In honor of the Catholic Church’s Year of Mercy, St. Thomas students are writing letters to prison inmates and conducting a clothing drive as part of this year’s Corporal Works of Mercy Project.

After an “overwhelming response” to last year’s project, junior and peer minister Maria Post decided she needed a team of students to help organize and implement the projects. She and her team of four other students have already accomplished one project, namely writing letters to prison inmates, and are now doing a clothing drive as their second.

“We’re so privileged at St. Thomas and there’s the constant culture of brands, of looking fashionable. It called me out to be more grateful for the clothes that I have,” Post said. “We decided to initially just have a drop off for the clothes, so there’s a drop off in Campus Ministry and the peer minister dorms.”

Then a group of 20 students headed to North Campus dorms to do some door-to-door gathering, Post said.

“We weren’t sure how the powers that be would like us going ‘door-to-door;’ maybe they would take it as soliciting or something,” Post said. The response from students, however, was positive. “We probably got 200 pounds of clothes.”

Those clothes are now sitting in junior Adam Weinzetl’s apartment. Weinzetl was excited about getting to help Post head the Corporal Works of Mercy projects this year.

“We’re not a club, really. Campus Ministry has been helping us out and giving us an avenue to do this, but it’s really just a group of students who want to make a difference,” he said.

Post and her team are dropped the donations off at Sharing and Caring Hands April 15, the same place to which they donated last year’s clothing donations.

Weinzetl is grateful to all the people involved in this year’s clothing drive.

“It’s cool because we have this background of the corporal works of mercy going through the Catholic Church, but service and helping others in need is such a human quality,” he said. “I think that’s something important to consider here too is that this isn’t a Catholic thing necessarily, it’s just a human thing.”

Meghan Meints can be emailed at mein9517@stthomas.edu.