September 3, 2024 // Diocese

Neighboring Parishes Merge to Form St. Patrick-St. Hedwig Parish

Scott Warden

Editor-In-Chief

On Thursday, August 22, Bishop Rhoades officially merged two historic South Bend parishes into one to create the new St. Patrick-St. Hedwig Parish, according to an official decree.

“The pastor of St. Patrick and St. Hedwig parishes, on the advice of the parish and finance councils of both parishes, approached me with the recommendation that the parishes should be consolidated,” Bishop Rhoades wrote in the decree. “This recommendation is based on declining attendance and sacramental life, especially at St. Hedwig Parish, and the close proximity of the two parish churches. Consolidation is seen as a means to pool the resources of both parishes so as to seek to build up one vibrant parish community.”

St. Patrick Church and St. Hedwig Church are located a block apart on the west side of downtown South Bend. St. Patrick, located at 331 S. Scott St., was founded by the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1858 – seven years before the city of South Bend was incorporated. It is the original parish in South Bend (as St. Joseph Parish, founded five years earlier in 1853, wasn’t originally within the boundaries of the city). Years later, as an influx of Polish immigrants settled in South Bend, the Congregation of Holy Cross founded St. Hedwig in 1877.

For years, the parishes have shared a pastor. Father Cyril Fernandes served the communities for nearly a decade until he was reassigned this past January, when Bishop Rhoades appointed Father Eric Zimmer as administrator of the two parishes.

Father Zimmer told Today’s Catholic that upon his arrival, he had discussions with Bishop Rhoades; Father Mark Gurtner, Vicar General of the diocese; and Joe Ryan, Chief Financial Officer of the diocese about the unique challenges the two inner-city parishes faced. The key problem, Father Zimmer said, was a depopulation of the downtown area west of the St. Joseph River. There simply isn’t enough housing to support two parishes, he concluded.

“Right now, people who come to either parish come from outside the parish boundaries, because we simply don’t have housing nearby,” Father Zimmer said. “To the east is downtown, where you’ve got some housing, but not much. To the south, we’ve got Section 8 housing, which is mostly empty. To the north, we have old mansions that have been turned into bed and breakfasts, or office buildings, or things of that sort. And to the west, we do have some population, but it’s not a Catholic population.”

Because of these limitations, Father Zimmer said, St. Hedwig has only about 80 registered households – only about 30 of which are “ambulatory and come to Mass.”

“I had conversations with the parish and finance councils of both parishes throughout the spring to kind of gauge where they thought they were and where they wanted to be,” Father Zimmer said, “After all those conversations, we finally came to the point where I told the parishes that we need to make a proposal to the bishop. They were very concerned that either parish or both parishes might be closed.”

“It became clear that we had … enough people for one parish but not for two,” Father Zimmer said. “That’s really how we got to the point where the parish councils on their own made a motion in their meetings to present to Bishop Rhoades the request to merge the parishes. So these were separate requests, and I packaged that and brought it to the bishop’s attention and described the current status of things here. And the bishop was happy to respond to that, because it suggested that people were trying to take their future in their own hands and move forward.”

Father Zimmer continued: “Parishioners here recognize that they can either have their parishes merge … or they can have a closed parish. And when you put it that way, people’s affections shift a bit.”

While Father Zimmer said Mass schedules and other details about the parish merger are still being worked out, he’s eager to see the new parish unite through a sense of shared hope in the future.

“I said in my installation homily that we are, I believe, on the cusp of great change in downtown South Bend, and I believe that there will be an increase in housing here, which, if we do that well, should result in more and more people coming to St. Patrick and St. Hedwig,” Father Zimmer said. “When that happens, we should be a significant presence in the city again.”