Gulf Pine Catholic

Gulf Pine Catholic • November 22, 2024 13 Ministries of the Catholic Diocese of Biloxi Ministries From page 12 In June of this past year, we had one of the most powerful week-long expe- riences of the Eucharistic Revival Pilgrimage, here in the Diocese of Biloxi. This week had so many different prayer experiences and encounter moments. A few of the events included walking along Hwy 90 in Eucharistic procession with hundreds of parishioners from our diocese and many others. We started in Bay St. Louis and by the end of the week ended our journey at the Cathedral of the BVM. The pilgrims from the National Eucharistic Revival joined us after starting their journey in South Texas. We walked just over 24 miles with the Blessed Sacrament being carried the entire way for the world to see. In July we traveled to Indianapolis, to Lucas Oil Stadium, to join 60,000 other Catholics for the Nation Eucharistic Congress. This was an incredible event. We set out over a year ago to bring people from all over our diocese to experience this once in a lifetime event. I am excited to say we were able to take over 240 people from our diocese. We are still hearing about the incred- ible experiences being shared in our parishes. This is the beginning of the year “On Mission.” Our mission has many different efforts, but the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic still remains front and center. In August we set out on a year-long effort for formation on Discipleship, for our teachers and staff at our schools. We have four days set out for encoun- ter and training with the Apostolate Missio , to work with all our staff, on working in teams and creating healthy structures to be most effective in evan- gelizing the students in our schools. In October, for our Priest Convocation, we had the apostolate Catherine of Sienna Institute speak to our priests on their Charisms and Governance. Many of our priests took the charism inventory and completed the interview. Following the week-long convocation with the priests, Katherine Coolidge presented the topic of charisms and governance to our deacons. We continue to make Disciples and Disciple-makers here in the Office of Evangelization. Our vision is to help pastors create leadership teams to help them with visioning discipleship and evangelization in their parish. Our hope is to have all pastors, with their leadership teams, forming other ministry teams to continue to be intentional about making disciples. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Office of Youth Ministry Director: Marianne Schmidt The Office of Youth Ministry serves youth, young adults, and cam- pus ministry and this past year we were full of events, programs, for- mation, and much more. 2023-2024 For youth ministry we started the year with our dodgeball kick-off held at St. Vincent de Paul. We had many of our parishes show up with the middle schoolers and high schoolers to compete in a classic dodgeball bracket. After that, we gathered outside to hear about the events coming up, revealed the coming up DBYC theme, and took time to pray in community during a time of Eucharistic Adoration outside. Our kick off was planned by our Diocesan Spirit Movers. Spirit Movers are a group of students 10th-12th grade who apply and put on our diocesean events. They meet monthly and we work to form them to be leaders in their youth group. They also planned the middle school retreat. The middle school retreat was held at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Long Beach and we talked about what it means to love and be loved. We had students from Southern Mississippi come and give the talks while the Spirit Movers led games, small groups, and gave testimonies. The Spirit Movers also helped prepare the Rosary Rally and Walk for Life held in January. We started with a Rosary and Mass at the Cathedral and then made our way to the Lighthouse Park in Biloxi where we heard from the different pro-life ministries in our Diocese and had a time of Eucharistic Adoration to pray for the end to abortion. And of course, our Spirit Movers are vital to planning and executing our Diocesean-wide Youth Conference held in March. The Spirit Movers came up with the theme, sessions, games, small groups, and the overall environment of the weekend. We had Katie Prejean McGrady and Kelly Colangelo as keynote speakers and the theme was Belong . Friday, almost 30 parishes came together (in costume) to start the conference. Upon being called up by the Bishop, they presented him a gift that had to do with their theme. On Saturday during the conference, we had the main hallway lined with universities, EWTN , eucharis- tic miracle posters, religious sisters, and all of our seminarians. They had freebies for the teens and were overall a great resource to the teens on voca- tions, how to stay Catholic in college, and more. Saturday night was a night full of prayer and reconciliation with several priests there to offer the Sacraments. We closed the conference on Sunday with Mass and awards and then quickly got ready to do a day rally for the middle schoolers. Our SEARCH team began meeting in August with a team retreat and then weekly meetings on Thursday evenings. We had a team of 14 with nine girls and five boys, all seniors in high school, representing ten different parishes in our diocese. Each week we would dive deeper into the retreat, practice giving talks, shared a meal, and ended in prayer led by the team. All of these meetings led to two different SEARCH weekends held at the beginning of the year. Both weekends were full and our team perfectly balanced prayer, play, and fellowship in order to make space for their peers to encounter Christ. Campus ministry leaders attended a bootcamp at the beginning of August to prepare for what it means to be a leader on their campus. Throughout the year they planned class retreats, school prayer services, and even help when the Bishop makes his school visits. 2024-2025 For youth ministry, once again, we started the year with our dodgeball kick-off held at St. Vincent de Paul. We had many of our parishes show up with the middle schoolers and high schoolers to compete in a classic dodgeball bracket. After that, we gathered outside to hear about the events coming up, revealed the coming up DBYC theme, and ttook time to pray in community during a time of Eucharistic Adoration outside. Our kick-off is planned by our Diocesan Spirit Movers. Spirit Movers are a group of students 10-12th grade who apply and put on our Diocesean events. They meet monthly and we work to form them to be leaders in their youth group. They also planned the middle school retreat. The middle school retreat was held at St. Vincent de Paul and the theme was Look Up . We had the adult team give the talks while the Spirit Movers led games, small groups, and gave testimonies. Our SEARCH team began meeting in August with a team retreat and then weekly meetings on Thursday evenings. We had a team of 14 with eight girls and six boys, all seniors in high school, representing nine different parishes in our diocese. Each week we dove deeper into retreat prep, practice giving talks, share a meal, and end in prayer led by the team. Campus ministry leaders attended a bootcamp at the beginning of August to prepare for what it means to be a leader on their campus. This retreat was led by Kelly Colangelo who was one of the keynote speakers for DBYC 2024. MINISTRIES, PAGE 14