St. Gregory's Hall Interview: Meet the Director

We are very happy to announce that Mark Franzen has been hired as the founding director of the Cultural Center at St. Gregory the Great.

Mark comes to us from the Lumen Christi Institute, where he served as Senior Program Coordinator. He is also a long-time parishioner of St. Gregory the Great. Mark shared some of his thoughts on the mission of the Cultural Center and what it will mean for evangelization in the neighborhood.

If you would like to get in touch with Mark about the Cultural Center, contact him by email.

Can you speak about the significance of this role, given how long you’ve been a parishioner at St. Gregory’s?

It’s God’s providence that I’m having this opportunity, and it’s fitting insofar as usually when we want to see some kind of change in the church, we want to see something right, we want to start somewhere new or go somewhere else. Being able to start a center like this in my home parish, it’s just unbelievable. It doesn’t feel like a job, it feels like a vocation. My hope is that I can live up to what is a very significant thing I’ve been called to here.
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My understanding of the faith has been cultivated at this parish. My wife, Lauren, and I are both baptized Catholics who returned to the faith as adults and went through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults at St. Gregory and were confirmed there.​

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