Our Lady of Lourdes closes centennial celebration

Friday, Jul. 04, 2014

SALT LAKE CITY — Our Lady of Lourdes Parish concluded a year-long celebration of its 100th anniversary with a Mass on June 29 at which the Most Rev. John C. Wester, Bishop of Salt Lake City, presided.

Concelebrating the Mass were Father JJ Schwall, the parish’s pastor; and Father Jorge Roldán, who was ordained the day before. Assisting at the Mass were Deacon Lowell Palm, who is assigned to the parish, and Deacon Gervan Menezes, a seminarian friend of Fr. Roldán’s who will be ordained a priest July 26 in the Diocese of Nashville.

In his homily, Bishop Wester said it was wonderfully providential that the parish celebration fell on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. The two men were very different in many ways, the bishop said, but they shared a love for Jesus Christ, and they proclaimed their personal relationship with the Lord so that others might have life eternal, he said, adding, “I see in this a real model for our celebration today at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish.” 

In its 100 years, the parish has been home to diverse pastors, religious women and laity, but they all shared a relationship with Jesus Christ, the bishop said. 

“Today in this liturgy with your pastor, all of you are called to give thanks for the past, celebrate the present and look with hope to the future as you continue to grow in faith and diversity and in your love for Jesus Christ,” he said. “You have been commissioned by Christ to be a living community of believers who give witness to Christ’s presence here in this diocese, this city, this state, this portion of the Lord’s vineyard.”

Bishop Wester also presided at the June 30, 2013 Mass that kicked off the parish’s centennial year.

“That was really moving for me because it was a chance for the parish to come together in a special way,” Fr. Schwall said.

No other event was singled out to celebrate the anniversary because of parishioners’ conflicting schedules, Fr. Schwall said; instead, the decision was made to honor the anniversary at each activity throughout the year. In particular, there were a number of events in conjunction with Our Lady of Lourdes School, and a large fundraiser was held to improve the parish that resulted in the renovation of the parish hall’s kitchen, he said.

The renovation included new appliances, brought the plumbing and electrical work up to code, and added storage space and a serving window in the wall between the kitchen and the hall.

“It’s just wonderful,” said Joan Corey, a parishioner since 1965 who also is a member of the Ladies of Charity, a group that often uses the kitchen. “Everything functions. We have space.”

A side benefit of the renovation was that one of the contractors found photos of two of the parish’s first pastors, Father P.J. Quinn and Fr. William J. Flynn, that had been missing from the gallery in the parish hall. 

The pastor’s photo gallery hung on the wall where the contractors kept their tools, and “every time we’d go in there, I’d see that plaque that said ‘photo unavailable,’” said Erin Evans of K.C. Ward Company. “It was like having loose threads, and you know you’re not supposed to pull at them,” but seeing the plaque bothered him, particularly because the missing photos were of the first pastors, “and I thought, ‘Well, that would be the most important.’”

To set his mind at ease, Evans did research every night on the Internet and eventually found the priests’ photos at the Waterford County Museum in Ireland, he said. Fr. Flynn, who served the parish from 1915 to 1919, was from Waterford. Fr. Quinn was the parish’s first pastor, from 1913 to 1914.

Evans obtained permission from the museum to reproduce the photos, which he then gave to the parish.

Because of Evans “we now have a complete wall of every pastor who has ever been here,” said Carol Huffman, a parishioner since 1974.

The Our Lady of Lourdes centennial “has been a wonderful journey,” said Geri Dudley, who was confirmed in the parish. “This is a marvelous parish and I think some of the greatest people in the world.”