Northwest Catholic: A decade of inspiring, forming disciples

It’s hard for us to believe it’s been 10 years since Northwest Catholic magazine was launched in September 2013.

In the decade since, we’ve brought you uplifting stories of Catholics finding and living out their faith, thought-provoking columns, useful faith-building content, the latest from the archbishop and more.

Our companion website, NWCatholic.org, brings you the newsier side of things — including local, national, international and Vatican news and features, columnists, movie reviews, local obituaries and even a Catholic crossword puzzle! (Learn more about our digital platforms.)

“It is so important for people to stay in touch with the Church today when there are so many other demands and distractions,” said Archbishop Paul D. Etienne. “Northwest Catholic magazine is a great source of articles and resources to help people not only stay in touch, but even grow in their faith.”

The archdiocese is “blessed,” he said, “to have such a great staff who publish such a quality Catholic publication.”

Why did we start a magazine?

Although our predecessor, the 100-plus-year-old Catholic Northwest Progress, was popular with subscribers, there were less than 8,000 of them in an archdiocese with hundreds of thousands of Catholics.

In 2013, then-Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, with the support of the archdiocesan Presbyteral Council, decided to go a different direction: create a magazine, focused on evangelization, that would be sent free of charge to every registered Catholic household in Western Washington.

“Evangelization is an invitation to delve more deeply into the faith, and the magazine will seek to be that kind of invitation,” Archbishop Sartain said in announcing the magazine.

Originally published 10 times a year, today Northwest Catholic is mailed six times a year to 110,000 registered households. The magazine is supported by parishes, the Annual Catholic Appeal, the Northwest Catholic Collection and our advertisers. It is written entirely  by local contributors.

Our work is guided by our mission statement: “Proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ to Catholics in Western Washington to teach, inspire, and form disciples who know the Lord and live their faith to the full.”

As we begin our second decade,  we hope Northwest Catholic continues inspiring your faith!

Northwest Catholic reconnected with some of the people whose stories have resonated with readers over the years. Click the images and links below to learn what they’re doing now.

Now a U.S. citizen, Mateo Santiago continues helping his native Guatemala

As an undocumented 18-year-old, Mateo Santiago made the dangerous overland journey from Guatemala to the U.S. in 1999, hoping to find a way to help support his parents and siblings. Some 23 years later, in May 2022, Santiago became a U.S. citizen. Two months later, his wife Reyna and daughter Abigail (Abby) received visas and came to the U.S., ending a four-year wait for the family to be together year-round. The couple welcomed their second daughter, Isabel, in 2023. 

It’s the latest chapter in Santiago’s story, shared with Northwest Catholic readers (“Risking life, trusting God”)  in the January/February 2018 issue. Read more about Mateo’s life today.

‘Ora et labora’ on Shaw Island

In 2015, Northwest Catholic readers were greeted with one of our more memorable covers — a nun milking a cow. Inside that July/August issue, readers met the Benedictine nuns of Our Lady of the Rock Monastery.

We told the story of these semi-cloistered women living, working and praying on 300 acres on remote Shaw Island in northwestern Washington (“Ora et labora: On Shaw Island, Benedictine nuns share lives of work, prayer and hospitality”).

Find out what the nuns have been up to the past eight years. Click here.

From ‘soup lady’ to ‘angel friend’

When readers met Christine Schoeler in our March 2019 issue, she was serving up soup in the kitchen at St. Hubert Parish in Langley, on Whidbey Island.

It was a community ministry inspired by a Scripture reading during the Easter Vigil: “Come without money, come without price,” Schoeler said, paraphrasing the verse in our story (“Soup’s on! Christine Schoeler warms souls with her soup ministry and joy-filled spirit”). “It has everything to do with feeding people,” she said.

Learn how the soup ministry pivoted during the pandemic and how Christine is serving today. Click here.

Finding roots of family, faith in return to Vietnam

On Dec. 25, 1982, Hien (Henry) Tran and his 9-year-old son Can (Eric) embarked on a dangerous sea voyage, seeking freedom from the communist regime in Vietnam. Forty years later, in December 2022, Eric Tran returned to Vietnam with his wife Theresa and four sons, ages 7 to 13, on what he called a “roots-finding mission.”

The stories of local Catholics who escaped Vietnam, including Tran and his father, were told in the September 2015 issue of Northwest Catholic to mark the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon (“Waves of Hope — Forty years ago, Vietnamese Catholics began heading to sea in search of freedom”).

Read the latest about Eric and Henry.

Vashon coffin maker expands business and ‘evangelical reach’

It was the simple wood coffin of Pope John Paul II in 2005 that sparked something in Marcus Daly. The landscaper and wooden boatbuilder turned that spark into Marian Caskets, the business he and his family began in their Vashon Island woodworking shop.

Daly cuts, sands and glues each wooden coffin and prays for the person it’s for. Most caskets are carved with the Marian cross, the concluding prayer from the Divine Mercy chaplet — “Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, Have Mercy on Us” — and the Divine Mercy message, “Jesus, I Trust in You.”

“Getting to spend all this time this close to a really hard reality that God has allowed, ultimately for our own good, has given me a privileged place to go deeper and deeper and deeper into a mystery,” he told Northwest Catholic (“The coffinmaker”) in the November 2016 issue.

To find out where Marcus has opened a second workshop to expand his “evangelical reach,” click here.