Upcoming event to benefit Mount Claret

By Andrew Junker | Sept. 3, 2009 | The Catholic Sun

Mount Claret Retreat Center will host its 19th annual “Evening Under the Stars” dinner and charity auction Oct. 3. The event is the only fundraiser the center undertakes each year.

“This is huge to keep the place going,” said Fr. Paul Sullivan, director of Mount Claret.

Fr. Sullivan listed a catalogue of groups that benefit from the central Valley retreat center. Cursillos take place there along with healing retreats, retreats for the recently widowed, youth groups, parish staff retreats, clergy days of reflection, and others.

The 10-acre site, which sits at the base of Camelback Mountain, also houses a Life Teen studio, serves as a retirement home for a number of priests, and offers a place for young men discerning their vocation to the priesthood to live in community.

But at its heart, Mount Claret exists as a place that calls people closer to God, said Jim Willson, head of the center’s advisory board.

“The basic mission is providing a tranquil space where people of God can renew their Catholic faith,” he said. “It’s just a marvelous site.”

Fr. Sullivan agreed.

“No longer are we in a culture where people have silence,” he said. “More so than ever, the faithful need a place to go to encounter silence.”

Since taking over direction of the center in July, Fr. Sullivan has been thinking of ways to improve Mount Claret. Installing more benches and creating new prayer gardens is high on his list for the place of “quiet and peace.”

Mount Claret was originally a guest ranch until the Claretian order — which offered Cursillo retreats in the Valley — bought the property in 1963.

In the late 1980s, the Claretians decided to sell the property. Msgr. John McMahon along with some others lobbied that the Diocese of Phoenix purchase the site with the help of the Cursillo movement.

“Msgr. McMahon had the vision to transform the place,” Fr. Sullivan said. “He really rebuilt it and established it.”