The interior of St. Luke Church underwent extensive renovation this year for the church’s 200th anniversary. 

Danville St. Luke Church celebrates bicentennial

By Tim Puet
Catholic Times Reporter

This is a big year for Danville St. Luke Church. The parish is celebrating its 200th anniversary, and the church building is 125 years old. Parishioners are disappointed that the coronavirus pandemic is preventing them from honoring those events as much as they would like, but the double milestone is being marked by an anniversary Mass to be celebrated by Bishop Robert Brennan on Saturday, Aug. 15.

Distancing restrictions will limit attendance in the church for the Mass to 72 people, and it will be livestreamed to the community center next to the parish for the anticipated overflow crowd. It also will be available live on the parish’s “St. Lukes Church” Facebook page, where it will remain available for viewing after the Mass.

“The church would have been filled, and there undoubtedly would have been a dinner afterward at the community center, but we’re grateful to have the bishop coming and to be able to celebrate the anniversary in some form this year,” said parish secretary Sandy Mickley. “We’re hoping to continue anniversary activities next year and have the dinner then. We’re also hoping to resume our annual festival, which we had to cancel in July.” The one-day festival includes a chicken dinner and other traditional activities such as games, raffles, bingo and a basket auction.

A five-month renovation project has made the church building shine as brightly as it did when it opened in 1895. The work began on Thursday, Jan. 2 and was completed during the last week of May. Masses were celebrated in the community center during that period. The effects of the pandemic began to be felt in mid-March, but the renovation proceeded on schedule.

R.A. Long Painting of Granville was in charge of the project. The church’s interior, statues and a depiction of the Last Supper were repainted; a new pulpit, new wood floors and new Stations of the Cross were installed; a new heating, ventilating and air conditioning system was installed; the carpet was taken up; improvements were made to the pews and a new granite top was put in place on the altar.

The work was overseen by a renovation committee led by parishioners Charlie Bratton, Steve Bratton and Keith Mickley and cost about $300,000. The parish’s history of strong financial support meant that money on hand paid for the remodeling, and no separate fund drive was necessary.

Sandy Mickley said a portrait of St. Luke by parishioner Judy Hedge and a panoramic photograph of the parish’s 100th anniversary in 1920 are to be installed in the church or the community center after restrictions resulting from the pandemic are eased.

The center, dedicated in 1969, includes space for religious education classes and the parish offices. Parishioner Bob Blubaugh said it gives the parish an important link to the larger Danville community because its dining hall seats 500 people, making it the largest meeting space in the community and a frequent site for public events sponsored by civic groups not connected with the parish. 

The Danville Public Library used the building in the early stages of the pandemic for a public meeting on the situation. In October 2019, it was the site of a regional meeting sponsored by the Diocese of Columbus on creating a culture of safety in schools and church buildings.
Since Danville High School is across the street from the church, the center is used for testing programs for students. The building also has hosted Red Cross bloodmobile visits, flu shot clinics, wedding receptions and banquets. 

Each February, it is the site of an annual raccoon dinner that the Danville Lions Club has sponsored since 1945. Blubaugh said about 200 raccoons are hunted and trapped locally for the dinner, with most of them provided by parishioner Leonard Mickley and his nephew, Brian Payne. Blubaugh said this year’s raccoon dinner was the parish’s and the community’s last major event before the pandemic altered the familiar rhythms of life for people throughout the world.

St. Luke and all other Catholic churches in Ohio were closed for the public celebration of Masses from mid-March to late May. Parishioner Margie Samples said 35 to 40 people have been attending the parish’s Saturday evening Mass, and 50 to 60 have been at the Sunday morning Mass since the church was reopened.     

The parish also participates in the community’s interfaith group, the Association of Danville Area Ministers (ADAM), which was co-founded by the church’s longtime pastor, the late Father Richard Snoke. Every Thursday during Lent, except Holy Thursday, St. Luke Church hosts a noontime prayer service sponsored by ADAM, followed by lunch in the community center, with pastors from the parish and from Danville churches of other denominations taking turns offering reflections from the Gospel.

Also benefiting from the parish’s community involvement are the Sanctuary Community Action Service Center and the Interchurch Social Services organization, which are located in adjacent buildings across U.S. Route 62 from the church. Both groups were started in the mid-1990s, mainly through the efforts of Father Snoke and his colleagues in the ministerial association. Though separate, the organizations work together in many ways.

Sanctuary provides a central location for social service programs in eastern Knox County, such as home-delivered meals (which are continuing during the pandemic), immunization clinics, the Women, Infants and Children program, legal aid, tax preparation, the high-school equivalency diploma program, and senior citizens and veterans assistance. It is not affiliated with any religious organization. 

Interchurch Social Services is an emergency needs provider offering services similar to those of the Joint Organization for Inner-City Needs in Columbus. It has a food pantry and provides aid for rent and utility bills, clothing and medical transport and prescription assistance.

St. Luke Church has about 320 families, many of whom have been part of the parish for multiple generations. “We have a lot of tradition and are very proud of our parish,” Blubaugh said. “We’re ‘old school’ in a lot of ways yet have always been ready to adapt to liturgical changes, most recently to livestreaming.”

“This is a small town and a small parish, so everyone here knows each other and it creates a warm atmosphere,” parishioner Janet Fesler said. “When people come here from other churches, they often tell me how warmly they’re welcomed and how pleased they are that people will speak to them after Mass.”

The parish roster has 25 listings under “Mickley,” 11 under “Durbin,” nine under both “Colopy” and “Sapp” and seven under both “Blubaugh” and “Hawk.”

The Sapp family has been part of the parish from the beginning. George Sapp Jr. and his wife, Catherine, the first Catholics in what is now Danville, came to Knox County in 1805. The Durbin family followed the Sapps from Maryland not long afterward. Danville was named after George Sapp Jr.’s brother Daniel. The first St. Luke Church, a log structure, was built on land donated by George Sapp Sr. 

St. Luke says it is the second-oldest Catholic parish in the state, predated only by Somerset St. Joseph, founded in 1818. Lancaster St. Mary and Junction City St. Patrick parishes also list 1820 as the year of their founding. All three trace their beginnings to Dominican Father (later Bishop) Edward Fenwick, OP, Ohio’s first resident Catholic priest. Father Fenwick and his nephew, Father Nicholas Young, OP, made frequent stops in Danville and nearby Mount Vernon in their missionary travels through Ohio and other states.

The second of four St. Luke Church buildings, a frame structure, was built in 1838. One year later, the church had its first resident pastor, Father Jean Baptiste Lamy, who was in Danville from 1839 to 1847 and also served parishes in Mount Vernon, Newark and elsewhere in Ohio. He eventually became archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico and the subject of Willa Cather’s classic novel Death Comes for the Archbishop.

A brick church dedicated in 1877 burned down and was replaced by the current church, also of brick, built in the High Victorian Gothic style, with an ornate altar and stained-glass windows of Sts. Joseph, Peter, Paul, Patrick, Dominic, Aloysius, Elizabeth, Rose of Lima and Mary of the Immaculate Conception.  

The parish has nurtured several religious vocations. A bicentennial history that is being edited lists eight priests, three brothers and 23 sisters from St. Luke.

Five of the priests were members of five branches of the Durbin family – Fathers Carl, Clarence, Samuel, Clement and Walter Durbin. Six of the sisters from the parish also were Durbins. The first priest from the parish was Father John Brent, the third of 20 pastors who have served the parish during the past 200 years. He was pastor of his home parish for 23 years (1851-74), a tenure exceeded at St. Luke only by Father Snoke (1987-2012) and Father Clement Teipe (1912-1950). 

Priests from St. Luke who are serving in the diocese today, both relatives of the Durbins, are Father James Colopy, pastoral associate at Grove City Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, and Father Homer Blubaugh, who is retired, lives near his home church and celebrates Mass there frequently when not assisting at other parishes.

In 2014, St. Luke became part of a consortium of parishes with Mount Vernon St. Vincent de Paul and the Church of the Nativity in Utica, with all three served by a pastor, a parochial vicar and a deacon. The Utica church was closed in 2016 because of structural issues. Father Mark Hammond has been pastor of the consortium since its beginning. Father Daniel Olvera, parochial vicar, and Deacon Tim Birie are other members of the pastoral staff. Fathers Hammond and Olvera take turns celebrating weekend Masses at St. Luke, with Father Blubaugh also a frequent celebrant on weekdays and weekends.

“Parishioners at St. Luke have been incredibly supportive of the church with their prayers, time and money, especially during the bicentennial renovation,” Father Olvera said. “Because of their past support, it wasn’t necessary to conduct a separate capital campaign to pay for the improvements, and volunteers performed many hours of valuable work. 

“We reached out to parish members with frequent surveys, and they responded. Because the church always has been so well-preserved, the renovation was not difficult, especially for a 125-year-old building. As a result of parish members’ desire to retain the beauty of the church, we hope to be able to preserve it for another 100 years.”      

Parish organizations include Knights of Columbus Council 910 and the Parish Council of Catholic Women. The Knights operate their own hall, where they have conducted weekly Lenten fish fries and monthly pancake breakfasts and hope to continue to do so once restrictions caused by the pandemic end. The women’s group was founded in 1906. Every woman in the parish is considered part of it.

The parish also sponsors a Giving Tree program during the Christmas season in cooperation with the Danville Fire Department. It provides toys and food for every needy child in the community, usually aiding more than 100 children.

For a number of years, the parish also has sponsored a bus trip to the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., that goes beyond the one-night excursions some other diocesan parishes offer. This year’s trip covered three days and two nights and gave participants a chance to tour historic sites in the nation’s capital.

Masses at the church are at 5 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m. Sunday, 11 a.m. Tuesday and Wednesday and 8 a.m. Thursday. Its website is www.stlukedanvilleoh.org and its phone number is (740) 599-6362.