Church Histories
St. Margaret Mary Parish was established by Bishop Thomas M. O’Leary of Springfield in 1922, who named it after St. Margaret Mary, a nun in the 17th century who was canonized in 1921.
The parish served people of English, Italian and French backgrounds who were drawn from St. Stephen, St. Ann, St. Joseph and Notre Dame parishes, according to a parish history.
At first it was a parish without a church. The first pastor, Father James T. Hanrahan, celebrated the first parish Mass on Sept. 10, 1922. At first Masses were celebrated in an old ice house on Lake Avenue, near Lake Quinsigamond.
Blocks of ice had been harvested from the lake and stored in the ice house for use in homes and businesses during the warmer months in the days before refrigeration.
As the parish grew and the ice house could not accommodate the congregation, Masses were celebrated in the Knights of Columbus, Alhambra Council, Hall on Lake Avenue and at the state hospital.
The parish bought the Methodist Episcopal Church on Alvarado Avenue and renovated it. The first Mass in the church was celebrated on Sept. 9, 1923, according to the church history. About 200 people attended that first Mass.
Later, additions were made to increase the capaciity of the church. The first rectory was at 112 Lake Ave. In 1929 it was replaced by a larger rectory at 118 Coburn Ave.
Over the years renovations included a new center entrance to the church, side altars, and work on the Stations of the Cross, vestry, baptistery and electric lights.
For several years beginning in 1951 an annual 4 a.m. Fisherman’s Mass was celebrated in the church on Sundays at the start of the fishing season. It drew as many as 300, according to the parish history.
By the mid 1990s the parish had borrowed $60,000 to make what were called vital repairs to the church, according to a newspaper story. Father Patrick J. Hawthorne put the rectory and open land owned by the parish called Lake View Park up for sale. The rectory had 18 rooms and seven bathrooms. The properties were sold to help pay off the debt and a new, smaller rectory was built next to the church at 77 Alvarado Ave.
At the 75th anniversary of the parish in October, 1997, parishioners talked a bout how the parish seemed like a family and praised Father Hawthorne for bringing the parish back to health, according to a Catholic Free Press story.
Notre Dame des Canadiens Parish was the mother church out of which came St. Joseph Parish on Hamilton Street, Holy Name of Jesus Parish on Illinois Street and St. Anthony’s Parish in Vernon Square, now called Kelley Square.
St. Anthony Parish, no longer in existance, was in a factory building and contained a school, a parish hall and the church, each on a separate floor of the three-story building. It was suppressed in 1975 when parish population declined and re-consolidated with Notre Dame, according to “A Parish Grows Around the Common: Notre Dame-des-Canadiens, 1869 - 1995, written by Richard L. Gagnon and published in 1995.
Notre Dame had a number of firsts when it was established in 1869, according to Mr. Gagnon’s history.
It was the first of 20 parishes in Worcester County established for the French-speaking people. It as the only parish in the United States named Notre Dame-des-Canadiens. It was one of the first “dozen or so of the 150 ‘Canadian parishes’ established in New England from about 1838 to 1950.”
It was the fourth parish to be established in Worcester, after Christ Church/St. John, 1834/1846; St. Ann, 1856, and St. Paul, 1869.
“It was the first parish in the city to be named after Our Lady and the first non-English-speaking parish, followed 25 years later by the Lithuanian parish of St. Casimir. It was the 16th parish in Worcester County and the last in the city itself to be established by the Bishop of Boston before the Diocese of Springfield was established on June 14, 1870, by Pope Pius IX,” Mr. Gagnon wrote in his history.
Its first pastor was Father Jean-Baptiste Primeau, who came from Montreal in September, 1869, and was assigned to St. Ann Parish as an assistant. He also was given the assignment of establishing a parish for French-speaking immigrants from Canada who had been asking Bishop John Williams of Boston for their own parish.
The parish was established on Sept. 26, 1869 and Father Primeau celebrated Mass on the second floor in Horticultural Hall, which then was on Front Street.
Father John J. McCoy, in his “History of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Springfield,” published in 1900, said Father Primeau bought a church on Park street, now Franklin street, facing the Common, from Methodists for $35,000. It became the first Notre Dame Church and he celebrated Mass there for the first time on June 1, 1870. Father Primeau lived in the basement . Ten years later the diocese bought land behind the church on Portland street for a rectory.
At that time Father Primeau was busy with the enlargement and remodeling of the church. When it was finished, it bore a striking similarity to the Union Congregational Church across the Common. Both had been rebuilt in 1880 and both had two front towers, one taller than the other. Father Primeau also contracted with the Sisters of St. Anne in Quebec to come to Worcester and operate a school in the parish, according to Mr. Gagnon’s history.
In 1902, a new pastor, Father Joseph Brouillet, bought land in Salem Square from the Baptist Church and several other owners. Six years later Notre Dame Church on Park Street burned and the parish moved to the church building in Salem Square. The Park Street property, the rectory and other property on Portland Street was sold to the Bancroft Realty Company. It became the site of the Bancroft hotel.
In 1928 the Salem Square Church and convent were demolished and the present Notre Dame Church building was built. It was dedicated on Sept. 15, 1929, and named Notre-Dame-de-L’Assumption-des-Canadiens, according to Mr. Gagnon’s history. It took 17 years to pay off the $200,000 mortgage for construction, Mr. Gagnon wrote.
In 1975 St. Anthony Parish was closed and joined again with its mother church, Notre Dame. In 1989 a program to renovate the parish hall, roof and two towers began. It was completed in 1990 and cost more than half a million dollars.
In 1992, Bishop Harrington ordered the closing of St. Joseph Church, citing costly repairs that would be a burden on elderly and single-parent families in the parish. He reunited the parish with Notre Dame and gave it the name Notre Dame-St. Joseph Parish.
Parishioners of St. Joseph protested, occupied the church for more than a year and brought suit against the bishop over the ownership of the church. Courts ruled in favor of the bishop and police escorted 49 occupiers from St. Joseph’s.
Later, Bishop Reilly succeeded Bishop Harrington and, after several visits to St. Joseph’s and talks with parishioners, reopened the church. Now it, Notre Dame and Holy Name will be joined in a new parish called Holy Family Parish.
When Ascension Parish is merged with St. John’s Parish July 1 it will be returning to it’s mother parish.
Ascension was the last parish to be split away from St. John’s, the mother church in what became the Diocese of Springfield. Bishop Thomas D. Beaven of Springfield erected Ascension Parish in 1911. Father James J. Farrell was named the first pastor. On Aug. 11, 1912, the bishop dedicated the church.
Msgr. Thomas Griffin, pastor of St. John’s, had bought the land 38 years before the church was built in order to expand the Catholic school system in the area.
He invited the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in 1872 to establish a convent and school. The Sisters opened a high school for girls who attended St. John’s Church. It existed for 98 years, first as the St. John’s Parish Girls’ High School and, later, after Ascension Parish was formed, Ascension High School. It closed in 1970. Ascension Elementary School was merged in 1971 with St. John Parish School, which in turn was merged with the present Central Catholic Elementary School in 1976.
Father Farrell was pastor from 1911 to 1923. He was succeeded by Father Joseph G. Daley. At that time, according to a history of the parish, there were 3,000 parishioners and 650 students in the school.
Throughout the 1920s the parish conducted its annual Ascension Church May Procession up Vernon Street to St. Vincent Hospital and back, followed by benediction in the convent garden behind the high school. Each year a Queen of the May was chosen, invariably an Ascension High School girl who presided at the crowning of statues of the Blessed Virgin along the procession route, according to the parish history.
In 1927 the church was badly damaged by fire. Church custodian Patrick Ryan rescued the Blessed Sacrament, chalices and vestments with the help of Father Daniel F. Daley and Father James R. McCarthy, assistants at the parish.
Another fire, this one in 1973, destroyed the vacant Ascension High School building but spared the church. A new church hall was completed in 1985.
In November, 2007, Father Joseph A. Adamo Village at Ascension Heights was dedicated in a ceremony attended by Bishop Reilly, Sister Evelyn McKenna, SND., and city, state and federal officials. The building, containing 36 one-bedroom apartments for low-income from Worcester who are at least 62 years old. It was funded by $4.8 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and $500,000 in grants from city and state governments. Father Adamo, pastor of Ascension Parish, also is president of the Ascension Housing Corp. an independent board set up to apply for the grants.
Holy Name of Jesus Parish was established in 1893, two years after the establishment of St. Joseph’s Parish.
Both parishes grew out of the mother church, Notre-Dame-des-Canadiens to serve the growing French-Canadian presence in the city.
Father John J. McCoy, in his “History of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Springfield,” wrote that Holy Name, “like St. Joseph’s, for several years had a kind of parish formation which dates from the chapel erected by the pastor of Notre Dame. This little chapel was at the corner of Southgate and Grand streets.”
Father J.E. Perreault, first resident pastor, arrived on Feb. 8, 1893, from Turner’s Falls, where he had been pastor of St. Anne’s Parish. Previously he had served as a curate in Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Webster.
Holy Name parish outgrew the chapel and Father Perreault bought 60,000 square feet of last for $10,800 on which the church was built, Father McCoy wrote. In 1898 a parish school was constructed for $25,000.
“It is said by good judges to be one of the best of Worcester schools, and is not only a glory to the parish, but it is decidedly an ornament to the city,” Father McCoy wrote.
The Sisters of St. Anne from Lachine, Quebec, ran the school, he wrote.
The school was built while Holy Name still was a basement church because Father Perreault believed a school was more important than a big church, according to a history of the parish written by Richard L Gagnon and published in 1993. Mr. Gagnon wrote that Father Perreault also “did not want to burden the parishioners with a bigger debt than they could manage.”
Work on the upper church began in March 1914 amid some controversy, Mr. Gagnon wrote, because Father Perreault accepted the second lowest bid for the construction from a non-union contractor.The building was completed in December, 1916, without the stained glass windows, installation of which was delayed until 1920 because of World War I.
A second rectory, larger than the first, and an addition to the school were built in 1927.
Holy Name of Jesus High School began its first classes in 1942 and graduated its first class - 11 girls and five boys - on June 16, 1946, Mr. Gagnon wrote. By 1947 there were 1,437 families in the parish and 616 students in the elementary and high schools.
A major renovation and redecoration of the church began in 1954 and was completed and rededicated by Bishop Wright on Jan. 6, 1957. That same year Holy Name High School became a diocesan Central Catholic High School and began to accept students from Holy Family High School which closed.
In 1960 fire damaged the church. Shrines, a confessional, a stairwell, the organ and an altar.
Father George Denomme and Father Roland Hebert rescued the Blessed Sacrament and some vestments. The church again was repaired and renovated and, on Feb. 5, 1961, it was rededicated by Bishop Flanagan.
A new Holy Name Central Catholic High School was constructed for $2.6 million on Granite Street, across the city from the church, beginning in 1965. The first class entered the new building on Sept. 6, 1967.
In February, 1986, the convent and school buildings were sold to Candlewood Farms Trust for $625,000. The buildings were converted to condominiums and some of the money from the sale was used for church repair and renovations. Once again the church was rededicated, this time on April 17,1988 by Bishop Harrington. It was the fifth time the church had been dedicated. On July 5, 1988, the church was accepted in The National Register of Historic Places.
In recent years members of the Brazilian community attended Masses at Holy Name Church celebrated in Portuguese, but more recently they have moved to St. Stephen’s Parish.
In 1891 a group of Lithuanian men from the growing Lithuanian community in Worcester formed the St. Casimir Benefit Society.
A priest, Father Andrius Juodisius, made periodic trips to Worcester from New York to hear confessions in Lithuanian and provide for other spiritual needs.
Father Juodisius brought a newly-ordained priest, Father Joseph Jakstys, to Worcester in 1894 and members of the St. Casimir Society began to call for a parish, according to parish histories.
On three different occasions Bishop Thomas D. Beaven of Springfield refused to see a delegation from the Society.. Finally, he agreed to meet with Father Jakstys and told him he didn’t think there were enough Lithuanians in Worcester to support a parish.
The bishop said that if Father Jakstys could give him 300 names of Lithuanians in Worcester, he would establish a parish. Within two weeks, according to parish histories, Father Jakstys came up with 400 names, including a small number from the Polish community.
A parish was established. It was called the Parish of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. But members of the St. Casimir Society insisted it be called St. Casimir Parish, so the name was c hanged, according to the parish histories.
Masses were celebrated first in the basement of Sacred Heart of Jesus Church. Later they were moved to Notre Dame des Canadiens Church.
In January, 1895, the parish bought a lot for $1,004.65 and built a small wooden church on Waverly Street at a cost of $1,699.77. By 1900 the congregation had outgrown the church, so another plot of land was bought at Waverly, Providence and Clarkson streets for $13,980.
The cornerstone for the new church was blessed in 1903. But by then the Polish parishioners, growing in number, decided to start their own parish. That cut parish income and, after the church basement was finished, construction of the church came to a halt.
A series of troubles, including the break-away of several parishioners, slowed progress on the church. But a new pastor, Father John Jakaitis, brought some stability to the parish.
Some parishioners had moved to South Worcester and wanted their own parish. Father Jakaitis said St. Casimir’s Church would have to be completed before a new parish could be started. The church was finished in 1916 and blessed on Oct. 12 by Bishop Beaven. In 1923, Father Jakaitis bought land in Shrewsbury on Lake Quinsigamond and build Maironis Park cultural center.
And the parishioners who had moved to South Worcester eventually got their church and their new parish. St. Casimir’s Parish was divided and Our Lady of Vilna Parish was established in 1925.
In 1922 the old church on Waverly Street was razed and a three-story parish school was built. It opened in1924. During World War II the parish rallied to support Lithuanian Relief. After the war there was an influx of immigrants from Lithuania who brought new life to the parish.
In 1965 Father John Jutt (Jutkevivius) was named pastor. He undertook a complete repair and renovation of the church to conform to the standards set by the Second Vatican Council.
In 1972, Bishop Flanagan asked the Marian Fathers to provide two priests for St. Casimir’s. Father Anthony Miciunas from that order was named pastor and Father Joseph Budzeika was associate. Father Miciunas built a new rectory for the parish in 1974.
Parish priests have since replaced the Marian Fathers in the parish. In 2003, a $285,000 renovation in the church interior was completed under the direction of the present pastor, Father Richard Jakubauskis.