From the desk of the pastor for June 21, 2026

The Lord be with you! We need to take a little break from history to go over a few things happening right now. There is much to be excited about although some projects are going more slowly than others.

First, a number of parishioners have asked me what is going on with the church’s upper roof. Before giving what I can now, I want to note that I am writing this on Monday, June 15th but will be meeting with the roofer on Wednesday, June 17th. Accordingly, some things might change. We do have a signed and executed contract with Absolute Roofing to replace the church dome roof and upper roof. That contract had a target start date of May 1st and target end date of July 1st. Obviously, those dates are not being met.

Absolute Roofing informed us last week that their manufacturer could not obtain all the chemicals it needed for its summer orders due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Their intent is to begin work on the roofs in the second half of July. How long that will take exactly will be weather dependent, but we should figure on a week or so of setup, a week of tear down, a week of construction, and then another week of related work like flashing adjustments. Call it mid August for the project to be completed.

Second, we are presently obtaining bids to repair the cement spalling on the church. Fixing cement that high up will be labor intensive and expensive. More to the point, this work cannot be started until the roof repairs are completed or far enough along that an end date is known. Since the cement has been damaged from the water coming off the upper roof, we just have to wait for the roofers to do their work. At this point we are likely looking at early Autumn for this work to get done.

Third, the church air conditioning has not been working since last summer. If you have not seen the condensers before, we have two and they are each the size of a car. The first unit failed a while ago, but when the second unit stopped working last summer we thought there was not much more we could do. Our HVAC company has suggested using an older form of refrigerant that should mix with the oil. We have given them the green light to try this out, but it might not work. Even if the older refrigerant works, we have only bought time as its production is now indefinitely curtailed.

Fourth, we’re getting a playground! It will be installed the week of July 7th with a formal blessing and ribbon cutting on August 2nd. Thanks to a generous donor and much hard work by the school faculty, we were able to gain the funds we needed to move forward with this. I know that many of our school families share our excitement for this addition to our campus.

A lot of work is going to happen starting in July, and we will certainly need your prayers. Expect further updates as the summer moves on. Please continue to pray for us and our vendors doing this important work.

In His Sacred Heart,

Fr. John