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Last weekend I attend the Missouri Catholic Conference in Jefferson City. It was celebrating its 50 th anniversary. It was my first time to attend as a priest. It is always on a Saturday, so many times I have had a conflict to attend. A couple of years ago there were several parishioners who did attend and brought back information to the parish council. The conference is under the directions of the Bishops of Missouri, Archbishop Carlson, Bishop Gaydos of Jefferson City, Bishop Rice of Springfield-Cape, and Bishop Johnston of Kansas City-St. Joe. Their website is mocatholic.org.
As I learned from Msgr. Michael Witt, the French explorers, Joilet and Marquette, helped to discover this area. The German people loved this area so much because it looked like the Rhine Valley, and European priests were brought in who could speak German. In 1818, Bishop DuBourg brought the Catholic faith to this area with the influence of so many religious orders such as the Sisters of Loretto, St. Joseph, Visitation, Uruslines, Mercy and Notre Dames plus the Christian Brothers and the Brothers of Mary. All came to the St. Louis area from 1823 to 1897. Also, the bishop of St. Louis was able to convince the Jesuits to put a seminary in Florissant which then provide more priests for the area. thought this information would interest you as it did me.
The Archdiocese of St. Louis requests that we count the number of people at all our weekend Masses every October. Last weekend we had 1059 for our total Mass attendance. Since I was at Our Lady of Lourdes for Mass on Monday, I know that they had over 1100 people for Masses. For the past four years our average has been over 1100, so we will see what the rest of the month holds for us.
Thanks for all you do!!
Fr. Joe Wormek