Dear St. Catherine Parish Family,
In April of 2018, we began our Honoring Our Past, Building Our Future capital campaign to help build our parish hall, pay off our previous debt, and build a healthy capital reserve for future major capital repairs and improvements. The campaign was planned as a three-year campaign with a goal of $4 million dollars. Although we have not reached the $4 million dollar goal yet, I am pleased to say that, to date, we have received over $3.2 million with approximately $500,000 in outstanding pledges (a number of the pledges have not yet been completely paid, and several large pledges were five-year pledges, so I am still hoping that we will come very close to reaching our goal).
As I mentioned a couple of months ago, we were able to completely pay off our bridge loan on our parish hall last August, and several months ago I also requested a $100,000 matching grant from the archdiocese, which we received, as a recognition of our efforts to aggressively pay down our previous debt. Including the grant, we have been able to pay down the previous debt by $800,000 this fiscal year, which now leaves us with a balance of about $800,000. Additionally, we have been able to deposit money into our savings for our capital reserve, and our current reserve is approximately $1.1 million (this is extremely helpful as there are several major repairs and maintenance that have been deferred that we will need to address in the near future).
I want to thank all of you who have participated in the campaign over the past three years. The generosity of so many of our parishioners always inspires me. If you have not yet fulfilled your three-year pledge, I would ask you to try to do so soon. For those who made a five-year pledge, please continue to complete your pledge. And for those of our newer parishioners who did not make a pledge three years ago, I would certainly invite you to consider participating in the campaign. You can visit www.stcatherinercc.org/capital-campaign for more information. It is my goal to completely pay off our debt in two years, and I am confident that we can do it!
As we approach our patronal feast of St. Catherine of Siena, I invite you to join me in asking her intercession in a special way to help us to continue the work that the Lord has entrusted to us as a parish family to set the world ablaze with the fire of Christ’s love.
Sincerely in Christ,
Fr. Neil