Posted on 06/15/2015 12:04:01 PM PDT by Morgana
For more than 100 years, an order of Capuchin Franciscan priests has prayed and preached in the Kanawha Valley, celebrating baptisms and marriages, comforting the bereaved, ministering to the needs of generation after generation of Catholics, always based in a small church on the West Side of Charleston.
As of today, the Capuchin presence on the West Side, in Charleston, in the Kanawha Valley and in the state of West Virginia, is no more.
The orders provincial minister, based in Pittsburgh, made the decision to reassign the two remaining Capuchin priests in the state after concluding the community here could not support an order.
Our vows as Capuchin friars demand that we live together as brothers, sharing prayer and a common life, the Very Rev. David Nestler, the provincial minister, wrote to parishioners in announcing the withdrawal. You have seen friars come and go. We have had no success at a long-term solution to the needs of our communal life.
Father James Kurtz is the 14th, and last, Capuchin priest to lead St. Anthony Parish, on Charlestons West Side, since it opened in 1908.
(Excerpt) Read more at wvgazette.com ...
Frater Leo ad dicere salve.
The fruit of veetu.
That's sad..................
Bet they were drinking all the beer they brewed and not selling any.
Very sad.
Beat me too it.
school closed earlier. no vibrant faith, no children, no vocations, no priests....no Church. But if people leave for work, then possibly the priests have done their job and the church needs to follow the people after the old ones pass. That’s the cycle of life.
I’m well aware of St. Anthony’s history if that is what you are referring to.
This whole area has seen a decline in Catholics since we lost Union Carbide, FMC and other chemical companies. They moved as the jobs moved or left.
Mostly what we have left are people in their 70’s+. Don’t get me wrong there are some exceptions.
The rest decline I fear has something to do with Vatican II. After seeing the Latin Mass first hand I now know what we are missing.
++
bttt
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