FORTVILLE — Jon Smith came to Fortville for a new home and found a new church as well.
Smith and his wife were expecting their second child and looking for a new home in the mid-1990s. Their real estate agent told them about a new neighborhood being built in Fortville. As they checked that out, he wondered how far he would have to go to find a Catholic parish when they moved. To Anderson? Greenfield?
Then he saw a sign for one right there in Fortville.
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He’s been at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church ever since, with his story becoming another chapter in a long line of parishioners who have been part of the church for 150 years.
Indianapolis Archbishop Charles C. Thompson will visit the parish Sept. 14 to celebrate the 5 p.m. Mass, and members of the parish will have dinner together afterward.
Then the anniversary celebration continues outside, with a community gathering at 7 p.m. featuring carnival games, snacks, music and a laser light show.
“We want to open it up to the community, since we’re celebrating 150 years of being in this community,” said parish member Rosemary Ritchie, who helped plan the anniversary celebration. “We wanted to include the community as much as we could.”
With the milestone ahead, the church has compiled memories from people of the parish. There’s the story about the family dog who followed young altar boys to church and made its way into Mass. There’s the story of the woman who forgot her hat, in an era when women were expected to wear them in church, and the priest told her to cover her head with her handkerchief. There’s the story of mothers who formed a carpool to drive their children to Catholic school after one priest sold the parish bus. There are recollections of people from the parish who became priests, nuns or deacons in the Catholic Church.
There’s the respect the parish has for 110-year-old Mary Weir, a longtime member who once taught in the religious education program and for years has made a pie for the parish festival.
Smith’s own part of the St. Thomas story includes the welcome he found when he first came to 523 S. Merrill St. for Mass.
“It was the smallest church (building) I had ever been in,” he said. “The people were very warm and very welcoming. You just got a feeling when you walked in that you were comfortable and you were welcome.”
Smith said that welcome made it easy to get involved in the ministries of the parish. He’s been a member of or held various offices on the parish council over the years, and he taught religious education for about 15 years, mostly to high school sophomores. It was a change from larger parishes he’d grown up in, where “it’s awfully easy to sit on the sidelines because there are so many people.”
Stephanie Garst said people in the parish are good at noticing gifts in others and inviting them to participate in ministries. She thinks of the Rev. Joseph Kos, the priest in the 1980s who encouraged her to try being a song leader. She thinks of the Sunday School teacher who welcomed her family when it moved to the area when she was 13 and helped her become more involved with her faith, or the committee member who asked her, as a teen, to help teach children.
“St. Thomas is just such a close-knit family type of atmosphere,” she said. “There’s been a lot of people in the church who have been very welcoming and inviting me to be involved.”
Smith said the growth of St. Thomas over the years is measured more in deepened faith than in increased numbers, and he believes that spiritual foundation is what has sustained the parish for 150 years.
“It’s just a strong faith community,” he said. “It’s just grown in its faith, and it’s survived.”
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St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church plans a community gathering at 7 p.m. Sept. 14 as part of its 150th anniversary celebration.
An outdoor community gathering will feature carnival games, snacks and music by Just Push Play, a local band including parishioner Rusty Eastman.
A laser light show is also planned for 9 p.m. The church is located at 523 S. Merrill St., Fortville.
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1869: The church now known as St. Thomas is built as St. John’s Catholic Church. This first building, at the same site as the current one, was later moved and became a private residence in Fortville.
1916: The current brick church is built for $7,113.67.
1917: The Ladies Altar Society, St. Ann’s, is formed.
1934: Cardinal Joseph Ritter appoints a priest to serve both St. Thomas and for St. Michael in Greenfield.
1952: The parish buys the former Prentice Presbyterian Church building in Indianapolis, dismantling it, reassembling it in Fortville, and bricking it to become a parish hall.
1960: The parish buys a house to be the rectory for its first resident pastor, Fr. Joseph Koster.
1983: The parish organizes its first summer festival.
2016: The church celebrates the centennial of its building. Indianapolis Archbishop Joseph Tobin, comes to celebrate; since then he has been named a cardinal and assigned to Newark, New Jersey.
2019: The pairsh celebrates 150 years.
More information: http://stthomasfortville.com/history/
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