MUNDELEIN — Transitional Deacon Hyland Smith will be ordained a priest by Bishop Thomas John Paprocki on Saturday, May 25, at 10:30 a.m. at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield.

Sacred Heart-Griffin High School students recently participated in the Science Olympiad competition at the University of Illinois Champaign and came back to Springfield having placed as a team as well as having earned several individual medals.

No one likes waiting. As children, we hated waiting for Christmas. We hated waiting for snow to start falling. We hated waiting for weekends to come.

Actually, that's not just children. As an adult, I still hate waiting for weekends to come.

May is one of the two months that Catholics traditionally honor the Blessed Virgin Mary; October, the month of the holy rosary is the other. However, for members of the Legion of Mary, any time — indeed any hour of any day — is a good time to praise Mary with thoughts, prayers and actions.

GRANITE CITY — Students at St. Elizabeth Preschool in Granite City have learned some valuable lessons this spring, both about helping others and staying safe. On April 26, the PreK students took part in the annual Trike a Thon to raise money for St. Jude's Children's Hospital in Memphis.

Illinois Catholic Daughters of the Americas held their 51st biennial state convention April 26-28. The convention was held at the Route 66 Hotel and Conference Center in Springfield, hosted by eight courts in the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois.

MARYVILLE — Danielle Vilhard, a student at Father McGivney Catholic High School, was one of 19 students selected nationwide to participate in the University of Missouri School of Journalism's annual summer workshop. Among those chosen by the journalism faculty, she was the only freshman.

One might imagine that the work of interreligious dialogue consists of aiming directly for the issues that distinguish and divide us from one another. We might imagine Christians examining with Jews the variety of ideas about what a "messiah" is, while with both Jews and Muslims we might explore the oneness of God and ask whether the Christian concept of God as Trinity is a contradiction of the oneness of God to which these faiths adhere.

Q With the new English translation of the missal it seems, in the priest's prayer at the consecration, that Jesus has gone from saving "all" to saving "many." That sounds more like Calvinism than Catholicism. Although, because of free will, not everyone will follow Jesus, didn't he die to save us all? (Milwaukee, Wis.)

It was a brief greeting to former colleagues. But if you read Pope Francis' April 18 letter to the Argentine bishops' conference closely, you get a glimpse of the man, his convictions and his vision.

The church introduces the great feast of Pentecost with a vigil Mass the night before, but the readings we are highlighting in this column are from Sunday's liturgy.

At the time he was selected the 266th successor of St. Peter, Pope Francis stepped out of papal character in some significant ways. He even went so far as to go back in the bus with the other cardinals to the hotel where he had been staying to tidy up his room and pay his bills!

Daily Scripture readings for the weeks of May 19 and 26.

Daily events occuring throughout the Diocese.

Bishop Paprocki's public schedule for the weeks of May 19 and 26.