Columbus St. Mary, Mother of God Church in the German Village area and the parish school have expanded their outreach to the community with the opening of the Nationwide Children’s Hospital School Based Health Center in the newly renovated Burkley Center on the campus at 672 S. Third St.

The clinic opened in the former parish convent north of the church on Tuesday, Jan. 31 and was blessed on Friday, Feb. 3, the feast of St. Blaise, during an official ribbon-cutting ceremony by Bishop Earl Fernandes.

Joining the bishop for the ceremony were Father Vincent Nguyen, pastor at St. Mary; Deacon Roger Minner, who serves the parish; Gina Stull, St. Mary School principal; Msgr. Joseph Hendricks, the pastor at Dublin St. Brigid of Kildare Church who oversees community relations for the diocese; officials and health-care professionals from Nationwide Children’s; Corna Kokosing Construction; MKC Architects; and benefactors.

The 5,000-square-foot health center, located on the second floor of the former convent, will provide medical, vision, hearing and behavioral health care with staffing from Nationwide Children’s for the 400-plus students in the parish school in grades pre-K through eighth in addition to being open to all children in the area. 

Major gifts to help fund the project came from the hospital and a private donor.

The partnership with Nationwide Children’s is part of the hospital’s mission in recent years to bring medical and behavioral health care into schools to students who might not regularly have access to these services. 

“There are few who are blessed to be able to offer the services of a world-class health center within the campus of their school,” Stull said. “It just doesn’t happen.”

The clinic will serve not only the parish school but will be open to children in the German Village area and in south Columbus as part of St. Mary’s outreach efforts in the community at large. 

Father Vincent Nguyen, pastor at Columbus St. Mary, Mother of God Church, offers opening remarks at a gathering on Friday, Feb. 3 to bless the parish's new Nationwide Children's Hospital School Based Health Center.

“As a people of faith, we have principles that guide us to be a culture of care, such as the commitment to promoting human dignity, the care for the poor, to contribute to the common good, to be responsible stewards of available resources and to act with our beautiful Catholic faith,” Father Nguyen said.

“This school-based health center does all of that and reminds our community here at St. Mary’s and the greater central Ohio region in the diocese that we must be men and women who identify with the vulnerability of others, especially the youth, to reject exclusion and act instead as neighbors lifting up and rehabilitating the fallen for the sake of the common good.”

The first floor of the Burkley Center will be the new home for the Dominican Learning Center, currently located at Corpus Christi Church at 1111 E. Stewart Ave. The Dominican Learning Center primarily serves adults in the community through volunteers who provide support that includes learning English as a Second Language (ESL), tutoring in reading, mastering learning skills and passing GED examinations.  

The parish offices, currently located on the first floor, will be moved to the first floor of the rectory located between the church and the school this fall as part of a campus renovation project that encompasses the rectory transformation with offices and a conference room, the addition to the parish school already underway, a new Heritage Hall within the confines of the school that will provide 3,403 square feet of space that will hold 200 people for parish and school events, and a new 1,419-square-foot Our Lady of Guadalupe Hall adjacent to Heritage Hall reserved for parish use, with a projected completion date in 2024.

The new Nationwide Children's Hospital School Based Health Center is located on the second floor in the Burkley Center. The building will also house the Dominican Learning Center on the first floor.

Construction at St. Mary has been ongoing since a lightning strike in 2016 damaged the historic church and made it structurally unsafe. Extensive renovation took several years before the building reopened in 2019.

In 2020, the diocese purchased the former Golden Hobby Shop at 630 S. Third St., and the historic former schoolhouse is now home to St. Mary’s middle school.

The idea for a health clinic came from Father Nguyen in 2019 when he saw the struggles taking place on the south side of the city that included human trafficking. He approached Bishop Robert Brennan, then the diocese’s bishop, who agreed that there was a need for community outreach.

Bishop Brennan reached out to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Catholic Bioethics Center for clearance to pursue the idea of a parish-based health center before discussions began in 2020 with Nationwide Children’s.

“I’ve preached about being a spiritual entrepreneur, and, in some ways, Father Vince is an entrepreneur,” Bishop Fernandes said at the dedication. “It says in the Scriptures that without vision people perish. And so, it’s literally helped give children vision through the building of this center.

“Another thing an entrepreneur does is he surrounds himself with good people, works with them and their strengths and gifts to make a vision a reality. And today we celebrate the fact that this vision is becoming a reality.”

Bishop Earl Fernandes speaks at Columbus St. Mary, Mother of God Church before the dedication of the Nationwide Children's Hospital School Based Health Center. CT photo by Ken Snow 

Bishop Fernandes went on to speak about the importance of outreach to those in need and forming healthy children both spiritually and physically.

“Good things happen when we have healthy children who can see clearly and hear clearly and who can then study properly and grow up to be virtuous citizens,” he said. “Part of the building of this center is clearly part of the proclamation of the kingdom, which is no longer a kingdom of injustice but a kingdom of inclusion, a kingdom of truth and justice and peace.

“Part of what we are giving witness to is that the poor, the marginalized, excluded, the sick will not be forgotten, will no longer be pushed aside. The existence of this center is a sign of the compassionate care of which we as a society are capable of offering so that no one feels alone or abandoned but feels like they have a true opportunity to succeed. We give witness to the dignity of each and every person and each and every child with our commitment to that child’s care.”

He concluded, “We have to have healthy children that are more able not only to understand truth in the classroom but also the things of God, and these things work together to form a well-rounded person. … We have a vision not only for the present moment but for the future. Here, we are in a historic church next to a historic school in historic German Village, and we are building on the shoulders of giants.

“But we don’t just look to the past. Now it’s time to open our eyes to the future and the good things that are going to happen in German Village.”

Msgr. Hendricks called the St. Mary’s projects “a building block for the reestablishment and expansion” of the church’s ministries on the south end of Columbus and in the German Village area. Those plans could include the construction of affordable community housing on the south side in the future.

“It really will be the linchpin of the faith for the south end,” Msgr. Hendricks said.