St. Mary Beautification Phase II
 

OVERVIEW

We are very excited to announce the second phase of our Church Beautification Project. The first phase, completed three years ago, of our renovated sanctuary, altar and artwork, has been a beautiful and vibrant blessing to our parish. After getting full approval from the Diocese, we are now making plans to undertake three new projects simultaneously this Spring: replacing the flooring in the body of the church and the narthex; replacing the pews and chairs in the church; and updating the area of the baptismal font. 

TIMEFRAME

The initial legwork for this project began over a year ago. The timeframe for the renovation has now been scheduled and will begin the day after Easter which is April 5th. We will celebrate all of Lent, Holy Week, the Triduum, and Easter Day in the church. The work is projected to take between eight and nine weeks, and for that time all Masses will be celebrated in the school gym. As those who attended Christmas Eve Mass in the gym know, we were able to make that space prayerful and beautiful for worship. Eucharistic adoration and other prayer events will mostly be held in St. Joseph Hall or the St. Francis Room during that time. We are confident that we can return to the finished church on June 5th, two months later, if not sooner, God willing. We know that this will be a challenge, but we can get through it together.

FUNDING

The total project cost is around $330,000 and our parish finance council and the Diocese have both approved our spending plan to pay for the renovation. The funding for these projects comes from two main sources: 

1) Parish savings- which includes contributions pledged and given to the Witness to Hope diocesan capital campaign in 2017.

As we worked together to meet our parish goal for that campaign, initially 35% of all the pledges received came back to our parish. At that time, we designated those funds for two priorities. 

    The first priority was the establishment of a school endowment. We have fully received the $100,000 that is  earmarked for this new endowment. 

    The second priority was to establish a maintenance fund for ongoing improvements to our church,  especially for things like pews and flooring.

As you may know, through the overwhelming generosity of our parish family, we far exceeded our parish goal for the diocesan campaign, allowing even more funds to come back to the parish for the maintenance fund. The structure of the Witness to Hope campaign was that once a parish exceeds their goal, instead of 35%, 65% of all remaining donations go to the parish; and at 125% giving on the goal, 100% of all donations are returned to the parish. We are currently in that 65% return range, and are very close to exceeding 125% of our goal, something which will likely happen in the next quarter. At that point, all contributions will be coming back to the parish. Staying current with our pledges to the Witness to Hope campaign, greatly helps with cover the cost of the pew and floor renovation! We thank everyone for your generosity and to encourage us to continue to fulfill our pledges to Witness to Hope.

2)   A generous gift from an anonymous donor has allowed us to move forward with updating the baptistry area to reflect and relate to our sanctuary. This amazing donation will cover all the costs associated with installing a beautiful, new marble font and the addition of artwork and architecture that will visually tie the sacrament of baptism to the sanctuary and altar. An additional portion of this gift has been designated as a special matching fund to encourage future support for parish beautification efforts. If you are interested in supporting this phase or future phases of the Beautification Masterplan, please contact Father Fons to see how your gift may be multiplied through this generous matching opportunity.