State Deputy Message - October

October 8, 2017
Brothers,
Those Knights in Tucson should already be aware but for the rest of our Members, we now have a new Bishop in Tucson. Bishop Gerald Kicanas submitted his notice of retirement to the Pontiff when he turned 75 last year, as required by Cannon Law. On Tuesday October 3, 2017 Bishop Edward Weisenburger was introduced as the next Bishop of Tucson. Bishop Weisenburger was Bishop of Salinas, Kansas prior to this announcement. He is a Fourth Degree Knight of Columbus and the Kansas State Deputy Vince Melvin has let me know the Bishop is a strong supporter of the Knights.

We will miss Bishop Kicanas, who has been a friend and champion of the Knights of Columbus since his arrival in Tucson. District Master Bryant Sayers and I were honored and privileged to be invited by Bishop Kicanas to be present at the announcement.

We have now completed the first quarter of this Fraternal Year. How is your Council doing? Are you conducting programs that support your Pastor and our goal of Building the Domestic Church in support of our Parishes? Are you using these programs to attract or create interest among men in your Parish to join our Order as we support our Parishes and fulfill the vision of our Founder Father Michael J. McGivney? Have you recruited a new member and held an Admission Degree this quarter? It is not too early to work toward your Star Council, Star District and other Supreme Awards.

For the first three months of this year we have added 166 new members as Arizona Knights. This does not count those men that transferred to Arizona from other states. This is great! We are a little short of the goals we set but with October beginning I am confident we will get back on track.

October is traditionally a big month for the Knights of Columbus. We hold our Fall Church and Membership Drives in October. We are also the major sponsor of the annual Arizona Rosary Celebration as well as conducting our PWID drives. This is a great month to show prospective members how we are active in both support of those in our communities and that we are fully engaged in the spiritual side as we publicly proclaim our devotion to Jesus through Mary with recitation of the Rosary.

Your District Deputies should by now have made you aware of some information we will be gathering for our October membership drives. If they have not yet talked with you about this, give them a call so you will be ready when they ask you at the end of the month how things went.

In the next few days our State Program Director Larry Powers will be sending out information from our various State Chairman related to the different programs that Supreme, the State, and Councils can plan for over the next few months. Going forward we will have the various State Chairman work through Larry Arizona State Council Knights of Columbus Office of State Deputy to present broadcast messages to the Councils and state membership. I also encourage you to visit both our state website: www.azknightsofcolumbus.org and the Supreme website www.kofc.org on a regular basis. Almost all the messages we send out are also listed on our State Website.

I trust by now the Councils have received their supply of the Fraternal Leader Success Planner. I apologize on behalf of the Order for the delay in getting these to the Councils. Supreme tried a new process this year of sending them directly to the Councils rather than to the State Deputy. As with many initial undertakings this endeavor did bring to light some logistic difficulties.

Even though these were delayed in getting to you, I encourage you to begin using them right away. History has shown that setting goals, tracking progress and planning produce better results. You will see that the October highlighted program is the Holy Family Prayer Program. We have two images of the Holy Family in Arizona along with the prayer programs to be used to host a Parish or group prayer event. District Master Bryant Sayers or State Family Director David Fischer can provide you additional information and arrange for one of the images to come to your Council.

As your Council conducts and reports your PWID activity I ask that you help our State Council and State Treasurer. Councils submit a list of the groups they wish their portion of the PWID proceeds to be directed to. In the past we have prepared the checks made out to these groups but sent them to the Councils for you to present to your charities. Unfortunately, there are still many checks that have not been deposited. We are looking at sending these directly to your designated recipients. This should cut down on the number of checks lost or misplaced. There comes a point in time that funds not used are considered abandoned and the State Council will donate the money elsewhere and not reissue the checks.

This week we will have our Supreme Membership & Program Consultant Pat Maloney traveling in Arizona to present some training for Council Officers and members. We have not had high turnout in the past. We have sent several reminders about these sessions. We are looking to do at least two more rounds this year. Let your District Deputies know what type of additional training you are interested in receiving so we can plan further in advance. We need to build stronger Programs and recruit more Members to work with us as we do the work that Knights do. Remember to sign up and participate in the Supreme Training Webinars. The next one is October 18th and Supreme will be presenting this one beginning at two different times to accommodate Knights nationwide.

Finally, I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at one of this month’s Arizona Rosary Celebrations. Because the money sent for sponsorship ads in the Program book were down this year I ask that you, and those you invite to attend with you, be generous in donating at the events when we take up a collection to support this event.

Vivat Jesus,

Sean Halpain
State Deputy