Are student loans keeping aspirants from your Catholic religious community?

BERWYN, Ill. - April 25, 2013 - PRLog -- Many a leader of a Catholic religious community has experienced it before: a young person shows up interested in joining their community. They are a good candidate, but there’s one obstacle — they owe tens of thousands of dollars in college loans. With this ever growing problem becoming more common, the community is not in a position to take on their debt.

I can imagine the thoughts of any religious superior: It’s difficult enough to find good vocations – how are we going to overcome this kind of hurdle?

This is where The Labouré Society (TLS) comes in.  The TLS provides an innovative fundraising platform, taught and facilitated by industry leaders, but led by the candidates themselves. With this method, each aspirant receives:

• Comprehensive Training in the fundamentals of Catholic philanthropy

• A personalized fundraising platform (website, digital and printed media) & ongoing staff support

• Weekly accountability calls to top business executives

The results of this one-of-a-kind program?

• 109 communities received 240 new aspirants since 2003.  (Aspirants who would otherwise have been lost to the Church and us all)

• Aspirants experience a fuller discernment process and enter community life firmly convicted of their calling to religious formation. As a recent graduate of the aspirant program shared… “Every time I picked up that phone to ask for a meeting or financial support I asked God if He was REALLY calling me to the religious life.”

• Aspirants, upon successful graduation of their program, have true freedom to discern God’s calling throughout their formation process.  They may enter and complete formation secure in the knowledge that their vocation blocking debt has been mitigated.   They can also leave formation, given their unique program, resuming their student loan payments and owing nothing to the Labouré Society for the time spent in formation.

• Aspirants also graduate from a TLS class with a high demand and life-long skills that benefit ALL communities and dioceses they enter.  They have practical experience and training in Catholic fundraising.

You might appreciate hearing about one of their aspirants: Toni Garrett

Toni graduated from the University of Dallas with a degree in politics and was burdened with $65,000 in student loans. Although not raised a Catholic, she felt a calling to join the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth in Texas. (She is now a postulant in the community.) After going through the TLS program, Toni says of her accountability partner, the Clinical Instructor of Economics at Creighton University College of Business, “His positive attitude and practical solutions for dealing with people, from his business background, help me to sharpen my thinking and make my ideas more effective. I couldn’t have made it without the help of the Labouré  Society.”

The Labouré Society is currently accepting applications for their next class of aspirants. If you would like to learn more or see how they can help deliver more aspirants to your community… please contact them on The Labouré Society website at http://labouresociety.org/, or call them at 651-452-1160.

The Labouré Society is a 501 (c) 3, which provides the opportunity of a tax deduction for those who wish to join these vocational journeys and receive an eternal reward on their investment.