Students find and strengthen faith at WPI campus ministry funded by Partners in Charity

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

Fernanda Calix left her home country to study in Worcester, where she found a spiritual father more important to her than her aerospace engineering degree.
 
Ethan Rasquinha figured opportunities for growing in faith would be less available at a non-Catholic college, but chose one anyway, and was pleasantly surprised.

Last year Keegan Kuhn completed his Catholic initiation, and this year Ethan Chandler was baptized, confirmed and received first Communion.  

Catholic ministry, supported by Partners in Charity, helped these Worcester Polytechnic Institute students find and strengthen their faith. Father Alfredo R. Porras, Catholic chaplain at WPI, said Partners pays his salary and provides money for hosts, wine, candles and the use of a diocesan building.

Students and their chaplain spoke with The Catholic Free Press before leaving school for the summer. Next week school starts up again, and, with it, Catholic ministry.  

“Part of the ministry [is] forming relationships with the students,” Father Porras explained. “The ministry’s not just for the current students.” He has celebrated weddings of alumni and is there for anyone, whether or not they are students or Catholics.

“In some ways, I function as an advisor to the Newman Club,” the Catholic club students run, he said.

Miss Calix, former Newman Club secretary, and incoming president, raved about their chaplain’s ministry.

Freshman year at the student activities fair she met Father Porras, who repeated her name with a Spanish accent, which touched her. (She’d recently arrived from her native Honduras.) He invited her to the Newman Club and soon she received an email about Mass.

“After Mass Father comes up to me ... and remembers my name,” she recalled. “It brought a lot of comfort to my soul to see someone who greeted me with such joy. He felt like a familiar face.”

He kept inviting her to events, most of which she attended, including eucharistic adoration.
“I had ... my period away from God,” angry because “things hadn’t gone my way,” Miss Calix said. At adoration “I felt so much peace and so much love from God.” Father Porras had heard her confession, and soon she asked him to be her spiritual director, she said.  

“He truly is a spiritual father,” she raved. “One of the things that brings me the most comfort and makes me feel the most loved is when Father calls me ‘daughter.’” Her first Thanksgiving here she had nowhere to go, and he invited her to join his family, who “went above and beyond to make me feel included and cared for.”

He’s helped her grow in love for the liturgy “through his very reverent celebration of the Mass,” she added. Upon arriving “I say ‘Hi’ to Jesus and then I go into the sacristy and greet Father with a hug,” and ask how he is and if he needs any help.

“I came to the school to get an engineering education,” Miss Calix said. But what matters most to her is how she’s come closer to God through the Newman Club, and especially through Father Porras.

“Father, by making the sacraments available, has helped make the Mass – the Eucharist – the center of my life,” she said; she previously attended just on Sundays and holy days, but now “I plan my schedule around Mass” daily.  

Miss Calix is not the only student who gravitates towards Mass.

José Kee Ham, who also came from Honduras to study at WPI, said one of his favorite things here is “the opportunity to go to Mass from Monday through Sunday; every day’s an opportunity to give thanks and praise to the Lord.” And the Newman Club is a “great place to make new friends.”

“I was considering going to either a Catholic college or WPI,” said Mr. Rasquinha, a student from Maine studying computer science with a focus on cyber security. “I was prepared to not being able to delve deeper into my Catholic faith” at WPI.  

He figured he’d have to go off campus for Sunday Mass, but found it celebrated right there.  
Students reserve space for Sunday Mass on campus, Father Porras said. He celebrates weekday Masses nearby at the diocese’s building next to the Chancery, where the Catholic campus ministry has a chapel, and rooms to study and socialize.

At first Mr. Rasquinha went only to Sunday Mass. Then he attended a Newman Club event about how to prepare for Lent, which inspired him to delve deeper into his faith. Last spring he told The Catholic Free Press, “I’ve been going to daily Mass here every day they have it,” and Monday eucharistic adoration. Wednesdays (Father Porras’ day off), WPI students cook dinner on campus, then go to eucharistic adoration at Assumption University, said Mr. Rasquinha.

“We’re creating a music ministry here,” he said. “Joining this music team has ... helped me to realize how much I love music. I’m probably going to join a band” at WPI, in addition to being involved in Catholic activities.

Mr. Kuhn, a junior, said he was baptized, but not brought up Catholic, and “was ... searching ... what the true Church was.” He attended a Newman Club apple picking outing, then Mass and other events. In 2023 he was confirmed and received his first Communion at the Easter Vigil at St. Paul Cathedral, having been helped by the Club, Father Porras and FOCUS missionaries.

Nathaniel Turner, a FOCUS missionary at WPI, said the Fellowship of Catholic University Students is a separate entity that provides Bible studies and forms students in faith, but “it all goes hand in hand” with Newman Club activities and Father Porras’ ministry.

Father Porras said students receive the sacraments of initiation – baptism, first Communion and confirmation – at Easter Vigils at St. Paul Cathedral “to know they’re part of a bigger Church.” Besides, he is there then, given his other jobs as director of the diocesan Office for Divine Worship and diocesan master of ceremonies.

Miss Calix is grateful that the diocese supports campus ministry. She said, “We have an amazing bishop who allows us to have an amazing chaplain.”

– Partners in Charity supports Campus ministry. In 2023, $38,011 was
allocated.