ST. JUDE'S APOSTOLATE
Undoubtedly, St. Jude Apostolate, with its popularity reaching all the nooks and crannies of the country has become the most popular Apostolate of the Dominicans at St. Dominic's.
It was started 41 years ago in 1959 by Brother Stephen Lucas, then a 27 year-old man of strong Catholic family from Racine, Wisconsin, in the United States.
Brother Stephen entered religious life at age 20, took his vows 7 years later (July 1959) and came to Nigeria in October of the same year, eight years after the Dominicans arrived in the country and one year before the country gained its independence.
St. Jude was started soon after the arrival of Brother Stephen, who brought with him, the experience he had gained from being at the St. Jude's Shrine in Chicago, USA.
Presently, there are 480 Charters in various Parishes across the country and even beyond to Togo, Ghana, and Republic of Benin. There will soon be a Nigerian Chartered Shrine in Chicago.
St. Jude's Apostolate has a National Shrine domiciled at St. Dominic's. St. Dominic's is also the National Headquarters of the society.
For over 40 years that it has been in existence, St. Jude has become well known, its regular Novenas and people have benefitted through the intervention of the Blessed Saint.
The first St. Jude Shrine was built outdoors and it had the Statue of Mart. The Statue proved to be the most photographed in Nigeria since every wedding and baptismal party posed in front of it.
VERITAS STUDIOS
The objective for the setting up of the Veritas Studio is to have a centre for preaching by means of the electronic media.
It is envisaged that an audio recording studio will be the initial take off point with the minimum requisite equipment for good quality production of audio materials both on cassette tapes and CDs and will be open to the public for use at a charge and also for the Dominican production which would consist of production of audio tapes and CDs of talks, retreats, devotions, novena etc, which will be mass-produced and sold to the public.
The centre would also co-ordinate the airing of Dominicans productions on government or private radio stations and would also source for other adequate materials that would be aired on the radio (e.g. from the St. Joseph's Catholic radio, USA and other Catholic radio stations)
The centre is expected to be self-financing from the proceeds of the services rendered to the public, from sales of Dominican publications and also from sponsorships.
A worthwhile apostolate for the Dominicans and the Church in general, the first step of action would be to take the Veritas Studio up as a project of the Province and to charge a friar or friars with bringing it on stream.
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