EFFINGHAM - St. Anthony of Padua Parish will begin its year-long sesquicentennial celebration with an opening Mass on Jan. 6.
The parish will celebrate the June 13 feast of St. Anthony with Mass followed by a parish dinner. At the St. Anthony Picnic celebration, Aug. 8, 9 and 10, a documentary film on the parish history will be shown. On Dec. 14, a commemorative sesquicentennial Christmas ornament will be released, and a closing sesquicentennial Mass celebrated on Dec. 25.
On Christmas Day in 1858, the first Mass was celebrated in the newly created St. Anthony of Padua Parish. Prior to then, Catholics in the Effingham area attended Mass in Teutopolis or Green Creek, or in a small log cabin in Broughton, which served as a school during the week. St. Anthony was a mission parish, served by priests from the neighboring villages until 1871.
Initially 40 families made up the parish. Within 10 years the number grew to 120 families, and by 1875, it had grown to 225 families. Land was donated for a cemetery, a two-room brick school building had been built as had a six-room frame rectory.
The congregation was officially incorporated as St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Church of Effingham, on March 1, 1870, and the next year, the first resident pastor, Father Michael Weis, arrived. During his administration, the present church was built and the School Sisters of Notre Dame arrived to minister to the children.
During Father H.J.F. Jungmann's term as pastor, which began in 1877, a new main altar was installed, and a new brick rectory and six-room school addition were built.
In 1896 Father Louis W. Lammert became pastor, and immediately began making improvement to the parish buildings, including an addition to the parish hall. He installed stained glass windows in the church and built a new convent in 1918, which the Notre Dame Sisters occupied. It housed a repository for the Blessed Sacrament in its chapel. Father Lammert installed a new organ in the church, and saw the first class to graduate from the parish high school.
(Note: More historical news on the parish will be featured in a follow-up story in Catholic Times in January.)