St. Aloysius Parish Reimagines Campus with Planned ‘Education and Faith Center’

St. Aloysius Parish is preparing to build a new 26,000-square-foot facility on its campus at South Avenue and Cherry Street that will include a new school, community room, youth center, meeting spaces and large green area connecting all parts. The project is estimated to cost $26 million—more than half of which already has been raised—with construction planned to start in the spring, according to the Rev. Rob Kinnally, pastor at St. Aloysius. “This project re-imagines our parish campus to accommodate our growth from 2,600 families to more than 3,000 families in the past six years,” Kinnally said in a press release.

New Canaan’s Memorial Day Parade and Ceremony Return [PHOTOS]

Brian Platz’s grandfather was in his mid-20s, with three children, when he was drafted into the U.S. Marines toward the end of World War II. 

Platz on Monday morning recalled that his grandfather “would tell us that we were actually running out of men.”

“The draft began, if I remember him correctly, with single men aged 18 to 26,” Platz—himself a U.S. Marines veteran, known to many New Canaanites as the town’s chief building official—told about 300 people gathered at Lakeview Cemetery for a Memorial Day ceremony. “Then went to married men 18 to 26. Married with one child. Married with two. Married with three.

‘One of the Truly Bright Lights’: Amid Pandemic, Local Clergy Members Form Stronger Bonds

Even prior to the onset of COVID-19, New Canaan’s local clergy association stood out in the experience of the Rev. Stephen Chapin Garner. Collegial and kind, it includes unusually gifted people whose monthly gatherings are free of a type of guardedness can limit such groups, Garner said. As the pandemic set in this spring, bringing unforeseen practical challenges among other demands, New Canaan’s spiritual leaders began leaning harder into one another, according to Garner, senior minister at the Congregational Church of New Canaan. “We laugh together, we joke, we share the challenges of time and we have gone past ‘friendly,’ to friends,” Garner told NewCanaanite.com. “For me, some of these folks are people I would turn to if I had a complex issue in my life, let alone the church.