Way Out West

Blessed Sacrament, Burlington

In 1971, when plans were afoot to create the new Diocese of Charlotte from the western half of the Raleigh Diocese, Blessed Sacrament in Burlington was “on the bubble.” Some were of the opinion that Burlington should go to Charlotte, since the larger city where Burlingtonites worked and shopped was Greensboro, to the west. But Bishop Vincent S. Waters, desiring the most equitable split in territory, drew a line as straight as possible down the middle of the state, and Blessed Sacrament became the westernmost parish in the Diocese of Raleigh.

By then Blessed Sacrament was a monument – one of many -- to the tenacity of North Carolina’s missionary priests in the early 20^th Century. Seventy years earlier, the legendary Fr. Michael A. Irwin had traveled to Burlington four times a year by horse and buggy from Newton Grove to say Mass for the area’s two Catholics. Although Blessed Sacrament was established as a parish in 1929, and Mass celebrated each Sunday in a remodeled home near downtown, when the first parish church was built in 1935 the parish still had only eight families. In 1946, Western Electric moved to Burlington, bringing 50 Catholic families and causing parish membership to soar to 86 households.

Over the next three decades, growth was steady. The first Mass was celebrated in the current church on October 31, 1971, and by 1973, when Father Joseph G. Vetter, an alumnus of Blessed Sacrament School, offered his first Solemn Mass there, the parish had more than 400 families.

Today, immigration from the north and the south has more than tripled those numbers. According to Pastor (and Dean of the Piedmont Deanery) Fr. Robert Benko, OFM Conv., more than 1500 families are now registered at Blessed Sacrament, and he estimates that as many as 2500 families actually attend Mass there. In his office Fr. Benko has a wooden stand with flags representing all the cultures – nearly three dozen – from which his parishioners have originated.

A constant throughout the history of Blessed Sacrament has been the excellence and openness of its school. When there were eight families in the parish, the school, staffed by the Sisters of Providence, educated 25 students, 11 of them non-Catholic. That ratio of Catholics to others maintains today, Fr. Benko says. The school, in a former public elementary school building purchased in 1995, now enrolls 225 students and has won the Blue Ribbon School of Excellence Award twice. And it boasts a science lab equipped more elaborately than any other comparable school in the state.

Father Benko characterizes his parish as especially “community minded,” and Blessed Sacrament puts special effort into fostering that attitude in its youth. The parish youth group takes an annual trip to Franciscan missions abroad, for example; recent trips have taken them to Jamaica and Costa Rica. The right to go on the trip is earned by local community service points.

Challenges? Not surprisingly, the parish has outgrown its church, and planning for a new facility is ongoing. The other challenge in such a diverse congregation is unity. “That takes work,” Father Benko says, “but that’s something our people want to accomplish.”