THE CENTER
The Center for the Secret of Peace
First Phase Projects
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Counseling and Retreat Center: This project will be the center for those seeking counseling services. It will provide meeting and office space for individual meetings, conferences, and retreats. It will also provide onsite food and beverage services and lodging for those visiting from out of town.
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Visitor Food Service and Administrative Offices: This project will focus on offering limited food and beverage services and a gift shop to the many daily visitors to the site. It will also include the administrative office of the center.
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Overall site Infrastructure Upgrade: This project will focus on the infrastructure needs of the Center. They will include safe access/circulation roads, parking for car and busses, walking pathways, hard landscaping, seating walls, benches, garbage bins, planter and flower boxes, security booths/control gates, entry/exit barriers, drainage ditches, fencing to site boundaries, covered walkways, a service plant, project entrance upgrade, project signage.
Future Projects
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Retirement House for Priests: This project will focus on the retirement needs of the local priest community. Retired priests in Rwanda have no place to go to be cared for and to participate in community life. They have given their lives to the church and Fr. Ubald felt very strongly that we should take care of them at the Center. His desire was for them to have a place to live with dignity and to be able to help with confessions and other sacramental needs of the pilgrims at the Center so they could continue their work and be part of the Center Community.
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Sister Convent: A facility to house a group of sisters who will minister to the pilgrims, aid and assist the retired priests and perform duties carried out around the center.
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Guest House: A facility for retreat leaders, visiting dignitaries, visiting professionals such as doctors’ counselors and other individuals who are helping with the programs and work of the Center.
The late Fr. Ubald, with the encouragement of the Bishop of Cyangugu, had a vision to build a center of healing, peace, and reconciliation that would minister to the people of his diocese, Rwanda, and the surrounding areas of Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo where there has been so much war, poverty, and trauma. Fr. Ubald, with the generous donations from his friends in Austria and the USA, purchased a beautiful piece of property overlooking Lake Kivu to build the center. The property is comprised of 72 acres and has a church with a perpetual adoration chapel, amphitheater for large gathering, a rosary walk, and a Divine Mercy Jesus statue, as well as housing for the priests and a small administrative building.
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The Board of the Center of the Secret of Peace’s mission is to implement Father Ubald’s vision for the center. To do so, the Board is in the process of establishing a master site plan incorporating the building and infrastructure elements that Father Ubald felt where necessary for the center to carry out its mission of peace, healing, and reconciliation. We anticipate the center’s master site plan being built out over the next 5 years, with the first phase of projects being built out over the next 24 months. The funding of these projects will be subject to donations from individuals, foundations, and institutions.