The Knights of Columbus sponsored a lasagna dinner Saturday evening, July 21, with the purpose of raising funds to furnish the dining room in the diocesan House of Formation in Little Rock.  Sacred Heart of Jesus Church had already donated $50,000 towards the construction of the dining room.  Prior to the dinner, Bishop Anthony Taylor celebrated the 5:00pm mass for parishioners with concelebrants Vocation Director Monsignor Scott Friend, former Sacred Heart of Jesus Pastor Monsignor Bernard Malone, and current Pastor Father Bill Elser.   

Knight Bob Honzik organized the event with brother knight and former restaurateur Diego Miceli cooking his tasty lasagna.  Other knights served as ticket sellers, kitchen crew, and waiters for the sit-down meal, which included Pastor Father Bill Elser’s now regionally famous homemade ice cream for dessert.  Larry Linteau, a new knight from Malvern, provided great background music with his expertise on the keyboard.

After introducing each of the 14 seminarians in attendance, Monsignor Friend indicated that the 6,000-square-foot facility being constructed on the campus of Our Lady of Good Counsel in little Rock will have a chapel, kitchen, dining room, meeting room/library, and a common area.  The House will also include an apartment for the vocations director, one for the assistant director, and ten two-person student rooms, which are already scheduled to be full when the building opens this fall.

There are currently 36 seminarians in the diocese, which ranks it 12^th in the country in the number of seminarians per Catholic.  In explaining the purpose of the House of Formation, Monsignor Friend said, “It will serve three primary functions by providing a place to: 1) discern a vocation; 2) conduct formation; and, 3) give a home to seminarians when they are back in the diocese.”  By being parish based, a requisite for approval by Bishop Taylor, both the seminarians and the laity will benefit.  The location also provides easy access to the UA-LR campus, which can provide good academic instruction at a reasonable cost to fill in any educational needs that a young man may have in preparation for entering formal seminary studies.

Bishop Taylor spoke about the fact that young men today face much stiffer challenges than they would have 50 years ago and prior to Vatican II. Families are smaller and there is a much more secular society today which does not offer the support it formerly did.  Young men today need real courage as they swim against the current and walk by faith, requiring much more spiritual depth to survive.  The House of Formation can provide some of the support needed, but human and prayerful support by the laity is every bit as important as financial.

Following the dinner, the 200 attendees received special envelopes for their individual donations.  The Hot Springs Village 300-member Knights of Columbus Council will conduct additional fundraisers to help equip the dining room.  As a start, Grand Knight Bill Roe presented a $2,000 check to Bishop Taylor.  He also gave a $1,000 check to Monsignor Friend to be used in assisting individual seminarians as needed.   Again this fraternal year, the Council has committed $500 to each of four seminarians, and the 4^th Degree Assembly will do the same for two seminarians.   It should also be noted that the Arkansas State Knights of Columbus has already donated $187,000 for construction of the chapel.

It should be noted that each of the clergy involved in this event has a nephew who is either a priest or a seminarian (Msgr Friend has two).  The seminarians at the dinner included: David Aguilar, Joseph and Patrick Friend, Juan Guido, Kardly Isidor, Thomas Johnson, Jose Luis Quijada, Daniel Phillips, George Sanders, Emmanuel Torres, Taryn Whittington, and Luke Womack.

See photos of the evening in the PHOTO Gallery.