Please RSVP by August 27, 2024
To RSVP please:
Fill out the online form here or
Email jennab@cyocamphoward.org or
Call 503-231-9484
The St. Michael the Archangel Youth Center, dedicated this summer at Camp Howard, is a multipurpose building for Mass, performances, movies and meetings. It “speaks to the spiritual side of our being,” says Sister Krista von Borstel, longtime executive director of CYO/Camp Howard. “I hope people will appreciate our desire to make the very best use of the building while honoring our Lord with a very special place to say Mass at the camp.”
Why name it after St. Michael the Archangel? “St Michael offers such strong biblical inspiration, and we need strength in the world now,” says Sister Krista. This last of the four major camp buildings is away from the clanging of the kitchen. It offers a large open space that evokes the woods via exposed Douglas fir timbers from fallen trees at camp that were milled on site by Karen von Borstel, the multi-skilled property manager.
The new building is likely to play a major part in Catholic outdoor education being set up by staffer Erin Cahill. On the spiritual side, the altar, ambo, four tables, and three chairs for liturgy were handmade by Father Peter O’Brien, pastor of churches in Lebanon, Scio and Jefferson.
An 80-foot-wide sliding glass door system that opens onto an outdoor plaza creates a connection between inside and outside that is just right for a spiritual building at a camp.
Crosses figure prominently in the design, and a 40-foot in diameter labyrinth modeled on the one at Chartres Cathedral in France is poured in concrete in the plaza.