This summer, two dozen church property professionals will begin a two-year program aimed at forming leaders and advancing innovative projects related to the pastoral questions arising from church-owned real estate. This leadership program, the 2025-2027 cohort of the Eucharistic Culture Project (ECP), is a collaboration between the Church Properties Initiative (CPI) and the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy at the McGrath Institute for Church Life. 

Selected from a field of close to 80 applicants, the 2025-27 cohort is composed of 22 participants and two cohort coaches who occupy a wide range of professional and ministry roles. With half of participants working full time for a Church entity and half working in industry, the 2025-27 cohort will bring together architects, clergy, developers, lawyers, pastoral ministers, women religious, and more, to develop a shared vocabulary for the Eucharistic dimension of church property and to support one another in executing individual projects. 

As part of the application process, prospective cohort members submitted project proposals, identifying a specific pastoral need related to church property and proposing an innovative solution or research question. Examples of accepted project proposals submitted by this cohort include forming a real estate investment co-op normed by Catholic Social Teaching, reimagining closed convents for new forms of monastic-inspired life, designing a master plan for a downtown cathedral campus, and revitalizing a historic inner-city church building as a center for regional Catholic life.

In addition to receiving ongoing coaching and peer support on their projects, participants will spend several weeks together in person on Notre Dame’s campus, travel to Rome and to a domestic immersion location, and will complete four, six-week online learning modules. By the conclusion of the program in 2027, NDCL and CPI hope that cohort participants will emerge as ambassadors for the building of a Eucharistic culture through church property, with projects that advance reflection and practice in the understanding and stewardship of the Church’s patrimony.

The ECP’s first cohort was launched in 2022 to “orient the Church’s preaching, teaching, prayer, and service around the Eucharistic mystery.” The forthcoming cohort will be NDCL’s second iteration, and the first in collaboration with CPI. “In addition to the formal learning and immersion opportunities the cohort will offer, simply convening this group of visionary, devoted, and incredibly well-qualified leaders opens up a space for transformative conversation about both the liturgical and economic dimensions of sacred space,” said CPI Program Director Madeline Johnson. “We are thrilled to partner with NDCL to accompany this cohort over the next two years.”