OLW Parish

Our Lady of the Wayside Parish is a Roman Catholic community of almost 3,000 households who live in and serve the Arlington Heights, Illinois area in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. We are committed to our Faith, which is illustrated through our worship, our school, our Stewardship, and our participation in a wide variety of religious and social activity.  

Our parish strives to live the message and mission of Jesus. We do this by building a nurturing Catholic community through prayer, service, and celebration.

Father Arthur Marat first came to Our Lady of the Wayside in January 2020 after being on sabbatical in Rome. Then he was assigned to our parish as an Administrator before being officially names Pastor. He was ordained a priest in 1988 and is a Canon lawyer. Before becoming Pastor at OLW, he was  Pastor at St. Barbara Parish. 

Below are some excerpts from the Parish’s Getting to Know Father Arthur series:
“One of my key missions as your new pastor is to sanctify and enrich the spiritual lives of married couples and families at Our Lady of the Wayside. Families centered in Christ are perhaps the most effective evangelists in our Church today.”

Father Arthur grew up in Poland. He has one younger brother and four niece and nephews who live in Poland. He also has several cousins who live in Glenview. Growing up, his favorite subject was always history, especially the Middle Ages. “it was a fascinating time in history,” he says. As a boy, he also enjoyed playing soccer with neighbors in his backyard. “My brother and I would go rock climbing and hiking in the Polish mountains, and I would ride my bike on the trails around Bialystok.”

About his call to the priesthood, Father Arthur says, “Many different factors contributed to my decision to follow a call to the priesthood. At the heart of my vocation was a very important woman: my grandmother, Susan. When I was a child, she would take my brother and me to Mass at the nearby parish or at the chapel where Fr. Michael Sopocko celebrated the Eucharist in Bialystok, Poland. Fr. Sopocko was St. Faustina’s spiritual director and still alive when I was a child and teenager. I know that my grandmother prayed for me, and I think that my vocation is partly the fruit of her prayers in my intention. Another very powerful and spiritually touching experience occurred in my life and the life of Poles during my sophomore year of high school: Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected and became Pope John Paul II. It was a patriotic moment that I will never forget—a moment that planted in me a desire to do something meaningful in my life.”

To learn more about Our Lady of the Wayside Parish, please visit http://www.olwparish.org.