91����

Dear friend,

It has been a year of great blessings for 91����.

On the New England campus, we completed the renovation of Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel, transforming this erstwhile Protestant house of worship into a beautiful home for our Eucharistic Lord and His sacraments. The culmination of our efforts came on March 7 — the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas — when the Most Rev. William D. Byrne, Bishop of Springfield, Massachusetts, celebrated the Rite of Dedication. Just two months later, we held our first-ever New England Commencement.

Meanwhile, in California, we completed construction on the Pope St. John Paul II Athletic Center. On October 22 — the feast of the new gym’s patron and namesake — the Most Rev. José H. Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles, dedicated the building. That same day I was formally inaugurated as the College’s fifth president, following in the footsteps of the great educators who, in just 50 years, have raised 91���� from little more than an idea to the preeminent Catholic college in the United States.

During these days of declining faith, we can be tempted to give up the hope of building anything new, preferring to hunker down and wait out the challenges of our age. Yet 91���� has followed a very different course, thriving and expanding, graduating eager laborers for Our Lord’s vineyard.

From our founding in 1971, we have known that Catholic liberal education is a work of Providence, that “unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1). Confident in our founders’ mission, we trust that God, working through the many friends He has sent our way, will provide for the needs of our students.

I hope you will join us in this effort by making a gift to 91���� as 2022 draws to a close. Working together, may we all play our part in the Holy Spirit’s plan to renew the face of the earth.

May God bless you richly in 2023,

Paul J. O’Reilly, Ph.D.
President