Archdiocese of Chicago

The Archdiocese of Chicago emerges as a church institution whose reach is visible in the movement of priests between difficult assignments, support for a project in wartime Saigon, and the rebuilding of a struggling parish. Its actions are presented chiefly through the Cardinal and Father Stefan Wycazik: institutional authority supplies the appointments and recognition, while Wycazik undertakes the work on the ground.

Hierarchy and Clerical Assignments

After ordination, Father Wycazik was assigned as curate to St. Thomas's, a small parish in the Illinois farm country. Its elderly shepherd, Father Dan Tuleen, was beloved by the congregation but hampered by arthritis and failing vision. The Cardinal chose Wycazik because the parish needed a new priest capable of carrying more responsibility than a newly ordained curate would ordinarily be expected to shoulder. Wycazik took on virtually all the parish work rather than being daunted by the unusual burden.

When Father Tuleen died three years later, the Cardinal reassigned Wycazik to a suburban Chicago parish where the rector, Father Francis Orgill, was struggling with alcohol. Wycazik's task was not simply to replace a failing priest: he was expected to support Orgill and guide him toward recovery. Over the following three years, Wycazik served at two further problem-plagued churches. The hierarchy's repeated use of him in such situations led its members to call him the Cardinal's troubleshooter, presenting the Archdiocese as an organization that deploys trusted clergy where a parish is in difficulty.

Saigon and Institutional Patronage

The Cardinal's most unusual assignment for Wycazik was Our Lady of Mercy Orphanage and School in Saigon, Vietnam. Funded by the Archdiocese of Chicago and described as one of the Cardinal's favored projects, the institution placed Wycazik second in command under Father Bill Nader. He served there for six years amid the danger of war. Nader had already been wounded twice and had lost two Vietnamese priests and a previous American priest to Vietcong terrorists.

When Saigon fell, Wycazik, Nader, and thirteen nuns escaped with 126 children. The account emphasizes Wycazik's conviction that saving those 126 lives mattered even against the scale of the subsequent bloodbath. The Archdiocese's role in this episode is concrete but bounded: it funded the orphanage and school, while its clergy and religious workers carried out the dangerous work of protecting and evacuating the children.

St. Bernadette's and Lasting Recognition

After roughly a decade and a half of serving as the Cardinal's troubleshooter, Wycazik was offered promotion to monsignor. He modestly declined and asked instead for a parish of his own. The Cardinal granted the request, assigning him to St. Bernadette's, a parish in serious financial and physical distress: it carried $125,000 in debt, needed major repairs including a new slate roof, had a decrepit rectory, lacked a school, and had suffered nearly a decade of declining Sunday attendance.

Wycazik's recovery of St. Bernadette's shows the local consequences of the Archdiocese's appointments. In four years, he increased Mass attendance by 40 percent, cleared the debt, and repaired the church. By the fifth year he had rebuilt the parish house; by the seventh, attendance had doubled and construction of a school had begun. In the Cardinal's final week of life, he made Wycazik a permanent rector, giving him life tenure at the parish he had brought back from spiritual and financial decline. The institution's contribution is thus expressed through both the authority to place a priest and the formal recognition that secures his continued service.