Our Lady of Lourdes celebrates 75 years

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

WORCESTER – As Our Lady of Lourdes Parish celebrated its 75th anniversary with the universal Church’s birthday, Bishop McManus compared attendance of the past and present, spoke of praying for a new Pentecost and challenged listeners to invite others to Mass.

The Holy Spirit is with them and they are the Church; it’s not just the building, the pastor, Father Brian P. O’Toole, reminded them.

But the building drew at least one man to the parish and factored into another’s comments.

Joining Saturday’s Pentecost vigil Mass and the anniversary dinner which followed in the church hall were Father James B. O’Shea, former pastor, and Father Francis J. Roach, a retired priest in residence there. Father O’Toole said Father Joseph J. Jurgelonis, a retired priest of the diocese and a son of the parish, came for the dinner after celebrating Mass elsewhere, and Father Alfredo R. Porras, who has family in the parish, assisted the bishop.

At Mass Father O’Toole said they were celebrating the birthday of the Church and of their parish.

He told of a bride-to-be seeking a wedding dress that rustled – because her fiancé was blind and “I need him to know that I am beside him all the way.”
“We are the Church,” Father O’Toole said. “It’s not just about this building or the old building. ... It’s about you and me ... standing together. And, on this feast day, we celebrate the rustling, the coming of the Holy Spirit.” The wind the apostles heard on Pentecost was like a rustling, a reminder of the Holy Spirit’s presence, he said.

Father O’Toole drew laughter as he asked if listeners had ever been in the church when the wind blew.

“You should hear it, Bishop,” he said, describing crackling and grinding sounds.

Paraclete, a term for the Holy Spirit, means to stand next to, Father O’Toole said; we need to believe the Holy Spirit is standing next to us.

“The person beside you in the pew, the person who has your back ... When someone in your family dies ... people come to your house with lots of baked goods,” the people who hold us up – that’s the Church, he said.

“If we shut the Spirit out, we go nowhere,” like a car without gas, he said.
He spoke of moving forward with courage, strength and hope, celebrating not just 75 years, but the future.

“We, the Church, have a message for the world that needs to hear it,” he said.
Bishop McManus sounded a similar theme in a brief talk at Mass. He noted that Our Lady of Lourdes became a parish on Jan. 20, 1949. (The 75th anniversary celebration was set in warmer weather.)

The 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s were “glory days” in the Church, the bishop said. Veterans returned from World War II and started having large families. Parishes built schools. Eighty percent of the Catholics attended Mass on Sunday, compared to 20 percent now, Bishop McManus said. He cited a poll in which only one in three Catholics said they believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is the source and summit of Catholic life, the bishop said. God wants everyone to be saved, and none to be lost.

“Look around the church; there are a lot ... of empty places,” he said, adding that parishioners raised their children Catholic, but young people are not marrying in the church or having their children baptized.

If everyone invited others back to church, beginning with their family members, it would be marvelous, he said.

Parishioner Fred Alexandrowicz made a similar point. Speaking with The Catholic Free Press about the church after Mass he said, “It’s changed; I wish it was back like it was.” He said he missed a church filled with statues, but added, “We’ve got to fill the church with people.”

The present building brought James Kokernak to the parish.
    
“When I got out of school, I decided to come to this church,” he said. “I wasn’t happy with the church in Grafton [St. Philip’s]. Our parish built a new church; it didn’t even look like a church. ... I’m a civil engineer; I like architecture.”
So, he went looking and liked Our Lady of Lourdes, “the way you feel as soon as you walk in – a beautiful structure giving praise to God,” he said. “How many churches have the ceilings we have?”

Mr. Kokernak and his wife, Pamela, talked about work he’s done for the parish, from putting in a ramp to the rectory to re-doing the kitchen in the church hall. His wife said she’s an extraordinary minister of holy Communion, he’s an altar server and they have served the parish in other ways too.

Meals after Masses and for senior citizens helped bring people back to church after COVID, said Cheryl Orrell, who grew up in the parish and is administrative assistant/bookkeeper. But it’s unclear why fewer people come now, she said.

“Our church has made a huge effort” to bring people back, she said. “I’ve started a newsletter” to communicate with parishioners. She said one reader came looking for her, with a donation to help pay bills.

Pope John XXIII Knights of Columbus Council 5481 moved from Our Lady of Loreto Church to support Our Lady of Lourdes; the Knights donate and hold fundraisers to help out, said Robert Manzaro, the council’s financial secretary. Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish’s council moved to Our Lady of Loreto, he explained.

Asked what she likes about Our Lady of Lourdes, parishioner Norma Nunag replied, “The people are nice; I just feel at home.”


Two locations, one community:
A history of Our Lady of Lourdes Church

Deacon John “Jack” Franchi, who assisted at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish’s 75th anniversary Mass on Saturday, is one of those who remembers the early days.

He was 6 years old when Our Lady of Lourdes became a parish on Jan. 20, 1949.

Prior to that it was a mission of St. Philip Parish in Grafton.

On May 16, 1928, St. Philip’s pastor, Father John Casey, completed the new mission church named Our Lady of Lourdes, according to booklets from the parish’s 25th anniversary and the dedication of the present church building, located at 1290 Grafton St. in Worcester.

The original church was on the corner of Grafton and Ackerman roads in East Millbury. When a bigger church was needed, the present land was purchased just over the line in Worcester.

The original church seated 250 and was intended to serve Catholics in East Millbury and part of Worcester, the histories say. Father Casey traveled from Grafton every Sunday, preached in French and English, taught catechism and administered the sacraments.

In 1947 Father Thomas F. Mullahy succeeded him as pastor of St. Philip’s and its missions – Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Mary’s in North Grafton.

When Our Lady of Lourdes was elevated to a parish in 1949, Father William F. Ahern became its pastor. He had been associate pastor and temporary administrator of St. Stephen Parish in Worcester and continued to live at and work from its rectory, commuting daily to East Millbury. Soon a rectory was built, the parish debt was cleared and the church interior was renovated.

“I remember being an altar boy in the old church,” Deacon Franchi said. (It burned down in 1966, a few years after parishioners moved to the present church.)

Our Lady of Lourdes is home parish for him and his wife, Alice “Nancy” Franchi, he said. They’ve gone there through the years when living in the neighborhood, as they do now. She attends Mass there and volunteers washing the altar linens. But he doesn’t usually get to go. Though retired, he is campus deacon at Anna Maria College, and has also assisted at different parishes when needed.

Deacon Franchi has fond memories of his teenage years at Our Lady of Lourdes. Father George E. Rueger, who later became the diocese’s auxiliary bishop, was associate pastor from 1958-1963 and ran the parish’s Catholic Youth Council.

“He molded it into a wonderful group of kids,” Deacon Franchi said. “Our lives revolved around him and the church.” He said dances were held at Our Lady of Lourdes after Monday night religious education classes, then called CCD.
“In order to get to the dance, you had to go to CCD,” he recalled.

Saturday nights, he said, “we all went to confession” at Our Lady of Lourdes, then to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish’s recreation center for dances – which drew “a lot of kids from the diocese.”

In 1951 Bishop John J. Wright, bishop of the newly established Diocese of Worcester, had confirmed 40 young adults at Our Lady of Lourdes, the parish histories recount.

Ten years later, his successor, Bishop Bernard J. Flanagan, confirmed 115. Sunday Masses went from two to six.

Seeking to build a larger church, in 1962 Father Ahern bought land over the line in Worcester. Parishioners held fundraisers to pay for the new church with a capacity of 500, which was dedicated on Sept. 15, 1963.

“The overall design of the structure symbolizes a person praying and its simple beauty raises our minds and hearts very easily to God,” the dedication booklet says.