“Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me. Then the God of peace will be with you.” - Phil. 4:9
HAMMOND – “It’s okay to be suffering, but I would hope that you will also take the Lady into your homes. Bring that love, joy, consolation and perpetual help into your homes. Our Lady is still there to take into your home.”
With those words, Bishop Robert J. McClory implored the parishioners of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to keep alive the spirit of their parish despite the closing of the physical church building during an Oct. 4 Mass.
“Each of you have memories of your experience here, beautiful memories, whether you are a couple who moved here 29 years ago, or you have children who went to school here … even if you have not been here in a while, savor the memories and take that feeling and share that love with others,” added the bishop in his homily.
“Today, a perfect second reading (for the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time) has been given to us,” he continued. “‘Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God,’ Paul said to the Philippians. It is good to call to mind the things you are grateful for, and then, as Paul says, ‘The peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.’”
During the final regularly scheduled Sunday Mass, Bishop McClory officially commissioned the move of the parish’s statue of St. Catherine of Siena and an image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to their new home at St. John Bosco. Father Jeffrey Burton, the pastor of both parishes, said they would be installed within a day or two “to offer a sense of hospitality and continuity.” Aside from live plants that former pastor Father Charles Mosley lovingly cultivated, there are no plans to move anything until the relegation is final
“It’s perfectly okay to be sad, because something we loved is leaving, but we can’t stay stuck in the sad,” Father Burton said in a message to OLPH parishioners that explained the financial straits that led to the church closing. “We have to be able to smile, remembering that it happened, and thank God it happened.”
The church building will be available for funerals and limited prayer services, while the parish leadership will explore a resolution for the parish debt, considering what is best for the long-term good of the Catholic faith in Hammond, according to a news release from the Diocese of Gary.
After meeting with the OLPH pastoral council, Father Burton explained that the parish leadership understood the gravity of the situation, which includes running a deficit since 2014 that has risen to $470,000. “Seeing the mounting bills and hearing the realities of their dire financial situation, the pastoral council came to a consensus that it was time to merge into St. John Bosco,” he said. Effective on Sept. 8, the full merger allows the unified community to focus its attention on mission rather than trying to maintain two campuses.
Records have been transferred to the St. John Bosco Parish Office, while items of religious significance and furniture in the school and convent building will be cataloged for eventual use in other parishes, schools and diocesan entities. After the Mass on Oct. 4, the school building was open for those wishing to take a final look, except for the top floor, which was blocked off for safety reasons due to excessive mold and concerns about collapsing plaster from the walls and ceiling. The school, which once boasted more than 1,400 students and 17 teaching nuns, closed in 1992.
Our Lady of Perpetual Help was established in 1937 when Bishop John Noll of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese sent Father Alfred Reinig to build a new parish and chose as its name Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Joseph Artim had four lots of land at 171st and Arizona Ave., and the bishop approved the site. The original building was a frame structure purchased from the city of Hammond, placed on the corner at 7108 Arizona St. and dedicated on Nov. 6, 1938.
Father Reinig approached the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ and requested that sisters come to teach catechism to the parish children. Enrollment grew to more than 350 children. Ten years later, a multi-purpose building was constructed, with the top floor as a convent, the middle floor containing classrooms and the ground floor becoming the new church, with a seating capacity of 550.
In 1985, Father Joseph V. Murphy met with Bishop Norbert Gaughan of the Diocese of Gary, established in 1957, to discuss building a new church. The dedication of the current church at 7140 Arizona Ave. took place on Sunday, Sept. 18, 1988, and the former church was remodeled into what became the social center.
Father Burton said the merger is already bearing fruit, with OLPH religious education teachers finding more resources, like Smartboards, available to them in the St. John Bosco School classrooms. The youth groups from both parishes met for a pizza party on Oct. 4 and a combined Altar and Rosary Society will begin honoring the Month of the Rosary with prayer services at 3:30 p.m. on Saturdays, Oct. 10-31, at St. John Bosco.
Father Ron Zgunda, a senior priest of the Diocese of Evansville who grew up in the shadow of OLPH, said it was “a wonderful tribal village to be raised within. I remember the four-day annual festivals every August, with carnival rides and a cake walk. It was a real melting pot of people from Eastern Europe, an immigrant church as it still is. Just the faces and languages have changed, but it is still a family.”
Senior priest Father Gerald Schweitzer, another son of OLPH, is a member of the OLPH School class of 1959, and remembers his teachers from the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ as “a true inspiration.” He also remembered fondly many early pastors, including Msgr. Alfred W. Reinig, Father Patrick Connolly, Father Robert Evers and Father Tim Doody.
“I received my First Holy Communion on May 10, 1953, and my second grade teacher, Sister Francine, said to return to our pew afterward and fold our hands in prayer, because God would tell us something,” said Father Schweitzer. “She was right, because that’s the day I received my vocation. I heard God say, ‘Gerald, I want you to be a priest.’”
“I’m sad today, but I understand (the closing) and I look forward to following Father Jeff (Burton) and (associate pastor) Father Ivan (Alatorre) to St. John Bosco,” said Denise Ince, who attended OLPH as a child and returned when she moved back to Hammond in 2011 from Pennsylvania. “The best thing about this church is all of the friends I’ve made, and I look forward to still seeing them, just in a new place.”
Caption: Father Ronald S. Zgunda (right), who grew up in Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Hammond, visits with Sister Joyce Diltz, P.H.J.C. And Joyce Oboy, who attended the parish school, as did Father Zgunda, a senior priest from the Diocese of Evansville who has retired to his family home "just a stone's throw" from the church. All three were in attendance for the closing Mass of the parish on Oct. 4. (Marlene A. Zloza)
