- Donna Craft
- June 30, 2023
- 11:06 am
It is hard not to notice that Our Lady of the Rosary Church has added many families to the congregation over the last few years. Something is attracting families, not just from within Greenville, but from across the country. I have heard OLR called a “Unicorn.” This term describes a community that combines all desirable traits in one place: reverent liturgy, faithful families, holy clergy, lovely music, charitable ministries, and classical Catholic education, within a livable city and state. And like unicorns, they basically don’t exist in real life.
OLR’s unicorn attributes will only become more appealing as the secular culture of our country darkens. But for Our Lady of the Rosary to continue receiving those who would relocate to join us, we must increase the capacity of our facilities. Since this past fall, we have worked with Hord architects to develop a vision for the future. Fr. Longenecker and I teamed with individuals from the parish and school to craft a campus plan that will support this growth, while achieving a more beautiful and intentional arrangement of buildings. This new OLR will allow school enrollment to expand from 300 to 450 students, while more than doubling the amount of meeting space available to parishioners during the day.
In addition to more classrooms, the new buildings will bring parish and school offices into close proximity, allowing for better and more harmonious collaboration among staff. Our plan provides for a phased approach, that would allow school and parish life to continue uninterrupted, if a little inconvenienced, while the building occurs. We look forward to sharing detailed renderings with you in the months to come.
Finally, our prospects for acquiring the five acres across Frontage Road continue to improve. Perhaps it is premature to call it a done deal, but the path to a successful acquisition has never been clearer, thanks to the excellent leadership of some key parishioners throughout the process. We do not need the property for the building project itself, but owning it will give us much more flexibility with which to plan, both now and in the future. Our Lord is doing amazing things at OLR. And it seems the best is still yet to come!