The Charlotte Observer
Thu, Aug 9 1:00 AM EDT
The membership of St. Gregory’s Catholic Church in Bluffton has grown by
a whopping 70 percent in the past decade and is now 10,000 strong.
Sunday Masses are crowded as latecomers squeeze into pews or stand in
the back of the Beaufort County church. Twelve Masses are held Friday
evening through Sunday — two of which are in Spanish. And work is
underway on a new parish life center for community events. It’s not the
only S.C. Catholic Church experiencing a rebirth. While mainline
Protestant churches across the state are shedding members — even
shutting down — Catholic churches are flourishing, buoyed by a growing
community of Hispanic families and Northeastern retirees. Statewide, the
number of ...
1 comment:
Bluffton, SC, was a quiet, waterfront town until around the early 2000's when Del Webb's Sun City Hilton Head got started. The parish church there was St. Andrew's, a small - 300 capacity - church that was often referred to as the Pinckney Colony Church. The Pinckney family had been in that area and owned vast acreage in that area.
I was pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes in Port Wentworth, Georgia, the bordering parish in the bordering diocese when my friend Fr. Greg West was made pastor in Bluffton with the mandate from the bishop to buy land a build a BIG church in anticipation of the anticipated influx of Yankee Catholics to Sun City. They bought land and built a 900 seat church and have since added a school. There's a Catholic high school, St John Paul II, not far away.
Pretty amazing expansion in short order, indeed!
Post a Comment