Rev. Ronald Raab, C.S.C., has been awarded first place for magazine columns by the Canadian Church Press.
He was recognized May 11 in Toronto, Canada, at the organization’s 2012 Convention.
Fr. Raab, who was ordained a Holy Cross priest in 1983, is Associate Pastor of St. Andre Bessette Church-Downtown Chapel in Portland, Ore., one of the missions of Holy Cross.He hosts a weekly radio Scripture commentary and is an active retreat director, workshop presenter, blogger and author. He contributes regularly to several liturgy magazines.
The Canadian Church Press honored Fr. Raab for three columns in “Celebrate!:” “Getting Our Feet Wet” (Spring 2011); “Message in a Bottle” (Summer 2011); and “Off The Wall“(Fall 2011). The judge said of Fr. Raab’s work: “The author writes from a powerful place – his own perspective – and never lets the reader forget that. First-person writing of this form is tricky, because the writer runs the risk of not relating his own experiences to those of the reader. No such issue here, as time and again, theauthor succeeds in relating his experiences to those any of us might have encountered within our lives. His voice is very real, very engaging, and I couldn’t stop reading piece after piece.”
Fr. Raab has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy (1978), a Master of Divinity (1982) and a master’s in liturgical studies (1990), all from the University of Notre Dame. He has served in ministry in a variety of parish and mission settings, including St. Joseph Church, South Bend, Ind.; Sacred Heart Church, Colorado Springs, Colo.; St. Elizabeth Parish, Portland; and St. Francis Xavier Parish, Burbank, Calif. He also has served at the Office of Divine Worship in Chicago and at Fatima Retreat Center at Notre Dame.
