Diocese of Salt Lake continues to expand in Utah

IC photo by Marie Mischel

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Children from St. Joseph the Worker Parish were invited to take part in the groundbreaking ceremony on Jan. 24. The dirt from the groundbreaking will be placed under the new church's altar.

SALT LAKE CITY - With Christ as the vine, Utah's Catholics continue to create branches to spread their faith from Brigham City to St. George.

From 2005 to 2009 alone, Catholics established a new parish, built seven new churches, added a new school and expanded several existing campuses, among other building projects (see graphic at left).

This year, the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City anticipates two new churches and the renovation of a third, the expansion of three schools and a new education building for one parish.

"This is the power of the Holy Spirit at work, calling forth people, calling people to generosity, and people's response to what God's calling them to be," said Msgr. J. Terrence Fitzgerald, the diocese's vicar general.

The most recent groundbreaking occurred Jan. 24 at Saint Joseph the Worker Parish in West Jordan, which has grown from about 150 families to more than 1,000 and is replacing a church constructed as a temporary building 45 years ago.

The new church's architecture already has won awards

for its architectural design and will be a monument to "the hard-working men and women who over the years, over the decades, have given so beautifully to their parish because their church and their faith mean so much to them," said the Most Rev. John C. Wester, bishop of Salt Lake City, at the groundbreaking.

The children of St. Joseph the Worker decorated stones that will be among the first laid for the new church. "They have assured us that all of these stones can be in the very first pour of concrete when we start to raise the church out of the ground," said Father Patrick Carley, pastor of St. Joseph, "so all of these children, as long as this church lasts, all of these little ones will be a part of that...because we are indeed building for the future and for our children."

Utah has added roughly 20,000 people each year since 2005, and the diocese estimates that about 10 percent of those are registered Catholics with an additional 5 percent as unregistered Catholics.

To cope with that growth, parishes throughout the state have built new facilities. For example, St. James the Just in Ogden was "a tiny church that was built as a multi-purpose center in 1968; you could cram 250 sardines in there," said Father Erik Richtsteig, the pastor, adding that the Masses at Easter and Christmas were held in the gymnasium to accommodate the crowds. In 2006, St. James opened a 10,000-square-foot church that seats 750, but the parish has added 150 registered families in the past four years, including a number of young families, and "I wish I'd built it bigger," Fr. Richtsteig said.

The growing number of young people, especially in the Hispanic congregations, has led the diocese to emphasize religious education, Msgr. Fitzgerald said. "We have to have an emphasis on educating, preparing, forming the young people to be fully responsible members of our faith."

In addition, because of the growth of the Spanish-speaking Catholic congregation, bilingual priests, deacons and other leaders increasingly are required.

Thirty parishes located throughout the state of Utah celebrate Spanish Masses.

"We have more than 20 priests who give mass in Spanish, even some of them are not Hispanic," said Deacon Ricardo Arias, Secretary of the Hispanic Affairs office.

"Every day we have more and more Hispanics coming to the churches," said María- Cruz Gray, Director of the Hispanic Ministry, adding that the Spanish Mass at The Cathedral of the Madeleine started with 50 people but now is full.

Although Utah's Catholic population has spread through most of the state, "There are still areas where we don't have facilities," Msgr. Fitzgerald said. "We still have three counties that we have no physical presence in, in terms of owning anything. We have to keep always trying, as those communities develop, to buy a house or have some place where the people can put a cross on and put their name on it and call it their own."

This is as important for the family of the Church as it is for an individual family, he said, because it's "an external sign of the community of faith, of the people gathering, and it's a place where they can live out, as a community, the faith by the liturgy, catechism and sacraments."

IC reporter Laura V. Sausedo contributed to this story.