Novices in the news.

As previously mentioned in this post, a Southern Indiana daily - The Brazil Times, to be precise - did a story on some of the Loyola House novices' visit to the home of our own Mike Singhurse. That story is now available online for your inspection - and, I hope, your edification as well. Some of the details are a bit off - "novices" somehow became "novitiates," for example - but the article takes a commendably positive and upbeat tone throughout. The hometowns listed are taken from our Company bios, which is why I'm listed as "Joe Koczera, of New Bedford, Mass." As a general matter that's fine, considering that more people have heard of commercial seaport New Bedford than have heard of its country cousin Rochester, making New Bedford a more convenient frame of reference. However, it probably doesn't matter much in this case, as I doubt many of the Times' readers have heard of either New Bedford or Rochester.

In any event, there's a funny story behind the photo of Loyola House novices that accompanies the Brazil Times article. Noting that priests and seminarians are a strange and mysterious lot to many people, the Times reporter wanted us to adopt a group pose that would communicate the fact that we're really normal folks. What could be more normal than hanging out in the kitchen, she ventured. Thus she posed us around the island in the kitchen; to lend more verisimilitude to the proceedings, I grabbed a spatula and a plate and acted busy while the reporter snapped photos. Such necessary bits of artifice aside, the Brazil Times article offers a keen sense of what we're about at Loyola House. Good press is always welcome, and I commend this example to your attention. AMDG.