Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church holds groundbreaking ceremony for new multipurpose parish center

On Monday, June 9, over 200 people, including church clergy, local and state elected officials, parishioners and interested locals gathered at Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church on 781 E. Gamebird Rd. to witness the groundbreaking ceremony, commemorating the start of construction for the new 7,000-square-foot multi-use parish center named Regina Caeli, latin for Queen of Heaven.

It has taken more than seven years for the church to reach this point. “We’re still in the drawing stages with the architects [JVC Architects of Las Vegas], so it might be a little while before it starts. A month or two,” mentions church Deacon Rick Minch, who has been the point-person for church for this project since the beginning, and emcee of the event.

Minch says construction should take 12-14 months, and will use a local construction company. “We’ve worked for three main things: to make it affordable, to be good stewards of people’s kind donations, and to be a good citizen of our community in Pahrump and to make sure that a Pahrump company and Pahrump labor is used to build this,” says Minch. He continued that it was very important to the church to use a local contractor and local labor, with LG Construction leading the project.

The building, which is next to the current multi-use metal building (used for the fish fry dinners, bingo, etc.) and behind the church toward the back of the property, is currently planned to house six large meeting rooms, a conference room, office, a 24’ x 66’ multipurpose room and restrooms.

According to Minch, the church has raised over $1 million dollars for the project through fundraising events and donations. Minch lists the various events, “Car wash, bake sale, fish fry, Bunko, penny social, bingo. We’re so blessed. It’s our parishioners, but also people from the community. Fish Fry has been going for over 20 years, and bingo for three, and we have a lot of people from the community that don’t belong to the parish come. We’re really, really blessed.”

Archbishop George Leo Thomas, Ph.D, of the Archdiocese of Las Vegas was present at the event and spoke during the ceremony. Thomas said the project is a sign of “dynamism” in the community, noting “dramatic” growth locally and throughout the Archdiocese, which covers 39,088 square miles in Nevada, with over 30 parishes. Thomas remarked, “It’s a community on the move. We have about 830,000 in the Archdiocese who are registered, and then we have a lot more who are not.”

Assemblyman Gregory Hafen II, recently returned late Friday from marathon sessions in the Assembly at the end of the 83rd legislative session in Carson City, led the group in the Pledge of Allegiance. Hafen was happy to see the Regina Caeli Parish Center finally get to this point, and also pleased with the outcome of the legislative session. Hafen mentioned, “We did a lot of good things. We stopped some really bad things, and we were actually very fiscally responsible, which made me happy.”

“We were able to still fund government, give our state employees a small cost-of-living raise and the other big thing we did was, we made teacher raises permanent,” continued Hafen. “We finally got charter teachers the same pay raise. That was a bill that I actually co-sponsored with the speaker.”

The other speakers included Fr. Bruno Mauricci, pastor of the church, and Fr. Henry Salditos, the previous pastor of the church, and the one responsible for naming the parish center.

County Commissioners Bruce Jabbour, Debra Strickland, John Koenig and Ian Bayne were on hand for the event. Sheriff Joe McGill and NCSO Supervising Sheriff Administrator Tammy Engel were also in attendance, and ended up coming to the aid of a woman who collapsed, apparently from the heat. After spending some time in shade and being checked out by paramedics, she required no further assistance.

Once the quintessential photos were taken of Archbishop Thomas, Fr. Mauricci, and Fr. Salditos holding shovels in the dirt, anyone with a shovel was invited to join. In Thomas’ speech, he prayed that God would help bring the project to a successful conclusion, and protect those working on it. He also read from the first letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, “But each one must be careful how he builds upon it, for no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is there, namely Jesus Christ.”

John Clausen is a freelance reporter living in Pahrump.