Angels Place Receives Cardinals Encouragement Award

13 June 1997

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ngels Place, an Oakland County, Mich., organization that provides homes and supportive care for adults with development disabilities, was the recipient of the Eighth American Cardinals Encouragement Award.

Loretta Nagle, a founder of Angels Place, accepted the award at the Eighth American Cardinals Dinner at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dearborn, Mich.

The award recognizes faith-based initiatives that reflect gospel values. It is presented each year by the American Catholic cardinals at the dinner that benefits financial aid for students at The Catholic University of America, the national university of the Catholic Church. Angels Place was founded in 1992 by Nagle, Annemarie Lopez, Rosemary Kelly, Margaret Prentice and Margaret Maxwell. The project stemmed from a conversation between Nagle and Lopez, both nurses, in which Lopez expressed concern about the future of her own daughter with developmental disabilities. By garnering the support of friends in the community, the first of four Angels Place homes opened in 1994 in West Bloomfield Township, Mich.

The homes provide care for people with developmental disabilities whose families can no longer care for them because of age, illness or death. Many of these families have exhausted their physical and emotional strength, as well as their financial resources, said Nagle. Ultimately, the death of both parents can be a life-threatening situation.

Cardinal Adam J. Maida, the archbishop of Detroit and a Catholic University trustee, said, "The people behind Angels Place have a great commitment to Christian values. Their witness to the dignity of every human life deserves recognition and encouragement."

The American Cardinals Dinner honors the American Catholic Church cardinals who are among the Church's highest-ranking prelates and whose duties include electing the pope. The event benefits financial aid programs at the university, the only university established by the U.S. Catholic Church bishops.

In addition to Cardinal Maida , the other cardinals honored were:

• James A. Hickey, archbishop of Washington, chancellor of Catholic University and a university alumnus
• Bernard Law, archbishop of Boston and chairman of the university's Board of Trustees
• John J. O'Connor, archbishop of New York and a university trustee and alumnus
• Anthony J. Bevilacqua, archbishop of Philadelphia and university trustee
• Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles and a university alumnus
• William H. Keeler, archbishop of Baltimore and a university trustee

Previous Cardinals Encouragement Award winners are:

• Richard Bautista, a 13-year-old Whittier, Calif., shooting victim who asked the people of Los Angeles to pray for his attackers
• Sister Eileen Smith, S.S.J., director of St. Vincent's Dining room in Philadelphia
• Sister Carol Keehan, D.C., president and chief executive officer of Providence Hospital, Washington, D.C.
• Anne Burns, who coordinates a family AIDS project in Dorchester, Mass.
• Suzy Yehl Marta of Palatine, Ill, founder of Rainbows for All God's Children, an organization that helps children deal with death
• Sister Mary Rose McGeady, D.C., president and chief executive officer of Covenant House in New York City
• Helen Mariano Connolly, president and executive director of the Archdiocese of Boston's Good Samaritan Hospice

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Revised: 27 October 1997

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