St. Ita's Today
St. Ita Church, founded in 1900 in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood, currently still holds daily masses and even mass in Spanish on Thursdays to cater to their increasingly Hispanic community. This willingness to adapt to the changing demography of Edgewater is also reflected in the Ge'ez Rite mass celebrated on the first Sunday of the month for Edgewater’s fledgling Eritrean community. The church also hosts meals, such as their pancake breakfast, as a means to fundraise and foster community within the church and broader parish. Most recently, they hosted a St. Patrick’s Day pancake breakfast after mass. In addition to their pancake breakfasts, St. Ita hosts monthly game nights for young adults, coffee socials, crafting groups, rights of Christian initiation, and other social organizations for parishioners with many taking place directly after mass. These weekend activities seem to keep a sense of community among attendees of St. Ita Church even in the broader context of a larger parish. The church is now also home to the parish school, St. Thomas of Canterbury Catholic School, further demonstrating the way these three churches have melded their services in the wake of their merging.
St. Ita's church hosts many events on the behalf of Mary, Mother of God for both parishioners and non parishioners alike; one of their more popular events is their Pancake breakfast. Parishioners are invited to gather after Sunday mass and eat breakfast with one another. This event was hosted in March of 2024 by the Knights of Columbus, a charitable Catholic fraternal organization. The breakfast serves as a way to keep the parish community alive and united, as well as to get Parishioners who perhaps may come from one of the two other parishes to get to know each other. The breakfast also serves to further St. Ita's longstanding tradition as a fund raising center for its community, and now for the whole Mary, Mother of God Parish.