Each year we are blessed to have a strong list of applicants for the Archbishop Carlson Adoption Grant and this year was no exception. The Adoption Grant committee met on several occasions from November 2022 to January 2023 and was impressed by the caliber of the families who were willing to open their hearts and their homes to children in need. In February, the final determinations were made who would receive the 2023 Grants and the families were notified.

On March 20th, the Feast of St. Joseph (Patron Saint of adoptive parents!), we met with several of the families who received the 2023 grant for a special blessing. All three of the families who were able to join us had already welcomed their adoptive child into their home and were ready to receive a blessing from Bishop Rivituso. After the blessing, the families gathered for a small reception to celebrate the beauty of adoption in their lives and the lives of their children. It was an amazing opportunity for the families to connect with one another and share graces of their experience!

It was truly beautiful to meet each family which whom we had been working for so many months and to hear the ways that God had been working in their lives to bring them to this point. They all expressed such gratitude for gift of the Archbishop Robert J. Carlson Adoption Grant in their lives and expressed how much it meant to them that there were others, including the Church, who were willing to support them along this journey.