100 Years

Each month during its centennial year celebration, The Catholic Spirit will look back at how the newspaper covered news and personalities significant to Catholics both locally and nationally. This month, the focus is on our advertisers.

a century of news and inspiration to guide our hearts

When Pope Benedict XVI recently commented to a journalist about condom use in AIDS prevention, there was widespread discussion and confusion about what the pope meant and whether it represented a change in church teaching. To clarify that no change in church teaching had taken place, Archbishop John Nienstedt provided The Catholic Spirit with a guest column about the issue from John Haas, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center.

Everything you need to know about how we get the newspaper to you

Readers often ask how we construct each issue of The Catholic Spirit. How do we find story ideas? How do we choose which ones to report and print? What about photos? And, where does our national and international news come from?

“Beloved brethren: In the early days of the new year, a new messenger of Cath­olic truth, a new advocate and defender of your holy faith, appeals to you for a cordial welcome to your homes, for an earnest and loyal support in the purposes it holds in view, in the work to which it consecrates itself. . . .” With those words, St. Paul’s first archbishop, John Ireland, bestowed his blessing on The Catholic Bulletin, The Catholic Spirit’s predecessor, in its inaugural Jan. 7, 1911, edition. So began a journalistic tradition that has endured a century.

I’ve been at The Catholic Spirit for almost six years now. That amounts to only about 6 percent of its history — a drop in the bucket when it comes to the newspaper’s century of service to Catholics of the archdiocese.

We asked former employees to reflect on the time they worked at the Catholic Bulletin or Catholic Spirit.

Associate publisher Bob Zyskowski searched the newspaper’s archives to produce the following timeline of events and significant people in the life of the church in this archdiocese, which were all featured in The Catholic Bulletin and The Catholic Spirit.