Elizabeth Lev points out some connections:

The Patrons of the Vatican Museums were formed in 1983 as an international society organized from within the Holy See institution. The Patrons were dedicated to supporting and maintaining the art of the Vatican Museums. While there are chapters of Patrons in several parts of Europe, by far and away the greatest number of patrons can be found in the United States.

The Vatican Museums maintain an office just for the Patrons where they are brought on private guided visits and have special events and dinners on the premises.

The Patrons donate between €250 and €1,000 (about $320 to $1,280 at current exchange rates) annually to the museums and are coordinated in different parts of the United States by chairpersons who serve as links between the Vatican institution and the local area.

The chair for the Minnesota chapter is one Maureen Kucera-Walsh, as can be seen on the Vatican Museums Website on the Patrons page.

Kucera-Walsh was particularly instrumental when the "St. Peter and the Vatican" show toured the States in 2004. She was indicated in the June 2004 issue of Basilica, the magazine of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as the point person for visiting the traveling exhibition. Her Minnesota chapter restored the hammer used to verify the death of the Pope as well as the statues of Sts. Peter and Paul from the sacristy of St. Peter’s.

But Kucera-Walsh does not limit her charitable activities to the preservation of sacred art. Last Oct. 9, she served as a host for a Planned Parenthood event in Minneapolis.

This event was organized to marshal support against the proposed law in South Dakota which would have make it a crime for anyone to perform an abortion except where the mother’s life was in danger. One of the principal items on the agenda of this event was to "get the inside scoop on the effort to defeat South Dakota’s abortion ban."

Benefactors of this event paid between $100 and $1,000 to participate. Kucera-Walsh was listed among the hosts for this event.