Local Catholic to guide and seek adventure, faith at camp

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

A local Catholic has set her summer sights on the heights.

Catherine L. Fleming, a Boston College junior, heads to the Colorado Rockies this month for training to be a counselor at Camp Wojtyla, a Catholic adventure program for middle school and high school students.  

It is named for Karol Wojtyla (St. John Paul II) “who loved to minister to young people in the outdoors,” says the camp website camp-w.com.
 
Miss Fleming, 20, also likes working with young people and being outdoors.  
She was an American Heritage Girl with Troop 0716 of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish, now at Our Lady of Loreto Church in Worcester. She said that in 2021 she earned the Stars & Stripes Award, the program’s highest, for planting five wildflower gardens at churches in Worcester: Our Lady of Loreto, Sacred Heart-St. Catherine of Sweden, St. Peter, St. Andrew, and St. John, where she attends Mass with her family when home from college.

In 2019, 2021 and 2022 she spent summers as a Venturer and counselor at Treasure Valley Scout Reservation in Rutland, working with Scouts ages 6-18, she said.

“I really loved my experience there,” she raved. It helped form “a really big part” of who she is today. Miss Fleming is majoring in English and secondary education and minoring in Latin, in hopes of teaching students in grades 5-12 in a Catholic school.
 
Last summer she volunteered at a week-long camp at Treasure Valley, she said. She also worked with high school students in Ever to Excel, a Boston College program employing Jesuit spirituality.

She is fundraising to help support herself, since she plans to be a missionary volunteer all summer at Camp Wojtyla. She said she contacted family, friends and acquaintances for donations and does online fundraising, mainly to help her pay for college expenses, including books, next year.

“I felt a tug in my heart to go on adventure with God – and for him,” she said.
She researched Catholic camps which provided outdoor adventures, run by people “super-passionate” about teaching youth to love God and his Church.

“I felt like Camp Wojtyla was the best fusion of the two,” she said.

Unlike camps that provide just adventures, or just faith formation, or faith formation separately from adventures, Camp Wojtyla aims to offer those things simultaneously.

“We wanted to teach about our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the life he has called us to while rock climbing – engage the big questions of life as we whitewater raft – know what it is to depend on your brother in Christ within the adventure experience at hand,” says camp-w.com. It says students “often see that God is in everything and that their faith life is their daily life.”
   
According to the website, “Camp Wojtyla was launched by FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, in 2007, under the direction of Annie and Scott Powell, both of whom served as FOCUS missionaries.”
Camp Wojtyla has nine year-round staff members, and 50 summer staff members who are college-aged young people and seminarians, according to Kelton Stecklein, assistant director. He said about 570 campers are expected this summer.

Miss Fleming said a friend who was a counselor at Camp Wojtyla last year told her about it, and she also got information from the camp’s booth at the January 2023 SEEK, FOCUS’ national conference. She applied to serve at Camp Wojtyla last October and was accepted a couple months later, she said.
“Since then I’ve been preparing by fundraising and praying and keeping in touch with all the staff,” she said.
 
She said she is to be a counselor for multi-faceted programs for girls. Programs include rock climbing, mountain climbing, white water rafting and helping lead small groups of campers in prayer and spiritual reflection. On weeks for male campers, she and other female counselors are to help with behind-the-scenes work such as cooking.

Counselors, who are not paid and do not pay to work at the camp, are not required to raise money, but the camp allows them to raise some. They may keep it all, except for a small processing fee, or donate some back to the camp, Miss Fleming said.
 
Fundraising “allows others to be participants in our mission, with their finances and their prayers,” she said. “My goal is $8,000. … That is the maximum you can fundraise; I figured I’d shoot for the stars.” As of Monday she had close to $1,300, she said.
 
She is to leave for Colorado May 20 for three weeks of personal formation in faith and morals, and education in youth development and wilderness safety, among other things. She serves at the camp in June and July.

“I’m really excited to share my faith” with campers and fellow counselors, she said.
 
She was told that the experience is difficult and challenging, she said; counselors sleep out in the open in hammocks or on the ground, covered with a tarp. The food, while adequate, is “nothing special.” There will be emotional and spiritual challenges too, working with young people with varied journeys, she said.
 
“I’m excited to be challenged and pushed in all those ways,” she said. She’s eager to see what God does through it – for her and for other people.  

– Editor’s note: Those seeking more information or participation in the mission can visit the website camp-w.com or contact Miss Fleming at clouisefleming@gmail.com or 774-244-5632.