After visiting every church, Ray Geska wants to tell their stories

Ray Geska hit the end of his journey when he rolled into the parking lot of St. Joseph Parish in Fredonia. For the past 15 months the Williamsville resident has been spending his weekends and many weekdays participating at Mass in various parishes across the diocese. His goal is to visit every church.

On Oct. 27, he visited number 193, the 124-year-old St. Joseph.

“It feels really good, but it’s almost sad in a way knowing that I’ve seen them all,” he said. “But I also plan to go back and hit a lot of them again just to get a lot of pictures. It feels pretty exciting because I want to share that with people. At the same time, knowing that the mystery of trying to find some of these churches isn’t going to be there again.”

With each visit, Geska has taken photos and/or video of the church, as well as some notes about its history. He now wants to share this with the larger community. Catholic does mean universal after all. He’s not sure what the final project will look like, but he is developing his editing skills for a series of YouTube documentaries.

“I’m looking to turn it into a historical perspective mainly to start, meaning taking certain areas of the city or suburbs and focusing on how these areas were built and how they are connected to the whole building of the city or the town and how the Catholic Church played a part in that. Starting with the immigrants who came; how they built the church, to how some of these churches separated into other churches. I really want to take that and all these photos – I got close to 6,500 of them – and work in some stories which I want to narrate.”

He’s looking for people who want to share not only their personal stories about their parish, but also the stories of their parents and grandparents to tell the story of the earliest days of the diocese.

He’s also looking for some assistance in producing the series.

“I’m looking for some technical help more than anything, maybe some extra hands that can put some scripts together with me to put the stories into digestible form,” he said.  “I think if I had that helping hand that would help me then realize how I want to do it.”

Anyone with video production skills, and anyone who has stories to share of their parish can email Geska at RayGeska@Yahoo.com.

“I think there’s a lot of interest in it. It’s just for the last 15 months I’ve been building up this volume of photos and stories. Now is the time I really want to make sure that I’m sharing that however I can,” he said.