Students filtered into the pews as church bells rang to mark the start of a Wyoming Catholic College noon mass, a service conducted in Latin on a recent fall day.
The prospect of daily church services may not appeal to many college students, but it's a draw for this tiny, fledgling liberal arts college in central Wyoming.
Now in its third year, Wyoming Catholic College is operating near capacity in Lander and developing plans for a new campus 15 miles south of town. Applicants interested in the college's mix of academic, outdoors and spiritual instruction have exceeded the college's limited space in each of its three years, directors said.
"I think the educational model has been demonstrated to be very workable by our students," said the Rev. Robert Cook, the college's president. "We know how to run it, we know how to operate it, and we're paying for it. So I'd say we're well-established for a beginning college, and it's working."
Cook said the college has enrolled about 33 students each fall since 2007 _ for a total of 99 _ and retained all but one student. The student body represents 35 states, and applications for next school year have arrived from 45 states.
The college is laying the groundwork to raise money for its planned $120 million campus, which will sit on a donated ranch, said Mark Randall, vice president of development. Randall spends two weeks per month traveling coast-to-coast drumming up financial support for the college.
The project will be built in phases and directors hope to break ground in three to four years.
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Australian Catholics celebrate as country moves closer to getting its first saint
SYDNEY (AP) _ Australian Catholics celebrated last Sunday a Papal decision that will give the country its first saint _ the feisty Mary MacKillop, who founded a network of schools for poor children and was briefly excommunicated before being set on the path to canonization.
The Vatican on Saturday said that Pope Benedict XVI approved a decree that MacKillop was responsible for a second miracle, one of the final steps in a complex and often yearslong process before sainthood can be bestowed.
MacKillop founded the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph, an order that built dozens of schools for impoverished children across the Australian Outback in the 1800s, as well as orphanages and clinics for the needy.
With vows of abstinence from owning personal belongings and dedication to helping the poor, MacKillop is credited with spreading Roman Catholicism in Australia and New Zealand.