The following comes from an April 6 story in the Orange County Catholic, the website for the diocese of  Orange.

Bishop Kevin Vann blessed the ground at St. Serra Catholic School in Rancho Santa Margarita on Monday, April 3, as students, faculty, donors and city leaders celebrated the groundbreaking of the fourth and final phase of the school.

More than 100 gathered on the property where construction will soon begin on the new Saint Serra Chapel and a two-story Student Creation Center and Administration Building. The 22,000-square-foot project is projected to cost $9 million and will complete the master plan for the school that began as an idea 22 years ago.

Bishop Vann presided over the Liturgy of the Word that fittingly included words from the Gospel of Matthew 16:18 “…and upon this rock, I will build my Church…”

Bishop Vann then walked the footprint of the new building and using holy water he blessed the ground and asked God to “bring construction to a successful completion.”

Finally the bishop donned a hard hat, grabbed a shovel and, flanked by eighth-grade students also with shovels, he moved the first plod of dirt symbolically beginning the construction.