In Brief

Converging Roads healthcare conference coming this spring

The current church will continue to be used for Mass during the construction of a new, Baroque-style church for Our Lady of the Mountains.

PHOTO PROVIDED BY OUR LADY OF THE MOUNTAINS MISSION

“Over the past 35 years, our office has assisted parishes and schools with more than 270 capital campaigns. Our Lady of the Mountains has raised more than the other 270 campaigns, and no other church in our diocese’s history has ever raised that much in a single campaign. Congratulations to Father Barone, their campaign leaders and their parishioners for their extraordinary results.”

The present church, built in the 1950s and expanded in the late 1980s, presented challenges to the growing congregation. The new, Baroque-style church will be built adjacent to the existing church on the mission’s 2.5-acre property.

Fundraising to reach the ultimate goal of $10.7 million will continue at a lower profile in 2023.

Father Barone assembled a Construction Advisory Committee of experienced parishioners to help guide him as work moves forward.

CHARLOTTE — Medical professionals, students and interested laypeople are invited to the sixth annual Converging Roads healthcare ethics conference on Saturday, March 25, at St. Patrick Cathedral in Charlotte. Gain a comprehensive knowledge of practicing medicine under a Catholic ethos while earning up to 7 hours of CME/ CNE credits. Join national and local experts either in person or online to discuss topics rooted in the Hippocratic and Catholic ethical tradition. For more information or to register, go online to www.bit.ly/cr23-cnc.

Winston-Salem native named to Redemptorists’ leadership

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Redemptorists of the Baltimore Province elected a new leadership team to serve during the 2023’26 term that includes Father John Olenick as provincial vicar. Father Olenick was born and raised in WinstonSalem and worked at the Winston-Salem Journal and then for R.J. Reynolds before entering the Redemptorist congregation in 1996. He was ordained a priest in 2003, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

The new members of the Ordinary Provincial Council will guide the missionary activities of the Baltimore province. The elected leadership team assumes leadership under the Redemptorist theme “Missionaries of Hope in the Footsteps of the Redeemer.” outcomes and experiences by developing a process that is very structured and clear –so parishes and schools will know, at any time, where their projects stand and what next steps are,” Sapp said. Monsignor Winslow likens the process to “a directory at a mall. I want to be able to look at the map and say, ‘I am here,’ at any given moment in the process.”

Sapp is part of the team that developed a new Capital Construction Team handbook for use by parishes currently considering capital projects. St. Joseph Parish in Asheboro, Holy Spirit Parish in Denver and Our Lady of the Mountains Mission in Highlands are all using the handbook to guide their ongoing capital projects. The team will finalize the handbook this summer after receiving feedback from those pilot parishes.

Over the past four and a half years, the diocese has assisted in executing 28 major capital projects totaling around $76 million. Ten projects with a combined cost of $22 million are expected to be completed in 2023. Sapp is also tracking 33 projects with an expected cost of $161 million with completion dates beyond 2023.

The campaign committee – which includes Father Jason Barone, parochial administrator, and Berney Kirkland, pastoral council chairman, as well as Greg Thompson and David Goodrow, campaign co-chairs – had done their research and gauged the support of Our Lady of the Mountains’ 240 registered families, most of whom are seasonal members.

“The results were consistently encouraging, and Father Barone proved to be an excellent ‘salesman’ for the project,” Kirkland said.

In less than six months, they received $7.5 million in pledges, the minimum amount needed for the $10.7 million project. As of mid-January, $3 million has been collected, and all pledges are on schedule for the campaign.

Now their hope is well-funded.

“The support of our community has filled me with humility and gratitude,” said Father Barone. “As we began this project, Building a Beacon of Catholic Faith, I committed myself never to lose sight of the reason for all this work: to glorify God and sanctify souls. Prudence and hard work are essential, but so are prayer and providence.”

The campaign committee members agreed.

“We have felt the Holy Spirit blessing our efforts throughout the campaign,” Kirkland added. “I was optimistic from the outset, but I did not anticipate that we would achieve this amazing level of success, and in such a short time. It was an audacious goal for us, but the timing was right.”

Jim Kelley, development director for the Diocese of Charlotte, has called the capital campaign the most successful ever conducted by a parish in the diocese.

Final drawings of the 9,000-square-foot church with a capacity of 300 will arrive soon from McCrery Architects of Washington, D.C. Groundbreaking is expected in early 2024.

The new building will have several amenities the current church lacks, including a choir loft, Marian shrine and dedicated spaces for a confessional, baptismal font and sacristies, some of which donors have specifically funded. In addition, the new church will have a narthex where parishioners can gather for fellowship before and after Mass.

The idea to build a Baroque-style church frequently came to Father Barone in prayer. He noted that they didn’t need a large church and thus had the financial potential to pull off a church in the Baroque style, which is often cost prohibitive.

The style also seemed appropriate based on where the Church is in ecclesial history, Father Barone said. He noted that Baroque architecture came out of the Counter-Reformation, when the Holy Spirit was stirring the Church to renewal after many decades of seeming decline and division from the Protestant Reformation.

“It’s the story of a phoenix rising from the ashes,” Father Barone explained. “We’ve seen many scandals and bad press the past couple decades. It seems as though the Church is and will remain in decline, but that’s not the case.

“Our Lord, who promised the gates of hell would never prevail and that He would remain with His Church until the consummation of the age, has not abandoned us but is already stirring renewal and growth, the evidence of which we see throughout our diocese with the growth of vocations and parishes.

I want this church to tell that story.”

The Redemptorists are a religious congregation of priests and brothers founded in 1732 by St. Alphonsus Liguori in Naples, Italy. More than 4,000 Redemptorists are currently working with the poor and most abandoned in nearly every part of the world. More than 150 Redemptorist priests, brothers, and students represent the Baltimore province in the United States. Redemptorist priests staff two parishes in the Diocese of Charlotte: St. James Church in Concord and St. Joseph Church in Kannapolis.

— Spencer K.M. Brown