the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada. The contest winners, for works published in 2016, were announced in June at the Catholic Media Convention in Quebec City, Canada.