Please pray for our Totus Tuus Missionaries as they prepare to service the youth in our parish and diocese this summer!
In 1987, Bernard X. Gorges, a seminarian for the Diocese of Wichita, teaches a catechetical summer program to elementary grade students at St. Michael’s Parish in Girard, KS. To keep busy during the summers of 1988-1990, Gorges accepts calls to teach at 15 different parishes in Southeast Kansas and hires college students to assist him. In 1991, two teams of four college students are formed to meet the demand for the Summer Catechetical Program, as it was then known. In 1993, the program increases to four teams and expands services into parishes in the Diocese of Dodge City, Kansas. The program informally begins to be called Totus Tuus. Over the next decade Totus Tuus grew and expanded to many other Dioceses in the Midwest and in 2002, Fr. Jerry Volz, then Director of the Didde Catholic Campus Center at Emporia State University received permission from Archbishop James P, Keleher to be trained with the first team to come to the Archdiocese of Kansas city in Kansas as a ministry of the Archdiocese. On that first team was Andrew Strobl, a student of Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. He is one of many men who have entered the seminary after serving on a Totus Tuus team, and he now serves as Co-Director of the program with Fr. Jerry Volz. In the first 11 years of the program being in the Archdiocese, there have also been 7 women who have entered religious life after serving on a team for the summer. Since its beginnings as a ministry of the Archdiocese in 2001, Totus Tuus of KCK has continued to expand its reach and ministry. The summer of 2013, four teams ministered in 23 parishes in the Archdiocese ministering to 1816 students. Where is Totus Tuus located now? Since its inception in the Diocese of Wichita in 1987, Totus Tuus has expanded from one parish in Kansas to numerous parishes throughout the country. In 2012, 29 dioceses in 16 states throughout the United States and one diocese in Canada will host their own Totus Tuus teams!
Totus Tuus Forms:
2024 Totus Tuus Registration Form
2024 Parish Request Form
View process and applications here.
Applications are welcome from dynamic Catholics 18+ from the Diocese of Witchita and beyond.