WCC Community Celebrates First Feast at “All Saints” with Mass, Procession, and Veneration of Relics

On Wednesday, November 1st, the Wyoming Catholic College community celebrated the Feast of All Saints. The feast is an annual event, but this year’s was a particularly meaningful one for the College—the first it has celebrated since moving into All Saints, the former Holiday Lodge property that now houses nearly half of its students.

The celebration began with an All-College Mass at Holy Rosary Church, followed by a procession across the field and along the highway to All Saints (accompanied by riders from the College’s Horsemanship program). There, the relics that are normally housed in the downtown Oratory were placed in the middle of All Saints Common, where the College’s Roman chaplain, Father Godfrey Okwunka, led the community in prayer.

After the ceremony, many of the students remained behind to venerate the relics, with a number of them breaking into spontaneous hymns and motets to finish up the morning’s festivities. (The old Lodge’s renaming as All Saints is particularly fitting, since each of its four residence halls is named for a particular saint: St. Gerard Majella, St. Gianna Molla, St. Isaac Jogues, and St. Kateri Tekakwitha).

Thanks to several generous benefactors (including its then-Board Chairman, Paul Powers) the College acquired the space in the Fall of 2022, spent the next few months renovating the buildings on the site, and moved fully into the new location at the beginning of the current academic year. Since then, it has become a major part of the student experience, with the large river-side green space below the Lodge becoming a particular favorite among the students, staff, and families.