The neighborhood surrounding Columbus Sacred Heart Church has seen many changes since the current church building was dedicated 100 years ago, but the church has endured through cycles of growth and decline because it retains a solid core of people who think of it as their home church, no matter where they live in central Ohio.
The parish marked the building’s 100th anniversary at a Mass on Sunday, Nov. 19 with Bishop Earl Fernandes as principal celebrant. It will have another anniversary event in two years, when it observes the 150th anniversary of its founding in 1875.
In his homily, Bishop Fernandes said Catholics “need to be missionaries who have an entrepreneurial spirit.” He described an entrepreneur as someone who has a vision, knows how to invite others to make the vision a reality, shows initiative, is a person of integrity and is a servant leader, and gave examples of how Jesus had all those traits.
“Jesus came to proclaim a vision of the kingdom of God,” the bishop said. “He surrounded Himself with others – the Apostles – who shared the vision and could lead by example. … He showed initiative by associating not with the obvious people, the religious leaders, but with tax collectors and sinners” because His vision was all-inclusive.
“He showed His integrity by practicing what he preached” and never deviating from that trait, the bishop said. “He displayed His servant leadership by washing the Apostles’ feet at the Last Supper and through His sacrifice of love on Calvary.
“Even after He was crucified, He continued to give gifts,” beginning with the blood and water flowing from His side and continuing through His gift of the Eucharist to us.
“Our vocation is to be entrepreneurs and to tell people about God Who has revealed Himself through Jesus,” Bishop Fernandes said. “We are called each day to pattern ourselves more and more after Him. … The message of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to whom this church is dedicated, is that God will not abandon sinners and will bring them back.”
The block where Sacred Heart Church is located, bounded by Summit and Hamlet streets and First and Second avenues, has been Catholic Church property since 1852 or 1853, when William Phelan willed it to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, which included Columbus at the time. The original church building served the parish for nearly 50 years, but as the congregation grew, a larger church was needed.
When the current church was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 29, 1923, its 800 seats were filled with people living in what then was a working-class neighborhood between downtown Columbus and Ohio State University. The post-World War II building boom resulted in many parishioners leaving and moving to the suburbs, with the neighborhood going into a slow decline.
But since the 1990s, the area has undergone a revival as an entertainment and arts district known as the Short North along North High Street and Italian Village and Victorian Village in the surrounding residential streets.
Its population is expected to increase in the next few years once several apartment complexes are completed as a result of the neighborhood’s becoming a popular choice for housing, especially among young adults.
About 2,000 apartments are scheduled to be built within a short walk from the church, said Jim Merckling, a parish volunteer who grew up in the neighborhood, takes care of church maintenance and schedules lectors, extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist and altar servers.
Merckling lives in Grove City and is one of many former parishioners who come to Sacred Heart for its 4 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. Sunday Masses.
“Not all that long ago, you could buy a house here for $20,000,” he said. “But thanks to the boom in the Short North and the redevelopment of the area where the former Jeffrey Manufacturing plant was located, we’re getting all these apartments and condos that sell for as much as $300,000.
“Some of the young people who have moved to the area say they like coming to church here because it’s an older church and makes them feel closer to God. Because it’s easy to walk to, sometimes you’ll see a group of young adults outside church talking before Mass and other young people joining the conversation and going in with them. That’s an encouraging sign.
“While he was parish administrator, Father Adam Streitenberger encouraged young people to get together outside of Mass. This was the start of a young adult group that has been meeting every other Thursday following the 6:30 p.m. Mass for the last few years.”
“We have about 100 young people who come to the meetings and Masses regularly or occasionally,” said Msgr. Frank Lane, who has been administrator of Sacred Heart and nearby St. John the Baptist Church since July. “Because it’s always been a parish people can walk to, you want that to be there for that next generation.”
Msgr. Lane said the parish recently received a $40,000 grant from The Catholic Foundation to preserve its stained-glass windows. “We’ve also repainted doors, redone the chapel and performed other maintenance as funds have been available. There’s lots of cosmetic and structural work that needs done, and we’re trying to do what we can with what we have,” he said.
Mary Rykowski has been attending Sacred Heart for more than 50 years, since the former St. Peter Church building closed, and the St. Peter name was given to a new parish in northwest Columbus.
“People at the old St. Peter’s had several options to choose which parish they wanted to transfer to, and I ended up choosing Sacred Heart because the people were so kind and nice to newcomers,” she said. “That feeling has continued to this day. The parish got smaller, but the people who stuck around formed a close bond.”
Sacred Heart had only three pastors in its first 100 years – Father John Eis from 1875 to 1919, followed by Msgr. James Ryan until 1944 and Auxiliary Bishop Edward Hettinger until 1977. In recent years, Sacred Heart and St. John the Baptist have been served by several pastors and administrators. “We joke about playing the game of ‘name the pastor,’” Rykowski said.
Some of the most recent pastors and administrators were Father Streitenberger, Father William A. Metzger and Father Andrew Kozminski, SAC, now pastor of Columbus St. Christopher Church. Deacon Frank Iannarino was the diocese’s first deacon to serve as a parish administrator. Father Gerald Lupa of the Diocese of Syracuse, New York, was a guest priest at Sacred Heart from 2007 to 2010.
Bishop Hettinger was one of the few U.S. bishops to be most identified as pastor of a single parish. After leaving Sacred Heart, he lived in retirement in southeast Ohio for nearly 20 years until his death on Dec. 28, 1996, nearly 55 years after his consecration as a bishop. He was the senior bishop in the United States at the time.
“He never wanted to be a bishop, but Bishop (James) Hartley wanted an auxiliary, and you never said ‘no’ to Bishop Hartley,” Merckling said.
“Bishop Hettinger was a very humble man and never asked for money except for the St. Vincent de Paul Society’s annual collection. You’d never know he was a bishop when he said Mass here because he only wore his bishop’s miter when he had to, like when there were other bishops celebrating a Mass with him.
“He loved growing roses. They were all over the parish grounds, and everyone knew he had an unwritten rule – ‘Don’t touch the roses.’ And he enjoyed cigars. You knew he was around because you could smell the cigar before you saw him.”
The parish had an elementary school until 1972. The former school building has been leased by St. Joseph Montessori School since 1987. The building also housed a girls-only commercial high school from 1908 to 1966 and was the original home for Columbus St. Charles Preparatory School in 1923 during construction of the St. Charles campus on East Broad Street.
Since Sacred Heart has only two weekend Masses and one on Thursday evening, it does not have large parish organizations, but it celebrates the Feast of Corpus Christi with an outdoor procession between the church and St. John the Baptist Church each year and the Feast of the Sacred Heart in June with an indoor procession.
The Divine Mercy devotion was introduced to the diocese in the 1980s at Sacred Heart by Father William DeVille, who was the parish’s pastor at the time and attended the anniversary Mass. The parish continues to celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, with a special program.
Sacred Heart also has been the home of the Syro-Malabar Catholic community of Columbus for about 20 years. Most people who belong to the Syro-Malabar rite, one of the Eastern rites of the Catholic Church, live in India. The rite traces its roots to St. Thomas the Apostle, who died in India.
Jinson Sani-Koreph of the local Syro-Malabar community said 100 to 200 people attend its 4:30 p.m. Sunday Masses at Sacred Heart and religious education classes there. “We are extremely grateful for the kind support everyone at Sacred Heart has given our team and were delighted to be part of the anniversary Mass,” he said.
Bishop Mar Joy Alappatt of the Syro-Malabar Eparchy of Chicago, which covers the entire United States and is the equivalent of a diocese, came to Sacred Heart on Sunday, Sept. 24 to celebrate Mass, with Bishop Fernandes as a concelebrant.