ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (OSV News) — Karen Callaway, longtime photo editor for the Chicago Catholic, received the 2026 St. Francis de Sales Award from the Catholic Media Association at a luncheon on the final day of its annual conference June 16-19 in Atlantic City.
It is the highest award the CMA presents to an individual for “outstanding contributions to Catholic journalism.”
“I’m humbled and honored. It’s a big surprise,” she said in accepting the award via a video message from — appropriately — Chicago, where she was outside the childhood home of Pope Leo XIV in the south suburb of Dolton, Illinois.
Callaway paid tribute to her fellow nominees for this year’s “Franny,” as the award is often called: Mike Krokos, editor of The Criterion, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis; and Joe Towalski, former communications director of the Diocese of St. Cloud, Minnesota, who was longtime editor of the diocesan publication, now called The Central Minnesota Catholic magazine. Towalski is the diocese’s chancellor and chief of staff.
“I share this with you. You’re both awesome,” she said.
Callaway’s photojournalism “has shown that the faith is never boring. It is moving, exciting, emotional, electric, awe inspiring, but never ever boring,” Joyce Duriga, editor of Chicago Catholic, said in the letter nominating Callaway for the Franny. “Karen has a gift for capturing moments that go straight to the heart of the viewers. This is a skill that cannot be taught. It is a gift that comes from the soul.”
“Karen’s work touches every corner of the Archdiocese of Chicago and reaches far beyond it,” Duriga wrote.
Callaway thanked the entire Chicago Catholic staff, including Duriga and staff writer Michelle Martin, as well as the Chicago archdiocesan communications department. She also said she was grateful to Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich and his predecessor, the late Cardinal Francis E. George, for “supporting our paper.”
She also thanked many other Catholic press colleagues, including Nancy Wiechec, former visual media manager and photos and graphics editor for Catholic News Service, and Paul Haring, former photographer at the CNS Rome bureau who now works with the Knights of Columbus.
Callaway had special praise for her first Catholic press editor, Brian Olszewski, who “gave me my first job when I was 23 years old and didn’t know what I was doing.”
“I have forgiven you for putting the Holy Family (statue) in the darkroom to scare me,” she said about Olszewski, who was editor and general manager of the Northwest Indiana Catholic for the Diocese of Gary, Indiana, in those years.
She also acknowledged her mentor, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist John H. White of the Chicago Sun-Times, who has called her photos “visual blessings.” White was an instructor at Columbia College in Chicago where she was a student.
“He showed us the responsibility and the privilege of seeing through God’s eyes and treating … people with respect and dignity and knowing that faith is a very personal thing,” she said.
Callaway thanked her family, “who puts up with my delayed appearances at holiday gatherings.” She also joked about some of the “unknown” risks of assignments, like “palm burnings” that “could be a little bit dangerous” or “when the Knights of Columbus pull their swords, God bless them.”
(The ceremonial swords are carried by fourth-degree Knights who serve in the fraternal organization’s honor guard to symbolize the Knights’ defense of the Church and the Catholic faith.)
“I think the best advice I ever got from another photographer friend who was an editor is trying to shoot ‘with their feelings,'” showing what the subjects are feeling, and “not what they’re doing. I kind of live by that,” she said.
Callaway also urged editors to be good to their photographers.
“I want to thank everyone for this incredible journey that I’ve been on for the last 40 years,” she said in conclusion. “It’s been amazing and a privilege to be able to tell the stories of people. Thank you so much.”
