St. Mark Parish pilot retreat may become model for other parishes
A 24-person retreat at St. Mark Church drew women from both Perry County parishes and may become Fatima’s model for bringing faith formation closer to home.
St. Mark Parish in Perry County has become the Archdiocese of Indianapolis’ pilot site for a traveling retreat model, and the April 18 turnout suggests why organizers want to repeat it elsewhere. The one-day retreat at St. Mark Church drew 24 participants, including women from St. Paul Parish in Tell City, and feedback forms came back overall positive.
Father Anthony Hollowell, who has pastored both St. Mark Parish in Perry County and St. Paul Parish in Tell City since 2020, said the idea came after Sandi Patel was hired in May 2025 to lead the archdiocese’s new Office of Retreat and Renewal Ministry. The goal was practical: bring Fatima-style retreat experiences to parishioners instead of requiring them to travel to Indianapolis, a barrier for people who have never attended a retreat or who may not want to spend a full day away from home.
That local convenience appears to have met a real need in Perry County. The retreat’s theme, Treasures of Friendship, centered on spiritual friendships with Christ at the center, and the day included Mass and Eucharistic adoration. Patel said the parish setting helped create a safe environment where people could begin or deepen a retreat experience without feeling overwhelmed. For a rural county where many residents already know one another through church, school and town life, the format also put spiritual formation within reach of people who might not otherwise seek it out.
Hollowell said the outside support mattered, especially in a parish where many people already hear him speak regularly. At least one participant said she appreciated learning more about both people she already knew and people she had just met, underscoring the retreat’s role as more than a devotional day. It also worked as a bridge between the two parishes Hollowell serves, with women from St. Paul joining St. Mark parishioners inside the county rather than traveling out of it.
The pilot fits Archbishop Charles C. Thompson’s vision for the office, which he created to bring Fatima “to people wherever they are in the archdiocese.” With 125 parishes across the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, a parish-based retreat could extend the reach of Our Lady of Fatima Retreat House, which opened in 1950. For Perry County, the success of the first traveling retreat suggests St. Mark may be more than a one-time test site. It could become a model for how faith-based outreach reaches rural communities that are often hardest to serve from a central location.
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