Parishioners of St. Emeric Catholic Church in Country Club Hills want to reunite people who were part of the faith community over the years for a final Mass and parish celebration on Nov. 6.
“We have a great parish that touched so many lives,” said longtime parishioner Marge Gleason, 75. “We want everybody who ever was involved in St. Emeric to come back and be at our Mass and come to our celebration.”
The 10:30 a.m. Mass Nov. 6 at the church, 4330 W. 180th St., Country Club Hills, will be followed by a 1 p.m. luncheon at Gaelic Park 6119 W. 147th St., Oak Forest.
The Archdiocese of Chicago announced in January that St. Emeric, along with St. Anne in Hazel Crest, would merge with St. Joseph in Homewood to form a single parish centered at St. Joseph.
The Chicago Archdiocese has been reducing the number of churches and schools through its Renew My Faith initiative.
“A good number of our parishes were founded more that 100 years ago,” Cardinal Blase Cupich wrote in an April 25 decree that formalized the mergers. “Many were established for national, linguistic, or ethnic groups that no longer reside in the archdiocese or in the neighborhoods where they once flourished.”
Average Sunday Mass attendance had fallen to 215 in the months before the pandemic began in early 2020, the archdiocese said. Attendance had declined 55% from 474 in 2000.
St. Emeric Parish formed in 1960 in an unusual fashion.
“Normally a church is erected in an area after the archdiocese establishes a parish and a pastor is assigned, the entire procedure being supervised by the chancery office,” the archdiocese newspaper reported in 1959.
“Country Club Hills Catholics — a blending of all nationalities — have taken hold of the reins and are proceeding on their own initiative and at their own cost to erect a church, which when completed, will be turned over to the archdiocese,” the newspaper reported.
The church was first known as St. Joseph Mission when the first Mass was celebrated Christmas Eve 1959 before being elevated to parish status in 1960. At the time, Country Club Hills had the second highest birthrate of any community in Illinois, according to the parish history.
Because the post-World War II baby boom defined the community at the time, parishioners honored the youth movement by choosing the name St. Emeric, a young Hungarian prince who died in 1031.
“We have four children and they all went to St. Emeric School,” Gleason said. “That was their formation in faith and education.”
St. Emeric School opened in 1962 and closed in 2001.
Unlike many Catholic parishes where a dominant ethnicity defined the culture, St. Emeric parishioners have always represented widely diverse backgrounds, Gleason said. Diversity is celebrated at the annual parish festival, Taste of St. Emeric.
“We wear our native costumes and share our native food and culture and objects with each other,” she said. Ethnicities represented include German, Polish, Irish, Lithuanian, Haitian, African, Afro American, Filipino, Guatemalan, Mexican and Italian, she said.
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Gleason is a retired nurse. Her husband, Mike, is a former alderman and treasurer for Country Club Hills. The couple raised awareness about the need for bone marrow donors after Mike Gleason received a bone-marrow transplant in 2016.
In 2017, the St. Emeric community celebrated one of its former pastors, the Rev. John Rochford, who led the parish from 1972 until his retirement in 1991. Rochford died in 2018.
Membership may have declined, but St. Emeric parishioners have always remained close, Gleason said.
“Even the ones that have moved away we’re still friends with them,” she said. “We’re excited that they’re going to be coming back for the final Mass and celebration at Gaelic Park.”
The archdiocese also announced in January that three other south suburban parishes would merge into one. Flossmoor’s Infant Jesus of Prague Parish and School in Flossmoor will remain and absorb parishioners from St. Irenaeus in Park Forest and St. Lawrence O’Toole in Matteson.
The new parish centered at St. Joseph will have a new name that has not yet been determined, Homewood Mayor Rich Hofeld wrote in a Sept. 27 proclamation for the closing of St. Joseph Parish, which opened in 1912.
A final Mass is set for Oct. 16, which Hofeld proclaimed as St. Joseph Parish Day in Homewood.
Planning for St. Emeric’s final Mass and celebration luncheon has been bittersweet, Gleason said. She’ll miss the church that has meant so much to her family and community, but she’s looking forward to seeing old friends again.
“It will be sad for a while but we’ll move on,” she said.
Ted Slowik is a columnist with the Daily Southtown.