Members of Sacred Heart, Covington, say many of their fellow Catholics are converts.
So is the building in which they worship.
Searching for a new home at the turn of last century, the Irish railroad workers and other immigrants that made up the growing Catholic community in this Allegheny Highlands city found one on Main Street. It was a brick church with plain, frosted windows, owned by the Methodist Episcopal Church since 1858.
Sacred Heart, a mission of St. Joseph in Clifton Forge at the time, bought it for $3,000. A year later, using the altar and other fixtures from their original building, they moved in. By 1924, Sacred Heart was large enough to be named a parish.
On a sunny, mild morning June 8, Bishop Barry C. Knestout helped celebrate the 100th anniversary of that designation with a special Mass.
More than 100 people filled the nave as the bishop processed to the sanctuary. He was accompanied by current pastor Father Augustine Lukenge; retired pastors Father Thomas Collins and Father Louis Benoit; Msgr. Patrick Golden, pastor of Our Lady of Nazareth, Roanoke; and members of the Knights of Columbus.
Among the congregants was DeDe Rogowski, a longtime parishioner who was baptized, made her first Communion, was confirmed and later married at Sacred Heart. So were her parents, though because her father wasn’t a Catholic yet, they couldn’t wed in the sanctuary. Her mother chose the sacristy for the ceremony “so she could be near the Blessed Sacrament.”
DeDe met her husband, Don, on the steps of the church one Sunday morning about 30 years ago. “I’ve got a lot of love for this church,” she said.
Parish council chair Laurie O’Doherty shares that love. “I came from Northern Virginia, from a really big parish where you kind of felt very lost,” she said. “So here, I feel like I know everybody. Everybody’s very compassionate. Everybody’s very cohesive and I really like that about this parish.”
As a small parish, all the administration has to be done by volunteers. “There are not too many, but they are very committed,” said Father Lukenge. “The work gets done. They love their parish.”
(Photo/Joe Staniunas)
Love of the Sacred Heart
The varieties of love was the theme of Bishop Knestout’s homily, based on the readings for the Feast of the Sacred Heart. The bishop was preaching within a few miles of two of the state’s great rivers – the Jackson, a shallow mountain stream, and the James, a long waterway, deep in most places.
“God always calls us in the spiritual life from the wide and easy to the narrow and difficult,” the bishop said. “From the wide, shallow and easy streams of first loves, to the narrow and deep rivers of true and lasting love, toward unselfish and sacrificial love.”
Catholics have the privilege of experiencing both types of love in their spiritual lives, he said. “We know the comfort and enjoyment of beautiful music, welcoming hospitality in the parish,” the bishop continued. “But we also know of a more enduring love of bearing with one another and accompanying one another in the sorrows and difficulties of life for longer periods.”
He concluded by praying, “May God strengthen this parish community for hundreds of years to come in the future, with an ongoing energy and excitement of that first love, but also with the depth and devotion of a proven love, of a lasting love.”
After Mass, the celebration continued in the parish hall with a performance by the children’s choir, a classic Southern dinner of baked chicken and ham and sides, as well as a surprise for the bishop – a cake in honor of his birthday June 11.
Small but thriving
Built in 1957, the parish hall has been home to scores of receptions and potluck dinners. For over 20 years, hundreds of children from the Allegheny Highlands attended a preschool program in the hall, too. Presiding over all is a large white statue of the Sacred Heart that used to stand outside at the front of the church. Given as a memorial to the late Anne McGahey by her husband, Robert, it was moved inside for protection from the weather.
Father Lukenge says Sacred Heart is small but thriving, on solid financial ground, seeing more people at Sunday Mass, adding families with children. Rogowski says three young married couples with children “searching for more depth” in their spiritual lives are currently enrolled in RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults). All three mothers are expecting. “It’s just the grace of God,” she said.
Father Lukenge has experience with the grace and generosity of Sacred Heart parishioners. A native of Uganda, he lost the ability to work in the U.S. a couple of years ago.
“I spent a whole year out of work because of the visa issues, but the people saved the situation,” he said. He says the community supported him until his immigration status was fixed. He has been thinking about the work he’s done here, including helping to establish the Knights of Columbus council, as he prepares to move to his new assignment. In July, he will become pastor of Christ the King, Norfolk.
“There are needs throughout the diocese, and many communities that certainly could benefit from the passionate care and the goodness of Father Augustine, and we are grateful for his own readiness to serve wherever he’s called,” the bishop noted just before beginning his homily.
Father Ernest Dugah, parochial vicar of St. Gabriel, Chesterfield, and Good Samaritan, Amelia, will arrive in July to be the administrator for the associated parishes of St. Joseph, Clifton Forge; Shrine of the Sacred Heart, Hot Springs; and the parish that is beginning its next 100 years of faith, Sacred Heart, Covington.