East Side parishes celebrate Heritage Masses ahead of mergers

In the rough waters of parish mergers, the Greater East Buffalo Family of Parishes is trying to make their transitions as smooth as possible for its parishioners.

For three weekends in March, the family held a series of Heritage Masses where the sacramental records of St. John Gualbert Parish in Cheektowaga and St. John Kanty Parish in Buffalo were brought to St. Stanislaus Parish on Buffalo’s East Side before the official merger dates.

March 9 saw just one Mass for the trio held at St. John Gualbert, where the parishioners of the three churches gathered. As the diocesan Relic Shrine, relics of St. John Gualbert, St. John Kanty and St. Stanislaus lined the altar.

“Everybody was invited after Mass to come and venerate them if they like. We also gave out a holy card that you could touch to the relic making it a third-class relic. As Mass concluded, we blessed everyone with the relic of St. John Gualbert,” explained Father Cole Webster, Family of Parishes pastor .

Following Mass, the baptismal, marriage and death registers were processed out. A similar procession took place on March 16 at St. John Kanty. On March 23, all the records were processed into St. Stan’s.

Corpus Christi and St. Katharine Drexel parishes, also a part of the family, will be unaffected by the merger, so they held their usual Masses.

St. John Gualbert’s will become a secondary worship site of St. Stan’s on April 27. St. John Kanty’s will have its final Mass on May 18. To further ease the transition, the 10:15 English Mass currently at St. John Kanty will continue at St. Stan’s at the same time. St. John Gualbert Masses remain the same.

After the mergers, St. Stanislaus Parish will comprise three worship sites – St. Stanislaus, St. John Gualbert and St. Adalbert, which merged with St. John Kanty in 2011.

Parishioners of Gualbert’s and Kanty’s had different visions of their closing Masses. As St. John Gualbert’s will continue as a secondary worship site parishioners saw no reason for anything elaborate. St. John Kanty’s parishioners wanted an intimate closing Mass with those who were a part of the Broadway church’s history.

“In listening to what everybody wanted, we had to do something to recognize the fact that we are all merging. So, we scheduled these Heritage Masses prior to the actual merger dates,” Father Webster explained. “Everybody that is coming together to worship at St. John Gualbert. Everybody is coming together to worship at St. John Kanty. And everybody over at St. Stan’s. So, we’re all praying in each other’s space, getting to see one another and meet one another, pray with one another.”

The Masses allowed strangers to meet their “Family” members and become familiar with worshipping in a new space.

Although a sad time, Father Webster thought the Heritage Masses went well. “People are coming to terms with what needs to be done, what direction we are turning; that we’re no longer independent parishes, but we are coming together as one. So, it achieved the intent of why we had them,” he said.