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Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois. / Credit: Diocese of Springfield in Illinois

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 19, 2025 / 17:57 pm (CNA).
Bishop Thomas Paprocki, Bishop Kevin Rhoades, and Father Thomas Ferguson will join an adviso… […]

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 20, 2023 / 05:00 am (CNA).

“Awesome. Awesome.” 

That’s how Anna Sudomerski, the communications coordinator at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Beaufort, South Carolina, describes the parish’s eucharistic adoration program. 

St. Peter’s is among the parishes in the United States that are hosting perpetual eucharistic adoration with the Blessed Sacrament exposed 24 hours a day.

Since Church law dictates that exposition of the Blessed Sacrament requires at least one adorer present at all times, this means the parishes that opt for this extraordinary form of worship must coordinate a major year-round effort to ensure at least one volunteer is present before the Eucharist every hour of the day.

Eucharistic adoration, whether exposed or reserved in the tabernacle, is an ancient custom of the Church dating back to its earliest centuries. Yet its practice today occurs among flagging faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, with U.S. Catholics signaling a growing reluctance to believe that Jesus is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament. 

A poll by RealClearOpinion Research last year found that roughly half of likely Catholic voters doubted the doctrine of the Real Presence; more broadly, in 2019 a Pew Research Center poll found that just one-third of Catholics believed in it.

Yet multiple parishes around the country in recent years have maintained vibrant adoration initiatives, including St. Peter’s, which began its perpetual adoration in the early 1990s. 

Sudomerski said the St. Peter’s adoration program started at the parish’s original historic church in downtown Beaufort. With the construction of a new church building in 2006, adoration moved to a purpose-built chapel there. 

For years, Sudomerski said, the adoration program was run by team captains who each supervised a specific stretch of hours within a given 24-hour period.

“They were in charge of certain times, like from midnight to 6 a.m., in case the adorer could not make it, so the captain would have to find a substitute or cover the hour themselves,” she told CNA. “We had four team captains covering midnight to 6, 6 to noon, noon to 6, and 6 to midnight.”

She said the church’s adoption of the sign-up software Adoration Pro “made it a lot easier for people to sign up.” 

“From there, ever since, we’ve done several campaigns,” she said. “One to pass out interest forms to see who would be interested in what hour. We just finished another campaign because Father thought the Eucharist is the most important thing that we have. We’ve done callouts, mailings.” 

Light of the World Catholic Church in Littleton, Colorado

Kathryn Nygaard, the communications director at Light of the World Catholic Church in Littleton, Colorado, outside of Denver, said the parish has maintained an adoration program since 2007. 

“There are two parishioners who are the main adoration chapel coordinators and they do an incredible job,” she said. “In addition, there are 24 ‘hourly coordinators’ to assist with making sure substitutes fill in during open hours and communicating with the adorers in their specific hour.” 

“There are approximately 270 people involved in adoration, as either regularly scheduled adorers or as substitutes,” she said. The church hosts two “renewal weekends” in February for adorers to re-up for the coming year; regular announcements are also made at weekend Masses to attract more interest. 

Adorers at Light of the World use the church software Flocknote to communicate with one another, Nygaard said. “Most requests for substitutes are filled within 1-2 days,” she noted. 

Bishops aim to ‘start a fire’ of eucharistic renewal

The U.S. bishops last year launched the National Eucharistic Revival, meant to “start a fire” of eucharistic devotion among Catholics in the United States. The initiative was first conceived following the 2019 Pew poll showing low numbers of Catholics with a belief in the Real Presence.  

As part of the three-year program, parishes around the country have been encouraged to launch Eucharist-focused programs and events to draw parishioners into a deeper relationship with Jesus through the Blessed Sacrament.

Next year, the bishops will host a National Eucharistic Congress featuring multiple high-profile Catholic speakers along with what is expected to be a crowd of about 80,000 Catholics. Pope Francis in June called next year’s national congress “a significant moment in the life of the Church in the United States.”

St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Columbus, Nebraska

At St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Columbus, Nebraska, worshippers have been keeping perpetual adoration there for more than 62 years — since Feb. 14, 1961, according to a live clock on the parish’s website.

The parish on its website says the roots of its adoration program go back to 1949 and expanded thereafter. The program now includes worshippers from other nearby parishes who come to participate in adoration. 

Parishioner Tim Cumberland told CNA the church is “blessed to have about 550 people in the program.”

“A few years ago, we went to an automated process of managing our perpetual adoration program, using the Adoration Pro software,” Cumberland said. “This has greatly improved our ability for our adorers to find subs online when necessary. A request for a substitute is usually filled within minutes.”

Kim Waller said the 25-year-old adoration program at Holy Infant Catholic Church in Ballwin, Missouri, still uses a coordinator-led sign-up program instead of an online sign-up. Like many programs, Holy Infant breaks down management of the adoration schedule into hourly segments.

“The 24 hourly coordinators form the backbone of perpetual adoration,” she said. “They ensure that there is at least one adorer present in the chapel at all times. The hourly coordinator reviews the sign-up list weekly to ensure that their committed hourly adorer fulfills his/her commitment and contacts the adorer if she/he has not been to adoration as committed for two consecutive weeks.”

A new team of coordinators just took over in January, Waller said. “The last several years, the ministry was administered by a couple who since have passed within six months of each other,” she said. 

St. Mary Help of Christians in Aiken, South Carolina

Donna Pierce told CNA she helped launch the 24/7 adoration program at St. Mary Help of Christians in Aiken, South Carolina, roughly 30 years ago. 

“I think we have about 10-15 people who have maintained their Holy Hour since it began, and currently we have 318 weekly adorers and about 60 substitutes, not counting the many people that pop in the chapel when they can,” she said. 

Pierce said a priest from a perpetual adoration apostolate helped the parish launch the program. “He told us that having perpetual adoration is actually much easier to run than a 40-hours or other time frame,” she said. “Adorers incorporate their hour into their schedule, so you don’t have to keep signing up from scratch.”

She said the parish maintains participation in the program by way of biannual talks at Masses (which Pierce described as “our fall and Lent blitzes”). These efforts usually result in upwards of a few dozen sign-ups.

On the website for the National Eucharistic Revival, the bishops say that the current year of the program is focused on “fostering eucharistic devotion at the parish level, strengthening our liturgical life through the faithful celebration of the Mass, eucharistic adoration, missions, resources, preaching, and organic movements of the Holy Spirit.”

Catholic evangelist Tim Glemkowski in a video for the revival urged parish leaders to “prioritize personal encounters with Jesus in the Eucharist” over the course of the year.

“The heart of this invitation … is to create space in our parish calendar this year for people to come and encounter Jesus in the Eucharist personally,” he said. “This could mean parishes that don’t have perpetual adoration start that opportunity, or opportunities for eucharistic processions, or different devotional experiences.”

Pierce said that starting the St. Mary program decades ago was a daunting prospect, but she went ahead with it by putting her trust in God.

“It was terrifying when Msgr. [Thomas] Evatt asked me to be head coordinator to start it so long ago — I was 30 years old with a toddler and working part time,” Pierce said. “So I made a deal with God. He would have to be responsible for sustaining it, and we would just be his instruments.”

“How many, many times he made it obvious he was running it!” she said.

Graces for eternity

St. Bonaventure’s website, meanwhile, predicts that the graces of perpetual adoration will redound not just in the present but for eternity.

“Someday far, far from now, there will be a magnificent heavenly banquet where all of the adorers in the St. Bonaventure adoration program will be reunited,” the parish’s website says.  

“Won’t it be wonderful,” the website continues, “for all of us who have been in the program to share stories of how many of our lives, and the lives of those we touched as a result, were radically changed by this personal and enduring encounter with Our Lord!”

[…]

Chicago, Ill., Oct 3, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- You might say that running 10 marathons is extreme.

Well, Sr. Stephanie Baliga, who is about to run her tenth, is somewhat of an extreme person. Just ask her. She’ll tell you.

She was once even more of an extreme runner, she told CNA.

But while she was a college athlete at the University of Illinois, she was grounded by a foot injury. While she recovered, Baliga, who had been running seriously since she was 9 years old, had some time to reevaluate her life.

“The metatarsal of my foot spontaneously fractured, so I went from being in very good shape to completely messed up because it was a…complete fracture. So I was in a boot and crutches for a very long time,” Baliga told CNA.

“And it made me – it forced me to reevaluate my life priorities and realize that I had pretty much placed running on this pedestal. It was how I defined myself and how I thought, how I understood who I was, and how I explained myself everybody else.”

But the injury, and the time off, made Baliga realize that her approach to running, and to life, was “super-not-sustainable and really didn’t make sense. So I needed to completely reevaluate what I was thinking about my life and who I was.”

It was during that time that Baliga connected with some students from her campus Newman Center and began delving deeper into her Catholic faith. She said when her friends invited her on a retreat, she was ready to go.

“I was pretty open to it,” Baliga told CNA. “It was pretty clear that Jesus was preparing for me to be ready for that point in time.”

It was on that retreat, during Eucharistic Adoration, that Baliga said she encountered the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist in a new way.

“There was this increasingly intense realization of his presence and the sense, the knowledge that Jesus was really there in the Eucharist and this is real, it’s not just some stuff that people say because it’s nice to talk about, or it’s nice because it ties the theology together. But this is actually real…and that I needed to completely change the ways that I live my life.”

After that retreat experience, it didn’t take long for Baliga to realize she was being called to the vocation of religious life.

“So I’m kind of an extreme person,” Baliga said.

She said after the experience of realizing Jesus is real, she took time to delve more deeply into prayer and her faith community. It wasn’t long after that that she realized she was being called. “It was only like five months, because I’m extreme,” she added.

Baliga said she felt drawn to a Franciscan order from the start of her discernment because of their “love of the Eucharist and focus on the Eucharist, and love of the poor and work with the poor, and then (living in) actual poverty.”

As she was looking into different religious orders, Baliga said she considered one that would have required her to completely give up running, because it wouldn’t have been compatible with that order’s way of life. In prayer, she said, she told Jesus that if he was asking her to give up running, that was ok.

“I told Jesus that if he really would rather me not run ever again, that’s what I’ll do…if that’s what’s needed, that’s what I’ll do,” she said.

“And that was just kind of this experience of freedom in that once I gave run into Jesus, which is what I did at that moment, it then became his. And then he was able to use it for his glory instead of me being selfish and prideful and…showy about my running.”

Around February of her senior year, Baliga found the sisters that she would soon join – the Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago. A relatively new religious community, there were only two other sisters in the order at that time.

Baliga decided to join after graduating from the University of Illinois in 2009.

The order encourages sisters to exercise as their schedule allows, and Baliga has been able to keep up her running – though not in full habit, she said.

“I wear a bandana, and a T-shirt, and then a long running skirt with tights,” she said.

“Some orders do run in their habits because they’re shorter, but ours…we have ankle-length habits. It would be kind of a problem.”

Sr. Baliga ran her first marathon as a sister in 2011, and for the past several years has used the Chicago Marathon as a chance to recruit people to be on a team that raises donations for her order’s mission.

“My community runs a place called Mission of Our Lady of the Angels, and we work with the poor on the west side of Chicago. We are a presence of Jesus here on the west side and this is one of the worst areas in the United States and leading Chicago in murders this year and things of that nature,” she said.

“So we provide a presence of peace, and a presence of love, and a presence of Jesus here in the midst of violence and poverty. We feed about 1,000 families a month with food and provide clothing and household goods for that same group, as well as work with senior citizens and families and do a lot of special events.” 

This year, she’s recruited 105 people for Team Our Lady of the Angels for the October 13 marathon, and so far they have raised more than $126,000 of the $200,000 goal.

The money will go toward the renovation of an old Catholic school building that caught fire in 1950, killing 92 students and three sisters. Sr. Baliga and her sisters plan to transform the building into a community center.

According to the team’s fundraising page, the new outreach center will provide space for the Mission’s donation storage and distribution, a handicapped accessible kitchen and dining room, meeting space for neighborhood and retreat groups, and a 60+ bedroom retreat center for volunteers and retreat guests.

Sr. Baliga also has a personal fundraising page for the marathon, where she is raising $30,000 for the boiler system in the sisters’ church and school.

“I have spent the past 9 years of my life tackling maintenance issues. BY FAR the most annoying, long-lasting, and time-consuming issue was the BOILERS/ heat system. It has innumerable issues. The only advantage has been my opportunity to evangelize at least 10 different HVAC repair companies,” Baliga wrote on her fundraising page.

“This is the year the Lord has made. Both boilers in the school-rectory-church heat system will be replaced by winter 2020-2021. I am running the 2019 Chicago Marathon to end the boiler issues once and for all.”

By press time, Baliga’s page had raised about half of its goal.

Baliga said she would encourage anyone else who finds themselves in a similar situation as herself in college – wonder what God is calling them to do – to be courageous.

“I think the Church right now needs saints and saints in the making. So we need people to be courageous…if people think Jesus is calling them to religious life, he probably is. So people should seriously take that very seriously and not wait,” she said.

“Listen to Jesus and make the sacrifices that he asks because the rewards will be great. Honestly, here on earth, he has provided for us beautifully here. And then obviously we know that he’ll provide infinitely for us in heaven.”

 

[…]