Bishop Kevin Vann blessed the ground at St. Serra Catholic School in Rancho Santa Margarita on Monday, April 3, as students, faculty, donors and city leaders celebrated the groundbreaking of the fourth and final phase of the school.
More than 100 gathered on the property where construction will soon begin on the new Saint Serra Chapel and a two-story Student Creation Center and Administration Building. The 22,000-square-foot project is projected to cost $9 million and will complete the master plan for the school that began as an idea 22 years ago.
“Today is about our charism, our vision and our mission,” the school’s president, Angeline Trudell, told the crowd gathered, as she opened the ceremony.
Bishop Vann presided over the Liturgy of the Word that fittingly included words from the Gospel of Matthew 16:18 “…and upon this rock, I will build my Church…”
Bishop Vann then walked the footprint of the new building and using holy water he blessed the ground and asked God to “bring construction to a successful completion.”
Finally the bishop donned a hard hat, grabbed a shovel and, flanked by eighth-grade students also with shovels, he moved the first plod of dirt symbolically beginning the construction.
“The seminal project for our campus solidifies our commitment to creating future leaders for our community through a commitment to STEM education and the Arts. Also, the addition of a central Chapel will keep our academic community firmly rooted in our Catholic faith and support the spiritual formation of our students,” said Angeline Trudell, president of St. Serra School.
Since opening its doors in 1995, St. Serra School has grown to more than 1,000 students and has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a Blue Ribbon School.