Under-resourced

Few churches, fewer priests, strong sense of community

In many ways, Monsignor Larry Lucree embodies the challenges in a mission diocese. The veteran priest helped establish many of the little mission churches in rural areas of the Savannah Diocese, and came out of retirement last fall to keep one of them going.

Monsignor Lucree has the slow drawl and courtly manner of his native Savannah, a heavily Catholic city which had about a dozen Catholic churches when he was growing up.

So he saw a far different world when, as one of his first assignments as a priest, he was dispatched clear across the state to Columbus, Ga., to begin a mission in adjacent Harris County, which had no church at all.

Religious orders such as Glenmary, Oblates of Mary Immaculate and Trinitarian Fathers had long been establishing new parishes in many parts of the South, where Catholics are thinly scattered.

The new Father Lucree used whatever facilities were available. Some of the early Masses in Harris County, for example, were celebrated in a motel room, later in a gas station/restaurant that was converted into a church.

In some counties, Catholics were clamoring for a church. In others, like Effingham County, Father Lucree beat the bushes, advertising in the local paper for Catholics to form a new mission. The 100 went to Mass in a concrete building at the fairgrounds "with low ceilings and no air conditioning."

Despite the penance of sweating through Mass on a muggy Georgia Sunday, "they weren't concerned about where they were having Mass. They were just happy to have a place to go."

Roadblocks to mission

It wasn't always easy either. As recently as 15 years ago, the monsignor was repeatedly rebuffed while trying to buy property in Marion County, where he had been having Sunday Mass at a local pool hall. No one would sell property to the Catholic Church. It was only after the priest, in "civilian clothes," made an offer on the spot to buy a little house along Route 26 that he was able to secure the property that now serves as St. Mary Magdalen Mission.

And that may explain why Catholics in southern Georgia value their churches, scarce as they are; they worked so hard to get them.

Where they have been built, people have come, and they have thrived.
This area, like many around the country, has grown with an influx of Hispanic Catholics from Latin and South America. Yet, the Savannah Dio­cese still has the most counties without a Catholic church.

They could use more, but they also are short of priests to staff them. Priests from Ireland, who once staffed dozens of churches here, are dwindling in numbers. And the ranks of religious orders are thinning, too.

Catholic Extension funding is helping provide valuable ministries that count on the presence of lay ministers, particularly in the rural areas: marriage preparation, outreach to migrant workers, and even thrift stores.

As for Monsignor Lucree, he reported for duty once again in October, serving as temporary administrator for St. Paul Parish in Douglas and its two missions.
St. Paul's also reflects the changes in the diocese: From Masses in local families' homes, the parish now thrives to serve and grow the experience of church among a heavily Hispanic population.

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