2/25/2000
Five sites named for jubilee year pilgrims in Baker Diocese
| |
|
Ed Langlois
By Ed Langlois
Of the Sentinel
BEND - The Diocese of Baker has announced five local pilgrimage sites for Catholics to visit during the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus.
Pope John Paul is encouraging Catholics to make pilgrimages during the jubilee year - but knows that not everyone can make it to the Holy Land or Rome. So dioceses across the world have chosen local churches and shrines to give more pilgrims a chance to celebrate the year by making a sacred journey that is meant to ignite a spiritual conversion.
Sites chosen for Central and Eastern Oregon are St. Francis de Sales Cathedral in Baker City, Our Lady of Angels Parish in Hermiston, St. Peter Parish in The Dalles, St. Thomas Parish in Redmond and Sacred Heart Parish in Klamath Falls.
Pilgrimages to the sites, accompanied by appropriate preparation and good works, can earn pilgrims a plenary indulgence - what the church describes as a gift of mercy that is sign of a true conversion of heart.
Pilgrims can obtain the indulgence by making a journey to one of the sites, celebrating the sacrament of reconciliation near the time of the pilgrimage, taking part in the Eucharist at the site or somewhere else on the day of the visit, performing penitential acts like works of mercy or fasting, spending time at the site in pious meditation, and offering prayers at the site for the Holy Father.
Jubilee indulgence also can be gained by those who visit those in need.
Groups of 15 or more who want to visit a site should call ahead at least two weeks in advance. For Mass and confession, groups should as a priest to accompany them.
Baker City
The stone cathedral dedicated to St. Francis de Sales is sign of the strong faith that helped start the Diocese of Baker City.
After meeting with a less than hospitable welcome in his new see in 1903, Bishop Charles O'Reilly eventually won over the hearts of clergy and people alike. With their support - and help from outside sources - he had the cathedral built.
Even after the bishop's residence moved to Bend in the 1980s, the church remained the spiritual seat of the diocese.
As early as 1862, Father Leopold Dielman visited the area and offered Mass for local miners. Later, the priest celebrated Mass in the home of the local newspaper publisher, I.B. Bowen. By 1871, Catholics built their first church, a wooden structure on the same block as the current cathedral.
'The Catholics are grand but very few,' a discouraged Father Dielman wrote of the community.
The parish did grow and thrive. Photos from the 1950s and 60s show large and fresh-scrubbed first Communion classes.
Recently, the parish has been a comfort to people negotiating the surges and ebbs of the local economy.
'There has been an intermovement within the church the past few years and with that an increased feeling of love, concern and caring for each other,' Mary Margaret Hansen, pastoral associate, told the Sentinel in 1996.
Weekday Masses: Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7:30 a.m.
Sunday Mass: 9:30 a.m.
Phone: (541) 523-4521
Hermiston
If you live in Hermiston, chances are you've had a Catholic visit your house to ask you about your needs and your faith.
Parishioners at Our Lady of Angels Parish here have launched a massive evangelization effort among English and Spanish speakers, the latter group constituting more and more of the parish.
'These missions continue to bear good fruit of faith awakened and lived,' says Jesuit Father Juan Turula, pastor.
Plans for the Catholic Youth Center, located a few blocks from Hermiston High, are moving ahead. The goal is to give Catholic high school students, and any others interested, an opportunity to deepen their knowledge and living out of the Catholic faith, enjoy wholesome activities together, as well as fit them out to be witnesses of Christ to other young people.
This was mission territory at the start. In 1909, Bishop O'Reilly invited Servite priests to take a look at the region, but they stayed only briefly. On a visit to Ireland, the bishop met Capuchin priests who were zealous to come to Oregon.
They served for 80 years, helping the people build churches and worship.
In the past few decades, the Catholic community has surged as Catholic farm workers come to work in the region's rich melon industry.
Weekday Masses: 7:30 a.m. and Thursday at 7 p.m. in Spanish.
Sunday Masses: 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. (Spanish) on Saturday; 8:30 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m. (Spanish)
Phone: (541) 567-5812
Klamath Falls
On a rise above downtown Klamath Falls, the brick Sacred Heart Church sits, strong and undeniable.
The parish has been strong in a town where Catholics were not always welcome. The Ku Klux Klan was on the march here in the 1920s and Catholics were among their targets.
But now, in contrast, the parish is strong on evangelization and ecumenism.
'I'm really pleased with the RCIA process,' Deacon Ken Morton says of the parish plan for those entering the church. 'We try to network not just newly baptized Catholics and candidates, but people who are coming back to the church after a long hiatus or people who need an update. It's a moment when people are open.'
Morton, who has spoken out for the church in the media on assisted suicide and other matters, also highlights the parish's strong 'covenant' with Klamath Lutheran and St. Paul Episcopal churches.
The churches pray together in Advent and Lent and hold common education series.
Archbishop Charles Seghers visited the area around Klamath Falls in the 1880s, often walking wherever he wanted to go. A priest named E.P. Murphy began tending the area from Ashland in the 1890s. When the town became part of the Diocese of Baker in 1903, Bishop Charles O'Reilly visited immediately on horseback and sent a resident priest in 1904.
Weekday Masses: 8 a.m.
Sunday Masses: 5:30 p.m. Saturday; 8:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. (Spanish).
Phone: (541) 884-4566
Redmond
St. Thomas the Apostle Parish sits at the geographical center of Oregon. It is also at the center of a population boom.
In 1950, there were 75 families in the parish. Now there are 530. Subsequently, parishioners are discussing construction of a new church to replace their 50-year old house of worship.
At first, Catholics here were served by priests in Bend. Capuchin Father Luke Sheehan had purchased a lot and had a church built there in 1912 at a cost of $1,800. In 1941, the community became a parish in its own right and within nine years built a church most thought was quite large. The Catholic Extension Society helped.
Many of the pioneer families from the 1940s are still active in the parish.
In 1966, Bishop Francis Leipzig dedicated 18 stained-glass windows.
Father Leo Weckerle, pastor since 1990, says that a spiritual building up is accompanying talk of population increase and a new church. There is adoration of the Blessed Sacrament 12 hours every day, seven days per week. Many folks hope it will go around the clock soon.
'It is a growing practice,' Father Weckerle says. 'One fellow at the start said he didn't really want to do it, but he put his name down. Now he looks forward to it.'
The long narrow church, with light filtered by the stained glass, is a contemplative place for certain.
The parish is seen as a potential center of evangelization. Tourists visit by the thousands each year to run the Deschutes River, ramble in the Cascades, or ski down the slopes.
Weekday Masses: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 7:30 a.m. Wednesdays at 6 p.m.
Sunday Masses: 5:30 p.m Saturday, 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.
Phone: (541) 923-3390
The Dalles
St. Pierre Mission on the massive rapids of the Columbia River was established in 1848. It served local native converts who fished at the site and was also a spiritual refuge for Catholic migrants on the Oregon Trail.
That mission, which in 1855 counted 117 whites and more than 300 natives, was the start of what is now a bustling large parish and one of the oldest Catholic schools in the state.
Pilgrims to The Dalles can see two St. Peter churches, the 1969 800-seat church on the hill and the 1898 spired church near downtown.
Next to the new church is the old mission cemetery, where some graves are more than 150 years old. A rock memorial near the site tells visitors that this hillside was the site of the original St. Pierre Mission. The parish returned to its roots and the area is prayerful.
The new church also offers a meditation garden.
Its ministries have burgeoned as of late, embracing Spanish-speaking Catholics and helping St. Mary's Academy thriving. The St. Vincent de Paul Conference is very active in aiding the area's needy.
'Ministry to the homebound is big,' says Father Todd Unger, pastor. On Tuesdays, he presides at a 10:30 a.m. Mass at a local nursing home.
On Fridays, the church welcomes worshipers for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
The 1898 church, the most visible local building from I-84, features a metallic rooster weather vane.
Weekday Masses: 8 a.m., except Tuesdays.
Sunday Masses: 6:15 p.m. Saturday; 8 a.m., 10 a.m. and noon (Spanish).
Phone: (541) 296-2026
- History drawn from The Cross in the Middle of Nowhere, by Msgr. William Stone. Maverick Publications, P.O. Box 5007, Bend, OR 97708
|
|
