Local missions will be helped by annual appeal

Intermountain Catholic

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Father Fidel Barrera (left) greets parishioners before the start of Mass at Our Lady of Light Mission in Beaver. IC photo/Laura Vallejo

BEAVER — Gathering Catholics from three different cultures and languages in one very remote rural area of Utah might seem like a tough assignment. However, the Diocese of Salt Lake City did just that in 2009 when Bishop John C. Wester dedicated Our Lady of the Light Mission in Beaver. In the past four years the mission has grown from just a few families to today, when the one weekly Mass that is celebrated on Saturday evening is standing-room only. 

Parishioners are Hispanic, Anglo and Korean; the Mass is bilingual English/Spanish.

"To be able to come here and attend Mass is very important for us, because we feel that we are far away from all the services that we should have, and unfortunately we don’t," said Patricia Nuñez, a parishioner of Our Lady of Light.

The mission is served by Christ the King Parish in Cedar City, which also serves the missions of Saint Dominic in Bryce Canyon, Saint Gertrude in Panguitch, Saint Sylvester in Escalante and Saint Christopher in Kanab. Two priests, one deacon and one vowed religious woman are assigned to Christ the King Parish to minister to all these congregations.

"I hope that we can have more vocations so we can receive more help," said Nuñez, who is a member of the diocese’s Spanish-language Lay Ecclesial Ministry formation program, which prepares lay leaders to serve their faith communities.

Before Our Lady of the Light Mission was established, Nuñez had to drive at least an hour to attend Mass.

"We used to go to Fillmore, Delta, Milford or Cedar City," she said. "We used to have to figure out our work schedules and the Mass schedules to be able to go. Now, with this mission right here, we feel that we have been really blessed."

Ok-Ran Kwon, who is part of the mission choir, shares Nuñez’s feelings.

"With this mission my mind is now at peace. I wouldn’t know what to do without being Catholic," said Kwon. "I can bring my family here and everything is good. Before when we had problems we did not know where to go, but now we come here with God."

Our Lady of the Light is one of 18 missions in Utah, some of which will benefit from the Catholic Home Mission Collection on April 28. About 1,100 mission dioceses worldwide receive annual assistance from Mission Sunday collections.

Home Missions are those dioceses and parishes in the United States, including its territories and former territories, which cannot provide basic pastoral services to Catholics without outside help, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which oversees the collection.

Funds from the collection help pay the salaries of priests who serve local missions, said Michael Lee, director of the diocese’s Pastoral Operations.

He added that most of the missions can’t afford to do more than upkeep of the facilities. "Home Missions helps us to be able to have those missions functioning for worship, sacrament and outreach – all those purposes," he said.

A number of Catholic live in remote areas of Utah’s 85,000 square miles, "so, quite frankly, we are in danger of them not having the ability to practice their Catholic faith and a very real possibility is that they might be enticed by other churches to join them," Lee said. "Overall we try to help all the missions that are in most need of help, so we do that in conjunction with the Extension Society, who are very generous. People should really think about how here in Salt Lake City we have the choice of a different number of Masses. On Saturday or Sunday we can go to another parish if we want ... [but] in these rural areas they are basically lucky to have one Mass a week."

The Diocese of Salt Lake City began as a mission diocese. Father Lawrence J. Scanlan (later the first Bishop of Salt Lake) told the Propagation of the Faith on Oct. 14, 1877 that "two priests were entirely inadequate for the work to be done in the Utah Territory." He applied to the Archbishop of San Francisco for another assistant, and received one, according to "Salt of the Earth," by Bernice Maher Mooney.