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St. Paul’s to celebrate renovation with community open house this Saturday
Fresh from finishing off a renovation eight years in the making, St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Greencastle will celebrate the expanded church with a community/parish event on Saturday, Aug. 13.
A community open house at 202 E. Washington St. is scheduled for 1-4 p.m. with community and local church leaders being invited along with any other interested persons.
Parish leaders and members will serve as hosts and tour guides of the new areas. Displays, including historical information and photos of the church then and now, will be available for viewing.
At 5 p.m. Archbishop Charles C. Thompson, the seventh archbishop of Indianapolis, will perform the Mass. Thompson was appointed archbishop of Indianapolis by Pope Francis on June 13, 2017. Thompson was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Louisville on May 30, 1987.
Following Mass, a parish picnic is scheduled for 6-8 p.m. with time to view displays relative to the renovation.
Fr. John Hollowell, appointed to serve St. Paul’s in July 2014, recalls that upon his arrival, “the only things on my desk were some architectural renderings of ways to expand the church.”
“I’m not sure who left the architectural plans,” Fr. Hollowell said, “but I immediately started collaborating with parishioners on how to make something happen. We had been having people sit in our narthex and watch our Sunday morning Mass for 10 to 15 years.”
In 2017, a capital campaign was launched to raise funds for a church expansion that would enable all parishioners to worship inside the sanctuary. Parishioners and other donors, including a gift from the Gwendoline Long family estate, raised the $1.6 million needed for the project.
In 2020, construction began to extend the church building 10 feet to the south and increase square footage from 3,200 to 4,500, allowing for an expanded and updated sacristy and a handicap ramp for easier access to the altar.
The project increased church seating from 182 to 318 and all new pews were installed. New flooring was also installed throughout the church, narthex and office.
Among other work, a new fire alarm system was put in with fire-rated doors replacing the old doors in the narthex leading into the church. LED lighting was installed throughout the church and the confessional was redesigned.
The first Mass celebrated in the newly expanded and renovated St. Paul’s was in August 2021.
The new altar is an interesting story of its own. It was most recently located at Holy Rosary Parish in Indianapolis, where it had been installed during a 2009 renovation. That year, however, Monsignor Joseph Schaedel obtained the altar from Our Lady of Aglona Mission in Chicago, which had closed. In 2019, Fr. Ryan McCarthy desired that the altar of the Church of the Holy Cross in Indianapolis be installed at Holly Rosary, allowing Fr. Hollowell to obtain the now “extra” altar and have it installed at St. Paul’s. The angels flanking the altar were installed in 2022.