Volume 25, Number 3    December 2003

Mary of Magdala celebrations featured in Newsweek

Four months after a four-page cover story in Time about St. Mary of Magdala. Newsweek ran its own 10-page cover story on the saint and other biblical women leaders.  Sr. Chris Schenk, who pioneered the national Magdala celebrations in 1997 as part of the FutureChurch-CTA joint project on Women in Church Leadership (WICL), is again quoted. Even better, Newsweek recruited four Mary of Magdala event organizers from the FutureChurch website, and featured them prominently in a two-page spread of text and photos:

Kathy Kidder with her women’s prayer and study group in Gainesville, Fla.;
Maggie Albo, the WICL anchor who organized celebrations in Spokane, and pushed the diocese to provide burial space for  poor people who had died;

Mary Platner and her group “Celebrating Women Witnesses” in their Eagle River, Wis. parish;

Dr. Jo Kelly, a pediatrician who organized celebrations in Sinking Spring, Pa. Her daughter Mary, age 7, says she wants to be a priest. “I want her to feel that she is as valued as her brother in terms of her faith,” she told Newsweek.

Planning a St. Mary of Magdala celebration in 2004, either in Lent/Holy Week or on her feast day, July 22? Contact FutureChurch/CTA to let us know, and to obtain resources. E-mail info@futurechurch.org or call 216 228-0869