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Basilica Celebrates 200th Birthday
[Source: Baltimore, July 13, 2006]

Baltimore’s religious and historical leaders gathered Friday to celebrate the 200th birthday--almost to the hour--of the country’s first cathedral and to announce the discovery of the sacred building’s original cornerstone.

Amidst scaffolding, caution tape and piles of bricks, Friday’s procession mimicked one that took place July 7, 1806, when the nation’s first bishop placed a wooden cross where the cathedral’s alter would eventually stand. Construction crews are now working to renovate the historic church and expect to complete the $32 million project in November.

The work included an exhaustive search for the building’s original cornerstone, according to Mark Potter, executive director of the Basilica Historic Trust.

"Finding the cornerstone and being able to closely recreate the ceremony as it took place in 1806 is a singular honor and privilege," Potter said. "There’s so much history contained within the basilica’s walls, and we’re well aware of our important role as the guardians of the legacy."

Ellington Churchill, project manager for the cathedral’s restoration, said crews took about four months to find the cornerstone. He said contractors were confident the cornerstone faced the building’s north side, then its west side.

They were also looking for distinguishable characteristics, such as engravings or a plaque.

But the cornerstone--a white stone slab among granite--was on the building’s south side, and might feature a copper plate on its sky-facing side, covered by other bricks.

"The stone was found through the old tried and true method that they would have used 200 years ago," Churchill said. "A plain old shovel."

U.S. Capitol architect B. Henry Latrobe, regarded often as the father of architecture, designed the cathedral, which is now known as the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Dignitaries will officially celebrate the cathedral’s bicentennial and reopen it November 4.

Phone Card Has Religious Theme
[Source: The Record (Bergen County, NJ), May 18, 2006]

A Perth Amboy company is seeking divine assistance to help sell prepaid phone cards.

U.S. Starcom Inc. says it has signed an exclusive deal with Catholic authorities in Mexico to use the image Our Lady of Guadalupe on the card. It also will carry the official insignia of the much-visited Mexico City shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Starcom, a distributor and marketer of prepaid phone cards, hopes the image will grab the attention of Hispanic immigrants, many of whom use prepaid cards to call home. The cards will go on sale June 1.

The company also plans to market a $3 "prayer card," said spokesman Jack Lennon.

"For a dollar, they would be able to call a number, record a prayer message to the Virgin of Guadalupe," Lennon said. "It could be anything. They could have lost a loved one. They have lost a son fighting in Iraq. They've lost a job. Gambling losses."

The recording would be played at the shrine in Mexico, he said. The company also may sell a card that would enable the buyer to have a votive candle lit in the shrine on their behalf.

The prepaid cards will help the Plaza Mariana Foundation in Mexico, which is trying to raise $100 million to repair the aging shrine, Starcom officials said. The foundation will get 25 cents of every dollar of profit generated by the phone cards.

According to believers, the Lady of Guadalupe first appeared to a poor Indian on a hill outside Mexico City in 1531. She identified herself as the "Mother of the True God" and told the Indian to have the bishop build a temple at the location.

The Virgin Mary's image supposedly imprinted itself on the Indian's cloak, which is housed in the shrine today.

Starcom said it has exclusive marketing rights to use the image for prepaid cards and other items in the U.S. and Canada.

Catholic leaders in the U.S. were unaware of the deal. Still, James Goodness, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Newark, said he wasn't surprised. He noted that the Vatican endorsed a prepaid phone card carrying the likeness of Pope John Paul II in 1999.

"I supposed the Mexican officials who looked at this see it as an opportunity to raise funds," he said. "If it doesn't conflict with anything else, then certainly they have found a good use."

In fact, other companies have sold phone cards with the Lady of Guadalupe's image, said Jose Nino, the president of the Basilica de Guadalupe Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based non-profit group that raises funds for the shrine restoration. But in the past, none of the money from those card sales went to the Catholic Church, he said.

The partnership with Starcom came about because Nino--a business adviser to President George H. W. Bush and a fund-raiser for his son, President Bush--is also a director of the company.

He said he didn't see a problem with using the Virgin Mary's image in a commercial enterprise.

"There is nothing wrong with it when it's being used properly, and its not just being used to line somebody's pockets," he said.

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