With the departure of the Basilians upon Fr. Thomas Sepulveda’s retirement at the end of June, Ste. Anne will be clustered with Most Holy Trinity Parish in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood, with Fr. Russell Kohler becoming pastor of both parishes.
“In the last 10 years, our religious congregation has found it necessary to make adjustments due to the declining number of Basilians available to serve our apostolates, and to the increasing age of those who are still serving,” Basilian Fr. Paul English, a member of the Toronto-based Congregation of St. Basil’s leadership team, told parishioners.
He thanked Fr. Sepulveda, CSB, for his service as Ste. Anne’s pastor, as well as his service on the congregation’s general council and prior service as its superior inMexico: “His retirement is well-earned, and Ste. Anne will miss him.”
Fr. English acknowledged that the Basilians and many parishioners will feel their leaving as a “significant loss, causing sadness and pain,” and said the Basilians will be “forever grateful to Our Lord Jesus Christ for this gift” of having been able to serve the parish for so long.
He added that the Basilians would also soon be announcing their withdrawal from a number of other parishes.
In the Archdiocese of Detroit, the Congregation of St. Basil also sponsors Detroit Catholic Central High Scho in Novi and co-sponsors Detroit Cristo Rey High School. Across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario, the Basilians operate Assumption Parish (which began as a mission of Ste. Anne de Detroit) and Assumption University.
Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Donald Hanchon, moderator for the Central Region of the archdiocese, thanked the Basilian Fathers for their “outstanding service” during 125 years of Ste. Anne’s nearly 311 years of existence, and assured parishioners that “Ste. Anne’s has a way forward” by being clustered with Most Holy Trinity. Both historic worship sites will be maintained.
The clustering of the two parishes in the event of the retirement of either’s pastor was among the measures called for by the recently released Together in Faith — Phase II pastoral plan for the archdiocese.
St. Anne, founded 1701, is the oldest parish in the archdiocese and second-oldest continuously operating parish in the United States. Its current building, the parish’s eighth church, was built in 1886. Originally a French-speaking parish, it continued to serve the descendants of Detroit’s original settlers for many years. In the 1940s, it began serving the increasing Hispanic population of southwest Detroit, with Latino Catholics eventually becoming the majority as the area’s demographics continued to change.
Most Holy Trinity Parish, which dates its founding to 1834, became the first English-speaking parish inDetroitwhen the Irish immigrant population reached became able to support its own church. Nowadays, its membership is also largely Hispanic.
Fr. Kohler has served Most Holy Trinity as pastor since 1991, and will become pastor of Ste. Anne as well July 1.
“Fr. Kohler is enormously grateful to be asked to assume this responsibility,” Bishop Hanchon said. “He has long admired the Basilian pastors of Ste. Anne’s with whom he has worked over the years, and has already begun to imagine the kinds of collaboration these two parishes can plan and implement together.”
He said he and Frs. Sepulveda and Kohler would be meeting later in the week “to work out practical details, and you will be hearing more about this in the days and weeks to come.”
Bishop Hanchon expressed his and Archbishop Allen Vigneron’s “gratitude to Fr. Sepulveda for the quality and dedication of his ministry, and for the example he has been to the priests of the Southwest Vicariate and of the entire Detroit presbyterate.”
“Your work as a spiritual guide to our young adults in the Jornadas (youth group), Fr. Tom, and your strong witness on behalf of the Church for immigrants are particularly worthy of praise,” the bishop added.
Addressing parishioners, Fr. Sepulveda said he wanted “to thank all of you sincerely and profoundly.”
He noted that his coming to Ste. Anne as its pastor was not his first involvement with the parish, but rather it was his arrival in August 1973 as a transitional deacon still looking forward to priestly ordination. He called it a transformational experience for him.
“I came to understand that my identity as the son of an immigrant Mexican laborer provided me with an open vista filled with life and a full variety of possibilities. The knowledge you conveyed dramatically changed not only my life, but also the direction which my future priestly ministry would take,” Fr. Sepulveda told the parish’s congregation.
“You shared with me the religiosity, language and customs of our Latin peoples, as well as the particularity of celebrating love of life, God and family. You have made me by far a richer person in every way.”
