St. Catherine of Siena welcomes members ‘from everywhere’
A stained glass window depicting Christ, with one hand raised in blessing to all who pass, looks onto the sidewalk from a small brick church in Clarksville, on a street lined with bed-and-breakfasts and houses with wide front porches.
It’s the home of St. Catherine of Siena, a small but friendly community of around 120 families, where the welcome mat is always out.
“Many of our parishioners are retirees,” said Father Raner Lucila, pastor. “They are all from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, all over. They are all from different states, but they’ve all come together to build a community.”
The church is also a home away from home, he said, for a surge of summer visitors who come each year for boating and camping on nearby Buggs Island Lake.
“It’s here in Clarksville that they celebrate the Lake Festival, so we get visitors from everywhere,” Father Lucila said. “Sometimes, we are surprised to have lots of guests at the Sunday Mass. And that’s Clarksville, that’s St. Catherine.”
St. Catherine marked its 75th anniversary on Sunday, Oct. 23, with a Mass celebrated by Bishop Barry C. Knestout and Father Lucila, followed by a reception at the Clarksville Community Center. Around 200 people joined the festivities.
“We had a magnificent day for it,” parishioner Anahi Trujillo Camorlinga said. “Everything was just lovely.”
Home sweet home
Originally from Iowa, pastoral council chairperson Mike Kapsch is one of many who called St. Catherine a home away from home, until he and his wife settled permanently in the area eight years ago.
“My wife’s mother and father lived near Boydton, and, for years, we went to St. Catherine whenever we visited,” he said. After a 20-year career in the Navy, he said, “we came down to help out and decided to stay right here.”
“Because we are all from somewhere else, we are all like a large, extended family,” parishioner Bob Chadeayne said. He and his wife moved to Virginia from New York, where they had run a sheep farm in the Finger Lakes, a second career for the both of them.
“After 18 years of minus 20 degrees and ice on every water bucket, it was time to retire,” he said, laughing. The couple chose their new home for the warmer weather and for its proximity to a Catholic church.
For a few parishioners, St. Catherine of Siena is also a childhood home, filled with a lifetime of memories.
Trujillo Camorlinga joined the parish when she was 5, she said, when her family moved to the area from Mexico. She was baptized and confirmed at St. Catherine, and also married in the church last year.
“I attend both the English and the Spanish Masses, and everyone is so friendly, so accommodating,” she said. “All in all, it’s a good vibe, and a good feeling. I just love everything about it.”
New foundations
Much like the present-day St. Catherine of Siena, the parish’s story began with people from diverse places coming together to build a community.
When Colonial Mills opened a textile plant in Clarksville in 1946, a large number of skilled workers from New England — many of whom were Catholic — moved to the area. Bishop Peter Ireton, along with group of Franciscans Fathers from New York who had recently established a residence in Emporia, began plans for a new parish to serve the area.
That November, Father Walter Hammon, pastor of nearby Good Shepherd, South Hill, hired a contractor to begin work on the church.
“This was right after the war,” Chadeayne said, “so if you know anything about 1945, 1946, you’ll understand that building materials were in short supply.”
Bishop Ireton gave the parish permission to take materials from an older church in Keileyville that had fallen into disuse, giving the pews, windows and even the ceiling beams a new life.
“If you stand in the church today and look up, all of the wood and all the timbers that you see in the roof are from the other church,” Chadeayne said.
With a little innovation and much faith, St. Catherine of Siena was dedicated on Sept. 28, 1947.
The community grew in the 1950s when construction began on the Buggs Island Dam — part of the era’s Rural Electrification Project — which brought hundreds of workers to the area. The project also created the manmade lake, which today draws vacationers and retirees to Clarksville.
A renovation and expansion of the sanctuary was blessed by Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo on Dec. 13, 2015.
“We matched the construction of the ceiling of the old church to the new church, so many people don’t realize where the addition begins,” said Chadeayne, who served as project manager for the addition.
“They did a beautiful job of it,” Kapsch said. “It’s gorgeous, for a little country church.”
Community outreach
From Backpack Buddies, a ministry that furnishes local students with school supplies, to more informal groups who spend Sunday afternoons checking up on elderly parishioners, volunteers at St. Catherine strive to give back to the wider community.
“We have a wonderful array of people with different skills and backgrounds from virtually all walks of life,” Chadeayne said.
The parish has a food ministry, he said, with volunteers who put their talents to use by cultivating a community garden. Parishioners also work with volunteers from eight area churches to keep the Clarksville Community Food Pantry open each Wednesday and Saturday.
The local Knights of Columbus council — which includes knights from St. Catherine as well as from its sister cluster parishes of Good Shepherd, South Hill, and St. Paschal Baylon, South Boston — has been instrumental in lending the parish the sense of camaraderie that it so enjoys, Chadeayne said.
The growing Hispanic Ministry, Trujillo Camorlinga said, organizes the parish’s Spanish- language Masses, which are celebrated once a month.
“I’ve just recently become more involved with that,” she said. “When Father Raner came and saw I knew both English and Spanish, he added me to the pastoral council, to help represent the Spanish-speaking community.”
The ministry also occasionally hosts holiday celebrations and observances, she said, such as Las Posadas, during the Christmas season.
Spirit of welcome
A reception held after the anniversary Mass brought the community together, with a lunch of hot dogs, hamburgers and sides contributed by members of the English-speaking, Hispanic and Filipino communities.
A few parishioners donned masks and hats to perform El Baile de los Viejitos, which translates to “The Dance of the Old Ones,” a traditional Mexican dance from the state of Michoacán, Trujillo Camorlinga said. There was also music from the Hispanic choir.
“I think the parishioners from the English Mass also probably enjoyed that as well,” she said.
Chadeayne said that the anniversary celebrations prompted him to recall the first time he attended St. Catherine, 19 years ago.
“A guy tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You’re new, aren’t you? What’s your name? Where are you from?’” he said.
“After we celebrated Mass, I got up to leave, but then, he said, ‘Come on, we have social after Mass every Sunday.’ He introduced me to everybody in the social hall. And that was my introduction to the church.”
St. Catherine of Siena retains the same welcoming spirit, he said.
“Everyone takes time for one another,” he said. “That’s the kind of attitude that permeates our church.”