COLORADO SPRINGS. Samantha Ross, the lead teacher for three-year-olds at Holy Apostles Preschool, was awarded a $1,000 grant from Colorado Springs Utilities for a “classroom makeover.” The grant was awarded through the utility company’s Community Focus Fund and was used to purchase new materials for the classroom. Robyn Tyboroski, assistant teacher at Holy Apostles Preschool, nominated Ross for the grant.

COLORADO SPRINGS. The 2023 Diocese of Colorado Springs Stewardship Conference took place Aug. 23 at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Colorado Springs. The conference speakers included Bishop James Golka; Father Brian O’Brien of the Diocese of Tulsa; Eric McArdle, President of Catholic Stewardship Consultants; and Larry Denis III, a seminarian for the Diocese of Honolulu.

COLORADO SPRINGS. The Diocese of Colorado Springs has assumed the operation of Franciscan Retreat Center, located at 7740 Deer Hill Grove in northwest Colorado Springs, through an agreement effective Aug. 1.

The retreat center, which opened in August 1988, was previously operated by the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration’s Western Province. The sisters will continue to reside at Mount St. Francis and will be designated as a convent under the order’s Immaculate Heart of Mary Province based in Mishawaka, Indiana.

COLORADO SPRINGS. A Catholic bishop, priest and religious sister from Ukraine will visit the Diocese of Colorado Springs in late August to raise awareness of the plight of Ukrainian citizens living through the war with Russia. The visit is being sponsored by Colorado Springs-based Catholic Outreach to Neighbors in Ukraine (CONU), an organization founded by the late Father Paul Wicker in 1994 to help the Catholic Church rebuild in the previously Communist country.

COLORADO SPRINGS. Long before the news of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster’s apparently incorrupt body electrified the Catholic world last April, a local woman was discerning whether to enter the Benedictine monastery she founded in 2006 in Gower, Missouri.