(Catholic Herald photo/Kevin Wondrash)
PLATTEVILLE — It was a night to get together, celebrate, and look ahead to blessings to come.
The annual St. Augustine University Parish Newman Banquet took place on March 12.
St. Augustine is the parish near the University of Wisconsin-Platteville campus that serves the Catholic student community.
The banquet was a chance for the parish’s student members to thank supporters and give a small glimpse into where their prayerful and financial support are doing the most good.
The evening started with guests, students, and staff mingling over drinks and appetizers.
Students were in charge of making all the food and serving it, including serving the appetizers and making sure everyone had a drink in their hand.
The room quickly filled up with guests, including Bishop Robert C. Morlino of Madison, who also got a chance to visit with St.Augustine members.
Putting the ministry on display
After everyone made their way into the dining area, St. Augustine Parochial Vicar Fr. John Del Priore, SJS, welcomed everyone.
He called the banquet an “opportunity to put on display the incredible work the Holy Spirit is doing here.”
UW-Platteville junior and mechanical engineering major Sydney Kilcoin next gave a testimonial of the blessings she has received being a member of St. Augustine.
“St. Augustine has changed my life,” Kilcoin said. “It’s really healed me through the relationships I have with others here . . . specifically the men of Newman. The relationships between men and women at Newman Center are unlike any other relationships I’ve seen or experienced in my time I’ve been on this earth. They’re really amazing because it’s a community striving together for holiness and sainthood and trying to grow in virtue with one another.”
Words from the bishop
Before dinner was served, Bishop Morlino offered some words and a blessing.
“The generation of students that are in college right now are a sure sign of hope,” Bishop Morlino said. He called them a “blossoming” for the “spring time of the Church.”
“We want to invest all the energy and the other resources that we can,” the bishop added “They [St. Augustine members] can change the Church and they can change the world.”
St. Augustine student leaders then served a five-course meal to their guests, more than 100 in number — twice as many as last year’s banquet.
Each of the more than dozen tables at the banquet had a St. Augustine student or staff member to help share the mission of the parish and answer questions.
Looking toward the future
The next part of the evening was introducing what’s next for St. Augustine — namely a proposed building project that will include a new church building, office and ministry space, and housing to accommodate the growing parish ministry and community.
The project is called “Building Christ’s Presence.”
Project Core Team Chairpersons Tom Kenney and Jim Rosemeyer introduced a video describing the hopes for the project.
Kenney called the project “an opportunity to do something really special here in Platteville and an opportunity to do something a lot of our great-grandparents did and that was to build a church.”
While in its early stages of planning, more information about the building project will be forthcoming from the parish.
For more on St. Augustine University Catholic Parish, go to their new website at pioneercatholic.org