You will see on page 6 of this bulletin that we are nearing the end of the mortgage we have been paying for the construction of the church building (October). Thanks be to God and all our generous people!!!

Our parish was established by the Diocese of Phoenix on July 1, 2000. I was here in July 2002 when we started our first building campaign which was followed by a few more building campaigns. We broke ground for the new church and parking in August 2006 and moved into the new church on Christmas eve 2008.

The church was “bare bones” at the time with bare concrete floor, plain glass windows, temporary wooden altar, ambo and baptismal font, chairs and a barren wall behind the altar platform. Slowly, piece by piece we added furnishings. We finally had a stone altar, ambo and font in early 2010. Then and only then, could we dedicate the altar and church with Bishop Olmsted as the main celebrant. But there was much more to be done in the years ahead.

We added flooring and furnishing as we could afford them as generous donors stepped forward and made sacrifices to beautify and complete the church. Stained glass windows were designed and money raised and we only added several windows at a time, when it made sense to bring the craftsmen and installers together from Pennsylvania.

Statues were designed and installed a few at a time, when we had donors. And so it went with everything. We built within our means and for the glory of God. We built according to a long-range vision of what we needed and wanted to do for God and for the Catholic community. The last major project in the church is to install pews. I wish we were ready to do that, but alas, not yet.

Our Catholic community desperately needs to have a much better building to replace the current temporary parish hall and parish offices. Our community grew from several hundred families to over 5000 families. Many more people are moving into our area. Some of them will be Catholic and looking for a new parish home.

When we started raising funds for the new Activities Center, we embarked on a “combined campaign” to meet diocesan goals and our own parish goals. Our fund raising goes through the Diocese of Phoenix Together Let Us Go Forth donor services office. They manage the funds, the reports, the reminder notifications to donors and statements, etc. It works better that way. But we have some parishioners who prefer to give money for the new building directly to St Clare Parish and they mark their envelopes “new building.” We respect your preferences and keep those funds restricted to the new building. Coming in October, we can expect to end the Loan Repayment Fund and transition to a new Property Mortgage Fund to separate them from other types of revenue.

— Fr. Hans Ruygt

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