St. Pius X: the building course and the great church, 1970–2017

PRESENT CHURCH DEDICATED MARCH 25, 2017 · 52553 FIR ROAD

The parish built in step with the suburb around it: a rectory in 1970; a parish center and gymnasium in 1986; a new church and offices built across 1989–91 and dedicated in 1992, replacing the 1950s church as the worship seat. In 2001 the parish changed hands in the way its founding had foreshadowed: the Congregation of Holy Cross, whose farm and chaplains had mothered the congregation for sixty-five years, handed St. Pius X to the Diocese of Fort Wayne–South Bend, and the parish became a diocesan one. Its school — the parish's largest work, and carried whole in this build's Schools section — opened in August 2008 in the new Parish Education Center, dedicated August 24, 2008, the first newly built kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school in the diocese since the Second Vatican Council. The final building act is the present church. In February 2014 the parish announced a campaign of twenty million dollars; ground was broken April 19, 2015; and on March 25, 2017, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades dedicated the new St. Pius X church — a 1,300-seat church at 52553 Fir Road, on the same Fir Road ground Zook had given in 1954. By the dedication year the parish counted more than 3,100 families and some 10,000 registered parishioners, the largest congregation seated on Granger ground and among the largest parishes of the diocese — a farm chapel of 1936 become, in eighty years, a parish of ten thousand.

Sources:

1. St. Pius X Parish records and Strategic Plans — the rectory (1970), parish center and gym (1986), the 1989–91 church and its 1992 dedication, the 2001 handover from the Congregation of Holy Cross to the diocese, the February 2014 campaign, the April 19, 2015 groundbreaking, and the parish counts of 2017 (more than 3,100 families; some 10,000 registered parishioners).
2. Today's Catholic — the dedication of the present church by Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, March 25, 2017; seating of 1,300; the school dedication of August 24, 2008, carried whole in the Schools section.