COLORADO SPRINGS. The Diocese of Colorado Springs has assumed the operation of Franciscan Retreat Center, located at 7740 Deer Hill Grove in northwest Colorado Springs, through an agreement effective Aug. 1.

The retreat center, which opened in August 1988, was previously operated by the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration’s Western Province. The sisters will continue to reside at Mount St. Francis and will be designated as a convent under the order’s Immaculate Heart of Mary Province based in Mishawaka, Indiana.

COLORADO SPRINGS. A Catholic bishop, priest and religious sister from Ukraine will visit the Diocese of Colorado Springs in late August to raise awareness of the plight of Ukrainian citizens living through the war with Russia. The visit is being sponsored by Colorado Springs-based Catholic Outreach to Neighbors in Ukraine (CONU), an organization founded by the late Father Paul Wicker in 1994 to help the Catholic Church rebuild in the previously Communist country.

COLORADO SPRINGS. A class titled “Growing Up: Girl to Woman” designed to help mothers and their young daughters talk about and prepare for the changes that come with puberty is being offered in September at St. Francis Hospital in Colorado Springs.

COLORADO SPRINGS. When Jarrod Waugh first offered his life to God in prayer, God said no. “It’s kind of hard to explain,” said Father Waugh, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Colorado Springs. “But nearing the end of high school, I perceived that negative signal very clearly.  God did not want me to enter the seminary at that time.”

COLORADO SPRINGS. Long before the news of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster’s apparently incorrupt body electrified the Catholic world last April, a local woman was discerning whether to enter the Benedictine monastery she founded in 2006 in Gower, Missouri.