Foxfield Parish Takes Commitment to Protect God’s Children to New Level
- Jay Sorgi
- Apr 16
- 5 min read
April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, but Our Lady of Loreto’s impact in keeping children safe lasts a lifetime
Every day, staff members and volunteers within the Archdiocese of Denver renew a commitment to protect the most vulnerable members of our community, particularly children, youth and at-risk adults from child sexual exploitation, abuse and violence, all while the Catholic community collectively prays for victim-survivors of such dehumanizing actions and asks Jesus to bring compassion and healing love.
Kevin Kasberg, and Chuck and Teresa Chagas are empowering that loving commitment to a greater-than-the-norm level through their ministry with the Safe Environments program at Our Lady of Loreto Parish in Foxfield.
They realize that fulfilling that commitment comes down not only to building individual awareness among each staff member and volunteer, but building a blanket of continual conscientiousness to dramatically shrink or even eliminate the risk of a child or vulnerable adult enduring abuse.
“Often in my presentations, I use the quote from Mother Teresa, 'I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples,' to emphasize the immense contribution that each facilitator makes to this effort,” said Alex Kwan, archdiocesan program manager of the Office of Minor and At-Risk Adult Protection (OMAAP).
Through her work with OMAAP, Kwan trains volunteers, safe environment trainers and coordinators across Northern Colorado. Among them all, the Aurora parish team is exceptional.
“In the case of the team at Our Lady of Loreto, they are a huge blessing, creating many positive ripples throughout our Catholic community,” she shared. “Their consistency, transparency and generous service are helping equip people to keep others safe, heal from past abuse and serve the Church well.”
The Our Lady of Loreto ministry instills staff and volunteers with two key points: that the Catholic Church serves all of God’s children, and that the Church works vigilantly to ensure that God’s children remain safe from every type of abuse.
The goal of their ministry, put simply, is to “increase awareness, so that everybody is aware about both the problems that exist and things that they should be looking out for,” said Kasberg, one of the parish’s program facilitators.
Every Catholic Church employee or volunteer who works with or around children and at-risk adults is required to complete Safe Environment Training, undergo a thorough background check and agree to the Archdiocesan Code of Conduct.
The parish’s program has proven so effective and all-encompassing that it attracts Church personnel and volunteers from across the region while offering continuing education tools for new and improved ways to keep kids and at-risk adults in the archdiocese safe.
“Not only do they leave our classroom empowered with the initial knowledge that they obviously will get in the class,” Chuck said, “but they leave with access to online tools that they can go home and always access, and those are always updated.”
Their program also reflects the archdiocesan commitment not only to creating but also to continually educating volunteers to a higher level of awareness in every situation they encounter. The Archdiocese says that about 3,300 staff and volunteers receive Protecting God’s Children (also known as Virtus) training every year.
“I think it really starts out with a strong program, which I think is what Virtus provided the archdiocese with,” Chuck said.
Some dioceses across America use online learning to facilitate Safe Environment training, but the Our Lady of Loreto program takes it far beyond. Facilitators use classroom teaching and discussion to build upon video presentations created by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and help further build consciousness within the people who will be called to keep kids and at-risk adults safe from abuse for a lifetime.
“I bring it together with the bigger discussion to make sure that we put a decent [focus] on some of the points that really need to be stressed,” Kasberg said. ”It's broken into two sessions. The first one is defining the problem, and then the second half is what you can do about it.”
The topics are uncomfortable. The conversations often become viscerally emotional. Yet the feedback that Kwan receives from participants in the Our Lady of Loreto program reveals how presently and effectively facilitators help them through what’s uncomfortable.
"This is hard to hear, but very important. Thank you," one anonymous participant said.
"I am so grateful this is a requirement. It is so important," another volunteer said.
“The commitment, skillfulness and compassion that the team at Our Lady of Loreto exhibits are consistently evidenced by the anonymous evaluations,” Kwan said. "Participants often leave the session thinking in new ways and are thankful that this subject is being addressed, as well as for the facilitators’ sensitivity to such a difficult subject. It is no accident that this team of facilitators makes this kind of impact in this mission.”
Kasberg added that the program’s content helps volunteers and staff bridge the discomfort that can come with reporting abuse or signals that may lead to the possibility of abuse happening.
“If you sense that there is a problem, or you see something or hear something that says ‘Boy, that might be a big indicator,’” Kasberg said, “you don't have to figure out where those lines are. Use those professionals to help you define whether you need to make the mandatory calls or not, and when in doubt, err on the safe side and make the call.”
The program not only creates deeply aware protectors of children, but also strengthens a statewide network of support for children and at-risk adults. Through the training, Chuck said, volunteers learn to act as mandated reporters, serving as extra eyes and ears keeping children and at-risk adults safe across Northern Colorado.
“Bringing their eyes open to [thinking] no matter how small something is that you see, keep it in mind. Keep paying attention,” Teresa added. “After the class, people think and realize ‘I'm really a 100% mandatory reporter,’ no matter how small it can be.”
Kasberg says that includes understanding when to reach out to authorities.
“If somebody is stepping outside of the boundaries, take immediate action, take some corrective action to that,” he said, encouraging volunteers to speak up to someone within the organization who can address the behavior. For more serious suspicion or knowledge of abuse, volunteers ought to reach out to the state hotline for reporting, 1-844-CO-4-KIDS. Of course, Kasberg emphasized, if someone is in imminent danger, 9-1-1 should be called.
Chuck and Teresa have additionally empowered Our Lady of Loreto’s Safe Environment classroom learning program to be available in both English and Spanish.
“Sometimes, more in the Hispanic community, they have even bigger taboos,” said Teresa, who is fluently bilingual. “Most of the time, we encountered a lot of Hispanics who asked, ‘How do you explain more? Why don't you guys cover something like that?’”
The Safe Environment program doesn’t just allow people to encounter uncomfortable subjects, but to know how to live with a greater awareness that upholds the dignity of every child as God’s child.
“It sort of lifts a veil over [how] this can be a taboo conversation. ‘Oh, it cannot happen to my kids,’ as an example. It's also a lot about educating in terms of how we react when we listen to these things,” Chuck said. “It helps to remove the veil over something that's oftentimes taboo. People walk out of those classes really with a new appreciation.
“It goes back to the awareness that drives it. The more people who go to the program, the more awareness there is. The more people know, the more I can discuss it with somebody else,” he concluded.
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Click here to find an Archdiocese of Denver Safe Environment class, and click here for resources from the Archdiocese of Denver Office of Minor and At-Risk Adult Protection.
