“Monumental” is an apt description of Monsignor Joseph L. Luca’s accomplishments at St. Louis Parish in Clarksville. When he arrived at the fast-growing Howard County parish in 1996, the new pastor inherited a landlocked campus with a severe space crunch.

The then-2,700 family faith community had already outgrown a new church that had been built only 16 years earlier. Seven staff members shared a single room for lack of office space, and scheduling multiple events a week was an increasingly impossible task.