A Nod to Home’s Irish Past, March for Kids Builds Futures

March 17, 2026

The St. Patrick’s Day season is always an occasion for sometimes boisterous celebrations throughout Chicago. But for Mercy Home for Boys & Girls, it’s a special time to celebrate our history while spreading public awareness about our work. This annual celebration falls under the umbrella known today as March for Kids. But the origin of the program goes back decades, and thematically, it pays homage to the Home’s own Irish Catholic roots. 

Mercy Home was greenlit, if you forgive the pun, by an Irish immigrant to America, Chicago’s first Archbishop, Patrick Feehan. Feehan’s tenure as Archbishop coincided with both the rebuilding of the city following the Great Chicago Fire and the explosion in population that the city experienced as it grew into a major industrial hub. 

Hundreds of thousands were drawn to this new center of opportunity both from lands overseas and across the nation’s interior. Many left their family farms, often hopping aboard the rail cars that converged in Chicago. And many of these newcomers were unaccompanied children. But rather than finding fortune, too many found hardship in the city’s unforgiving streets.

So, in 1886, Feehan discussed the growing crisis of homeless children in the city at a dinner with a group of Catholic priests.  Father Dennis Mahoney, on loan to Chicago from a parish in Boston, had experience working with Polish immigrant children at St. Stanislaus parish and proposed the idea that would soon become Mercy Home. The next year, the small orphanage formally set up shop above a Catholic Library in Chicago’s financial district before moving to its permanent home on the city’s Near West Side a few years later.

From Mercy Home’s founding fathers, to the succession of Catholic priests who have led the Home over the course of its 139-year history, each one has been of Irish descent, including its current President, Fr. Scott Donahue, who was inducted into the Irish American Hall of Fame in 2019.

Now, every March, the fabric of this Irish tradition unfolds with great pageantry, as Mercy Home and Chicago celebrate St. Patrick’s Day for weeks. Among the city-wide festivities a familiar presence has made itself known for well over two decades: Mercy Home for Boys & Girls’ March for Kids.

The program has evolved over the years, and in fact carried many different names. Today it features an online donation campaign that runs throughout the entire month and leverages a matching gift. It’s a special opportunity for donors to double their impact on the young people in our care, especially since we raise 100% of our resources privately.

The program’s more festive elements are concentrated in the days surrounding  leading up to the city’s big parades and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. After a Mercy Home contingent marched in the Chicago St. Patrick’s Day Parade, for instance, it held its popular annual Post Parade Party at a venue just steps away from the parade route. The family-friendly gathering featured live Irish music and step dancers, great food and refreshments for adults and kids alike, plus carnival games for the young ones, face painters and so much more.

The next day, young women from our girls home marched in the annual South Side Irish Parade, considered the largest community-based St. Patrick’s Day parades outside of Dublin.

The festivities also give us the chance to welcome our good friends from County Cork who visit the Home each year and host a group of our young people in Ireland every few summers. You can read more about our young people’s 10-day adventure last summer here. 

March for Kids also helps us share our story with the public, so we can invite more friends to support our work. Media partners ABC7 Chicago and country radio station US99 are promoting our efforts this month. 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! However you celebrate, we hope it is truly special. And we invite you to make your support for our boys and girls go twice as far by donating to March for Kids. It’s a great way to make a difference this St. Patrick’s Day.