Your Diocese

NAPERVILLE, IL — “Build us into a house of prayer, a house of peace, a house of care. Inn and hospice, fortress, banquet hall: Home for All!”

The words from the hymn “You Have Built Your House” were sung by the St. Margaret Mary Parish choir April 29 during the Mass marking the parish’s groundbreaking of the hospitality/administration wing which will serve the parishioners in all those endeavors.

The theme of building a house of God was present throughout the Mass celebrated by retired Auxiliary Bishop Roger L. Kaffer and the breaking of ground afterward. The actual building of the addition will begin in May, but the project really started several years ago for some parishioners.

“Five years ago the parish council and the pastor (Father William O’Shea) decided it was necessary to build an addition because we needed room at the parish,” said Josephine Lewis, a building committee member, during a phone conversation prior to the groundbreaking. “At the same time we were getting together to raise money for the administration wing we were also raising money for All Saints,” an elementary school that opened in 2006 and is sponsored by several Catholic churches in Naperville, including St. Margaret Mary Parish.

“In 1997 we started thinking about it as we were looking toward the future at St. Margaret Mary,” said Father O’Shea during a phone interview prior to the groundbreaking. “We had a five-year pledge period and we are now near the end of our fourth year. We finally were able to go to the diocese and say, ‘We now have enough on deposit to build what we want to build.’ We then had the parish council, building committee and architect work together to come up with a plan to meet our needs, but unfortunately you can never quite do all you want to do.

“We are pleased though that we will have a large gathering space on the same floor as the church, but the main thing we wanted to do was to have a place for our teens to gather and we got that.”

In fact the approximately 9,000-square-foot addition will provide the parish with a lot of additional space, according to Brian Kinney, who serves as co-chair of the building committee with Rick Burton. Father O’Shea said the two men have shepherded the project and the groundbreaking wouldn’t have taken place without them.

Kinney said the addition will feature an upper level gathering space for 200 people with an additional space for 100 people standing. New parish offices will be moved to the lower level of the addition and the religious education staff will relocate to the existing parish offices; the existing religious education offices will become a teen center and classrooms.

“It’s been a wonderful experience for me to be able to provide a service for the church and to see the culmination of all the efforts and to provide something that will be a lasting legacy,” Kinney said after the ceremony.

With construction as their chosen professions, Kinney and Burton were able to provide a valuable service to the building committee.

“With our background it enabled us to get into the details of the plans with the architect and to minimize the costs and maximize the effectiveness” of the new addition, Kinney said. “It enabled us to build as much as everyone wants in as an efficient way as possible.”

Molly Fara, a member of the parish council and the capital campaign committee, was one of the parishioners who faced a daunting task, asking parishioners to provide financial support for the addition as well as All Saints Catholic Academy.

“We had to find ways to raise money for the expansion and the school,” she said. “Luckily, we had a great committee of 13 commissioners. We started out by having a whole lot of meetings and made a lot of phone calls to encourage people to donate.

“But I think it was belief in the project that motivated people to give. They would be providing more space for events at our parish and providing a Catholic day school for our parish,” Fara said. “We have met the needs of all our parishioners, whether they are involved with religious ed or the school.”

In addition to the many parishioners who have been working on the addition project for nearly five years, about 150 parishioners followed Bishop Kaffer in procession from the church to the site of the new addition for the official groundbreaking.

“I’m here because I want to show my support for what the parish is doing,” said Rich Ruesch, a parishioner since 1981. “It should be a warm welcome place for parishioners. It is the spirit and atmosphere that bring people to the church. This (addition) is just a building.”

Bill McManus said he is excited to see the continued growth of his parish, which he has been a member of since it was founded in 1980.

“I’m here to see the spiritual and social aspects of the church come together,” he said. “It’s a spiritual house now, but it might as well be a social house as well” and the addition provides a place for socialization.

Gary Skarr serves as vice president of the parish council and has supported the addition from the beginning. He said the plans have been modified over the years and the project took a little longer to put together than originally planned, but he was happy to see the ceremonial groundbreaking.

“I like to see movement and change and once you see the hole in the ground it means it is really happening,” Skarr said. “It is the place of the parish council to shepherd this project through. Our demographics have changed so we have to look forward to see where we need to be to sustain our growth and we have done that.”

During the groundbreaking ceremony, Bishop Kaffer sprinkled the area with holy water, blessing the ground where the new addition will be.

“We are God’s building, every one of us here,” Bishop Kaffer told the people gathered around the small tent set up behind the church. “We are building this not only for ourselves, but for our future. You are blessed in this plan that you have. Let us ask God that this work we are about to begin will contribute to the building of his kingdom.”