Hundreds of people lined up in the lobby of the Center for Pastoral Leadership in Wickliffe on Nov. 7 for Novemberfest, the annual Italian dinner fundraiser that benefits the student activity fund for Borromeo and Saint Mary seminaries, according to the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland.
The scale of the kitchen effort matched the crowd. The diocese reported the menu ran through 480 bread sticks, 40 gallons of homemade pasta sauce, 150 pounds of meat rolled into 800 meatballs, 80 pounds of dry penne pasta, 30 pounds of Parmesan cheese, 80 pounds of salad and 100 pounds of sausage, finished off with cannoli.
The meatballs and sausage were prepared by the men in their propaedeutic year — nicknamed the “propadudes” — working in the days before the dinner with Alex Demko, the center’s executive chef, and Phil Guban, the seminaries’ chief operating officer, under the oversight of Father Patrick Anderson, the diocese said.
After buying dinner tickets, guests moved into the Aula to browse dozens of raffle baskets and silent auction items and to buy 50/50 split-pot tickets while they waited for a table in the Founders Room. Seminarians hosted and guided guests to dinner in groups, faculty and staff served the food buffet style, and split-pot drawings ran hourly through the evening.
“We invited friends, families, parishes and anyone that is interested in supporting the seminarians,” Joe Rohan, a Saint Mary Seminary fourth-year theology student who coordinated the event with Borromeo senior Christopher Yankay, told the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland. Rohan ran the evening’s many details despite recent knee surgery that had him on crutches, the diocese noted.
Guests could also join a bourbon pull and buy homemade nut roll, pies and mini loaves of banana bread. Deacon Noah Furin led tours of the seminary throughout the event, showing visitors the library, the residence hall, Mary, Mother of the Good Shepherd Chapel, the Capuchin chapel and a classroom inside facilities that recently underwent a major renovation financed by the Heart of a Shepherd campaign, according to the diocese.
For many guests it was their first look inside the seminary campus, and organizers said the night was built to connect the wider Catholic community with the men studying for the priesthood. Proceeds from the dinner, raffles and auctions go to the student activity fund that supports life at both seminaries through the year.
Photo: John Freeman, CC BY