Making Room for Future Saints: Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic STEM School Opens New Building in Wheat Ridge
With a new building, growing enrollment and Christ at the center of its mission, Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic STEM School is preparing to welcome and form generations of students.
Catholic education is growing in Wheat Ridge as Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic STEM School opened a new building on Thursday morning.
When enrollment at Sts. Peter and Paul surged in recent years, school leadership was faced with a welcome challenge: how could they make room for so many new students and families?
The answer was a capital campaign that raised 97% of the funds needed for expansion in just eight months, thanks in large part to a major gift from Shea Family Charities, longtime supporters of Catholic education. Ten months after breaking ground last year, the school celebrated the expansion’s dedication on Thursday.
The newly opened expansion offers the school community seven new classrooms, a beautiful chapel, office space, a reception area, a playground and more. It will also allow smaller class sizes, more individualized attention and room to welcome new families.
Asked what he would highlight if he were giving a tour of the school today, one student told the Denver Catholic that he would “definitely” highlight the chapel, “and maybe the playground.”
Archbishop Golka prays in blessing over the new school building.
(Photos by Neil McDonough/Denver Catholic)
New Building, Same Mission
For Sr. Mary John, O.C.D., the school’s principal and a Carmelite Sister of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles, the new building gives Sts. Peter and Paul more room to accomplish its mission of forming students in both faith and reason.
“This new space will allow us to grow our God-given mission to educate the whole child with the mind and the heart of Christ, and to form a community that desires to make tangible the kingdom of Heaven,” she shared.
That mission is particularly important at a Catholic STEM school, where faith and science go hand in hand, Sr. Mary John explained.
“The goal is to keep integrating the Catholic intellectual tradition into STEM because they’re so intertwined, but I think people tend to separate them,” she said, explaining that a faithful study of science leads students to wonder about the big questions of life: Who is God? Who am I in relationship to him?
At the center of the new building — and, indeed, everything done at Sts. Peter and Paul — is Jesus Christ, Father Jim Goggins, the parish’s pastor, emphasized.
“The point of the new building is to connect our young people with Jesus through a good education, through our sense of a faith-filled community and through their willingness to seek and follow Jesus in all they do,” he said. “Jesus is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament, and so he's in the tabernacle, right at the heart of the school. But with everything we do and are, and everything we teach, Jesus is the heart of everything we do here at Sts. Peter and Paul.”
With that vision of faith at the core of everything, the school community can accomplish its mission: forming future saints.
“That’s ultimately the goal of all of us: to become the saints that God is calling us to be,” said Mother Gloria Therese, superior general of the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles. “So I hope that the students would leave this school with this fervent sense of hope that God has created them to be a great gift to the world.”
A Community Effort
Students, teachers and community members packed into the parish church on Thursday morning to welcome Denver Archbishop James Golka, who would bless the new building and celebrate Mass.
But before they did, Father Goggins invited the students to join him in giving thanks to God — “Praised be Jesus Christ!” — for the gift of the new expansion. They responded with a resounding “Now and forever!” as the joy-filled Mass and celebration began, marking the completion of a work begun months earlier.
“God has called you to come to this place, because he wants to know you and he wants you to know him,” the archbishop said in his homily. “We celebrate with great joy. Your parents care about you enough, your church cares about you enough to not only build this school but continue to improve it and enhance it, because that's what God wants us to do.”
Following Mass, the community processed behind Archbishop Golka and the Blessed Sacrament into the new chapel. The archbishop then placed the Eucharist in the new tabernacle, blessed the new building and ceremonially cut ribbons with students and community members.
The expansion would not have been possible without the generosity of many community members, Sr. Mary John noted. But above all, she credited God and his providence.
“Only God could have orchestrated this with the cooperation of so many hardworking individuals. We have so much to be grateful for,” Sr. Mary John shared.
A Future of Hope
Looking to a bright new future, Mother Gloria Therese offered a former principal’s description of the school as a “city on a hill,” referencing Matthew 5:14.
“That’s truly what I see here: it’s truly a bright light in the archdiocese,” Mother Gloria Therese told the Denver Catholic. “It’s a gift to be able to serve our families and our children for generations to come.”
“The goal is to bring more families, to have them be a part of us and join the mission, wanting to be part of the Catholic community, wanting to give their children that foundation that's going to support them throughout their lives,” added Sr. Mary John. “Then for those children to bring their children and they bring their children!”
