Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 will run its 40th indoor games April 24: Annual event for Thompson’s elementary schoolchildren began in January 1975

Photos courtesy of Jeanette Kimball

Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 and Sir Albert LaFontaine Assembly #1739, composed of fourth degree sir knights from Thompson, Flin Flon and The Pas, will run their 40th indoor games in 41 years – since its debut in 1975 – April 24 for elementary school students in Thompson in the C.A. Nesbitt Arena at the Thompson Regional Community Centre (TRCC).

Hundreds of students will compete with a schedule that begins at 8 a.m. Friday and wraps up with an awards ceremony at 9:45 p.m. Daytime events take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.   Evening events are from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The annual K of C indoor games here incidentally have included two future Olympians. The Westwood Elementary School Vikings, which has been a powerhouse at the indoor track meet in recent years, took the overall title last year on May 9 for the most combined points at the event. The Vikings finished first in five of seven event categories last year to finish with the most points for the 12th consecutive  year, winding up with 259 points, 121 more than the second-place Deerwood Elementary School Dragons, who were runners-up for the fourth consecutive time. The top five teams finished in the same order last year as in 2013, with the Riverside Rams winding up in third place with 130 points overall, the Burntwood Bobcats fourth with 105, and the Juniper Jaguars fifth with 55 points. The only difference last year from 2013 was that La Voie du Nord finished sixth with 11 points and the Wapanohk Wolves were seventh with a total of four points.

The first Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 indoor games was held Jan. 18, 1975 and the cost of the original plywood track was $7,500. The Knights of Columbus had promised to sponsor the indoor event a year earlier. For the inaugral event in 1975, the knights brought in some notable track and field stars to launch it, including 27-year-old Abby Hoffman, the Canadian record holder in the women’s 800-metre event.  Hoffman competed in four Olympic Games for Canada in 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1976; four Pan American Games and two Commonwealth Games and was Canada’s flag-bearer at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. Ann-Marie Davis, the Manitoba record holder for the 800 and 1,500-metre events, and Bruce Pirnie, the 309-pound Canadian shot put champion, who also competed in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games, were also on hand in Thompson on that January day in 1975 for the first such track and field meet in Northern Manitoba sponsored by Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961.

Pirnie, born in Boston, had already won a silver medal in 1973 at the Pacific Conference Games in Toronto and bronze medal the following year at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, New Zealand and would go on 10 months after his visit to Thompson to his biggest victory, winning a gold medal at the Pan American Games in Mexico City in October 1975. Today, Pirnie, now 72, is the throws coach for the University of Manitoba Bisons.

All told, about 22,100 plywood sheets were used at the Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 indoor games between 1975 and 2009, the last year they were used. More than 15,000 local students have taken part in the annual track meet since 1975. Above and beyond thousands of volunteer hours contributed by local knights, they have spent more than $200,000 in cash on the indoor games over the last 40 years. Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 was chartered with 59 members on May 6, 1967 and reaches its 48th anniversary next month. The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic fraternal benefit organization headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut. Its origins date back to an Oct. 2, 1881 meeting organized by Father Michael J. McGivney, the assistant pastor at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, who founded the order. Today, the Knights of Columbus is the world’s foremost Catholic fraternal benefit society. The order’s founding principles are charity, unity and fraternity. Patriotism is the added later principle that marks fourth degree knights.

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Knights of Columbus brothers worldwide mark 133rd anniversary of Founder’s Day honoring Father Michael J. McGivney March 29

Members of the Knights of Columbus mark Founder’s Day this coming Sunday on March 29, honoring Father Michael J. McGivney, the assistant pastor at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, who founded the order. Councils throughout the order are urged to observe this day – among their own members and with the community at large – as a reminder of what the Knights of Columbus has accomplished in the past years, the ideals of the order, and their own local achievements.

The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic fraternal benefit organization headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut. Its origins date back to an Oct. 2, 1881 meeting organized by Father McGivney.

Worried about the religious faith and financial stability of immigrant families, Father McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus with the help of several men of St. Mary’s parish to help strengthen the faith of the men of his parish and to provide financial assistance in the event of their death to the widows and orphans they left behind. He was also known for his tireless work among his parishioners. He was born in Connecticut in 1852 to parents who were natives of Ireland and immigrants to the United States.

Knights of Columbus brothers offer mutual aid and assistance to sick, disabled and needy members and their families. Social and intellectual fellowship is promoted among members and their families through educational, charitable, religious, social welfare, war relief and public relief works.

On Feb. 6, 1882, the first members chose Christopher Columbus – recognized as a Catholic and celebrated as the discoverer of America – as their patron. Late 19th century Connecticut was marked by Nativism and considerable hostility toward Catholic immigrants. Dating back to the Civil War in the 1860s, many American native Protestants – both inside and well beyond New England ­– wondered about the tide of immigrant Catholics, overwhelmingly Irish that had been immigrating to the United States. They questioned just how American – how real, pure, genuine American ­– were they? Father McGivney wanted to see established a lay organization that would in part discourage local Catholic men from entering secret societies whose membership was antithetical to Church teaching; to unite men of Catholic faith; and to provide for the families of deceased members.

As a very visible symbol that allegiance to their country did not conflict with allegiance to their faith, the organization’s members took as their patron Columbus. Within three years of the founding of the Knights of Columbus, the Hartford Telegram, on the occasion of an 1885 parade by the order in New Haven editorialized: “There are some narrow-minded people living in New England yet who imagine that the Irish race are idle, slovenly and often vicious” but the parade proved that “the second generation in this country are intensely American in their instincts, and they are forging ahead to prominent positions in commerce, trade and in the professions.”

The Knights of Columbus, made up of Father McGivney, Matthew C. O’Connor, Cornelius T. Driscoll, James T. Mullen, John T. Kerrigan, Daniel Colwell and William M. Geary, were officially chartered by the general assembly of the State of Connecticut on March 29, 1882, as a fraternal benefit society, and celebrate March 29 every year as Founder’s Day, with 2015 marking the 133rd anniversary. Today, the Knights of Columbus is the world’s foremost Catholic fraternal benefit society. The order’s founding principles are charity, unity and fraternity.

Father McGivney fell sick with pneumonia in January 1890 while serving as pastor of St. Thomas Church in Thomaston, Connecticut. After almost eight months of various treatments, while laboring to carry on his pastoral duties, he died on Aug. 14, 1890 two days past his 38th birthday.

Now Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI declared Father McGivney “venerable” on March 15, 2008, approving a decree of “heroic virtue.” The cause for sainthood for the Knights of Columbus founder, furthering his process toward possibly becoming the first American-born priest to be canonized, was launched in December 1997. The title “Servant of God” is permitted to be used once a formal cause for canonization is under way.  This title was given to McGivney in 1997, when the Vatican granted nihil obstat, meaning that it had found no objection to the advancement of the formal cause for canonization. In 2008, after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints made a positive judgment on the positio, then Pope Benedict XVI declared Father McGivney’s heroic virtue as a prelude to possible beatification and Father McGivney was given the title, “Venerable Servant of God.”

The positio is a printed volume stating the formal argument for the servant of God’s canonization. It includes a systematic exposition of the individual’s life. It also summarizes what any witnesses said during the diocesan phase of the investigation into the individual’s life. Father Gabriel B. O’Donnell, the vice-postulator for Father McGivney’s cause for sainthood, completed a two-volume positio that runs to nearly 1,000 pages. It includes both a biography and an essay on Father McGivney’s spirituality. The volume on Father McGivney’s spirituality is organized around his life of virtue – the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, along with the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. Each chapter is followed by documents pertaining to Father McGivney’s heroic virtue.

The Knights of Columbus has grown from its humble late 19th century New England beginning to a place where today the order has more than 14,000 councils and 1.8 million members throughout the United States, Canada, the Philippines, Mexico, Poland, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, Cuba, Guatemala, Guam, Saipan, Lithuania, Ukraine and South Korea. Individual members can be found in other parts of the world, too. Bishop Prosper Balthazar Lyimo, consecrated last month as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Arusha in northern Tanzania in East Africa, has been a member of Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 in Northern Manitoba, where he served briefly as chaplain, since April 3, 2012.

The Supreme Council in New Haven chartered Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 with 59 charter members on May 6, 1967. Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 was the 31st council in Manitoba to receive its charter. Bishop Lyimo served as the Thompson council’s chaplain until June 2012. Canada’s first Knights of Columbus council – Montreal Council 284 – was chartered on Nov. 25, 1897.

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Ancient. Catholic. Africa: Tanzania’s Bishop Prosper Balthazar Lyimo to oversee the Titular Episcopal See of Vanariona in what was Mauretania Caesariensis, a Roman Empire province located in Algeria, and the Henchir Debik ancient ruin near Ksar Tyr, in neighbouring Tunisia

On Feb. 15, Father Prosper Balthazar Lyimo, will be consecrated as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Arusha in northern Tanzania in East Africa, the number two post in the archdiocese, where he will serve under the ordinary, Archbishop Josaphat Louis Lebulu. A story I wrote last Nov. 25 here on Father Prosper, according to my WordPress daily statistics, is presumably being fairly widely read in Tanzania, as these things go, relatively speaking. Even now, some 2½ months after the original blog posting on soundingsjohnbarker, I see on average one, two or three readers a day  – perhaps even slightly more this week  – logging on from Tanzanian Internet Service Providers (ISPs), as the date for Father Prosper’s episcopal ordination next Sunday is at hand.

A handful of online readers every day in Tanzania may not seem like such a big deal unless you have some idea of how vast and rugged the Archiocese of Arusha is. The Archdiocese of Arusha is an area of 67,340 square kilometres with a population of  2.364 million people, of which 512,073 are Catholics. It has 128 priests. There are 59 diocesan priests, including Father Prosper, and 69 religious from priestly congregations, including the Holy Ghost Fathers, whose presence in the archdiocese dates back to founding a mission station in Mesopotamia in 1926.

The archdiocese is named after the town of Arusha that lays at the foot of Mount Merit, one of the peaks of the Kilimanjaro Mountain Range to the west of Kibo, the highest peak of the range.
Arusha is the largest of all the archdioceses and dioceses in Tanzania, stretching some 400 kilometres southwards over the Maasai Steppes to Kiteto, bordering Morogoro and Dodoma  dioceses; 200 kilometres to the west through  Monduli over the  Ngorongoro Crater along the famous Olduvai Gorge, over the Serengeti Plains and bordering Musoma and Shinyanga dioceses; 400 kilometres northwest to Loliondo bordering Ngong Diocese in Kenya; and  300 kilometres southeastwards, bordering Moshi, Same and Tanga dioceses.

While Father Prosper has extended his former parishioners here at St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church in Thompson, Manitoba in Northern Canada, unceasing invitations to visit him in Tanzania, including for his Feb. 15 episcopal ordination, since his return home a couple of years ago after successfully defending his doctoral degree in canon law from Saint Paul University and the University of Ottawa, I have, as of yet, been unable to accept. But I do well remember receiving e-mails from Father Prosper’s personal Yahoo account, where he would apologize for the tardiness of his reply because he was out somewhere in the most rural parts of the archdiocese where electricity was often absent, never mind Internet connections to the outside world.

Father Prosper joined Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 on April 3, 2012. The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic fraternal benefit organization headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut. Its origins date back to an Oct. 2, 1881 meeting organized by Father Michael J. McGivney, the assistant pastor at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven. The Knights of Columbus, made up of Father McGivney, Matthew C. O’Connor, Cornelius T. Driscoll, James T. Mullen, John T. Kerrigan, Daniel Colwell and William M. Geary, were officially chartered by the general assembly of the State of Connecticut on March 29, 1882, as a fraternal benefit society.

The Supreme Council in New Haven chartered Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 with 59 charter members on May 6, 1967. Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 were the 31st council in Manitoba to receive its charter. Father Prosper served as the Thompson council’s chaplain until June 2012.

One of the more obscure, at least for many, duties that go with Father Prosper’s new assignment is that on Feb. 15 he also becomes titular bishop of the Titular Episcopal See of Vanariona in what was Mauretania Caesariensis, a Roman Empire province located in northwestern Africa in what is now present day Algeria, and the Henchir Debik ancient ruin near Ksar Tyr, in neighbouring Tunisia, adjacent east of Algeria. How cool is that?

As Archbishop Lebulu remains the ordinary of the Archdiocese of Arusha and Bishop Prosper will, as of Sunday, be his auxiliary bishop there, he will as be a titular bishop elsewhere in Africa. Each titular bishop is assigned to a Titular See, which in the case of Bishop Prosper, will be Vanariona in what was Mauretania Caesariensis in what is now present day Algeria, and the Henchir Debik ancient ruin near Ksar Tyr, in neighbouring Tunisia, adjacent east of Algeria.

A Titular See is a diocese that is no longer in existence. In Asia Minor and North Africa, many dioceses became defunct after they became schismatic, or when they were swept by Islam, or when they simply disappeared because the importance of those cities declined. The Apostolic See can also suppress a diocese when the number of Catholics in the diocese has declined sharply. The nomination of titular archbishops and Bishops is reserved to the Holy See. Their former title in partials infidelium was changed in 1882 to that of titular bishop. They have no jurisdiction over their titular diocese, but enjoy, with few exceptions, the privileges and honours of residential bishops.

There are currently 1,904 Titular Episcopal Sees; 1,065 have an archbishop or bishop appointed to them, while another 839 are currently vacant.

Vanariona has been without a titular archbishop or bishop since May 18, 2013. Father Prosper is set to become the fourth bishop or archbishop of Vanariona. The last incumbent was Archbishop Józef Piotr Kupny, who became archbishop of the Archdiocese of Wrocław [or Breslavia, as it is known in German] in Poland on June 16, 2013.

Before him serving in the Titular See of Vanariona, there was Patriarch Filipe Neri António Sebastião do Rosário Ferrão, archbishop of both the Latin rite Archdiocese of Goa e Damão and patriarch of the Patriarchate of East Indies; and from Jan. 5, 1968 until his death on Aug. 16, 1991, Bishop Raymond James Vonesh, a Chicago-born priest who also served as auxiliary bishop of Joliet, Illinois.

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