Catholics help rural parishes keep up with growth

On a recent trip to celebrate Mass at a new Roman Catholic Church, the Rev. Omoviekovwa Nakireru set his car's GPS to Our Lady of the Rosary in Louisburg. When the navigational device announced, "You have arrived," Nakireru felt sure it was mistaken.

Before him was a gray metal building with a sign for a dance studio.

"Where's the church?" he wondered, scanning the landscape for a steeple. It was only when he saw some girls in confirmation veils getting out of a car that he decided he was in the right place.

Many of the Diocese of Raleigh's rural churches look nothing like the mammoth compounds that have come to represent Catholic growth in the Triangle. There are no conference rooms, gyms, elementary schools and athletic fields attached to these churches. In some, there are no entrance halls or bathrooms. In Louisburg, the rented space used to be a Tae Kwon Do studio.

The diocese, concerned about the growing discrepancy between urban and rural churches, has begun a Home Mission Society to help raise money for these growing congregations, whose members are Catholic, but whose paychecks can't often support ambitious fundraising and building plans.

"The missionary thrust of our diocese came to be colored by people moving in from the North, and our churches took on a suburban look," said the Rev. James Garneau, pastor of Mount Olive's St. Mary Catholic Church and the chairman of the new society.

"But rural areas have been growing, too."

225,000 unregistered

Indeed, the diocese counts 210,000 registered Catholics and estimates an even larger number of unregistered, mostly Hispanic Catholics -- about 225,000 -- who regularly show up for Mass but don't fill out membership forms. Though some of those Hispanic Catholics live in Raleigh and Durham, many others process chickens and pick cucumbers in Eastern North Carolina counties such as Franklin and Wayne.

Attendance at rural Catholic churches is growing quickly, fed not only by Hispanic workers and their families, but expanding populations at military bases and coastal retirement communities.

At St. Mary in Mount Olive, Garneau celebrates five Masses each weekend. Two are in English and three are in Spanish to accommodate a growing congregation that spills out into the tiny sanctuary's aisles. Latecomers must watch the Mass next door at the parish center on closed-circuit TV.

"We don't expect a castle, but we need a place where we can meet together," said Edith Sosa of Dudley, a member of St. Mary and an emigrant from Panama.

For years, many Catholic churches in the Triangle were built with the help of the Catholic Church Extension Society, a national organization that helps build and repair poor and remote churches, among other projects. Since 1905, the extension society funneled more than $5 million to the Diocese of Raleigh, which spans 54 counties from Chatham to Dare.

It helped pay for virtually every church built in Raleigh before 1970, including Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Raphael, Msgr. Gerald Lewis said.

Many of the Raleigh-area churches are full of new arrivals, too -- mostly Northerners who came to North Carolina for better jobs and bigger homes.

The diocese's largest church, St. Michael the Archangel in Cary, exemplifies a successful suburban church. Its 20-acre campus off High House Road boasts a sanctuary seating 1,100, a pre-kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school, a parish center, an early childhood center and athletic fields.

About 6,000 families are registered, and the church collects about $45,000 in offerings during 10 weekend Masses each week.