Cardinal Donald Wuerl celebrated Mass this past fall at Our Lady of the Wayside Church in Chaptico, to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Southern Maryland parish.
“For 100 years, Our Lady of the Wayside Catholic Church has stood and continues to stand in Chaptico as a sign of the presence of God’s kingdom among us,” Cardinal Wuerl told the more than 150 people who attended the Mass.
He called on the faithful to remember that while Our Lady of the Wayside serves the faithful in that part of St. Mary’s County, “the parish is part of something much, much larger.”
“This parish is a manifestation of the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church,” Cardinal Wuerl said. “This portion of God’s flock for 100 years has come together to pray, to listen, to be a community, to celebrate the Eucharist.”
Our Lady of the Wayside Parish was established as a Jesuit mission on Oct. 6, 1914.
At that time, the chapel serving the people of Chaptico in St. Mary’s County was called Loretto House.
“It is with deep gratitude that we celebrate 100 years of Catholic faith in Chaptico,” Father Charles Gallagher, administrator of the parish, said.
The Loretto House chapel served the area’s Catholic community until the late 1930s, when the current church building was erected. Our Lady of the Wayside Church was designed by nationally known architect Philip Frohman. Frohman, a convert to Catholicism, also designed the Episcopal Washington National Cathedral in Northwest Washington. The architect – who also worked on St. Peter Claver Church in St. Inigoes after a fire there in 1934 – said at the time of the dedication of Our Lady of the Wayside that he wanted a design that expressed “honest poverty and spiritual wealth.”
The present church building was dedicated and blessed in 1938.
Edelen Gough, 86 and a lifelong member of the parish, was an altar server at the dedication Mass. His father was on the church building committee.
“I’ve been a member all of my life,” Gough said. “I am certainly not alone in that. Quite a few people go back to the beginning or almost to the beginning of the present church.”
He noted that in the early days of the parish, “it was mostly farmers and watermen who were parishioners, but now with subdivisions being built and the Naval [Air] Station [Patuxent River], we are a quite diverse parish.”
Gough added that with the diversity, Our Lady of the Wayside remains “a close-knit group, a small country parish.”
Cardinal Wuerl noted that for a century the parish has served as a place where “as members of God’s family, we come together. We identify ourselves as a faith community who looks to Jesus as our Lord.”
“We come together to be formed by God’s Word, we come together to be nourished by the sacraments, most particularly the Eucharist,” the cardinal said. “We come together so that out of God’s love for us and our love for God and one another we can care for the needs of one another.”
Earlier, the Commissioners of St. Mary’s County honored Our Lady of the Wayside Church with a proclamation in honor of the parish’s 100th anniversary, and the parish also hosted a celebration dinner.
