At the invitation of the late Archbishop Anthony Meagher, the lay movement is sending two of its 44 staff members to Queen’s, Jeremy Rude and Lee Leonard. They will be joined by an intern.

Catholic Christian Outreach is a Canadian movement for university students, founded in Saskatoon 18 years ago by Andre and Angel Regnier. It trains young people to become Catholic leaders and evangelists through Bible studies, international and national pilgrimages and mission projects, music and prayer. Primarily, the movement aims to reintroduce fallen away Catholics to the faith.

With the addition of Queen’s, CCO is on eight campuses in six cities: Vancouver, Regina, Saskatoon, Ottawa, Kingston and Halifax.

“We had to build a good foundation in order to build for the future. If we wanted to expand too much we would have a short life span,” said Andre Regnier. “Now we know we can sustain growth, so we can attract new people and care for the staff so that they can be lifetime missionaries.”

Queen’s University chaplain Fr. Raymond de Souza has long hoped for the lay movement to expand to the Queen’s campus.

“The contemporary university campus is real mission territory, and for that you need trained enthusiastic Catholic missionaries,” said de Souza.  

“If the future of the church depends upon young people, and they are increasingly absent from parish life, then we need a concerted evangelical push to reach them where they are — and one place they are is on university campuses.”