October 2020
2020 has indeed been an amazing year. As a parish, we have faced the challenges of COVID-19 with remarkable resourcefulness and resilience. We owe a great deal of gratitude to our leadership and to all the folks who have supported them in their efforts to keep our parish functioning and our liturgies possible, accessible & inspiring.
Now on a topic that has been near and dear to our hearts…money! The time has come to wrap up our 2020 Pilgrimage of Faith campaign. While the campaign would normally run through the end of the calendar year, our Pilgrimage of Faith committee has decided to give you a rest from our requests for your money. You have simply been outstanding in your support of our parish, both financially and in many other ways. Thank you! If you do still want to contribute for 2020, you can still do so until the end of the year.
We wanted to take a moment to celebrate the success of this year’s campaign because it has been truly unprecedented. Ever since the annual appeal was introduced in our diocese in the mid-1980s, many parishes have faced struggles to achieve both diocesan & parish goals while maintaining regular financial support to our parishes. St John Vianney parish was certainly no different. And that is especially true of the years following 2013 when the idea of closing our parish was officially announced by Bishop Corriveau. That year, our appeal donations totaled just under $23,000. Over the next five years, that total shrunk to a low $15,195 in 2018. (A Bar Chart is included at the end of this document). We were genuinely afraid our parish was going to be closed.
Then came 2020…Wow…what a truly amazing turnaround! As we wrap up this year’s campaign, we need to reflect briefly on what we have accomplished together as a parish family. When we first addressed you about our 2020 campaign, we shared with you that, while we did have a parish goal of $30,000, our primary focus was to strive for 100% participation from all our parish families. For many years before now, our participation rate has averaged between 30 & 35%. This year, we more than doubled that figure! While the final numbers are not all in, our current estimate is that 70% of our parish families have donated to the appeal.
Some donations were large, such as the matching donation of $15,000 from a generous parish family. We also were the beneficiary of a $9,000 bequest from the estate of the late Charles Guiho, a parishioner since 1984 who died on June 12th of this year. Charles left all of his accumulated treasures to the parish. Those treasures were sold by our Knights of Columbus and the proceeds turned over to the parish. That gift was very fitting as many of you may remember that Charles, at age 85, championed a petition to the Bishop to keep our parish open. Other donations received were in the thousands of dollars, but most were in the hundreds or less. Every single donation, no matter how large or small, is treasured and contributed to the success of our campaign.
So, as I speak today, the total dollar value of donations made through the Pilgrimage of Faith for our parishioners, stands at $63,000. Let that sink in, $63,000! That is more than four times what was donated in our last campaign in 2018. That is three and one-half times what we have averaged over the last five campaigns. That is 40% higher than our already ambitious goal for this year. And it is by far the highest total ever raised in our parish in the 35-year history of the Pilgrimage of Faith campaigns. 2020 has been a truly blessed year for our parish, in spite of the corona virus challenges. God has indeed blessed us, St. John Vianney has no doubt interceded for us and we have shared those blessings with each other. Thank you!
As you know, our goal of $30,000 was designed to pay for our beautiful new baptismal font and flooring. Given your generosity, we have been able to do a few more related and needed jobs at the same time. For example, we decided to change out our 55 year-old fluorescent light fixtures behind the valances, we had all the metal diffusers on our radiators sandblasted and re-painted, we did a bit of a facelift in our confessional, we freshened up some other areas of the church with some paint, and, with an earmarked donation, we purchased new liquid paraffin altar candles to eliminate wax spillage on our new carpet. A few other low-cost improvements were carried out during we had the church closed such as vacuuming & shampooing of the sound panels on the east, west & south walls, hand cleaning of all the stations of the cross, cleaning of our beautiful tabernacle, replacement & re-carpeting our tabernacle pedestal to remove the squeaks, washing all interior & exterior east/west windows and frames, vacuuming & cleaning all pews and sanctuary furniture, and a variety of smaller but much-needed tasks. And lest I forget, we acquired new sanctuary seating for our celebrant and servers with borrowed chairs at no cost to the parish! Almost all of this was accomplished through the countless hours of volunteer labour provided by many parishioners and even some volunteers who are not yet parishioners. At one work session, we had 17 women and men working diligently to remove pews and rip up carpet. The church looked somewhat like an ant farm that day! All told, we had more than 40 volunteers physically working on the project at one time or another. Everyone else I’m sure were praying hard for the success of the project. We have done this together.
Please be assured that we have not frivolously spent all your donations just because we had surplus funds. Our Pilgrimage of Faith Committee have considered a variety of possible uses for the extra money you donated, including carrying forward some of the funds for future capital needs. We will be making some recommendations to Fr. Obi for his consideration and review with the parish finance committee. We will keep you informed of the outcomes on that subject and we are certainly open to your suggestions in the meantime.
We have also begun looking at other pressing needs in our buildings, but we will come to you for your input before we plan next year’s campaign. As you know, very little money has been spent on upkeep of our buildings since 2013. So, we are playing catch-up at this time and it will take us several years to properly address the maintenance-related needs of our parish to make it look like we truly treasure our parish home. But we will get there …together!
When I started to write this talk, I did not intend to be this long, but we wanted to bring you up-to-date and keep you informed. You have been exceedingly generous with your donations and we owe it to you to do our best to be prudent and transparent in how we spend the money. Please take the time to have a look at the information below detailing how your donations were spent. If you have any questions whatsoever about the campaign, please feel free to direct them to any member of our committee, Jean McLeod, Holly Trainor, Brian Nowoselski, Tim Gahagan or myself…or better still, Fr, Obi!
By the way, we previously mentioned we were hoping to come in on time and within budget. Well, we finished the work at 6PM on our deadline date of Oct 10th and with all our bills now in, we can report that our final costs for the Baptismal font & carpet totaled $29,378 out of a budget of $30,000.
Thank you & God Bless!
Lorne Raymond
Pilgrimage of Faith Chairman
| Breakdown of Costs | |
|---|---|
| Project Costs (Baptismal font & flooring project costs) | $29,378.45 |
| Maintenance Costs (work undertaken with project) | 1,734.24 |
| Electrical Upgrade Costs | 4,292.40 |
| Other Expenses (candles & side tables) | 2,817.54 |
| Food/Drink (paid for by the St. John’s K of C) | 680.80 |
| Total Costs | $38,903.43 |
