Friars: Thefts won’t change Marytown operations

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Marytown, which was built in in the late 40's, houses chapels, a retreat center, the National Shire to St. Maximilian Kolbe and even a Holocaust Museum. | Rob Dicker~Sun-Times Media

Updated: January 30, 2012 10:22AM

Despite two recent burglaries where thieves made off with approximately $2,000 in votive candle cash and $5,000 in power tools, the friars of Marytown are undeterred about continuing to operate Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in Libertyville, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

On Christmas Eve, the Franciscan friars discovered someone broke a lock and hasp from an outside door and entered the basement of the chapel. They then went into a steam tunnel where there were two containers that collect offerings made upstairs in the chapel.

People will come and pray, then light a votive candle. They can make donations to help replace the candles.

The donations travel down a tube to the steam tunnel and empty into a box. Both boxes were broken into and the cash removed.

“We’ve had about six (thefts) over a span of about two months,” Doug O’Brien, marketing manager for Marytown, said Wednesday. Recently, someone cut off the lock on the friars’ workshop and took $5,000 worth of power tools.

The stolen cash was from prayer donations from a tradition first described in the Old Testament. “Prayers should rise like incense to the heavens,” O’Brien said, quoting the biblical passage.

The last thing the friars want to do is close things down to the public, he said.

“The challenge is central to their order, the attitude of welcoming 24 hours a day and seven days a week. They don’t want to change that,” O’Brien said.

“You can view the chapel on the Web site and see people there praying at 1 a.m.,” he added. “It won’t change. They feel very strongly it’s meant to be available for somebody in their time of need. That spirit is what Marytown is all about.”

O’Brien thinks the thieves were looking for an easy mark.

The recent thefts have made the Franciscans consider whether or not they could find some type of security system that would be unobtrusive so it wouldn’t undermine the atmosphere at Marytown.

The site includes a conference center and the National Shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe and his Holocaust exhibit, which is also in the basement of the center. St. Maximilian volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz in Poland during World War II.

Marytown also houses one of the largest Catholic gift and bookstores in the Chicago/Milwaukee area. It also is headquarters to Marytown Press which publishes religious books and the magazine, Immaculata.