SAN DIEGO — When you think of “the missions,” what do you imagine?
Would you be surprised to learn that there is still mission territory in the continental United States?
Just ask Piarist Father John Callan, headmaster of The Piarist School, a college-preparatory school located in Hager Hill, Kentucky.
Outside the airport in Lexington, he said, you’ll see “beautifully landscaped” horse farms.
“If that’s the only thing you see about the Diocese of Lexington,” he said, “that’s a very poor impression of the diocese.”
The Piarist School is located about two and a half hours to the east, in the midst of Appalachia, one of the most impoverished regions in the country.
“Seventy-four percent of the people live below the federal poverty line,” said Father Callan. “Addiction to alcohol and drugs is extremely high, and it just seems to continue from generation to generation.”
Over the summer, Father Callan made mission appeals at parishes on behalf of The Piarist School, as well as four other mission projects — in Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico and Puerto Rico — that are sponsored by the Piarists’ Province of the United States.
The Piarist School opened in 1990 in Floyd County, Kentucky, under its founding principal,
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