Priest a constant at Conwell-Egan

For 54 years, Father Fidelis Weber has walked the halls of Conwell-Egan (formerly Bishop Egan) High School in Fairless Hills. While the name and location of the school has changed over the decades, Father Fidelis, teacher of English, Spanish and religion, and director of the guidance office, has remained a constant.
The Third Order Regular Franciscan [...]

Accepting disability with faith in God

Hereditary Spastic Paraparesis (HSP) is classified as a rare disease with only a handful of people per 100,000 contracting it. That’s not much comfort to Helen Kienlem, because the first word is operative — it runs in families. The seventh of the eight children of Joan and John Kienlem, she is one of six in [...]

Raising funds for Catholic schools

Catholic education is of utmost importance to Al Gabriele, a retired businessman and entrepreneur, whose career most recently was in the printing field. A member of St. Rose of Lima Parish in North Wales, he recently finished chairing a highly successful $25 million capital campaign for La Salle College High School in Wyndmoor.
It took five [...]

Principal garners top honors

Sister Virginia Paschall, I.H.M.
Last October, when the annual Catholic school administrators’ conference was held in Avalon, N.J., Immaculate Heart Sister Virginia Paschall was startled when she received a Distinguished Principal Award.
Her school, Blessed Virgin Mary in Darby, certainly isn’t large. It has at this point 214 students K-8, and it’s a struggle; Darby is by [...]

God still has a mission for her

 
Eleanor Stretz
When you are 92 years old, it’s quite understandable if you just want to sit back, relax and let others do the work.
Don’t tell that to Eleanor Stretz; she’s just about as involved as you can get at St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Bensalem, and that’s just the way she wants it.
For openers every [...]

Talented teen writes, sings songs

“Letting go of the past never felt so hard
“And moving on never felt so rough”
Kate Lynn Tandarich is into Christian music and country music and writes and sings her own songs under the name Kate Tandy. You can find some of her songs on YouTube.
The two lines above are telling about where she is in [...]

Strengthening a city neighborhood

 
Giovanni Morante
Giovanni Morante, 56, who was administrator of Catholic Social Service’s Casa Del Carmen for 16 years until taking a leave for health reasons in 2010, was honored by his friends and colleagues Oct. 14. That’s also when Casa’s brand-new playground, with its various-sized slides, climbers, chinning bars and rings, was formally christened as “Giovanni’s [...]

New seminary dean sees hope, renewal

Kelly Bowring

 
Kelly Bowring, the new dean of the Graduate School of Theology and Program of Catholic Studies at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, wants a return to orthodoxy in Catholic higher education.
His recent book, “To Hold and Teach the Catholic Faith,” asserts that post-Vatican II witnessed the dilution, abandonment and in some cases “suppression” [...]

Wolk sees value of unborn human life

By Lou Baldwin Special to The CS&TShould you be strolling along Philadelphia’s Eighth Street early on a Friday morning, when you pass Appletree Street, just north of Arch Street, you might see a small knot of people in prayer facing a nondescript multi-story building. They are mostly members of Helpers of God’s Precious Infants, and [...]

Time for guard to turn a corner

By Lou BaldwinSpecial to The CS&T
When school opens on Sept. 7 at St. Cecilia School in the Fox Chase [...]