Sacred Heart’s first 150 years included loggers, fried chicken dinners, pilot priest

Ken Kirchberg’s grandparents and father, then merely a toddler, became members of Sacred Heart in Rush City more than a century ago — in 1912. Yet that was 42 years after the parish’s founding in 1870.

Kirchberg, 74, grew up in the parish, and recalls that 14 priests have served as pastor since he was baptized there in 1946. One who holds special memories is Father Remi Payant, pastor from 1947-1959, while Kirchberg was an altar server. Father Payant, a licensed pilot and chaplain for the Civil Air Patrol, gave each altar server a ride in his plane. That pastor’s large electric train set up in the church basement also mix with Kirchberg’s lifetime of memories from Sacred Heart.

Kirchberg and his fellow parishioners celebrated the parish’s 150th anniversary this year. For more than a year, a group of them had discussed ways to mark the occasion. But due to the coronavirus pandemic, a parish dinner was canceled that would have honored priests who have ministered there. However, they held a special anniversary Mass Oct. 25 as planned.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda concelebrated with Father Shane Stoppel-Wasinger, Sacred Heart’s pastor. About 100 people attended in person, and 60 watched on a screen in a downstairs hall. The Mass was also livestreamed.

Interior renovations to the church, including new maple floors and a coat of light-blue paint in the sanctuary, were completed shortly before the Mass, as were exterior tuckpointing and a resurfaced parking lot.

The parish has long been called the mother church of east-central Minnesota. That’s because it was the first church in the area to be founded as a Catholic parish, Father Stoppel-Wasinger said. Appointed pastor in 2012, he also serves St. Gregory the Great in North Branch, where he resides.

In 1870, the railroad had just been completed as far north as Rush City, according to one parish history. Even before that, Father Maurice Murphy from Stillwater occasionally traveled 50 miles north to Rush City by horseback or stagecoach to celebrate Mass at a home. He also called a meeting to elect parish trustees, and those men led the purchase of land for the first church.

About 30 Catholic families lived in the area at the time. Some men worked on the railroad in the summer and at logging camps in the winter.

According to accounts of the parish’s history, Father Murphy traveled to Hinckley, where tracks were being laid, on a pay day for the railroad. He asked the crew for contributions to build a church and they responded generously. By fall 1870, the church was built.

Kirchberg lived on a farm outside town, and remembers the days when his mother and father provided the chicken for the parish’s annual fall festivals — a continuing, time-honored event. Kirchberg recalled his mother frying chicken at home and, with others’ help, would finish baking it in the church basement.

The parish canceled the festival this year, but people still took home a chicken dinner Sept. 20. Four hundred dinners were served.

Kirchberg, who made plastic injection molds for a living before retirement, continues to volunteer at the parish’s Calvary Cemetery. He said 108 parishioners have been buried in the cemetery the past 15 years, one sign that the parish has an older congregation.

But the parish also has held steady at about 167 households, Father Stoppel-Wasinger said. Some new faces appear each summer when people vacation or visit cabins in the area. A sign on the outskirts of town proclaims “Up North Begins Here,” he said.

People at the parish are very welcoming, said Alan Walz, a trustee who joined Sacred Heart in 1999. He sings in the choir and has served on the parish council. He even pitched in to help paint the sanctuary during renovations.

“It’s been a good place to worship,” he said. “We’ve got an older parish, but I think it’s … filled with good people that want us to do well and want us to survive and continue to thrive. That’s critical.”