OUR LADY OF FATIMA (1958)

Our Lady of Fatima parish was established by Archbishop Vehr on August 13, 1958, when Robert Syrianey was appointed the founding pastor. His parishioners were some 350 families who had previously been attending St. Bernadette, Sts. Peter and Paul, St. Mary Magdalene, or St. Joseph.

Our Lady of Fatima Altar and Rosary and Holy Name societies met at a local bank to organize parish activities, including the first social--a Christmas party in Sts. Peter and Paul's gymnasium. Father Syrianey moved into a house near the parish property and began offering daily Masses in the remodeled carport. This carport/chapel also sheltered the first baptism and first wedding, while Sunday Masses were held in the the Lakewood High School auditorium.

Meanwhile, the building committee worked with John K. Monroe to design a combination church, parish hall, and classroom building at 10530 West 20th Avenue. A gathering of white-surpliced, black-cassocked priests and altar boys joined Monsignor Delisle A. Lemieux on July 26, 1959, to break ground on a grassy field in suburban Lakewood. The first Mass was celebrated June 26, 1960, when thirty youngsters received their first Holy Communion.

Archbishop Vehr dedicated the new complex on September 19, 1960. The annual Fall Fatima Festival that year, which included a dinner dance at the Brown Palace Hotel, raised $3,000, while other fund-raising campaigns and a tithing program enabled the parish to build eight classrooms that were opened in September 1964. The original rectory was converted to a convent for Benet Hill Benedictine sisters Irmina and Mary Giles, who began teaching with the help of two lay teachers. A new rectory was purchased across the avenue from the church.

By 1966, the parish included over 1,200 families, and a board of education was elected to help the fast-growing school. The board oversaw construction of a convent in 1966, and of a school addition for library, science, and audiovisual facilities in 1968.

Our Lady of Fatima became noted as the "partying parish" with its card parties, fashion shows, annual Mardi Gras and Fatima festivals, potluck suppers, bingo, square dancing, picnics, and ice cream socials. This active parish also conducted pilgrimages to Fatima, the tiny village in Portugal where "a Lady all of white, more brilliant than the sun and indescribably beautiful" appeared to three small children--Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta--as they tended their sheep.

J. Harley Schmitt, a St. Thomas Seminary graduate who had also completed a doctorate in canon law at the Lateran University in Rome, became the second pastor of Our Lady of Fatima on July 15, 1970. Despite the inclusion of the southern part of Fatima parish in the 1967 formation of St. Jude parish, Father Schmitt's flock overflowed its meeting hall. In 1975, a building committee was formed to begin planning a new church. Four architects from within the parish--David E. Fritz, John F. Milan, Thomas E. Reck, and Ralph Santangelo--formed the Fatima Design Group. Together, they produced one of the finest pieces of modern church architecture in the archdiocese. Using textured precast concrete panels that echoed the huge entryway cross tower, the Fatima Group included graceful semicircular shapes to wrap a low-slung complex around a dramatic church, whose worship space is reminiscent of a theater. This state-of-the-art church even included special rooms for choir practice, altar boys, ushers, and brides. A band of stained glass windows, 3.5 feet high and ninety-two feet long, formed the clerestory light of the church. These windows, containing over 1,400 pieces of hand faceted Dalle glass, portray the miracle of "the dancing sun." Archbishop Casey and hundreds of parishioners dedicated the new edifice on August 13, 1978, the parish's twentieth anniversary.

After moving into the showcase church, the parish renewed its efforts to help others. Service committees tended to the sick in homes and in hospitals and to the elderly at home and in nursing homes, and distributed Christmas gifts and food to the needy. Our Lady of Fatima also contributed generously to the new St. Jude parish and to the maintenance of struggling core city parishes.

After eighteen years in which Benedictine sisters guided Our Lady of Fatima's kindergarten through eighth-grade school, Donald McMaster, who had been teaching there for twelve years, became the first lay principal in 1984. In 1987, Our Lady of Fatima's completed a $1,300,000 parish center and rectory, enabling it to celebrate its thirtieth birthday in a complete, modern parish plant serving 1,828 parish families. In the fall of 1988, parishioners rejoiced at the news that their long-time pastor, Harley Schmitt, had been elevated to the rank of monsignor.