Quick Guide Staff Directory Weekly Schedule Calendar Directions Web Page Directory Pastor's Notepad Prayer List Daily Prayer Parish News Protecting God's Children Home Page

                                       St. Michael Church History

It was 100 years ago that St. Michael Church was born. Founded at the request of workers who were
in the area building a mill, the church became a possibility with the help of a $1,500 donation from
Mother Katherine Drexel of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People.

In 1902, Bishop Leo Haid, a Benedictine bishop and abbot of Belmont Abbey, began
construction of the church dedicated April 1903 as a mission of Mary help of Christians
Church in Belmont, which in 1910 became Belmont Abbey Cathedral.

Less than 15 churchgoers attended Mass in the early years, although by 1922 the
congregation had grown to 56. Priests from Belmont Abbey administered the church.
In 1925, St. Michael Church attained parish status and Benedictine Father Walter O'Brien
became its first resident pastor.

Father O'Brien added a rectory beside the church and began offering daily Mass. When
Benedictine Father Alphonse Buss became pastor in 1936, he initiated a parish vocation
school in religious instruction and organized Boy Scout Troop 13.

Through the years, the Belmont Abbey Benedictines assisted St. Michael's growth in many
ways. From architecture to construction, ecclesiastical duties to teaching, Belmont Abbey's
clergy proved instrumental in St. Michael's development.

Parish life grew further to enhance the lives of children in 1942, when a five-room house was
converted into a first- through sixth-grade Catholic school at the request of parishioners. By
mid-decade, while the parish comprised 165 people, land on Gravely Avenue (now St.
Michael's Lane) was bought to accommodate a new, permanent kindergarten- through
eighth-grade school building, which was dedicated in February 1952. The school, staffed
by Sisters of Mercy from Belmont's Sacred Heart Convent, hosted more than 120 students
in its first year.

Parish membership continued to expand during the 1940s, '50s and beyond. Structural
failures and a steeple collapse forced then-pastor Benedictine Father Gregory Eichenlaub
to initiate designs for a new church beside the school. That church, a granite-faced structure
which cost $160,000, was dedicated in 1958 and seated 350 people in its 4,700 square foot building.

The project marked the third time Benedictine Father Michael McInerney's talents were
called upon by the parish of St. Michael Church -- the architect, who designed more than
500 buildings during his career, had designed plans in 1903 for the original church and in
1944 for the school building.

Parishioners broke ground for the construction of a parish center in 1978, a time during
which more than 1,400 people attended St. Michael Church. The addition was dedicated
in late April 1979.