Katharina Barden, 11, a fifth grader at St. John the Baptist Catholic School in Savage, was sitting in the back of her family’s car when she told her mom, Stacie, that she wanted to “get Catholic.”
Stacie, whose family lives in Lakeville, was initially surprised that her daughter wanted to become Catholic since the family does not attend Mass. Then it began it make sense: Katharina receives religious formation at St. John the Baptist Catholic School, which she has attended for the past three years, and her great-grandmother, who was devoutly Catholic, recently passed away and left Katharina a collection of rosaries, which she treasures.
“I just wanted to follow the path of Jesus,” Katharina said about her decision to be baptized in the Catholic faith. “I realized that (Jesus) did a lot for us so I just wanted to grow closer to him.”
Katharina was one of five students from St. John the Baptist who expressed a desire to be baptized. After a series of special faith formation meetings, the students — Charlotte Hoang (second grade), Dereck Espinoza (second grade), Benito Lettieri (seventh grade) and his sister, Sarah (fifth grade) — and Katharina were baptized at a school Mass by Father Ben Little.
Kayla Rooney, director of discipleship and religious education at the school, where roughly a quarter of all students are non-Catholic, said she hopes the witnesses of the newly baptized students will encourage other students to desire baptism, too.
“You have a peer-to-peer witness to those other youth in our school,” Ronney said. “Whether it is a witness to be baptized if they are not, or just to desire the Catholic faith on a deeper level, or to ask good questions … I think this is just another way the (Holy) Spirit can move. It might just be a seed that was planted, at the very least, that might get watered and nourished into more.”
