St. Catherine of Siena Newman Center receives Koch Foundation grant for campus ministry

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Cate's Café, shown here at its opening in 2016, provides college students ?a place of friendship and support,? says Dominican Fr. Lukasz Misko, director of campus ministry at St. Catherine of Siena Newman Center.

SALT LAKE CITY — The campus ministry of the St. Catherine of Siena Newman Center at the University of Utah is very important to Catholic students at the school. A new grant from the Koch Foundation recognizes that fact and has given the center a $10,000 grant to continue its work.

The Koch Foundation was established in 1979 by Carl and Paula Koch. Carl Koch believed he was “just a steward of the finances given by God to use on His behalf,” according to the Koch Foundation website. This belief inspired the commitment he and his wife made to establish the foundation, which continues to fulfill his work of supporting Catholic evangelization worldwide.

At the Newman Center in Salt Lake City, evangelization efforts include reaching out to students, staff and faculty at the University of Utah, Westminster College and Salt Lake Community College.

While the parish staff helps with the campus ministry, the Newman Center does not receive any subsidies from the Diocese of Salt Lake City, so the developmental committee has sought grants as a “creative answer to that problem,” said Fr. Lukasz Misko, director of campus ministry.

A committee member came across the Koch Foundation grant a couple of years ago after receiving a grant from the McCarthy Family Foundation and the committee decided to apply.

For this first-time grant, the foundation gave the Newman Center $10,000 of the requested $25,000 for the 2018-2019 school year, but foundation officials have encouraged them to apply for funding for the 2019-2020 academic year.

At the Newman Center the campus ministry takes a three-pronged approach.

The first offering is Cate’s Café, which provides free coffee and baked goods for university students.

It’s a meeting place for Catholic students and non-Catholics alike, Fr. Lukasz said. “It’s a place of friendship and support.”

Frequently discussions among students at the café turn to theology. Those conversations are more organic, Fr. Lukasz said. Often the questions that come up are related to what the students are learning in the classroom and generate discussion.

“The coffee shop is a great place of sharing the faith in this low-key way,” he said. “We’ve made a lot of friends through this coffee shop who are not Catholic yet.”

In fact, three non-Catholic students recently joined a group from the center in a spring break pilgrimage to the missions of California after such a discussion piqued their interest.

Along with the café, the Newman Center offers occasional presentations by speakers on various topics. If funds allowed, they would bring in national speakers more frequently, possibly even organizing a series on such subjects as theology, social studies and Church history that would be  open to the broader Salt Lake community, Fr. Lukasz said.

“We’d love to create an international Catholic dialogue as part of our mission is to provide intellectual resources for the Catholic students and faculty,” he said.

The center also organizes spiritual retreats for students several times a year, providing scholarships to those who otherwise would not be able to participate.

“We try to take the students out of town, camping or some other activity in the mountains,” Fr. Lukasz said. “We enjoy some great talks while we hike, and often have Mass in the mountains. There’s nothing like being out in that physical beauty and engaging in the joy of physical activity to touch the soul.”

The Newman Center supports about 200 Catholic students with its programs, Fr. Lukasz said.