They were five parishes using six sanctuaries separated by more than 20 miles. The parishes, located along or near the Monongahela River in northeastern Washington County, have struggled along with the region since the declines in steel and coal jobs. Funerals outpacing any infusions of new members, and debt remained from a church building project.
Now the five parishes will form one in the new year. It’s a foretaste of what many more parishes will be experiencing after a restructuring plan is approved in 2018 in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
The Washington County parishes “recognized we need to be about partnering together,” said the Rev. Edward Yuhas, part of a two-priest team serving the parishes. The congregations began cooperating in various ways, including an evangelistic program that introduced people from the formerly separate congregations to each other.
“It enabled them to begin to build bridges,” Father Yuhas said.
The Diocese of Pittsburgh announced the merger earlier this month, effective in early January.
It creates a new St. Katharine Drexel Parish out of Saint Agnes in Richeyville, Ave Maria in Bentleyville, Saint Joseph in Roscoe, Saint Oliver Plunkett (St. Michael the Archangel Church) in Fredericktown, Sts. Mary and Ann in Marianna, and Saint Thomas Aquinas in California.
Ave Maria will serve as the administrative center and will have regular weekend services, as will St. Michael the Archangel and St. Thomas Aquinas.
The other three — Saint Agnes, Saint Joseph and Sts. Mary and Ann — will have occasional worship.
Patty Prekrel, a parishioner at St. Agnes who was part of the team that prepared the merger proposal, said she’s experienced this before. St. Mary’s in Daisytown — the church where she was baptized, confirmed and married and where her children were baptized — merged with St. Agnes in 1994, and its sanctuary closed for good in 2007.
“Everything in my spiritual life was conducted at that building,” she said.
But she’s adjusted to the changes, and most recently, she’s appreciated opportunities to meet members of the other parishes being merged into the new St. Katharine Drexel.
“We’ve kind of become family,” she said. “Not that I would have wanted this to happen in a perfect world, but I've accepted it and am excited to see what the future will bring.”
Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith.
First Published: December 18, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
