Within a few days of each other two Springfield Dominicans received recognition, one at the national level, and another in a six-county region of Illinois, for their respective outstanding service and leadership skills to foster and enhance quality education.

VANDALIA — Teenage boys slightly outnumbered teenage girls at a co-ed Theology of the Body teen retreat held March 26-28 at Mother of Dolors Parish. The retreat for eighth-graders through high school seniors is based on the teachings of Pope John Paul II regarding God’s plan for love and life and how a person’s body reflects the language of the love of God.

ALTON — Marquette Catholic High School will venture down the yellow brick road to the Nazarene Community Center in Roxana to perform The Wizard of Oz, April 9-11. Shows will be at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, April 11. The cast of 30 features MCHS and other students from the community in all the whimsical Oz roles in a special arrangement with Tams-Whitmark Licensing.

St. John’s Hospital in Springfield will embark upon the largest construction project in the hospital’s 135-year history, pending approval of St. John’s two Certificates of Need (CON) by the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board. St. John’s plans to build a new centralized surgery department, renovate four floors of patient rooms in the patient tower, tear down some two- and four-story buildings on the hospital’s campus, move the hospital’s main entrance from Carpenter Street to Madison Street to face downtown Springfield, and create an outdoor healing garden with fountains across from the main entrance, on the east side of the Pavilion.

ILLIOPOLIS — Though she was only 7 years old at the time, Mikayla Hady inspired others at Resurrection Parish in Illiopolis to follow her lead and give generously to help others.

DECATUR — Greeting and shaking hands with the celebrant after Sunday Mass is a common practice in most Catholic churches. But on March 21 at St. Thomas the Apostle Church, parishioners had an additional message for their parochial vicar, Father James Palakudy, SAC. “Congratulations, Father Palakudy, on becoming a United States citizen.”

Over 1,000 Catholics from throughout Illinois packed the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield to overflowing March 3 for Mass that opened “Catholics at the Capitol” day in Springfield.

A St. John’s Hospital AthletiCare sports-medicine facility will be established on the west campus of Sacred Heart-Griffin High School in Springfield as a result of a long-term collaboration between the two Catholic institutions. The new 3,800- square-foot facility will provide patients and SHG student athletes with licensed physical therapy services, athletic trainer support services, and access on site to local orthopedic surgeons.

Some 400 persons wishing to become Catholic or be fully initiated in the church participated in the Rite of Election of Catechumens and Call to Continuing Conversion of baptized candidates, held Feb. 20 and 21 at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield.

The nearly 100-year-old St. Patrick Catholic School on Springfield’s southeast side will close at the end of this school year.