Featured Story

Port-au-Prince, December 6, 2016- More than 30,000 children will benefit from a grant awarded to the University of Notre Dame by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to improve early-grade literacy in Haiti. 

Photo from www.standrewut.org

When Patrick Jefferies became principal at St. Andrew Catholic School outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, he made a commitment to foster a hospitable school environment for all who set foot inside the school, whether they be students, teachers, staff members, parents or visitors. One of Patrick’s first steps was to attend ACE’s 2015 Latino Enrollment Institute, a program that seeks to transform Catholic schools with open seats, favorable demographic potential, and motivated individuals by teaching them how to attract and serve Latino students more effectively.  

Kari Buchinger had a specific plan. She was going to serve Catholic schools for two years through the LANCE Program, where she would earn her Masters degree while teaching the underprivileged youth of Memphis. Then she would return to New York and work in public schools. 

For Paty Salazar Harty, the dedicated service of her parents’ lives has informed and inspired her work in Catholic schools. Growing up, Paty saw what it truly meant to help others. She watched as her father, who grew up in extreme poverty in Mexico with fifteen brothers and sisters, and her mother, who came from a home in Mexico where survival was more important than literacy, sacrificed their time and talents to help others in need. Her father, a mechanic, isn’t technically in the social services profession, but that didn’t stop him from naming his business “Amigos,” in acknowledgment that friends are there to help others. Her mother, who graduated from college in Mexico, knew that Catholic education was the way for her children to succeed – not just in the professional world, but also in their spiritual development.

Rising up out of the industrial landscape of South Bend’s West Side stand two architectural gems: St. Adalbert and St. Casimir. The brick and mortar, the stained glass windows, and the vaulted ceilings of these two Churches emanate beauty, but there is a sense of life, too, that pulsates throughout the buildings. It permeates the parish offices where parishioners come and go, perhaps in search of a quiet conversation with their pastor, Fr. Paul Ybarra. It flows through the halls and classrooms of St. Adalbert Catholic School where the average visitor is greeted with a colorful display of student artwork and the reverberations of children’s laughter. Founded in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries by Polish-American immigrants, both parishes have experienced a surge in their Latino populations over the years, with parishioners praying together in English, Polish, and Spanish throughout the week. Beauty and life—apt characteristics for the parishes that Fr. Paul Ybarra, C.S.C. calls “home.”