St. Joseph Parish in Edina celebrates 150th anniversary of impressive, enduring church building
What would they say if they could speak?
These lofty bulwarks of stone, brick and colored glass that mark the boundary between God’s house and God’s holy acre?
These sounding boards off of which once echoed the voice of Venerable Father Augustus Tolton, as well as 18 pastors and six generations of congregants?
These ironclad fortifications that held back a raging fire just over a decade ago?
“Welcome home!” they might say. “Come and be fed and let not your heart be weary.”
These walls matter.
“As Catholics, we build churches for three purposes,” Monsignor Robert A. Kurwicki proclaimed from the ambo of St. Joseph Church in Edina on Aug. 4.
“The first is that it is a house of prayer,” said Msgr. Kurwicki, vicar general of the Jefferson City diocese. “The second is that it is a gate of heaven. And third, it is a garden of vocations.”
Msgr. Kurwicki, who is also pastor of St. Peter Parish in Jefferson City, presided and preached the homily at a Mass to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the completion of St. Joseph Church in Edina.
Joining Msgr. Kurwicki at the altar were Father Boniface K. Nzabonimpa, pastor, and retired Deacon Kenneth R. Berry of the Edina parish.
St. Joseph Church is one of the most impressive and recognizable church buildings in the diocese.
The soaring edifice has seating for about 650, making it the largest Catholic church in northeastern Missouri and among the largest in the diocese.
Its 8-foot cross mounted atop a 212-foot bell tower and spire is visible from anywhere in town and for miles beyond.
Its bells can occasionally be heard from nearly as far away.
Msgr. Kurwicki noted that the church — the third to be built since the parish’s founding in 1844 — was intended to become a cathedral.
“Father John Fitzgerald saw that the pope had established the Diocese of St. Joseph just a few years earlier in the northwestern corner of the state,” said Msgr. Kurwicki.
“As the Catholic population in northeastern Missouri continued to grow, it made sense that it, too, would eventually become its own diocese,” he stated.
“So Fr. Fitzgerald and his parishioners set out to build a house of God that would serve the needs of the rapidly growing parish, and also of the new diocese they believed they would live to see created.”
Such never came to pass, as the region became part of the former St. Joseph diocese in 1911 and then the newly created Diocese of Jefferson City in 1956.
Yet, St. Joseph Church still fills up for Midnight Mass each year, as present and former parishioners and their descendants return to celebrate Christmas.
These stones
Before construction commenced in 1873, Fr. Fitzgerald convinced a gifted writer in the parish to send letters to East Coast newspapers, inviting immigrants to take advantage of the economic opportunities and strong Catholic community in Knox County, Missouri.
The letters helped swell the population even more, justifying construction of the church that has stood at North Main and East Smallwood streets for the past century-and-a-half.
Fr. Fitzgerald enlisted a master builder to design the new church and oversee its construction.
Parishioners, mostly immigrants who had brought exceptional building skills from their homelands, raised the money, extracted the stone and clay from the ground, fired the bricks and harvested the lumber locally.
Auxiliary Bishop Patrick J. Ryan of St. Louis — future archbishop of Philadelphia — blessed the cornerstone and set it into place in 1874.
Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick of St. Louis dedicated the church in 1875.
The bell tower and steeple were completed in 1891.
Msgr. Kurwicki called to mind that one person died while helping to build the church.
Fr. Tolton was here
On March 19, 1889, the Feast of St. Joseph, Venerable Father Augustus Tolton — a northern Missouri native, former slave and the Roman Catholic Church’s first recognizably Black priest in the United States — preached a mission in St. Joseph Church.
He is now under formal consideration for being declared a saint.
To recall that occasion, Fr. Tolton and St. Joseph Church are both depicted in a recently installed stained glass window near the baptistry of the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Jefferson City.
The Edina parish has had 24 pastors, 18 of whom have ministered in the current church.
Regarding St. Joseph Church as a garden of vocations, Msgr. Kurwicki noted that Edina was the hometown of 50 religious women; 16 priests, including Father Michael Penn and Father Paul Clark of this diocese; two religious brothers; and three permanent deacons, including Deacon Berry.
“Another chapter”
Until the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Jefferson City was completed in 1968, the Edina church was the diocese’s largest church building.
Some still refer to it as “the Cathedral of the North.”
Bishop Michael F. McAuliffe of Jefferson City, now deceased, rededicated St. Joseph Church in 1974, on its 100th anniversary.
The church’s interior was remodeled extensively in 1965, 1988 and 2010.
A massive, four-year restoration project was almost finished when a fire broke out in an area above the sacristy on Aug. 15, 2013, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
More than 60 volunteer and full-time firefighters from Edina and surrounding communities responded to the fire.
There were no injuries.
An extra layer of sheetrock applied during the renovation helped contain the fire, but the sacristy was gutted, the electrical system destroyed, and the church’s interior filled with pungent ash and soot.
Two 19th century stained glass windows from Germany were destroyed.
Arriving from Jefferson City the day of the fire, Bishop Emeritus John R. Gaydos said the whole diocese was grieving over what had been lost.
“But before long, that grief will turn to excitement and anticipation,” he said. “God will use you — the living stones of the Holy Roman Catholic Church in this corner of His vineyard — to repair this place of worship and open yet another chapter of his glorious mission here.”
Bishop Gaydos returned to bless the restored church a year after the fire.
St. Joseph Parish now includes the people from the former Mission of St. Aloysius in Baring.
Statuary from the Baring mission now adorns the Edina church.
In 2019, during St. Joseph Parish’s 175th-anniversary Mass, Bishop W. Shawn Mc-Knight reminded the people that they, themselves, are a temple of the Lord.
“This magnificent edifice is the sacramental representation of the presence of God and his Church, the people, in this community,” the bishop asserted. “God calls us to build upon the foundation of what our ancestors in the faith have built.”
Still striving
Following this year’s Mass on Aug. 4, Msgr. Kurwicki, Fr. Nzabonimpa and Deacon Berry blessed a new statue of the Blessed Mother in the churchyard.
Afterword, parishioners and friends gathered in the nearby Knights of Columbus Hall for lunch and several presentations on the history of the parish and on the construction and ongoing preservation of the church.
Msgr. Kurwicki noted that St. Joseph’s first several pastors were missionaries from Ireland, that the previous pastor was a missionary from Nigeria and that the current pastor is a missionary from Uganda.
“We know of one possible saint having preached from this sanctuary,” he stated. “Who knows how many others there may wind up being?”
