Despite Chestermere’s St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church providing a space for Catholics to worship since 2007, they’ve never had their own church facility, and hope to raise the funds to change that.
Masses have always been held in the gymnasium of St. Gabriel the Archangel school.
Father James Hagel, the fourth priest of the parish, said they don’t just serve the people of Chestermere but also draw in Catholic residents from Rocky View County’s southeast corner – from Delacour to the Bow River in the south and the edge of Calgary to the edge of Strathmore.
The plan was always to build their own church, Hagel said, but the wheels were set into motion after they saw how Strathmore raised funds to build their own church.
“They actually started a pledge drive as part of their fundraising campaign,” said Hagel.
St. Gabriel Catholic Church has already been fundraising but is now running their own pledge drive.
The pledge drive relies on people from the community and its own parish to help out in collecting funds to eventually build a church, a strategy, Hagel said, that was successful in Strathmore.
“We have enough money to actually put a structure up right now, but there's nothing inside,” he said. “We don't have any walls. We don't have any heating. We don't have any parking lot.”
He said the goal is to come up with a plan, raise the funds over several years, and then build a permanent home for the parish.
Having a building to call home will provide a space for Catholics in the area to host funerals, baptisms, and weddings, which are currently being held in other communities, Hagel said.
He noted that the school gymnasium isn’t the most ideal place to host weddings or funerals.
“They have school most of the time when you want a funeral because they're typically on weekdays,” Hagel said. “We can't do the funeral mass in the Funeral Home, we need a church to be able to do that.”
While people don’t seem to mind having a baptism in the school gymnasium, some still prefer to take their baptism requests to neighbouring community churches.
“We lose about half of our baptisms to other places because they want to [do it in a] church,” Hagel said. “We want to be able to worship as a community together each week and to gather the whole parish together in one central place and that's what the church would be able to do.”
The building committee has also discussed using their facility for other community celebrations, allowing the community to rent out the space for events.
“[We want to] really build up the community of Chestermere and Rocky View County rather than just [use it] for church services, because in a way, if we just use it for church stuff, it's an underutilized building, right?” Hagel said.
The community can hear more about the plans and provide feedback at a second public open house on March 14 held from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Chestermere Recreation Centre. The first open house was held in the fall of 2022.
The open house will provide a space for the building committee to reveal what the plans are, where the land is, and what the fundraising goal is. Hagel said the open house will also serve as a place to start the pledge drive.
Land was donated for the church building in Chestermere along Rainbow Road but construction will depend on their fundraising efforts.
St. Gabriel Catholic Church originally grew from a mission of St. Mark’s parish in Calgary that held masses in Chestermere. As Chestermere grew, they saw a need to establish their own parish in September 2007.
The parish currently has about 450 people in their congregation each weekend, which Hagel said is actually quite small.
“Catholics are about 20 per cent of the population,” Hagel explained. “So realistically we should be having 4,000 people on the weekend that are Catholic.”
He added that without a steeple, it’s difficult for newcomers to know that there is a catholic church in the Chestermere area.
By hosting the open house at the Chestermere Rec Centre, Hagel hopes to meet more residents from the area. He looks forward to eventually providing a home church to fill a spiritual gap in the community.
