PREFACE

            The red brick walls, the large black crucifix, the stained-glass windows.  They could be in almost any Catholic Church, anywhere in the world.  But to about 3,000 people in Taftville, those words can describe only one place; they can evoke only one image.  Think about it for a moment.  For just a second, let your mind’s eye conjure up colors and pictures.  Hear the choir.  Listen to the church bells.  Smell the burning candles.  Look around.

                        Of course, it wasn’t always this way.  Thirty years ago, the mention of Sacred Heart Church would have called up different images; it may well have evoked different feelings.  Like the small Canadian village that is its home – like the stores and houses along the stretch of Providence Street and Merchants Avenue, like the people in the parish itself- Sacred Heart Church has changed.  Few, though, would say it has forsaken its heritage; the days when nearly the entire tiny village of textile workers was summoned to the sound of a clanging mill bell at 7 a.m.

            Heritage is what this is all about.  Twenty-five years ago, the Sacred Heart Parish best described by the solemn and majestic black cross and the orange-red brick walls was dedicated.  One hundred years ago, Sacred Heart Parish was founded.

                        Heritage brings with it a sense of tradition, but it also provides an opportunity to look ahead.  Our look back on Sacred Heart Church and its history is, after all, only another way of looking toward its future.

 HISTORY OF:

Sacred Heart Church

Taftville, Connecticut

 “Origins”(1829 – 1867)

It may be hard to think of Taftville without French Canadians or without a Catholic parish to call its own.  Harder still, to think of Connecticut with no established diocese, no bishop, no parish, not one established Catholic church, not one full-time priest.  But so, it was when Rev. Bernard O’Cavanaugh arrived in Hartford one summer morning more than 150 years ago.

It was August 26, 1829.  Another hot day in a long, sultry summer.  As Connecticut’s first resident priest, Rev. O’Cavanaugh had his mission cut out for him.  He was, first of all, to be the pastor for all the Catholic people of Hartford, many of them staunch Irishmen, with a love for life and a lifetime filled with hard work, like himself.  But his parish had no boundaries, except, perhaps, the state’s borders.  Even in Providence, R.I. – a city whose very name spoke of its heavy religious influence – there was no established Catholic diocese. 

            O’Cavanaugh, his parishioners and their ancestors had learned first-hand about being Catholics in the early days of New England, and they suffered the hardships of being strangers in a strange land.  Many of the Irish settled in New England within 25 years after the Pilgrims had set foot at Plymouth Rock.  They had fled their beloved homeland after the English Lord Oliver Cromwell, who tolerated only Jews and non-Anglican Protestants, led an expedition into Ireland and transferred the rights of nearly all Irish lands to English landlords.

            Drawing strength from their knowledge of the hardships early Christians faced, most Irish Catholics remained undaunted by the religious intolerance in America and secretly attended Masses celebrated by passing missionary priests. With no church buildings in which to worship, they gathered instead in private homes, in public halls, and – on more than one occasion – in barns and stables to give praise to God.  Although they lived nineteen centuries after the days of the great catacombs, their religion was still, for the most part, a secretive affair.

            With a true parish priest among them now, the Catholics gathered more formally, and the Diocese of Hartford was officially erected on September 18, 1843 – fourteen years after Rev. O’Cavanaugh’s arrival.  Twenty-nine years later, on April 28, 1872, Providence, R.I. was separated from the Hartford Diocese and established as a separate religious See.  Catholics had come a long way from the injustices of the Puritans and the hostilities of others.

            But they still had a long way to go.

            In the half-century since the first priest’s arrival in the state, large numbers of Catholics had spread to other regions – like the small town of Jewett City, most of whose residents had been native-born Protestants during the time O’Cavanaugh was busy setting up his parish and his diocese.  But the construction of the Norwich and Worcester Railroad, which was chartered in 1883 and opened amid much fanfare in 1840, changed all that.

            The railroad was a boon to Norwich – whose three rivers, the Thames, the Shetucket and the Yantic – had helped it grow and become prosperous during the years of extensive boat travel.  The construction and completion of the railroad’s Hartford and Providence line in 1854 not only played a large part in the future of the Rose City but assured Catholicism a home in the area.

            While this was happening, three seemingly unrelated events in world history were occurring – events that were to shape the history also of Sacred Heart Parish and of Taftville – which was then little more than an old stretch of farmland consisting largely of trees and shrubs.

            The first of these events was the invention of the cotton gin nearly fifty years earlier in Georgia.  In due time, this single invention led to the creation of great expanses of textile mills across the New England countryside.  The mills meant work, and the Irish immigrants were looking for work.  Those who weren’t employed by the railroads that passed through Norwich were working at the great mills in nearby Baltic (then called “Lord’s Bridge”), in Hanover and in Versailles (then known as “Eagleville.”)

            The second happening was the advent of still more trouble in Ireland – this time from a two-year famine in the counties of Clare, Cork, Kerry, May, Kildare and others.  The lack of food in 1845 and 1846, coupled with the great quest for work, caused many Irishmen to leave their homeland and seek out new lives by coming to America.

            And come they did: about three thousand a week – almost two million of them between 1840 and 1850.  The mills provided good, steady employment, so many of them chose to settle in New England.

            The final occurrence in this chain of events was of more nationwide importance, and was also related-at least in part – to Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin   the issue of slavery, which had long divided the country, came to a fiery confrontation when the southern states – which had used black people on plantations – seceded from the northern states, which were generally opposed to the often-cruel use of one race of people as slaves.

            Many of the Irish immigrants who worked at the great cotton mill in Baltic enlisted in the Army in 1861, and those who returned when the bitter war between the states was finished five years later moved to the nearby village of Taftville.

            While they were at war, the great Industrial Revolution, which had transformed most of Europe from an agricultural economy to a modern industrial empire in the 17th and 18th centuries, had taken root in America.  Textile mills were experiencing a great boom, and new mills were being built all over New England.  So, it only made sound business sense for Edward P. Taft of Providence to purchase land in the small wooded area between Baltic and Norwich and build a large textile mill there.

            It hardly looked like the prime spot for such an undertaking.  The old Ripley farm, with its few acres of cleared land, was about all there was in Taft’s new village.  Irishmen who began to clear the ground and lay the first bricks in the 750-foot-long Ponemah Mills building had to construct temporary shacks because there were no houses.  But these men were ex-soldiers, just returned from the battlegrounds of the South, and the shacks were fine by them.  These people hadn’t forsaken their religion, though, and for a while the Catholic population of Ponemah Mills resembled that of Saint Mary’s in Jewett City, the Mother church of the area.

The Irish people weren’t alone in their quest for decent wages and honest work, however.  During and after the Civil War, word of numerous jobs and relatively high pay spread north across the border into the towns and provinces of Canada.  Soon, the Canadians came in droves – from towns and villages with names like Ste. Sabine, St. Michel des Saints, St. Athanase, St. Guillaume de Bagot and dozens of others.  As the village-names indicated, the Canadians were a deeply religious people, and the settlement of some of them into Jewett City, Baltic and Taft’s new village greatly added to the number of Catholics in the area.

There was still no Catholic Church in Taftville, but the figurative cornerstone had been laid.  The literal one was to come about one decade later, in 1877.

“The Early Years” (1868 – 1900)

             William Tucker had watched the day-to-day operations of the large textile mills in Taftville for a few years.  Its name, “Ponemah,” means “our hope” in Indian.  His position as mill superintendent allowed him to witness the daily comings and goings of the mill workers – mostly hard-working and honest Irish and Frenchmen.  He watched friendships form, and he saw the farmland the French had dubbed “Taftville” (after Cyrus and Edward P. Taft, who bough the land in 1865) grow into a prosperous small village.

            Although Tucker was of English descent, he knew the French and the Irish did not take their religion lightly.  Settling in New England was a hard enough adjustment for many of them – they weren’t about to give up their religion, too.  The healthy workers thought nothing of walking ten or twenty miles to attend Masses at the few established churches in the area – St. Mary’s in Greeneville or St. Patrick’s Church in Norwich.  (Because there was yet a Norwich Diocese, St. Patrick’s was not a cathedral.) Many from Taftville, Occum and Voluntown attended St. Mary’s Parish in Jewett City when Father John Mullon from Norwich said Mass there.  Even more went to Jewett city after May 1872, when the Rev. James Reynolds was appointed the first resident pastor there.  Part of Rev. Reynold’s new responsibilities were the people of Taftville.  By then, William Tucker noticed that Taftville’s Catholic population was growing daily, as the mill took on more and more laborers and produced yards and yards more textile.  The Protestants – many of them Congregationalist – had already established a regular meeting place at the Ponemah Hall a few years earlier.  So, it was only fitting, reasoned Tucker, to offer a similar place of worship for the Catholics, too.

            It is perhaps no coincidence that Tucker chose Saint Patrick’s Day, 1873 as the day to call on Rev. Daniel Mullen to celebrate Mass.  Fittingly, Mullen was from Saint Patrick’s Church, and the feast-day meant a great deal to the Irish workers.  When Tucker called the Catholics together for the Mass, he wasn’t surprised to find the French thrilled, too, at having the celebration take place in their own hometown.  They were all the more pleased when Tucker presented them with the key to the primary building at the Wecquonnoc School, owned by the mill.  And it was in the building that the first Mass was celebrated in Taftville, March 17, 1873.

            There was now a building, a congregation, but no permanent priest.  Like the residents of Hartford and Providence half a century earlier, they had come to rely on visiting priests to come to the little school house – and priests’ schedules were busy.  Sometimes, Catholics still made weekly treks to St. Mary’s in Greeneville or Rev. Reynolds’ Jewett City Parish when Reynolds could not come to Taftville.

            After Reynolds died in January 1875, Rev. John Russell took over the job in Jewett City.

            But Father Russell – a hefty, energetic man – recognized that he could not be in all places at the same time.  He recognized, too, that the Catholic population of Taftville had grown tremendously – and still there were the people of Occum to attend to as well as the Catholics in the Jewett City Mother Church.  So, he struck a compromise.  On most weeks, Mass would be said at the Wequonnoc schoolhouse, and people from Occum, and Versailles would go to Taftville.  On the other weeks, services were held in Occum, and Catholics from Taftville walked to that village.

            Pleasant as this was for a while, it could not go on for very long.  In 1875, the Catholic population of Taftville alone numbered nearly 1,600.  Father Russell finally decreed what some villagers had desired for the better part of a decade: Taftville and Occum would have their own churches.  Construction was to begin immediately.  The Taftville site-on the corner of what is now Merchants Avenue and School Street – had been the location of a small tavern, run by Frank Day and owned by his family.  The tavern had been destroyed by fire a few years earlier.

            It took one year for the building to be completed, and Mass was said there in September 1876.  The waiting wasn’t over, however.  Now that Catholics had a place to worship that they could call their own, they had to wait another six months for the church, with its simple but majestic steeple, to be officially dedicated.  Meanwhile, in Hartford, the diocese was without a Bishop.  Father Thomas Galberry was eventually elevated to that position, but he notified the Holy See he didn’t want the title with its added burdens and responsibilities.  When he was notified that he was to prepare to consecration on February 17, 1876, though, he did not back down.  Exactly one year and five weeks later – March 24, 1877, he arrived in Taftville and the dedication of the church took place.

            The event could not have pleased Father Russell more.  But still, there was no permanent priest, and he took care of the parish as an itinerant until 1878, when Rev. Thomas Joyant took over as priest at the Jewett City, Taftville and Occum churches.  Finally, in 1883, those two towns were separated from the Jewett City Parish, and Rev. James J. Thompson was appointed as Taftville’s first resident pastor of the new parish, now officially known as “Sacred Heart.”

            The growth of the small community continued to be rapid, although a series of three fires at Ponemah Mills caused more than $55,000 damage – a tidy sum in days when most workmen’s wages were doled out in pennies and other coins. They were the first of many Taftville fires that could be called “disastrous.”

            As more and more cotton was run through the huge Corless wheels in the brick mill building, more and more people flocked to Taftville.  These were years of growth for the church there, too.  In January 1885, Rev. Maurice J. Sheehan was appointed to assist Father Thompson.  Pleased with the size and spirit of the parish, the two priests worked hard to begin a parochial grammar school that would educate Catholic youth in religion as well as the three R’s they could learn a the nearby Wequonnoc School.

            Getting the convent and the school built proved to be the easy part of the task.  Work began on the simple, three-story wooden school and the more ornate, Victorian-style convent to its right in April 1887.  Both were complete eleven months later.  The difficult part of the priests’ undertaking was to find sisters to teach at the new grade-school.  In nearby Baltic, the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady Mother of Mercy taught religion, French and English in their school, which was fairly well-established.  Father Thompson asked Mother Superior Carola if some sisters could offer the same subjects at the new Sacred Heart School.  She understood his need, promised to keep the school in mind, but told him she had no sisters to spare.

            Father Thompson was similarly disappointed by the Sisters of Mercy and another group of Canadian nuns he asked for help.  This time, he was told the sisters couldn’t teach in both English and French, and bi-lingual teaching was necessary in the mostly French village.

            It was, ironically, another fire that brought about the teachers Taftville’s Catholic children needed.  During a huge fire, the mill in Baltic burned to the ground and hundreds were left without work. Almost in droves, families left the small town to seek work elsewhere, and the school population in Baltic plummeted.

Mother Superior Carola kept her word to Father Thompson and sent a letter to the Motherhouse to tell of his need- and to inform her superiors of the newly-available sisters.  A few days later, a letter from the sister’s General Council was received, and it bore good news for Mother Carola and the fledgling parochial school in Taftville.  Mother Angela was sent as superior, Sister Felix was to be the cook, and they were to be joined by two sisters from Willimantic.

            It was in August 1888 that the seven sisters settled in their new, three-story convent, school and chapel. The era of Catholic education in Taftville had begun.

            And as soon as it began, it grew.  The following year, three more sisters were sent to help in the teaching of French, English, math and sciences.

            In the meantime, Father Thompson, who had known the Taftville Parochial School since it was only a dream and a few bricks, died and was succeeded by Rev. Terrence Dunn for one year and then by Rev. John Synnott, who carried on the expansion plans by purchasing another tract of land from Ponemah Mill after long negotiations with the now-powerful company.  The new site became the home of the new parish rectory, into which he moved in 1898.

Those who knew Father Synnott also knew he was a mover.  In his term, he worked hard to liquidate the parish’s $7,100 debt, erect a chapel and community center for the sisters, renovate the school, put a new metal ceiling in the church and create a new cemetery.

            In the past quarter-century, the parish had grown to about 2,300 people.  Parishioners and Father Synnott saw that a new church would be necessary to meet the needs of future Taftville generations. From the rectory window, Father Synnott could see the site that would become that of the new church.

The year was 1900.  The world had entered a new century, and Sacred Heart Parish had begun a new era.

    “Transitions” (1901 – 1956)

             The second church building established in Taftville says a lot about the type of people who belonged to the growing parish in the first years of the Twentieth Century.

            When the cornerstone was laid during an impressive ceremony on August 5, 1900, most of the more than 1,000 people who attended the event knew two things: the complete church they had hoped to build would not be constructed immediately; and they would have to work hard to raise the money necessary to build the elaborate structure they had in mind for the site.

            That Sunday afternoon at 3 o’clock, though, financial concerns and dreams of things to come were forgotten for a while, as the procession of priests, led by the Most Rev. Michael J. Tiernan, Bishop of Connecticut, left the rectory and went to an altar set up in the basement of the new church. After the blessings and Gregorian chants, the procession moved to a decorated platform erected near the site of the new church’s northern tower.  There, Bishop Tierney placed the cornerstone at the front of the building.

            Architectural plans for the church showed an imposing, Romanesque-style building, 134 feet long by 65 feet wide, with a huge spire on the northeast corner.  Those plans were to be looked at and reprinted many times in the next 16 years, but members of the congregation knew they would have to call the basement of the planned building their new home for now because there was not enough money in the parish accounts to pay for the complete building.

            The basement, covered with a roof and a large cross facing Providence Street, held about 1,000 people, and was the site for Masses and funeral, weddings and First Communions for the better part of two decades.

            The church was now well-established in Taftville, and its middle years produced both proud efforts and some staggering setbacks.  Through all, though, the church grew in strength and in numbers.

            Father O’Keefe had been in Taftville for five years when the parishes first major tragedy occurred.  At first, though, no one knew it would be a tragedy.

            It was Saturday, September 5, 1908.  One of the sisters from the school glanced out the school window and noticed flames shooting out of the window of a nearby house which was on the side facing the school.  She shouted to one of the neighbor’s children, who were playing near Philip Hendrick’s house on School Street, but by then, the flames had been fanned by wind and had grown. The sister began pulling the cord to ring the large school bell and summon for help, watching helplessly as the Hendrick’s two-story house was engulfed by flames.  The wind swept the fire to the house owned by R.C. Kelley, which was next the school and convent.  Men answered the ringing school bell, and one left to call the Ponemah Mills Fire Department.  Finally, at 2:20 p.m., the Greeneville Fire Company arrived.

            By then, though, the worst had already happened.  The school was engulfed in flames and the fire shot 50 feet into the air.  By 3:30 p.m., then convent has caught on fire, but that blaze was out in about half an hour.

            The fire was estimated to have caused $20,000 in damages, but for many Taftville residents, its loss could be calculated in terms of dollars and cents.  School had been scheduled to start on Tuesday, but the 400 Catholic students instead had to be taken to the nearby Wequonnoc School.  The sister – with nothing left to do and no place to stay while the convent was being repaired – were sent to the Baltic convent.

            The only good news that came out of the fire was from Bishop Tierney in Hartford, who drove to Taftville Sunday afternoon to survey the damage.  The Bishop – seeing the wreckage and realizing the large number of Catholic parents who wanted their children to get a Catholic education – immediately granted Fr. O’Keefe permission to construct a new school on the church property at Hunters Avenue.

            Workers wasted no time getting started with the new construction project, and the new, three-story brick school with the gold cross on top was finished one year later, in 1909.

            The parish’s second school was to serve the Catholic children of Taftville and surrounding towns for many years to come.

            Eight years after the school fire – after normalcy had returned and the church had settled into its permanent home on the corners of Providence Street and Hunters Avenue – the parish marked another first.

            It came as a surprise to no-one. For years- since the construction of the Basement Church at the turn of the century-parishioners had contributed and created fund-raising drives so the upper portion of the building could be completed.

            In April, 1915, with enough money in the church treasury, Rev. Ulric Bellrose, the new pastor of the church after Rev. John Stapleton, authorized work crews to begin the task of constructing the huge brick building, under the supervision of A. Brosseau of Taftville.  Sixteen months later, the Roman-style building – sporting a 115-foot-tall bell and clock tower, hand-carved oak pews and a 50-foot-high sanctuary dome-was opened and ready for dedication by Bishop Nilan on August 27, 1916.

            More than 1,200 people attended the High Mass at 10:30 a.m. – so many people that not even the large new church could seat them all. Hundreds of parishioners and well-wishers donated items for the new church, ranging from altar vases to the huge pipe organ.  The new church received the praise of visitors and of news writers, who called it “one of the most beautiful edifices in a town the size of Taftville in the state.”

            But most of Sacred Heart’s parishioners – then and for the next forty years- knew that already.  They had believed in the beauty and the future of their church when it was little more than a basement.

            One of those believers was Father Frederick DesSurreault, whose 27 years at Sacred Heart made him the longest-tenured pastor for the church.  Those years – from 1927 to 1955 – were marked with growth for the parish and a genuine concern for the Catholic youth of Taftville.

            Father DesSurreault sponsored organizations for young men and young women, commonly called “SHYMA” (Sacred Heart Young Men’s Association), and “SHYLA” (the church’s Young Ladies’ Association).  Using the former church building as the center for these two groups many activities, the two organizations gained a name for themselves as having outstanding sporting and recreational events.  For the generations of the 1940’s and ‘50s, these activities provided a base on which many young people built their youths, their lives and their friendships- and many friendships formed during this time in Sacred Heart Church’s history are still strong bonds today.

            Father DesSurreault died as pastor in 1955.

            The years ahead were to be rough and full of changes and the parish in Taftville was given a chance to prove its faith and commitment once again.

“A New Beginning”

1956-1983

             Norwich Bishop Bernard J. Flanagan, flanked by other priests for the celebration of a Pontifical Mass, made his way through the new aisles in Sacred Heart Church to the marble main altar.

            “Introibo Ad Altare Dei,” he chanted. “I will go to the altar of God”.

            It was a different altar than most of Taftville’s Catholics had grown accustomed to in their years with the parish: a new altar in a new, orange-bricked, modern-looking building.  They had gathered, this Sunday afternoon, April 13, 1958, to praise God for the new church, to ask for His help in their new beginning.  But many couldn’t help but think, also, of the sad event two years before that made the new beginning possible.

            Rev. Rene Messier, the curate, was in the pulpit at the 7 a.m. Mass, reading the Sunday announcements when he heard a noise in the congregation.  Then he noticed church sexton Alexander (“Mike”) Lamothe, standing near the eastern side of the church and motioning there was a fire in the building.

            “I immediately turned towards the Sanctuary and saw smoke exuding out of a pillar at the point where the lights were attached,” Fr. Messier recalled 19 years later in a letter to Monsignor Henri Laurion, who had arrived as paster of Sacred Heart parish on February 11, 1956 – just two months before the fire.

            By the time the parishioners had left, the Sacristy was filled with smoke, and it wasn’t long before dense clouds of smoke began to billow from windows and the roof of the 40-year-old church.

            About 200 firefighters battled the blaze for 4 ½ hours, but to little avail; all that was left standing after the fire was the church’s bell and clock tower and the badly-damaged front of the church, behind which lay charred remains, exposed girders and twisted metal columnar supports in the discouraging ruins.

            The fire was headlined “One of Norwich’s Worst Disasters,” and for many the loss was spiritual as well as physical.  At one point, Fr. Laurion estimated it could take up to 10 years before the parish could raise money to begin construction of a new church.  Parishioners, though, banded together to get the task accomplished in one-fifth the time.

            As a temporary haven, Mass came to be celebrated in the congregation’s first church – SHYMA Hall.  Soon, president Henry A. Truslow of Ponemah Mills – still the largest employer in town – offered an entire floor of his business’s Number 3 Mill Building as a gathering place for the celebration of the Mass.

            Meanwhile, many parishioners returning from Masses on Sundays often returned home to change from Sunday suits into work clothes and return to the site of the old church and work at the grim task of removing the debris to make way for a new church building at the same location.  Father Laurion, who had planned to build a parish auditorium and add six more classrooms to the school when he arrived at the parish, transferred his efforts instead to the construction of a new church building.

            On April 30, 1957 – one year and one day after the fire – bids were opened for the construction of a new church on the basement of the old.  Still one year later – after hundreds of donated items, thousand of hours in volunteer time and tens of thousands of dollars in donations- the new church was completed and ready for dedication.

            The fire that destroyed the old church had proven to be both a mournful event and a hopeful beginning.

            Hope was the message of Bishop Flanigan’s sermon to the people of the parish the day of the dedication.  The new church, he said, was the “result of the courage and spirit of sacrifice of the parishioners, fostered by the zeal of the pastor and his assistants.”

            Zeal marked many of Monsignor Laurion’s accomplishments.  Those who knew him during his 25 years as head of the parish had to admit he served during a difficult time for the parish and the Church itself. Along with building the new church, it fell upon him to see the parish through the many changes that came with the Second Vatican Council.

            But there were many happy and less trying time in those 25 years, as well.  During that time, in 1977, Monsignor Laurion rejoiced with parishioners as the congregation marked the one hundredth anniversary of the first church, the present SHYMA Hall.

            He was forced to retire in 1981 because of ill health.

            In those years, the church had changed, but so had the small village that had celebrated its first Mass in 1977.

            The tiny town of Taftville, with its quaint stores, large textile mill and closely-knit population, had entered a new age.  But for the people who had lived in Taftville for most of their lives, the traditions, the language and the heritage were never to die.  They are as unshakeable and as permanent as are the roots of Roman Catholicism in Taftville.

A Glance Back; A Look Ahead

            Father Henry Archambault looked out of the window while at his desk in the newly-renovated church rectory.  What he saw was a community and a parish in the midst of change- its people drawing life and character from their past, but coming to term with the more modern, and at times more difficult, life of the 1980’s.

            “The face of the parish has changed from the days of Father DesSurreault and Monsignor Laurion,” he said.  “People are no longer drawn to the Parish as their center of activities and support as they used to for cultural and religious needs.  Parish life today is more challenging.”

            He and other members of Sacred Heart Church are satisfied the church is meeting those challenges head-on.

            The challenge is to meet the needs of the people in the parish community- a community that is more diversified and less homogenized than it was two decades ago.  “We should build a community of worship and love,” Father Archambault said. “My role is to awaken a sense of mission within the parish.”

            The mission, like any other, has a sese of urgency and a call to action.  But the action and the mission are really continuations of a move that started a century ago, when Sacred Heart Parish came into being.