'A great blessing': Holy Spirit Hall nearing reality as reservations being accepted

By ROB HERBST
The Catholic Week
BATTLES WHARF — Progress continues to be made on the construction of Holy Spirit Hall and now reservations are being accepted for the retreat center. 
The Archdiocese of Mobile broke ground on the retreat center for young people and those who serve them in February 2020 and work is expected to be complete sometime this spring. 
Holy Spirit Hall is being constructed on the former site of Camp Cullen and adjacent to Sacred Heart Chapel in Battles Wharf on Mobile Bay (historically known as the Bay of the Holy Spirit). It will accommodate 176 people, complete with sleeping arrangements, bathroom facilities, kitchen, and a dining and activity hall. The front of the facility will look directly onto Mobile Bay.
“It’s going to be a great blessing for them to come here and have a home away from home,” Archdiocese of Mobile Director Youth and Young Adult Ministry Adam Ganucheau said. “You can’t get much better than sitting on Mobile Bay, encountering God, encountering nature, encountering yourself.”
Holy Spirit Hall will include 14,700-square feet of indoor space and 6,000-square feet of covered porches. Much of the indoor space will be the dining hall/meeting space. The room will include two large screens and one motorized projection screen for presentations. 
Two bunk rooms will include 40 bunk beds each, sleeping 80 in each room. There are also eight chaperone rooms with bunk beds and private bathroom for each.
“It’s been on my top 10 list since I got here,” Ganucheau said of a retreat center. “We do a lot of retreats at other places. There’s very few Catholic retreat centers in our area that are built for teens. It’s our own, one that we designed and built with our young people in mind.”
Ganucheau added the retreat center is “an investment in our young people.”
“We want to take them on retreat, we want to take them away from TikTok, Snapchat and the daily kind of stuff to nature, to the water, to the woods. It unplugs them literally and figuratively.”
- For information on bookings, contact Adam Ganucheau at 251-433-4138 or [email protected]