Regrettable omission

When I saw the headline in the Sept. 10 Register about campus ministry in Boulder, I turned the page with great anticipation. As a former Paulist seminarian, one of my teachers was Father John Kenny, C.S.P., who served as pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Campus Parish at the University of Colorado during a critical juncture of the history of CU’s Newman Club. I visited Father Kenny while he was in Boulder. He was one of many Paulists who served in that ministry for nearly 20 years, yet there was no mention of the Paulist Fathers in the article.

In fact, a Paulist priest, Father Edward Brady, preached in Boulder in 1881. In 1977, the Paulists took over the campus ministry at CU, under the direction of Father David O’Brien. Father Kenny became pastor in 1984. It was during his tenure, on Oct. 9, 1985, that the church was gutted by an arsonist’s fire. Mass moved on campus, and under the able leadership of Father Kenny and other Paulists, Mass attendance grew exponentially. Following a fund drive, the church structure was enlarged and refurbished. Mass returned to the church on April 16, 1988.

In recent years, the Paulist Fathers, as many other religious orders, have experienced decreasing numbers, as deaths have exceeded new vocations. As a result, they have been forced to give up some of their ministries, and sadly that included the Boulder campus parish. Their farewell took place on June 17, 2006, but they left CU’s Catholic community healthier than they found it.

Paul J. Skizinski
Englewood

Editor’s note: Unfortunately, due to space constraints a sidebar listing historic moments in CU’s Catholic campus ministry, which included the Paulist Fathers service, didn’t make it into the paper.