New St. Kilian sanctuary holds tributes to the past

In his previous assignment, the Rev. Charles Bober led St. John Vianney in Allentown, which was entering its final years as the local Catholic population increasingly aged or moved away, a common plight of many urban Catholic parishes.

Now he’s on the other end of that demographic shift as pastor of St. Kilian Parish in Cranberry, which today will dedicate its large new sanctuary, a reflection of fourfold growth over the past decade. What was once a country parish now has more than 11,000 registered parishioners, with more than 600 children in its elementary school.

Rapid residential development along the Interstate 79 and I-279 corridors accounts for much of the growth, yet Father Bober said the parish doesn’t take a complacent build-it-and-they-will-come attitude. It works to maintain strong worship and evangelistic outreaches.

“The key moment of contact for a lot of people is Sunday Mass,” he said. “So you want as a pastor to put the emphasis on that — good music, good liturgy, a homily that’s brief enough to make one point that the people would remember.”

While the poor were more visible in Allentown, the parish in Cranberry seeks them out. “The rural poor tend to be different; they don’t easily come to you,” Father Bober said. “There’s almost a reluctance because they’ve come on hard times.” Parishioners can lose a corporate job and “become poor in a very short period of time.”

Even with a new church, with a bright, simple sanctuary, St. Kilian is paying tribute to historic churches that have closed.

It had its window openings tailored so that it could re-use the stained glass from shuttered parishes ranging from St. Josaphat in the South Side to a parish in Wilkes-Barre. The crucifix and some other artifacts hail from St. John Vianney and its predecessor parishes.

Many in those parishes “were immigrants, and a lot of them worked 14 hours a day,” he said. “They put pennies in the basket to make those churches beautiful. To be able to use [such artifacts], for people to say, ‘That’s from where I grew up,’ I think is important.”