First Mass in the New Church

On Sunday, December 23, 1923 the first two Masses were said in the new St. Columbkille church. The first was at 8:00 am and the second at 10:30 a.m. The first High Mass in the church was the midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. The church was built because the parish had completely outgrown the original church built in 1878. Here are a few pictures from inside our second church:

 

Happy 135th Birthday St. Columbkille Parish

It was on August 22, 1877 that St. Columbkille Parish was established. The thirteen Papillion, Catholic families built the church and rectory as shown above. Today you can see that the former rectory is still there and a brick house stands where the wood frame church once sat.

As those 13 families were simply delighted to have a church and borrowed $650 at 10% interest for the $1500 construction cost, they may never have imagined the parish today at over 2900 families.

The second church was built in 1923 and could seat 250 people. The first event in the "new" church was the Christmas Cantata" performed by the students of Sacred Heart Academy on Friday, December 21. The first Masses were said on Sunday, December 23rd.

The third (and current) church was dedicated in 1982. It was designed so as not to disturb the big beautiful tree in front of it. Unfortunately that tree died a few years later.

Since then a bell tower and courtyard have been built in front.

But besides the physical changes, the parish continues to grow and thrive in our mission to "go and Make Disciples."

For more on the parish history, click here.

Our Stations of the Cross

When our second church was built in 1923, the Altar Society raised $570 to purchase 14 Stations of the Cross for the worship space, as pictured above.

In 1982 when we moved into our current

 church, the Stations moved as well.

The cover of today's bulletin is one of those images.

Because of a tree...

The tree pictured above was once located on our grounds. It was so nice that eveyone agreed that the church should be built around it.

The original design called for the church to be built east of the tree, a new parish office to be built to the north and a new rectory to be built to the west. Everything would be built around this tree.

As costs and budgets were considered, the idea of building a new parish office and rectory were put off with the idea that they could possibly be added later.

But the church was built to the east of the tree. Grass was left around the tree. Stairs were built between the west parking lot and the church. It was designed to flow to the south of the tree and leave space in case we ever added the rectory later.

A few years later, the tree died.

 

So we built a courtyard and added a bell tower.

The stairs have been patched in the meantime, but they simply need to be replaced.

But now, as we consider the space, wouldn't it make more sense to build the steps in the center of the courtyard and parking lot instead of to the south? After all, we have no plans to build a new rectory on the courtyard.

 At the same time, we can add some more landscaping.

That would include landscaping the south end of the courtyard.

Each year a Helping Hands Project is chosen to be supported at Columb's Ceili. Last year that project was to remodel the bathrooms in the church.

This year that project is entitled "Creating Disciples Step by Step." The plan is to add new steps between the west parking lot and the courtyard and landscape the area. So Saturday night at Columb's Ceili we are asking our guests to contribute to his cause. If you are not attending Ceili but would still like to help, please contact Deacon David.

School Opens

On this day in 1916, the first school building opened. When the Benedictine Sisters of Atchinson Kansas had arrived in August, the school was not ready. So they began to teach classes in the frame church. Forty students arrived the first day. They would sit on the kneelers and used the pew seats for their benches.

Classes began amidst the hammering as the school wasn't fully complete. The heating system was installed in November. Above is a picture of those first students who attended what was then called Sacred Heart Academy.

Old Files

In the process of cleaning out the parish basement for future Dead Theologian Society meetings, some boxes of old school records were found and given to Mrs. Overkamp at the school.

Some of the records go back to 1919. Above are how some of the records were kept before later types of filing were used.
All of the early teachers were nuns. Above you can see how everything was hand written including the teacher's name on the top and the end of the year remarks on the right.

There were also numerous newspaper clippings including the pages from the Papillion Times when they used to print a photo of each 8th grader who was graduating that year.

This is some great information to have as the school would like to do a better job of keeping track of, and reaching out to, alumni.