SHENANDOAH — A new Roman Catholic parish opens in Shenandoah on Monday as seven parishes in the borough and Lost Creek will merge into one — Divine Mercy Parish.
This weekend, six of the seven parishes — Annunciation BVM, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, St. Casimir, St. George and St. Stephen in Shenandoah and St. Mary Magdalen in Lost Creek — will hold their official closings on Saturday and Sunday, with St. Stanislaus to officially hold its closing Mass on Monday evening.
The merger announcement was made by the Most Rev. John O. Barres, bishop of the Diocese of Allentown, in March, with Annunciation BVM becoming the home of the new parish and St. Casimir remaining open to be used for sacred worship.
In a letter dated July 7 and sent to the parishioners of all churches shortly thereafter, Monsignor Ronald C. Bocian, pastor of the seven parishes, explained what will occur during this weekend and in the coming months.
Bocian quoted the following from a letter by Barres dated March 13:
“While difficult, this process offers the means to maintain the presence of the Catholic Church in the Shenandoah/Lost Creek area, and the opportunity to grow and meet the challenges facing the Church in the 21st century. Your new parish, Divine Mercy, will never forget the heritage of its parent churches, just as we do not forget the heritage of our own natural families. You should consider yourselves to the founders of a new parish as your grandparents and great-grandparents were founders of our present parishes. Those seven parishes were founded to aid the immigrants in maintaining their faith in a new nation and to provide for their spiritual needs. Your are now founding a parish to help the Catholics of Shenandoah and Lost Creek to remain vibrant in their faith and to meet the challenges of promoting the Gospel in a world much different from that which your ancestors encountered.”
Bocian wrote that the Divine Mercy Church building will be closed for one to two months for renovation work, though a date has not been announced.
“According to the Diocese of Allentown Office of Synod Implementation Restructuring Manual, the new parish church building out to be renovated in such a manner that something from all the former parishes would be included in the renovated church building,” Bocian wrote. “Only that work which needs to be done now to accomplish the renovations will be done. There is other work within the church building which needs to be done, but that will be done at a later date and when funds become available.”
The closing Masses of each parish will take place as follows:
• Annunciation BVM will close at the 4 p.m. Mass on Saturday.
• St. Stephen will close at the 7:30 a.m. Sunday Mass in St. Stanislaus Church.
• St. George and St. Mary Magdalen will close at the 8:45 a.m. Mass on Sunday in Annunciation BVM Church.
• St. Casimir will close at the 10 a.m. Sunday Mass.
• Our Lady of Mount Carmel will close at the 11:15 a.m. Sunday Mass.
• The Annunciation BVM Parish Hispanic Liturgy will close at the noon Mass on Sunday in Annunciation BVM Church.
• St. Stanislaus will close at the 7 p.m. Mass on Monday.
The following Mass schedule will begin next week. Weekday Masses will still be at 6:45 a.m. Monday through Friday and alternate between the two church building, while the Mass at 8 a.m. Monday through Saturday will be celebrated in Divine Mercy Church. The weekend Mass schedule is as follows:
• Saturday — Divine Mercy Church at 4 p.m., with confessions from 3:15 to 3:45 p.m.; St. Casimir Church at 5:30 p.m., with confessions from 4:45 to 5:15 p.m.
• Sunday — St. Casimir Church at 7:30 a.m., with confessions from 6:45 to 7:15 a.m.; Divine Mercy Church at 9 a.m., with confessions from 8:15 to 8:45 a.m.; St. Casimir Church at 10:30 a.m., with confessions from 9:45 to 10:15 a.m.; Divine Mercy Church at noon (Spanish), with confessions from 11:15 to 11:45 a.m.
Bocian said both church building will be open only one hour before the beginning of Mass.
The Shenandoah/Lost Creek consolidation is a continuation of the restructuring of parishes called for by the Second Synod of Allentown in 2006. Plans in 16 regions of the diocese went into effect in July 2008, but plans for a number of other regions including the Shenandoah area remained under review or were still in development at that time.
In 2008, the Allentown Diocese, then under the leadership of the Most Rev. Edward P. Cullen as bishop, consolidated 47 parishes throughout the five-county diocese, with 32 of those parishes located in Schuylkill County. However, no decision was made on parishes the county: Region IV, which includes Annunciation BVM, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, St. Casimir, St. George, St. Stephen and St. Stanislaus, all in Shenandoah; St. Mary Magdalene in Lost Creek, St. Joseph in Sheppton, and St. Mary in Ringtown; and Region V, which includes the three Frackville parishes, along with St. Joseph and St. Vincent de Paul in Girardville, St. Joseph and St. Mauritius in Ashland, and Our Lady of Good Counsel, Gordon.
Since that time, the three Frackville churches have merged into St. Joseph Parish, with all three church buildings remaining open, and the diocese has announced that the churches in Ringtown and Sheppton will remain open.
On July 1, the two Tamaqua parishes, St. Jerome and Ss. Peter and Paul, merged to become St. John XXIII Parish. The new parish continues to utilize both the St. Jerome and Ss. Peter and Paul church buildings for divine worship. The new parish is one of the first in the country dedicated to Pope St. John XXIII, who was canonized with Pope St. John Paul II on Apr. 27 by Pope Francis.