Campaign still helps parishes, agencies focus on the future
This architectural drawing shows how the exterior of the new Holy Family Shelter will look when it is completed next year. Funds raised through the Legacy for Our Mission: For Our Children and the Future archdiocesan capital campaign made the construction of the new shelter possible. (Submitted architectural drawing)
By Sean Gallagher
Hopes were high when the Legacy for Our Mission: For Our Children and the Future archdiocesan capital campaign was launched four years ago.
As Catholics across central and southern Indiana learned about Legacy for Our Mission, they considered with hope how the campaign could further the mission of their parishes and the archdiocese as a whole.
Over the course of the four years of Legacy for Our Mission, many of those hopes have been fulfilled as more than 33,000 archdiocesan Catholics pledged $104 million and more than 14,000 volunteered their time and talent to see the campaign be a success.
Parishes across the archdiocese’s 11 deaneries have constructed new activity centers, made extensive renovations to their current facilities and established new endowments or grown already established ones.
But other parishes are still looking forward to seeing dramatic changes in the future.
St. Mary-of-the-Knobs Parish
One of them is the archdiocese’s oldest existing faith community, St. Mary-of-the-Knobs Parish in Floyd County in the New Albany Deanery, which was founded in 1823.
In recent years, many families have moved into the area around the parish. Now its facilities are far too small to accommodate them. As a result, in 2005, the parish purchased 33 acres of land adjoining its current campus.
“If you connect that with what we already have, I think we’re only six acres short of the size of Vatican City,” joked Father John Geis, pastor of St. Mary-of-the-Knobs Parish.
On the new land, the parish plans to construct a new church that will seat up to 1,000 people (its current church seats 350) and a new parish activity center.
“We’re just outgrowing everything here, not only the church,” Father Geis said. “We’re outgrowing all of our facilities. We’re standing over the top of each other and shifting on the same day from one activity to the other.”
In order to make this hoped for growth a reality, the parish of a little more than 1,000 households used its participation in Legacy for Our Mission in 2007 to raise $8.5 million.
So the future is very much on the minds of St. Mary-of-the-Knobs parishioners, even those who wouldn’t be blamed for remaining tied to the past.
At 73, Father Geis is three years past the time when he could have retired from active ministry.
But he values the vision his parishioners have for their future and prayerfully discerned that God was asking him to continue on in his ministry.
“He’s blessed me with good health,” Father Geis said. “And I feel that, with the response that the people gave, they trust me as their leader to move this forward.”
Parishioner Pat Byrne is the great-great grandson of Thomas Piers, who, some 185 years ago, donated the original land that St. Mary-of-the-Knobs Parish originally sat on.
But, like Father Geis, he is looking forward to the future, too.
“We always have to continue to listen to the Holy Spirit and the needs of our community to see what God’s will is for us today,” said Byrne, who was a parish campaign co-chair.
“To me, what his will was for us last year or 10 years ago or 185 years ago is something you can read about. But where he wants us to be in the next 10 to 15 years is what we need to focus on.”
Holy Family Shelter
It is not just parishes that are planning for the future through Legacy for Our Mission.
Archdiocesan agencies that oversee the parishes’ shared ministries are looking ahead, too.
Holy Family Shelter, a program of Catholic Charities Indianapolis, has been serving homeless families in Indianapolis for 25 years in its current facility next to Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish on the city’s near south side.
But through the generosity of thousands of Catholics across central and southern Indiana, the shelter plans on moving into a new facility in the coming year that is on the grounds of Holy Trinity Parish on Indianapolis’ near west side.
The new shelter will allow its staff to serve a third more families than it can at present. And they will be able to give the service more easily and efficiently.
There are times in its current location that two or three services often occur simultaneously in the same room. Children living there are forced to do their homework in a hallway.
“It’s exciting for the families that we’re going to serve,” said Bill Bickel, the director of Holy Family Shelter. “We’re certainly thankful for the archdiocese’s commitment to serve homeless families, even in the existing building. We’re thankful that they have the foresight to see the need for a replacement facility. The staff is very excited, too.”
In all of the hard work that Bickel and his staff do to serve homeless families, he is always aware that the shelter is there because of the generosity of Catholics across central and southern Indiana.
“It’s the parishes’ shelter, really,” Bickel said. “When families in the shelter thank us, we remind them that they may see us every day in the shelter, but standing alongside of us is the entire archdiocese.”
As a member of Catholic Charities’ advisory council, Mary Ann Browning knows well how Holy Family Shelter changes lives for the better.
Because of that, she and her husband Michael, members of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Carmel, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese, have been major supporters of the construction of the new $4.3 million shelter.
“You look at not-for-profit organizations in terms of the community and what’s really going to benefit the community and what we need in the community to sustain it and keep it alive,” said Mary Ann Browning. “And Holy Family is one of them. We just felt really strongly that it was important and that it did something tangible.”
David Bethuram, agency director for Catholic Charities Indianapolis, knows well how Holy Family Shelter gives tangible aid to those families it serves.
Twenty-five years ago, he was on the archdiocesan task force that helped establish the shelter.
He is convinced that the next step in its development will only expand the aid it can give.
“[The shelter] says something about the Catholic Church’s legacy to help those in need,” Bethuram said. “It’s all of us banding together for 25 years.
“But we’re still going to be there 25 years [in the future]. It may not look exactly the same in 25 years, but the basic needs will still be there. People will be helped when they don’t have a place to stay.”
(For more information on Legacy for Our Mission, log on to www.archindy.org/legacy.) †
