Local News

Sept. 7, 2006

Surprise parish breaks ground on permanent home

By Ambria Hammel
The Catholic Sun

SURPRISE — Their look on a recent Saturday was priceless — several members of the clergy garbed in neatly pressed vestments and sporting hardhats while holding shovels.

Alongside Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, they gathered around the future altar site Aug. 12 for the St. Clare of Assisi Parish groundbreaking ceremony. Instead of breaking bread, they ceremoniously broke ground on what will become the first permanent worship space for the parish.

The new church is estimated to cost $6 million, with Catholics throughout the West Valley having pledged $4.75 million toward construction costs since 2002. They continued to fund the new space through T-shirt sales, mardi gras celebrations and collection jars. Parishioners raised more than $13,000 in spare change alone since last summer.

“This is how much they want to see a (permanent) building, because the church isn’t a building,” explained Connie Gaudio, chair of the groundbreaking ceremony. “The church is already there. It’s the people.”

The Phoenix Diocese established the parish — which now covers a 76-square-mile area — in July of 2000. Fr. John Coleman served as its founding pastor.

The first of many capital campaigns began in 2002 shortly before Fr. Hans Ruygt took over parish leadership. After a few years, the parish found an architect who was sensitive to its vision.

“I asked everyone to write me a love letter about the parish confidentially,” said Bill Brown, the building’s architect. Parishioners overwhelmingly indicated they wanted a Spanish contemporary look and worked with Brown on the final design.

“It was an evolution of what everybody liked,” said Chuck Ashbeck, who co-chaired the steering committee. Ann Smitka, St. Clare’s business manager, said it was also influenced by the parish’s patron saint who was called to a spirituality of simplicity.

Parishioners will pray in a cruciform-style worship area lined with 22 rows of pews. Fr. Ruygt will be able to address four times as many Catholics than the current structure holds, where seating is limited to 480 of the parish’s 6,000 parishioners.

Additionally, he will break bread on a marble altar directly underneath a gold-domed roof. Plans also include stained glass windows, a 35-seat adoration chapel and an immersion-style baptismal font.

The builder will begin construction in the fall and expects to complete it by next summer. The 13-acre site west of Bell Road and Loop 303 will ultimately feature a permanent office, chapel, family life center, kitchen and school.

But for now, the future altar site — where the priests and deacons from St. Clare of Assisi and surrounding parishes sported their hardhats — serves as a small reminder of what is to come.

“What will be seen as it comes out of the ground,” Bishop Olmsted told the congregation, “is a much greater and much more important building: a building up of the Body of Christ.”

Ambria Hammel/CATHOLIC SUN
Parishioners of St. Clare of Assisi watch as Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted and others break ground where the church’s permanent altar will be built.