The Casa Veterans Ministry launched in 2012 in partnership with the Arizona Coalition for Military Families. It operates out of the Franciscan Renewal Center in Scottsdale, 5802 E. Lincoln Drive, and offers free retreats, programs and workshops for veterans.
Casa Veterans Ministry “a safe place for certain veterans and their families to find a place for healing from the wounds of service,” said Dean Pedrotti, lead volunteer and co-founder of CVM.
The word Casa in the name is actually a nickname for the Franciscan Renewal Center.
Pedrotti, a firefighter, was inspired to found CVM after attending a seminar through the Arizona Coalition for Military Families where veterans told stories about how they had been injured, had PTSD, significant traumatic brain injuries and more.
At the time Pedrotti was a member of the Franciscan Renewal Center and went to its Executive Director Charlie Brown who suggested that they start a ministry.
“He ended up finding a retired service corps executive that is a volunteer that helped us basically launch the ministry,” Pedrotti said. “Then shortly thereafter, we liked up with Mike and he was so crucial to the development of CVM. We did stuff for the first couple of years, we got grants that funded Healing memories. Some of the grant money we got also allowed us to do a strategic plan. And Mike was critical in that piece and helped redirect our ministry is such a way that we’ve lasted 12 years.”
The retreats and the workshops that the ministry holds are open to all veterans — with some even being specifically for women veterans. The ministry has even hosted retreats for spouses and significant others of veterans.
There are a number of different programs that the ministry offers.
Healing Memories — a two-day retreat run by Wold — is one of them. The workshop was created by Father Michael Lapsley, an Anglican missionary priest who in 1990 lost both of his hands and one of his eyes to a letter bomb sent to him by a supporter of the pro-apartheid government in South Africa. After recovering he founded the Institute for Healing Memories in South Africa — where the workshop was started — and dedicated his life to aiding victims of emotional, psychological and spiritual wounds.
The workshop supplements the PTSD healing with what’s called moral injury — the wound that people in combat and sometimes boot camp get when they have to do things that violate their basic moral values.
“I brought it to Arizona in 2013 and I was so happy to be part of the Casa Veterans Ministry because they supported me in doing those retreats,” Wold said. “And now we’re going to do our 38th retreat this weekend up at a retreat center in Carefree. It’s been very fulfilling.”
Casa Veterans Ministry also offers Building Spiritual Strength, an eight-week online program led by trained facilitators who will help veterans explore their spirituality while still paying mind to the veteran’s faith tradition and practices.
“We’re doing this in conjunction with Dr. Irene Harris — she’s from the Minnesota VA that just opened up a new training facility in Bedford, Maine called the Moral Injury Symptom Training Center,” Pedrotti said. “It’s unusual and unique in that it merges both a behavioral health provider along with somebody with a spirituality background … and we’re getting really good outcomes.”
The ministry created two retreats based around the Saint Francis of Assisi.
“St. Francis, historically, was a horseman soldier in the 12th century and both a prisoner of war,” Pedrotti said. “Historians, now believe St. Francis was passed from a young man traumatized by battle leading to a world icon of peace. It’s very helpful for the veterans.”
The first retreat — Journey of a Resilient Warrior — will have participants explore the challenges confronting veterans in comparison to the saint.
The second retreat — A Resilient Warrior’s Journey Forward — takes veterans deeper into their spirituality and teaches them various practices and alternative approaches to discovering “a deeper peace and the tranquility that lies within.” In order to do this the retreat focuses on St. Francis’s transformation from a wounded warrior to the founder of the Franciscan order.
Wold and Pedrotti have seen the different program be successful both qualitatively and anecdotally.
Statistically 90% of the veterans who participated in the Healing Memories Workshop said that their expectations had been met and that the weekend had been useful as a process towards healing them.
“Then there’s anecdotal information … last year there was a Vietnam vet, a huge man, about six foot five … and when he arrived, I wasn’t sure about him,” Wold said. “He had an angry look on his face, … I had not seen that level of anger and so I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. … Sunday, after the retreat, he said ‘I’d like to talk to you privately.’ … He said, ‘Mike, I want to thank you so much. I never realized that the stories that I buried for Vietnam made me an extremely angry man. … I told those stories and got the best sleep I had in 40 years.’ He emailed me a week later and told me at first his family thought he was nuts and didn’t know what had happened but finally realized that he had changed.”
Pedrotti added that the way he measures success when veterans tell their story is looking at the front row and when he sees tears, he knows it worked.
For the future, CVM is focusing on and working closely with the VA to get referrals and reach veterans who are more distant or isolated for the Building Spiritual Strength program as it is VA and Department of Defense approved.
“But we’re kind of outside that institution, so it’s been a slow process,” Pedrotti said.
Wold added that the suicide rate among veterans has dropped from 22 a day to 18 a day and believes that what the Casa Veterans Ministry and Dr. Harris are doing has aided with that.
Wold encourages other veterans not to deny themselves of the gift of these healing programs offered by CVM.
“Veterans don’t want to be fixed, right? We fix other people, we help other people, we sacrifice for other people,” Wold said. “And that’s the biggest barrier veterans have for getting healing. I’ve talked to Vietnam vets that waited until they retired to come to the workshop, they buried it for 40 years.”
Pedrotti noted the similarities between the fire service, law enforcement and military community and said although he had never served in the military, he can relate to veterans with moral injury having been a paramedic.
“So, I would say that if a veteran is willing to perhaps move to a place they really don’t want to and face that potential discomfort, they can get to a better place,” Pedrotti said.
Veterans interested in participating in the retreats and program offered by Casa Veterans Ministry can visit their website.
