The parishioners of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Smyrna will attend Sunday Masses for the first time June 30 in their new parish center on South Cobb Drive.

At the same time, the boundaries of Smyrna’s only Catholic church have been redesignated. The new area served by the Smyrna church is bounded on the south by Bankhead Highway, on the west by Floyd and Austell Roads, on the north by Pat Mell Road and Dobbins Air Force Base, and on the east by the Chattahoochee River.

A second Catholic parish has been established in South Cobb County. St. John Vianney’s Mission at Austell has been designated a parish. It had been a mission under the auspices of St. Joseph’s Church in Marietta and more recently under St. Thomas Church in Smyrna. Father Dale Freeman serves the church.

St. Thomas the Apostle’s Church was established in June 1966, and two years later the parishioners are moving into their “own home.”

As Father Richard B. Morrow, pastor of St. Thomas, says “he has been living out of a suitcase” with Masses on Sunday morning at the Belmont Hills Shopping Center theatre and Sunday Evening at St. Jude’s Episcopal Church, and on some Holy Days at the First Methodist Church, all in Smyrna.

The new parish center, located on King Springs Road between Cooper Lake Road and Reed Drive on the southern edge of Smyrna, will be used for all parish activities. In addition to daily and Sunday Masses, the center has several classrooms for CCD religious education classes, a kitchen and dining area for social events, and rooms for scouting and other activities.

Some interior work yet unfinished will be completed soon, while the parish landscape committee is busy planting shrubbery, trees and grass. Dedication of the new building will be held sometime later.