By Paula Day

Rome, Italy, has St. Mary Major. Rome, Georgia, has St. Mary’s Church, a major part of the lives of Catholics living in the west Georgia seat of Floyd County.

Parishioners are celebrating the 60th anniversary of their church’s dedication this year. The area has experienced a Catholic presence reaching back to the mid-1800s and some believe even to 1540.

While Rome, Georgia, does not have epochs of history that its eternal namesake has, there is a rootedness in this town of 30,000 built on its own seven hills. These form part of the piedmont rising into the southern end of the Appalachian ridge.

“It’s a very delightful little city,” Father Jim Miceli observed. “The pace is humane and the size enables people to establish deep roots. It’s a positive place to raise a family.”

And of the parish: “No ifs, ands or buts about it,” the pastor said, “it’s one of the best in the archdiocese.”

Both Father Miceli and the school’s principal speak of “family spirit” and “sense of ownership” in the parish and its school. “We’re a family,” Sister Regina Hlavac, DC, said, noting the school had just hosted 200 seniors of the community at a “Grandparents Day.”

These threads of family and ownership of one’s Church can be found woven through the fabric of Catholicity in Rome.

Thomas Fahy was a merchant in the town after the Civil War. His was one of several Catholic families who formed the backbone of the Church in the area, and in the absence of a resident priest, carried on Catholic traditions and educated their children in the faith.

The Fahy family often welcomed the visiting Redemptorist fathers as house guests when they came from Atlanta once or twice a month to celebrate Mass, baptize infants and validate marriages. All of northwest Georgia from Alabama on the west to Tennessee on the north, east to Atlanta was served by these traveling missionaries.

By 1874 there were enough Catholics in town to warrant a church. Local history tells of Mary Kane, a Catholic “straight off the boat from Ireland.” She cared for a young boy with typhoid and in gratitude, the non-Catholic family of Joseph Scanlon bought property for the church.

“Lay people were very active in the mission,” recalls Sister Peter Claver Fahy. The 91-year-old Religious was interviewed by telephone from the motherhouse of the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity in Philadelphia.

“During Lent Mrs. Givens led the Stations of the Cross. We would follow her around in the cold church. The way she led the meditations would bring tears to your eyes. Lay people just carried on without a priest for so long,” the Religious added. She remembers as a child standing around a gas stove with other children while her older sister, Jamie taught them using a penny catechism.

Sister Peter Claver’s mother, Sarah Jonas Fahy, was a convert from Judaism, and active in the Catholic Layman’s Association. This statewide organization was formed in 1916 in response to a request form Savannah Bishop Benjamin Keiley. The lay organization tried “to bring a friendlier feeling among Georgians, irrespective of creed,” according to John Markwalter of Augusta.

Markwalter served as the association’s executive secretary from 1954 until its demise in 1962 when the election of John F. Kennedy signaled a political acceptance of Catholics according to Markwalter. Sister Peter Claver described the writings of the association as “the hazel nut that grew into The Georgia Bulletin.”

These staunch Roman Catholics lost no opportunity to petition the bishop in letters and in person to send them a resident priest. Home from college one time, Hannah Fahy (sister’s given name) went to Atlanta where the bishop was visiting. His response to her request was, “I don’t know whether it’s more important to put the few priests we have in the big cities or in smaller places. Priests are so needed.”

But the little town on the seven hills was growing. The Etowah and Oostanaula Rivers form the Coosa River in the heart of Rome providing a waterway south to Mobile and the Gulf of Mexico. This accessibility to ports for shipping cotton drew early settlers to the area. Later, as a rail and carpet-making center with cheap labor, Rome attracted a continuous flow of transplants from the North.

This growth and persistence of petitioning Catholics finally bore fruit. In 1929 Bishop Michael Keyes assigned Father Joseph Cassidy to be St. Mary’s first resident pastor and efforts began to build the present church. The 1874 church and property were sold to the Jewish community and on that site the Jewish synagogue now stands. The new St. Mary’s Church was dedicated March 15, 1931.

Father Cassidy’s assignment was an appropriate one, in keeping with his youthful intention to become a missionary.

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., he attended St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie, N.Y., and felt called to volunteer for the Chinese missions. But Father Tim Foley, a priest visiting his alma mater from the deep South, persuaded him differently.

In a Georgia bulletin interview with Father Cassidy in 1978, the priest recalls Father Foley saying, “Why go to China? The same challenges are waiting in Georgia.” Father Cassidy was ordained for the Savannah diocese on May 26, 1923. At that time the whole state had no more than 22 priests. St. Mary’s was Father Cassidy’s first pastorate and he stayed for seven years.

Sister Peter Claver says her mother “took him in” the first night he arrived in Rome. He had been refused registration at the local hotel. “He felt prejudice in the beginning” the religious said, “but it was not long before he was loved and accepted.”

The Bulletin interview speaks of Father Cassidy’s “glee” remembering his seven hears in Rome. The asking price for land on North Broad for the church was $10,000. “We hadn’t 10,000 pennies and the bishop would not allow us to borrow,” he said.

“Not to be stopped,” the story continues, “and without the ‘full knowledge’ of the watchful Bishop Keyes, he pounced on 10 reluctant parishioners to borrow the money and put the price on the line.”

That was only the beginning. Parishioner Marguerite Coker, known by her nickname “Beedly,” is the great-granddaughter of Mary Kane. Her mother, Mary Holloway Mann, was president of the altar society in the 1930s. Mrs. Coker remembers altar society-sponsored bazaars, raffles and dinners in private homes, all to raise money to pay for the new church.

She also remembers a white cardboard box in the back of the church, and “people being encouraged to put in anything, any loose change they could,” during those Great Depression days.

St. Mary’s church has a rough granite exterior, an apt symbol for the commitment and strength of purpose of those who built it. A stonework crucifix is in place above the entrance. Modified flying buttresses add support to the church’s long, narrow form. Two large arches frame the interior. Steps lead up to a platform in the sanctuary where, before liturgical modifications, an ornate altar once stood. A simple altar separated from the back wall now permits the celebrant to face the congregation during Mass. Tall, narrow stained glass windows allow a soft light to filter through.

After he left St. Mary’s in 1936 Father Cassidy was appointed director of the diocese’s Rural Life Apostolate. Taking up what he called a “trailer ministry,” he drove a 26-foot mobile home throughout rural areas in the diocese where there were no established parishes or missions. He was “driver, mechanic, pastor, teacher and street corner preacher.” In recognition for his mission work the then Monsignor Cassidy was named the 1981 recipient of the Lumen Christi Award by the Catholic Extension Society. The annual award was given by the Society to an “exemplary home missioner.”

It was “scary” being a Catholic in Rome in the 1930’s according to Kathleen Tolbert. The part-time parish secretary says there were so few Catholics and they were often misunderstood. To have a crucifix on one’s church was unheard of, Mrs. Tolbert said, and her classmates believed Catholics worshiped Mary and prayed to statues.

“We were considered different. I was the only Catholic my school mates knew. It was sort of brave to admit you were a Catholic.”

Parishioner Mary Dial, who is 76, says being a Catholic “wasn’t funny,” but she recalls good times at teas and bridge parties. For Beedly Coker the annual parish picnic at Cave Spring with wading in a small lake was “great fun.”

The dedication of its 60-year-old church is not the only anniversary St. Mary’s is celebrating this year. In 1945 the parish crossed another milestone with the opening of a school. Fifty-one students, grades one through 11, and four Adrian Dominicans began the academic year on September 17, 1945. The Dominicans staffed the school until 1970 when dwindling vocations made it necessary to leave. Lay teachers kept St. Mary’s School open during the 1970-71 school year while the parish Board of Education searched for teachers from another religious community. The board compiled a booklet of pictures, letters and testimonials and sent copies to more than 450 religious congregations. In an open letter, school board chairman Elmer Guldenschuh pleaded:

“This is a story of the desperate plight of Saint Mary’s School in Rome Georgia. It is a story of need, prayer, devotion, sacrifice and concern. We ask you to read our story and consider it carefully...disregard of it will mean the closing of the only Catholic Parochial School in the 8,000 square mile area of northwest Georgia.”

The Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, based in Emmitsburg, Md. Responded. Three sisters – the principal, religion teacher and librarian – are on the school’s staff today with lay teachers; 237 students from pre-school through the eighth grade are enrolled this year.

“We’re part of the parish,” commented the principal, Sister Hlavac. “There’s ownership of the school by the parish. Our parishioners have a real sense of pride in the school, and that is a real strength.”

The school serves as a parish hall and is used weeknights and weekends, she said, as the “hub of all social and religious education events.”

In the early 1950s the General Electric Company moved its medium transformer plant from Pittsfield, Mass., to Rome and 40 to 50 Catholic families boosted St. Mary’s parish to 250 households. By 1980, families numbered approximately 320. Today St. Mary’s 450 households include a broad range of age groups from diverse economic and professional situations, according to Father Miceli. The parish also now has a growing Hispanic community.

Father Miceli points out that Rome is older than Atlanta and has maintained a “strong Catholic core.” Augmenting this claim is the belief that as far back as the mid-1800s Mass was celebrated in the valley where the rivers come together among the seven hills.

Explorer Hernando DeSoto summered the area while leading an expedition through the Southeast in search of gold. Historians theorize that his party of 600 were the first non-native Americans in the region and that priests in his entourage would have said Mass there. In the fall of 1990 Father Miceli blessed a marker commemorating DeSoto’s expedition into the area.

St. Mary’s Church stands midway up a hill facing a central part of downtown Rome. Ranging on the hill behind the church, closely packed older frame houses, some dilapidated, are evidence of the neighborhood’s poverty. The shooting death recently of a 14-year-old boy right behind the church has spurred plans for a parish outreach ministry. This would include tutorial programs and drug counseling, according to the pastor.

Already the parish is working through Good Neighbor Ministries, a coalition of downtown churches which acts as a clearing house dispensing emergency assistance. A monthly collection for the poor nets $10,000 annually, the priest said. Volunteers from St. Mary’s help at the First Baptist Church’s soup kitchen. One week a month they distribute Meals on Wheels. The parish also helps support a day care center for low-income families. A new prison, Hays Correctional Institute, opened in Trion, Ga. in the fall of 1990 and Father Miceli has been working to strengthen ministry to its inmates.

Father Miceli has nothing but praise for his parish. The pastor of seven months spoke of parishioners who had driven to Emory Hospital in Atlanta, a three-hour road trip every weeknight for two months to care for a fellow parishioner. The group trained to help in the man’s extended care at home so his wife could continue to work. The caregivers are planning a 35th wedding anniversary for the couple during which they will renew their wedding vows.

“Parish support is outstanding both in its financial commitment and in practical ways,” the first-time pastor said. “You only have to ask once and it’s done. They take great pride in their faith and in the parish.”

He claims the Knights of Columbus Council 4410 are “the most active in the diocese. Their interest in the parish and practical assistance is as good as I’ve ever experienced.” During his first weekend in Rome the Knights spearheaded work on the church grounds, the pastor explained. Thirty people arrived with shovels, lawnmowers and weed eaters. The Knights are active in social functions, sponsoring a Shrove Tuesday pancake supper, Mother’s Day breakfast, St. Patrick’s Day dance, parish picnics and outings.

“In a real sense the parish is the center of social life,” Father Miceli said. “I try to reinforce that through personal contact in celebrations.” The 60th anniversary celebrations have been a “wonderful opportunity to draw people together, not only the events themselves, but in their planning and execution,” he added.

A Mass and parish dinner on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, initiated the celebration. More than 350 attended, according to Ciro Pena, a parishioner of 36 years and member of the anniversary planning committee. Old timers were introduced at the Mass. A New Year’s Eve Mass and party drew 160. Other anniversary activities include compiling a parish photo directory, designing a logo for memento T-shirts, a St. Patrick’s Day Dance and a closing celebration in May.

As far as his own pastoring goes, the priest claims he “makes it up as he goes along.” But if one pushes him on this he admits to plans and dreams for his parish.

This year 20 people are taking part in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and are preparing to enter the Church at the Easter Vigil. “That’s good for the parish,” the pastor said. Recently two parishioners expressed interest in becoming priests and are in contact with the archdiocesan vocations director Father Don Kenny.

The pastor’s “wish list” includes having a candidate in training to become a permanent deacon, renovation and possible expansion of the church, and expanding the youth group.

Rome is the home of Berry College. About 10 percent of its 1,500 student enrollment is Catholic and Father Miceli hopes to initiate programs that will involve them in parish life. But perhaps his “wildest dream” is to have a Catholic high school in Rome. Because of shifting population a fully equipped public high school will soon be vacated and available, giving added spark to this dream. “If it’s ever to be done, this is the time to do it,” he said.

As for the 60th anniversary celebration, it may not end in May. The parish is having so much fun, its pastor said, “we just might go on for the whole year.”