THELEAVEN.ORG | VOL. 40, NO. 13 | NOVEMBER 2, 2018
St. John Paul II
LEAVEN PHOTO BY MOIRA CULLINGS
Martin Faith, founder and CEO of Scottish Stained Glass, looks over a design in his workshop. SSG was commissioned in May 2017 to produce the stained-glass windows at Santa Marta retirement community in Olathe. Dallas-based Maria Sheets was the artist who painted the windows.
BEHIND THE GLASS
The story of the Santa Marta windows By Olivia Martin olivia.martin@theleaven.org
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LATHE — Santa Marta retirement community here houses a valuable treasure, practically secret to the outside world. It’s not a chest of silver and there’s no “X” that marks the spot. But a visit to Santa Marta’s small chapel is all it takes to discover the community’s masterpieces: three hand-painted stained-glass windows depicting St. John Paul II, St. Teresa of Calcutta and St. John XXIII.
St. Teresa of Calcutta
St. John XXIII
How a stained-glass window is made • Windows are designed using sketches and computer programs. • Sheets of glass are cut and sent to the painter.
The process
• The glass is painted and fired, and the surrounding glass design is cut. • The glass is shipped to the workshop for assembly. • The glass pieces are put together with molten lead and tin mix. Joints are soldered together.
Tithing with art
• The window is shipped to its destination and installed.
Known for bridging divisions, no better examples of Christianity in the modern world could have been chosen than St. John Paul II, St. Teresa of Calcutta and St. John XXIII. According to Msgr. Raymond Burger, chaplain of Santa Marta at the time of the commissioning of the windows, a group of Santa Marta residents collectively chose these saints to be rendered.
“They wanted modern saints,” said Msgr. Burger, “so it was only appropriate that they chose those three.” Originally, the donation of the windows was anonymous. However, it was revealed in September that the donors were Betty and Tom Zarse, late residents of Santa Marta. “My dad was a believer in tithing,” said Robert Zarse, son of Tom and
New Leaven series
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Betty and a parishioner of Holy Trinity Parish in Lenexa. Faithfully setting aside 10 percent of their income for their parish annually and responding to the church’s needs came naturally to the Zarses. And the Santa Marta windows were simply the fruits of that generosity.
his week The Leaven kicks off a series of articles about the clergy sexual abuse crisis and what steps the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas is doing
to ensure the safety of its parishioners. The series, called “Safeguarding the Faithful,” starts on page 16 (where the stories will usually appear) with how priests’ morale has been affected by the crisis.
Commissioned in May 2017, the windows were created by Scottish Stained Glass (SSG) using the same method and craftmanship used for hundreds of years. With branches across the United States, the creation of the windows was a national team effort that began in Kansas City. Megan Hessman, senior designer for SSG, worked directly with Santa Marta and then-anonymous donor Tom Zarse to arrive at the design. “Tom was a very insightful person to work with,” said Hessman. “He wanted everything balanced and . . . wanted the saints to look like they were floating.” In choosing a clear glass design that matches the lattice tiling in the chapel, Hessman and Zarse created a design that unified the chapel. >> See “CONTEMPORARY” on page 7
But in this issue, look for a story on archdiocesan report investigator Jan Saylor on page 5, and Father Mark Goldasich’s take on the crisis on page 14.