FI News: Coredemption Conference – A Pictorial Essay

Ave Maria!

So, several days have passed since we held our Coredemption Conference at Our Lady of the Greenwood Church in Greenwood, Indiana, and our Vlogmaster and Roving Reporter, friar Roderic Mary, travelled to La Crosse, WI today, visiting the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which the friars will be taking custody of in June next year.

This Pictorial Essay of the Coredemption Conference is an attempt to thank all those involved in the organization of this incredible event .

One of our guests commented afterwards, “This is the most professionally organized conference I have ever attended.” This was a glowing comment from a man who has probably attended hundreds of events similar to ours. I’m not blowing our own trumpet, but merely pointing out that the friars had only a minor role in this and therefore the thanks and praise should all go to the hundreds of people we would like to thank for helping us to organize this event. Most of the people we would like to thank didn’t have their photos taken during the day so I am unable to post their pictures below, and I don’t have a list of names, so I won’t even try that, but I hope they and you all enjoy this pictorial essay as our way of saying thank you.

+

A picture the new church of Our Lady of the Greenwood, Greenwood, Indiana

+

The Old church is very beautiful but the Parish outgrew it and it is still used for the two daily masses and is packed each time – a vibrant parish community!.

+

The huge crowd of people (well over 1000) waiting excitedly for the Conference to begin.

+

Nick Welch assisting Dana with her microphone and ironing out some last minute technical hitches.

+

Fr. Maximilian Mary Dean prepares the crowd for the Conference with some beautiful, prayerful, music.

+

Michael Grogan assisting Fr. Maximilian with background vocals – amazing musical ability for a legally blind person!

+

The Control Room for the four Cameras – you may have seen this photo before – we had no photos of the control room taken during the conference so I stole this one from a previous post.

+

Susan Mackewich in the control room out of control – well, maybe the technical director was out of control – Susan was just being her “producer” self (she will hate me for putting this unflattering photo of her up but it is the only photo that was taken of her the whole day so I have no choice!). Her friend Ginny,?also had only one even more unflattering photo taken, and I definitely wasn’t going to put that one up! Thank you Susan and Ginny for all your sacrifices and help.

+

Lights… Gabriel (aka Brother Mule) did a fantastic job on the follow spot. So much so, that the only time we had to tell him what to do was when he had to shine the light on Our Blessed Lord during Benediction. He didn’t feel right about standing up and focusing the spotlight on Our Lord cause he wanted to get down on his knees and adore. Susan explained that “Our Lord is the star of the show and he has to have the spotlight on him.” He reluctantly obeyed but talked about how bad he felt for hours.

+

Camera… Fra Roderic, normally our Roving Reporter, takes a test drive on the other side of the lens. He did a pretty good job considering his lack of experience behind a camera – as did our whole crew. One of our cameramen, fra Anthony, had never done this before, fra Josemaria had only a few practice sessions and a video school’s experience, and fortunately we had fra Joseph as our number 1 cameraman, who has been doing camera work for a while. Considering the lack of experience with nearly the whole crew, I think we did a pretty good job – we’ll have to wait until we get the footage into editing but I’m hoping for great things.

+

Action… Dana, our wonderful MC, kicks off the Conference – and what an MC she was!, and pro bono to boot. Well, we were so blessed as all our speakers appeared pro bono in order to promote the honor due to Our Blessed Mother. May God reward them all for their generosity. I should also mention that no-one was paid a penny for anything they did at this conference – from our NYC Producer right down to the person who was vacuuming the church entrance at midnight on Saturday night. May God bless and reward them all abundantly for their kindness and generosity.

+

Michael Rose listens intently to the quality of the audio being pumped into the church, as well as being piped into the control room (the sacristy) for the live stream and the backup audio recording. He is sitting in front of the very impressive audio mixer located at the rear of the church. What a great job our audio guys did and this will be verified when the CD and DVD sets become available – stay tuned for that.

+

Raymond de Souza, of recent EWTN fame, had the honor of being the first speaker.

+

Here’s Fr. Pablo Straub during his demonstrative and lively talk.

+

Of all the thanks that we have to give, the most goes goes to Msgr. Svarzkopf. Without the use of his church, we had no Conference at all. Imagine handing over your church to a dozen Franciscan friars who lug in 3 carloads of equipment and then proceed to spend the next two days running hundreds of feet of cables all over the church, taping them down with ugly black gaffer tape, filling the sacristy with so much electronic equipment that the ambient temperature was raised to about 90 degrees (not to mention the fact that it was no longer recognizable or usable as a sacristy!), and then erecting camera platforms, tripods, spotlights, and a huge backdrop that covered the tabernacle. Thank you Msgr. for putting up with us!

+

The Principle Celebrant for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was Archbishop Raymond Burke. Here he is during the Mass with Deacon Mark Marivalle, and the founder of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, Fr Stefano Maria Manelli.

+

Archbishop Raymond Burke during his homily – what a shepherd!

Please God, send us more shepherds like him to guide and teach Your flock.

+

Dr Mark Marivalle (or should it be Deacon Dr?), after his presentation, poses in front of one of the beautiful backdrop and podium posters designed by one of our new novices, fra Thomas. Getting this magnificent backdrop completed came right down to the wire, but thanks to God it was completed in a timely manner.

+

Dr Scott Hahn was at his best – what more can I say? Stay tuned for the book, DVD, and CD sets, to try to absorb the stupendous teachings given throughout this day.

+

Here’s Raymond de Souza and Mark Marivalle slightly relaxed during the highlight of the day – the panel discussion. Fra Roderic is trying to get this posted on video because it was so good. Someone commented afterwards, “You will never again see these four people on a discussion panel like this again.” I hope they’re not right. It was so good we could have scheduled two hours for this segment and still not bored the audience. Again – stay tuned.

+

+

A classic moment – order a DVD or CD set to see what all this was about!!!

+

Fr Peter Damian Mary Fehlner makes a point during the last of the speakers presentations. This was classic Fr Peter Damian stuff. One of our sound guys commented over the intercom, after Fr Peter was about 5 mins into his talk, “Hey, this guy’s really heavy!” Even Fr Stefano admitted that he has to read Fr Peter’s works several times to absorb them. I’m waiting for the book to even try!

+

Dana finished off the presentations side of the Conference with a few songs to lighten things up a bit and really round out the whole conference with a very balanced series of talks and presentations – it seemed pretty obvious to us, when it was all over, that the Holy Spirit and not us had put all this together.

+

What Conference centered on Our Blessed Mother would be complete if it didn’t end with the adoration of Her Son in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Fr Elias was in charge of the organization of the whole Conference and we can’t thank him and his team of volunteers enough. I hope he can start thinking about preparing for the Second Annual Coredemption Conference – TBA???