While archdiocesan leaders are hoping Catholics in the Archdiocese of Chicago will look to Pope Leo XIV as an example of commitment to missionary work, Pope Leo — then Bishop Robert Prevost of Chiclayo, Peru — looked to Archdiocese of Chicago for support.
The parish church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán in Olmos, Peru, in the northern part of the Diocese of Chiclayo, had collapsed after heavy rains on Palm Sunday 2017.
The parish used temporary worship sites while efforts to raise money and rebuild were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the grant application.
In early 2022, almost five years after the church collapsed, the parish was still seeking $100,000 of the almost $450,000 it needed to pay for reconstruction. Inflation in Peru meant than any further delay would make the project more expensive.
That was when Cardinal Cupich suggested the then-bishop apply for a legacy grant from the archdiocese’s Global Mission Office.
Legacy grants come from a fund created with bequests to the missions office, separate from the national Pontifical Mission Societies, that can be used for special projects, according to Megan Mio, executive director of the archdiocese’s Global Mission Office.
All legacy grant applicants have some kind of relationship with the archdiocese.
In the case of Santo Domingo de Guzmán, the connection was with Pope Leo, who grew up in Chicago and is a member of the Midwest Augustinians, based in Chicago.
To qualify for a grant, applicants must be Catholic organizations ministering outside the U.S., and the funding must be for a project or a program that directly eases human suffering, provides for basic human needs or clearly contributes to the church’s work of evangelization and pastoral ministry.
In addition, the project or program must have other sources of financial support and be sustainable without ongoing support from the archdiocese.
Other grants have been given to projects supported by priests ministering in Chicago from other countries, such as helping to pay for construction of a school in Haiti, or to educate seminarians at the University of St. Mary of the Lake, who go back to their countries and teach future seminarians there.
The legacy grant program has provided more than $2 million to 24 projects in the past decade.
Santo Domingo de Guzmán Church is now finished.
“It’s very beautiful,” said Janinna Sesa Córdova, director of Caritas Chiclayo from 2014 to 2024, in an online interview for La Hora Católica in Chicago.
The rebuilt church, a structure similar to the cathedral in Chiclayo, serves a large parish, which includes 165 small towns in addition to Olmos.
Father Melchor Pérez Cabrera, now the pastor of Santo Domingo de Guzmán, said it was very hard on parishioners when the church was ruined and they did not know if they could rebuild.
Many people cried, he said. Now, with the church structure finished, they are returning to worship.