November 20, 2008

Building the faith, one small card at a time

JULIE S. BETTINGER | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 08.15.08

TALLAHASSEE | Pete Bond grew up working in the family-owned Alpha Data Systems in Tallahassee, a wholesale printing and business forms company. He recalls as a 12-year-old working 40 hours a week during the summer and pitching in as much as possible during the school year. After graduating from Florida State University with a degree in marketing, he continued to work for his father, Chuck Bond, handling the commercial print work, while quietly developing mostly Internet-based side businesses.

A cradle Catholic, he said went through a difficult time in his life about seven years ago and turned to his faith for strength. He spent a lot of time in prayer and started writing down what came to him out of his heart. Recognizing that others going through their own trials might use the prayers, he decided to print them on the back of small cards with art on the reverse side. He left these in churches and in Tallahassee’s Guadalupe Catholic bookstore, free of charge, with contact information.

Calls and orders started coming in and he added to the designs, responding to requests for particular saints. His therapeutic writing venture led to the start of a family business, San Pedro Publishing (after his namesake, St. Peter), which morphed into CatholicPrayerCards.org. The mostly online business now includes hand-tied, custom-designed rosaries; about 100 different religious medals; plus small crucifixes, novena books and Catholic stationery. The prayer cards have also multiplied. In the last two years, Bond went from 19 different designs to 97.

Bond imports his medals in large quantities, uses many to adorn rosaries, and ships the rest to religious goods stores, Catholic schools, parishes and to individual customers. A percentage of the profits go toward providing free medals, rosary rings and other religious articles to a Catholic mission group that distributes them all over the world.

Prayer cards are similarly tied to charitable giving: Bond suggests a 25-cent donation for each prayer card, and the sale of each card provides another 20 to be distributed free to missions, military men and women, and to those who cannot afford them.

Bond’s wife, Cathy, helps with proofreading and design of the cards and strings beads on the rosaries. Bond’s two oldest children, Gabriel, age 10, and Eve, age 9, help in putting together “sampler packs” of the prayer cards. The family spends time during the week creating them in assembly-line fashion at the kitchen table. They take turns with occupying the two youngest children – Joseph, age 2½, and newborn Patrick Kolbe, born July 28.

There is, of course, a motivator: “A nickel from every sale is going to a Rome fund, for our family to go to Rome,” Bond said.

Each time Bond receives an e-mail or a phone call from someone requesting a particular prayer card, he asks how he or she received the first one and is often surprised. Many times, it’s not a location or place to which he has shipped previously and it makes him wonder who else had that card and passed it along.

“In some way, I think we all want to leave something for the next generation,” he said. “And to think that people all over the world are reading a prayer or an inspiration that came out of my struggles – that’s a real consolation.”

The way the cards develop “isn’t an exact science,” he admitted, “it just happens.” It might start with a request for a prayer, for example, for married couples. He may find a quote or write a prayer first, and then search for artwork that fits. It happens just as often the other way around – he finds artwork that speaks to him and he writes a prayer or finds quotes to go on the other side.

“We have such a rich heritage of Catholic art,” he said. “I prefer photographs for the cards when I can get them, because I think that really helps capture the humanity of the saints.”

SACRAMENTS AND PRAYER AT THE CENTER

Bond has been attending daily Mass for nearly eight years. He reads the Magnificat magazine during his two “bookends,” morning and evening prayer. At 3 p.m., the mercy hour, you can usually find him praying a Divine Mercy chaplet, whether he’s at his “day job” at Alpha Data Systems, handling the affairs of his side businesses, or at home.

Creating CatholicPrayerCards.org has helped Bond live out his faith, he said. “The Catholic laity have two main roles in the life of the church – one is evangelization and the other is catechesis. We try to do both in those prayer cards – evangelize and teach.”

In May 2007, Bond felt called to ask for the blessing of Bishop John H. Ricard, SSJ because of the development of his business. After receiving it, Bond was encouraged to ask for the Holy Father’s blessing. He sent samples of prayer cards and other work with a letter to Pope Benedict XVI last fall, with help of the bishop’s office. This past Good Friday, Bishop Ricard surprised Bond with an “apostolic blessing” from the pope, coming in the way of an official document.

“I have it hanging in my office to remind me whom I’m working for,” he said.

The business continues to evolve as Catholics discover it as a way to celebrate their faith. For example, Bond recently added personalized, custom-made first holy Communion, wedding and other event holy cards as a service. It was a natural evolution since he is in the wholesale printing business, which means he can offer high-quality cards with full-color images in small quantities.

This new venture means, of course, that more nickels are coming into CatholicPrayerCards.org, so the Bond family is growing hopeful about traveling to see the pope.

“We can go to Rome now,” Bond quipped. “We just need to work on getting back.”

 

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