With a population of more than 45,000 residents today, it’s hard to imagine that the city of York was once a frontier town in Pennsylvania. In 1777, our nation’s founding fathers fled Philadelphia to this town of 1,800 people and adopted the Articles of Confederation, America’s first constitution.
Among the small community in York was an even smaller contingent of Catholics – about 100 or so – in the mission territory being tended to by Father William Wappeler, S.J., who had arrived from Germany 35 years before the birth of our nation.
Included in the three groups of Catholics he served was a small cluster along the Codorus Creek, the first roots of St. Patrick Parish.
Last Sunday, the parish community gathered to mark the 250th anniversary of their official founding, with the celebration of Mass by Bishop Timothy Senior.
“St. Patrick’s has been a staple in the community since 1776, with the community initially gathering in what we would call a Mass house. We wonder what it must have been like in 1776 to be among a couple hundred Catholics here. Despite religious freedom, it was still rough waters for Catholics here,” Bishop Senior said.
“What a wonderful gift it is to live our faith,” he said. “Is there anything more personal, more intimate in a human soul than one’s relationship with God? And to be able to live that, to practice the faith freely and peacefully, that’s the gift of 250 years in this place.”
St. Patrick Parish was established in 1776 and the three churches in its history have all been located at the same site, currently the corner of South Beaver Street and West College Avenue.
Its first structure was a stone house that served as a Mass house until a small brick church was constructed in 1810. The congregation was served by visiting priests from Lancaster, Conewago, Emmitsburg and Baltimore until Father Lorence Huber was named the first resident pastor in 1819. By 1890, York’s population had quadrupled and the parish was in need of a larger church to accommodate the growing congregation.
According to parish history, with more than $6,500 in donations from parishioners, a $5,000 bequest from the estate of a benefactor, and a $1,000 contribution from the pastor, Father Charles Galligan, the former church was demolished to make way for new construction.
Bishop Thomas McGovern, the second Bishop of Harrisburg and former pastor of St. Patrick Parish (1870-1873) presided at the groundbreaking ceremony for the current church on October 6, 1895. It was dedicated on September 11, 1898, by Father J. J. Koch, in the interim between the death of Bishop McGovern and the appointment of Bishop John Shanahan.
St. Patrick School opened in 1851; in 2019, it consolidated with St. Joseph School in Dallastown to form Holy Trinity Catholic School on St. Patrick’s campus.
The interior of the current church has been renovated on several occasions, including wall treatments that covered many of the frescoes and the restoration of the luminous Rose Window above the choir loft. In 2018, a $1.2 million capital campaign and multi-phase renovation project resulted in new flooring, new kneelers, reupholstered pews, a repaired drainage system and a renovated choir loft.
Today, the church is a breathtaking combination of old and new, with gleaming white altars, vibrant stained-glass windows, archways, wooden doorways and historic architecture.
In front of the tabernacle that has housed the Body of Christ for generations of families at St. Patrick Church, its parishioners gathered September 13 to celebrate 250 years as a community of disciples. Father Stephen Kelley, pastor, joined former pastors and native sons of the parish in concelebrating the Mass with Bishop Senior.
“If we live, we live for the Lord. If we die, we die for the Lord, St. Paul tells us in the second reading today. Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. We belong to Jesus Christ. And that belonging sets the direction of our life,” Bishop Senior said. “That’s why Catholics began to gather in this place, to belong to Jesus and receive the hope and the consolation and the promise that that relationship brings into our lives. And so we gather here today for that same reason: to encounter the Lord, to seek more and more to live for him.”
St. Patrick Parish is home to the Good Shepherd Perpetual Adoration Chapel, an active Knights of Columbus Council and Columbiettes organization, numerous study groups, and outreach ministries and activities that include support of the Catholic Harvest Food Pantry, Our Daily Bread Soup Kitchen and the Women’s Care Center of York.
“I thank all the faithful who are here today and express my gratitude to all the people of the parish – generations of families – who have served here, worked here and worshiped God here,” Father Kelley told the congregation. “You are the central part of what has made St. Patrick such a wonderful parish for 250 years.”
(Photos by Jen Reed, The Catholic Witness.)
By Jen Reed, The Catholic Witness
