Stephen and Jenny Conner smile in front of the Grotto house.

Courtesy | Jenny Conner

This year, Catholic Society welcomes a new alumni couple, Stephen and Jenny Conner ’24, to the Grotto.

The Grotto, an outreach of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Parish, is an off-campus house dedicated to facilitating student faith, life, and community. This house has also traditionally been the home of a couple chosen by the parish to live and work in service of the Catholic student body of Hillsdale.

“We are hoping to help demonstrate how the laity can have a certain rule of life and really center their whole home and whole day around prayer and around our Lord,” Jenny Conner said.

In addition to hosting talks, events, and activities, the Grotto contains a chapel with the Holy Eucharist always present just a couple blocks away from campus.

“Just by the presence there, it becomes a place of rest for students that is unlike any other place on campus,” Catholic Society Vice President junior Lizzie Putlock said.

Stephen and Jenny Conner said the Grotto was not only a vital element of their individual college experiences, but actually brought them together.

“The one thing Jenny knew about me when we had met for the first time at Saga was that I was Protestant and my name was Stephen with a PH,” Stephen Conner said.

Jenny Conner said she was quite surprised when she ran into Stephen at the Grotto the next day.

“I was shocked,” Jenny Conner said. “I think I just said, ‘What are you doing here?’”

That unexpected encounter was just the start of a college career for both students rooted in the formation and community the Grotto had to offer. Despite telling Jenny Conner that he was Protestant as soon as he met her, Stephen Conner said he kept coming back and was eventually confirmed Catholic in the spring of 2021.

“The Grotto just became a very important place for us throughout college, and as we were discerning marriage and what we wanted to do after school,” Jenny Conner said.

After graduating, the Conners moved to Arizona, where Stephen Conner started teaching at his old school, Cicero Prep Academy. The couple quickly settled into their new life together.

“Things were going well, and we were not planning on making any kind of change,” Stephen Conner said.

However, when the Grotto called, the Conners answered. Upon hearing from Jenny one evening that the Grotto position was open, Stephen said that his immediate reaction was, “I think that we are probably going to have a life change here.”

Jenny Conner noted she and her husband have always believed evangelical mission to be an important aspect of their marriage. She explained that they were married on the Feast of the Visitation, which she described as “a day of apostolic mission.”

“The idea that we as a married couple could have the opportunity to go on a mission together to help support the Catholic community at Hillsdale was very exciting, and we saw it as in line with our vocation of marriage,” Jenny Conner said.

After careful discernment and a series of interviews and conversations, the couple officially turned over the page to a new chapter. They said they packed up all their belongings and moved to Hillsdale in July.

Having experienced many opportunities for faith life and community at the Grotto as students, the Conners say they hope to continue this tradition for Hillsdale’s Catholic student body.

“Hillsdale is already such a small community. It doesn’t need another campus center or another student center, it needs a home,” Stephen Conner said. “It needs a place where students can encounter our Lord in a kind of intimate and sacramental setting.”

Putlock said when the Catholic Society Board convened at the Grotto before classes to meet the new couple, Stephen Conner started the meeting by leading them into the chapel and opening in prayer.

“I just had this sense that their first focus was on Christ himself, Christ in the Eucharist, Christ as a person,” Putlock said. “I just think being able to see Stephen’s heart in that way and Jenny’s heart in that way really inspired me to be like these people — they’re really on a mission.”

While preserving the established tradition that has guided the Grotto thus far, the Conners say they also have fresh ideas and areas of focus that they hope to bring to this endeavor. One of these new practices is the recitation of morning and evening prayer at the opening of the Grotto and just before its closing at night. Stephen Conner said he plans to lead daily prayers such as the Chanticle of Zachariah in the mornings at 8 a.m. and the Song of Simeon at 11 p.m.

“It’s a house, a home, but it also has a kind of monastic spirit to it as well,” Stephen Conner said.