a column of benevolent gossip

• Tania in wonderland —

  Tania Mann,
  Tania Mann from Catholic New World to L’Osservatore Romano.
  a Dominican University alum, was a staff writer at Catholic New World until mid-2008 when she went off to Rome to seek her fortune. Well, at least to be assistant editor at L’Osservatore Romano’s English edition. (She’s also fluent in Italian.) Eventually 23-year-old Tania started a blog that is molto interessante. Here’s a sample from Jan. 7, 2010: “While my second visit to the Capitoline Museums may have lacked the concert pianist and TV coverage of my first visit for ‘Music in the Museums,’ this time the art was even more beautiful in the sunlight streaming through the palace’s huge windows. Every inch of that place is worth observing. Speaking of the previous visit, it turns out the mysterious person who interviewed me was from one of Italy’s major TV networks: ‘I was watching the Sunday night news, and there you were!’ my landlord told me recently.” Or another entry: “A great little book I own is called ‘Basil in Blunderland,’ by the late Cardinal Basil Hume. It’s hard to imagine him being the Archbishop of Westminster when you read his writing, because he’s so completely down to earth in the way he relates. The core message is that it’s all about raising our hearts and minds to God. But he frames it in a children’s game of hide and seek.” If you yearn for bella Italia, read Tania’s “This Very Life” at tmmann.wordpress.com.

• Junior Clips —

  The Southwest News Herald recently did a piece on Mount Assisi Academy and its 14-year-veteran principal Franciscan Sister Mary Francis Werner. The school’s 250 women students come from more than 30 suburbs like Alsip, Berwyn and New Lenox, as well as from Chicago. With an average of 15 girls to a classroom, no one complains, “I never get called on.” . . . St. Mary School (Buffalo Grove) seventh-graders participated in the school science fair last month and faced 60 volunteer judges from the area. The top winner, Sarah Fruscione, figured out: “Which Metal is most Corrosive Resistant When Exposed to Common Household Solutions?” And the answer is: titanium. Some of the other problems students solved included: Which Sports Drink Stays Coldest the Longest? What Kind of Bubble Gum Blows the Biggest Bubble? How Does the Sun’s Position in the Sky Affect a Solar Car’s Performance? What Color Light Shines Through Smoke the Best?

• Correction —

  Thanks to a telephone question posed this week by Father Gerry O’Reilly
  Author James B. Swan
  of St. Daniel the Prophet Church (S. Natoma), let me revise my book review (Clips, Jan. 3-16, 2010). The meticulous work by historian James B. Swan in “Chicago’s Irish Legion” (published by Southern Illinois University Press), merits the clarification. The original Old St. Pat’s was a frame church built in 1846. Its first pastor was Father Patrick J. McLaughlin (not Father Denis Dunne as my review had it). McLaughlin died of cholera in 1854 just before the present St. Patrick Church went up. Father Denis Dunne, age 36, was the pastor who oversaw the new church’s construction. Dunne began the recruitment of the 90th Illinois volunteers (The Irish Legion) in 1862, and was vicar general at the time. By the way, the officers and enlisted men of the Irish Legion mustered in at Camp Douglas. The arch’s present Meyer Center (S. Lake Park), was a Civil War Hospital on that camp site and is an historic landmark.

• Cheerful givers —

  He’s among the top 100 lawyers in the country. Attorney Philip Corboy is a product of Catholic schools, like St. Margaret Mary (N. Oakley), and St. George High School. With his wife, Mary Dempsey, Corboy recently gave another of his alma maters, Loyola University School of Law, the largest single gift in the school’s history. Their present building at 25 E. Pearson will be renamed the Philip H. Corboy Law Center. . . . Loyola also received the Cuneo Mansion and Gardens in Vernon Hills, as a gift of Herta and John Cuneo Jr. The university will utilize the restored 1918 mansion for corporate and other special events, weddings, fine art performances, lectures and classes. The Julia Roberts/Cameron Diaz 1997 movie “My Best Friend’s Wedding” was filmed on location there.

Send your benevolent gossip to Church Clips, Catholic New World, P.O. Box 1979, Chicago, IL 60690-1979; or e-mail to dmadlener@catholicnewworld.com.