Inverness church joins anti-violence push in Chicago

Holy Family Catholic Community in Inverness is providing thousands of dollars to support an Archdiocese of Chicago violence prevention initiative helping at-risk youths in Chicago's most troubled neighborhoods.

But parishioners are going well beyond their checkbooks to contribute to the cause.

For the just-concluded Lenten season, Holy Family set a $25,000 fundraising goal to benefit the Strong Futures program at the Faith Community of St. Sabina on Chicago's South Side and Catholic Charities' The Peace Corner Youth Center on the city's West Side.

When all the donations are tallied, church officials expect they'll have doubled the goal, and give the programs $50,000 in all.

Holy Family is believed to be the first parish to fully commit to the archdiocese's violence prevention initiative announced in April 2017. The church called this year's Lenten social justice project "Walking Peaceful Pathways to Hope."

"Obviously, violence prevention is something that's going to be ongoing," said Holy Family's pastor, the Rev. Terry Keehan. "And these two programs, they're addressing a lot of the issues."

As part of the process, Keehan said, videos shown at Mass during Lent featured The Peace Corner and Strong Futures participants telling their stories.

Holy Family also created a display in its main lobby depicting inner-city violence. It includes photographs of young men who were killed in street violence.

"There were quite a few people that I would catch during the day that were just standing there, and you could tell they were so moved by it," said Sue Geegan, director of human concerns at Holy Family.

With Lent concluded, the help for Strong Futures and The Peace Corner is shifting from fundraising to volunteering, Geegan said. Both programs will provide lists of specific volunteer opportunities for Holy Family parishioners to take on.

One Holy Family parishioner is looking into replacing computers at The Peace Corner and Strong Futures. Another paid a few thousand dollars to repair a van used to take St. Sabina clients to work, Geegan said.

Keehan said it's not up to Holy Family to decide what's best for the two organizations.

"Let's listen, observe and let them tell us what they need, because we have some pretty hard-charging people here saying, 'I'll bet they need this,'" he said. "If we can just wait, let them tell us what they want."

The Peace Corner in the Austin neighborhood is more youth-focused, providing a safe haven from gang violence and drug activity, an after-school program for children, GED classes and job training and placement.

Strong Futures helps at-risk men ages 17 to 26 find jobs and turn around their lives. Since it started a year ago, 44 of the first 50 participants have obtained full-time jobs, said St. Sabina's senior pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger. Most are young men from the Auburn Gresham neighborhood who many wrongly presumed would be shot or wind up in jail by now, he added.

Pfleger visited with Holy Family parishioners last month. Some asked what they could do to help those in Chicago's most troubled neighborhoods. He said that while donations help, so do job offers.

"If it's a job where either a Metra train or a CTA train can get to, we'll take it," he said. "But it's getting jobs for people, it's finding the doors to open for people."

Strong Futures and The Peace Corner will receive an even split of the roughly $50,000 raised by Holy Family.

"Frankly, a lot of government and a lot of foundations do not want to take risks on these programs," Pfleger said. "They say, 'Those are gang guys. We don't know what they might do.'"