What it is
The Franciscan Renewal Center is a Catholic retreat campus on the north side of Lincoln Drive, at the foot of Camelback Mountain and next door to the Camelback Inn, and everyone in the Valley calls it the Casa. The Franciscan friars opened it in 1951 as the Casa de Paz y Bien, the house of peace and good, when Lincoln Drive was a dirt road between dude ranches and the town of Paradise Valley did not yet exist. It is still a community of the Order of Friars Minor, a sponsored ministry of the Franciscans’ Province of St. Barbara working with the Diocese of Phoenix, and it does what a retreat center does: Mass in its church, Our Lady of the Angels, four times each weekend and every weekday morning; directed and private retreats with overnight rooms; spiritual direction; classes, lectures and support groups; a licensed counseling center; and a gift shop, Books & Blessings, that is the best religious bookstore in the metro.
What makes it worth a guide is the welcome and the ground. The sign says all are welcome and the place has meant it for seventy-five years; the congregation is large and drawn from the whole Valley, and a visitor of any faith or none can walk the gardens from six in the morning to half past seven at night without being asked anything. On resort row, where every other acre has a valet, that is rare.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Three reasons, in order of how many people act on them. Sunday Mass, for Catholic visitors who want a church that sings and a courtyard coffee hour after. A quiet hour, for anyone staying on the corridor who needs ten minutes away from the pool deck; the grounds under the mountain are the calmest public acres between the Camelback Inn and the Phoenician. And a retreat, for the smaller number who come to Scottsdale for the sun and discover the Casa’s weekend programs, which are the real thing and fill months ahead.
The practical version
Eleven minutes from Old Town up Scottsdale Road and west on Lincoln Drive. Grounds and guest services daily, 6 AM to 7:30 PM. Mass Saturday at 4 PM, Sunday at 7:30, 9:15 and 11 AM, weekdays at 8 AM. Park in the lot, check in at guest services if you are unsure where to go, keep your voice down and your camera in your pocket out of respect for the people on retreat, and leave something in the box.
When to go
Sunday morning is the Casa at full strength: the 9:15 Mass is the fullest, the music is good and the courtyard afterward is where half of Paradise Valley catches up over coffee. Arrive twenty minutes early for a seat in season. Weekday mornings are the opposite and better for a visitor who wants the ground rather than the crowd: the 8 AM Mass draws a few dozen, and afterward the gardens are empty under the mountain with the light coming over Camelback’s hump. Advent and Lent bring the fullest program calendar, and the retreat weekends from October to April book out early. Summer is quiet, hot by nine, and lovely at seven.
What to do
- Mass at Our Lady of the Angels. A modern church built for light and for a large congregation, and the heart of the campus. Visitors of any faith are welcome to sit.
- Walk the grounds. Courtyards, gardens and shaded paths with Camelback over the north wall; ask at guest services for the quiet corners.
- Books & Blessings. The gift shop and bookstore, with its own hours posted online; it is the place in the Valley to buy a serious religious book, an icon or a rosary that was not made for a tourist.
- A class or a lecture. The program calendar runs to scripture, contemplative prayer, Franciscan spirituality and the occasional public intellectual; registration is online and most sessions are open to drop-ins.
- A retreat. Directed weekends with talks and community meals, or a private retreat with a room, the dining hall and a director if you want one. This is the thing the Casa exists for.
Etiquette
The campus is also a counseling center and a place where people are on retreat for reasons that are theirs. Keep the volume low, do not photograph other guests, and if you are asked by staff to check in, do. The friars are gracious about visitors and expect visitors to be gracious back.
The neighborhood
Resort row. The Camelback Inn is next door, El Chorro and the Sanctuary are minutes west, and Camelback’s Echo Canyon trailhead is across Lincoln and up McDonald Drive; our Camelback corridor guide covers all of it. The Casa is the one address on the street where nothing is for sale.
The story
In 1951 the Franciscans of the Province of St. Barbara, the California-based province whose friars had served the Southwest since the mission era, opened a retreat house on Lincoln Drive at the foot of Camelback and called it the Casa de Paz y Bien, the house of peace and good, after the Franciscan greeting. The valley around it was still the Paradise Valley of the dude ranches: the Camelback Inn had opened next door in 1936, the Jokake Inn stood on the mountain’s south side, and citrus groves and desert filled the miles between them. The friars built low, in the ranch idiom of the time, and the Casa grew as the Valley did, adding rooms, a dining hall, classrooms and finally the modern church, Our Lady of the Angels, that holds the congregation today.
Over seventy-five years it has become something more than a retreat house: a parish in all but name for Catholics across the Valley who want a Franciscan church, a counseling and recovery center, a lecture hall, a bookstore and a piece of open ground under the mountain that the resorts around it have never been able to buy. The town of Paradise Valley incorporated around it in 1961 and left it alone. The friars still live there. The name on the gate changed to the Franciscan Renewal Center, but the greeting did not, and the sign at the road says the same thing it said in 1951.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s own Catholic history runs through the Old Adobe Mission on Brown Avenue, built by Mexican and Yaqui families in 1933, and the parish that grew from it, Our Lady of Perpetual Help; the Casa is the other half of that story, the retreat house the whole Valley drives to, opened eighteen years after the mission and a few miles up the road. The two make a short Catholic Scottsdale: the barrio church that the town’s founding families built with their hands, and the friars’ campus under Camelback where their grandchildren go on retreat. The Casa also belongs with the postwar churches in our midcentury churches note, as the ranch-style religious campus that preceded them; by the 1960s the Valley’s congregations were building concrete shells and spires, and the Casa stayed low and quiet.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road north from Old Town to Lincoln Drive, west on Lincoln about a mile and a half; the Casa is on the north side just past the Camelback Inn’s entrance, at 5802 E Lincoln Drive, with a lot inside the gate. Eleven minutes from Old Town, a few from the corridor resorts, and an easy walk from the Camelback Inn for anyone staying there. No transit comes near. On Sunday mornings the lot fills for the 9:15; come early or park along the drive as directed.