{"id":193917,"date":"2018-12-14T06:11:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=193917"},"modified":"2018-12-14T06:11:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-14T11:11:00","slug":"priest-travels-us-spreading-gospel-1-good-deed-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/12\/14\/priest-travels-us-spreading-gospel-1-good-deed-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Priest travels US spreading Gospel 1 good deed at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Father Jim Sichko has a 50-state congregation and a simple mandate from the pope: Go forth and do good deeds. (File Photo<\/a>: Father Jim Sichko\/Twitter<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LOS ANGELES \u2014 Father Jim Sichko has a 50-state congregation and a simple mandate from the pope: Go forth and do good deeds.<\/p>\n

That’s why the Roman Catholic priest found himself standing by the drive-thru of a popular Hollywood fast-food joint on a recent windy, rain-swept afternoon buying lunch for everyone who stopped by. The next day he’d be at a gas station in Kentucky, topping off people’s tanks. Then it would be on to Arizona where he would \u2014 well, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d do there, but he’d think of something.<\/p>\n

At a Starbucks last Christmas, he tipped each of the baristas $100 after learning the annual brouhaha over whether the coffee chain’s holiday cups are Christmassy enough had caused tips to plummet.<\/p>\n

Sichko is a papal missionary of mercy, a rarified group of 700 from around the world, including several from the United States, who were appointed directly by Pope Francis in celebration of a \u201cJubilee of Mercy\u201d that began in December 2015 and has since been extended indefinitely.<\/p>\n

Missionaries were assigned to travel the world spreading kindness, forgiveness, joy and mercy to everyone they encountered. Some responded by using their newly granted authority from the pope to perform confession and forgiveness of sins basically anywhere at any time. Others took to radio airwaves or retreats to offer messages of joy.<\/p>\n

Sichko, a Kentucky-based preacher, came up with an idea different from the others and got his bishop at the Diocese of Lexington to sign off on it: He’d travel his country performing random acts of kindness in all 50 states.<\/p>\n

He’s provided groceries for half a year to a man with HIV and paid for medical services for a struggling Muslim family. This Christmas, he’s headed to an elementary school in Corbin, Kentucky, where more than a quarter of the population lives in poverty. There he’ll surprise the school’s 100 second-graders with shiny new bicycles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first question people ask is, ‘Why are you doing this?\u201d’ Sichko says between bites of his double-double cheeseburger at the crowded In N’ Out restaurant down the street from the Hollywood Walk of Fame where he’d just bought lunch for everybody.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy question,\u201d the balding, bespectacled 51-year-old cleric adds with a smile, \u201cis why not?<\/p>\n

\u201cMy approach is not so much speaking about the word of God, although I do a lot of that, but showing the presence of God through acts of kindness that kind of shock the individual and kind of cause them to, maybe cause them to stop for a little bit,\u201d he said. \u201cOr maybe, which I hope, to again bring kindness to others.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is candid in saying the church itself has much work to do in restoring its image after years of priestly sex and pedophilia scandals that he calls \u201chorrific and tragic and disgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of atonement to be doing,\u201d he says, adding that shocking people with random acts of kindness can be a first step in that direction.<\/p>\n

To say he shocked his lunchtime In N’ Out crowd would be a bit of an understatement.<\/p>\n

One woman, overlooking his white clerical collar, asked Sichko if he was a politician.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I’m not a politician. I’m a priest,\u201d he replied, nearly doubling over with laughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow did this happen,\u201d a stunned Hardy Patel asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust decided. I’m in a good mood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEarly Christmas?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou got it. Pay it forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI will do, I will do,\u201d Patel told him before driving off with his cheeseburger, then circling back to thank Sichko personally and take a selfie with him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere’s my selfie with the pope,\u201d Sichko told Luis Tostado a few minutes earlier as they posed for one by Tostado’s Chevy Silverado.<\/p>\n

Shichko’s selfie shows him standing next to Francis as the pontiff cradles a bottle of 23-year-old Pappy Van Winkle Kentucky bourbon the priest gave him during a visit to the Vatican. He isn’t sure if the pope is a bourbon man, but if not, the smile on Francis’ face indicates he does have a sense of humour.<\/p>\n

Sichko says he still doesn’t know why the pontiff, who had never met him until 2015, chose him as a papal missionary of mercy. Ordained 20 years ago \u2014 \u201cI always wanted to become a priest, ever since I was a little kid\u201d \u2014 he was the pastor at St. Mark Catholic Church in Richmond, Kentucky, when he got the call.<\/p>\n

Now he spends five days a week on the road paying for burgers and bicycles and handing out hundred-dollar bills, like the one he slipped 17-year-old Nicholas Vadi when he learned the teenager and his mom were celebrating Vadi’s birthday at the fast-food restaurant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI raise my own salary, living expense, insurance, everything,\u201d Sichko says, adding he sends out \u201cappeal letters\u201d twice a year to parishioners and raises the rest from paid inspirational speaking engagements.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I give it away,\u201d he says, laughing.<\/p>\n

Recently he’s started marketing \u201cMiss Marie’s All Natural Spaghetti Sauce\u201d online and hopes to get it into stores shortly. But even the money from that goes to help others. It’s divided among a Texas hospice that cared for his late mother, for which the sauce is named, and a church program to benefit the poor in Appalachia.<\/p>\n

It was his mother and her sauce, Sichko says, that likely ingrained in him the desire to help others. Every Tuesday she’d whip up a batch and serve it over pasta for lunch to the hungry garbage collectors who worked the route in their neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

Now he’s using it to keep her memory alive and to help spread the Gospel to Catholics and non-Catholics alike.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not just a Catholic thing,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is a human event.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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