UPDATE on Partners:
Chicago Office
St. Ita is a Roman Catholic parish in Chicago’s
Edgewater community. Dedicated in 1927, the French
Gothic church was built by a largely Irish-American
community and dedicated to a patroness who is one
of the most famous saints in Ireland. Today, many of
the families that built the parish have moved out of
Edgewater and been replaced by a diverse community
of new immigrants and refugees. St. Ita is now home
to Nigerian, Filipino, and Central and South American
parishioners
The parish is an imposing presence on Chicago’s
north side; its bell tower is visible from the city’s
iconic Lake Shore Drive and for miles north,
south, and west. But while the bell tower is an
important part of the parish’s presence and identity
in the community, it is also a source of concern.
After a building inspection identified potential
vulnerabilities in its infrastructure, the parish set out
on a capital campaign to refurbish and restore the
tower. After a few fits and starts, a recession, and a
pastoral transition, St. Ita’s leadership reached out to With exuberant details adorning its exterior and bell tower, St. Ita
Roman Catholic Church in Chicago, IL, is a neighborhood gem and local
Partners for Sacred Places. For the past year, Partners landmark.
and St. Ita have worked together to lay the ground
work for a capital campaign to restore the bell tower and
Partners worked with clergy and lay leadership, noting that
redefine the parish’s standing in the Edgewater community.
for the parish to build a foundation for a sustainable future,
there had to be a shift in thinking. St. Ita needed to devote
Partners began the collaboration by reviewing documents
considerable effort to reach out into its neighborhood
from the parish’s capital campaign efforts from the recent
and across the city to develop strategic relationships
past. While there were some encouraging references in
and partnerships. For these outreach efforts to succeed,
planning documents to potential external donors to the
St. Ita would need a coordinated plan for identifying
campaign (including people outside the parish), these
potential partners, making initial contact, and stewarding
references were limited. The attention and energy of the
relationships; a strategy for when, how, and to whom the
campaign were focused inward, and the initial momentum
parish would reach out that would be tied to the priorities
to steward and leverage relationships outside the parish had
of parishioners, the challenges and opportunities that
not been carried through.
existed locally, and the potential for this outreach to engage
individuals and stakeholder groups in the future of the
parish.
Chicago Advisory Board
Rolf Achilles
Rabbi Michael Balinsky
Clark Baurer, AIA, SE
Joel D. Bookman
Aja Carr
Christopher Ellis
Suzanne Germann
Eleanor Gorski
T. Gunny Harboe, FAIA
Corlis Moody
The Reverend
James M. Moody
Suzanne Morgan
Michael P. Mosher, JD
Joan Pomaranc
Father John Sanaghan
John Watts
9 • Sacred Places • www.sacredplaces.org • Summer 2014
To begin this process, Partners created a New Dollars/
New Partners training program tailored to the needs of
St. Ita’s parishioners and community. The training goals
included shifting focus from a cycle of scarcity to a cycle of
abundance, learning to build new community connections,
and understanding how to frame building repairs within the
context of community ministry.
Trainees were reminded that there are many individuals and
institutions in their potential donor pool for whom bricks