♥️Exciting news!!! ♥️ WCAT Radio has stepped up to be the fiscal sponsor of The Gethsemane Institute, founded this June 2025. Why now? It is the 350 year Jubilee of the Sacred Heart and we felt the Holy Spirit calling us to go forward in this providential moment.

Founding a non-profit can be an arduous process, and it takes time! Usually at least a year to get approval for tax-exempt status. To allow us to immediately receive donations that are 100% tax-deductible for you, our dear friend, a Dominican and friend of Catholic Holy Hour (the director of WCAT Catholic Radio) has stepped up to be our fiscal sponsor. Be assured that all of the donations collected through this fundraiser will be distributed to the Gethsemane Institute to fund our charitable operations. Thank you, WCAT Radio and God bless you! ♥️ Please, friends, pray for all our goals to be met and please join us on this exciting venture!

The Gethsemane Institute is raising funds and seeks YOUR help to grow and develop:

Free Guided Holy Hours: Please assist our capacity to be able to continue making, producing and sending Guided Holy Hours each month to thousands of First Thursday Club members WORLDWIDE at Catholic Holy Hour. It is costly to make these inspiring Holy Hours, and we seek to keep these free.

Education: Develop our initiative for the Gethemane Institute to offer theological Courses, Classes, Seminars, Retreats (online and in-person), and Podcasts inspired by our love of Christ in Gethsemane and firmly rooted in truth, beauty, goodness & the teachings of the Church Magisterium, Scripture and Tradition.

Parish Outreach: Spread devotion to the at-home Holy Hour and consoling Christ in Gethsemane by developing content (pamphlets, booklets, etc) that can be distributed for free in parishes explaining the fruits of this devotion: what it is, how to pray it, what the graces are.

Assist our Consolation Ministry: Gethsemane Institute's "Mount of Olives Bethany Plan" programs will reach out to the bereaved, the grieving, the caregivers, the lonely, the seeking, and the longing (and who of us is not longing for God?), to comfort and console them with the kind of hospitality Jesus found on the Mount of Olives in Bethany and that He awaits (and also offers) in Gethsemane.

Launch our "Gethseminary" Initiative to:

Help Seminarians: The Gethseminary initiative of The Gethsemane Institute will develop and provide resources to seminarians across the world giving them a strong and much-needed theological foundation in the Theology of Gethsemane (a missing component in current Seminary educations-- how often do you hear in-depth homilies on that part of the Passion?)

Provide a system of strength, support and inspiration to buoy them up as they go out into the world as priests.

Give priestly souls a spiritual refuge in the Garden of Gethsemane, to know of the lifelong invitation to a place set apart by Christ the High Priest where each individual priest's burden can find rest and consolation there.

Why is this so desperately needed? The crisis in the priesthood has rocked the church over the past decades, leaving an absence of vocations and added burdens on the priests we do have, making it harder for them to journey the many challenges of their holy call. After all, the priesthood is a high calling and "of all to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be asked" (Lk 12:48).

• We go forward boldly, trusting in God's love, because we believe it is the appointed time for the Gethsemane Institute to grow from the seeds each one of you plants in the Garden. After all, we have begun this quest 350 years (a Jubilee anniversary) from the origin of the Feast of the Sacred Heart in which Jesus asked for increased devotion to His Sacred Heart.

• The devotion to Gethsemane is one of the requests of the Sacred Heart 350 years ago... and while His other requests (9 First Fridays, etc) have been heeded, His request to prayerfully console Him in Gethsemane on Thursday nights have gone all-too-often unheeded.

• This request has been abandoned... just as Our Lord was abandoned in Gethsemane, just as the Eucharist is all-too-often abandoned today. The Gethsemane Institute wants to put a stop to this abandonment and bring this important devotion to the world. Think of it this way: We want to "build a house" of love for Christ in Gethsemane just as David longed to build a home for God's ark in the wilderness. Won't you join us?