NATCHEZ — Three green shovels digging into the ground Friday afternoon marked the beginning of a seven-month construction process for Cathedral School’s new middle school.

Administrators, staff, students and Natchez and Adams County officials gathered for an official groundbreaking ceremony for the new school, which will be a 14,500 square-foot building that will house sixth- through eighth-grade students.

“When we get up and begin everyday, one of the things we do is ask God to be with us, or if we have a big project we ask God to help us with the project,” the Rev. David O’Connor said. “So because we are about to begin a very big project of building a middle school, we’re going to have a special time of blessing now.”

O’Connor, who has been the pastor of St. Mary Basilica for 16 years and Assumption Catholic Church for 10 years, said he was honored to be a part of future generations of learning at Cathedral.

“We ask God’s blessing on this property here, which will become a center of learning, center of seeking and a center of teaching what is true,” O’Connor said. “We ask the Lord to help the students find in their teachers, the image of Christ the great teacher.”

The middle school building is part of a larger construction and remodeling project for Cathedral that also includes a new athletic facility, state-of-the-art science labs and refurbished restrooms campus-wide.

The goal of the campaign, which is titled, “Our Children, Our Tradition, Our Future,” is to help move the school forward to provide the students with more science, technology, engineering and math programs.

The chemistry and biology labs, as well as two elementary bathrooms and two high school bathrooms, were completed last summer.

Chief administrator and high school principal Pat Sanguinetti said the middle school building should be completed by April 30, 2014.

“They told me eight months, and I said it needs to be done in seven months,” Sanguinetti said. “This has been a dream we’ve wanted for five to six years, so this is a great day.”

Superintendent of Catholic Education Cathy Cook, who was also principal of Cathedral from 1991 through 2001, said she remembered the first meeting when the middle school concept was developed.

“In the mid 1990s, the faculty and administration that was here at Cathedral School had a meeting in that building over at the end room, which was called the assembly hall, and discussed concerns with how we were at the time serving seventh- and eighth-grade students and in particular how Cathedral School could do a better job of serving those students,” Cook said. “That was when the concept of a middle school within the schools was born.”

Natchez Mayor Butch Brown asked the Cathedral students sitting in a semicircle on the ground, where the new school will soon stand, to pick up a handful of grass and put it in their pocket.

“When you grow older, you’re going to run across that piece of grass and remember when this place used to be grass because after today, it’s not going to be grass anymore,” Brown said. “You’re going to be able to look back and say, ‘I was there when they were building that building.’

“It’s a wonderful day.”