The Diocese of Gary could have issued an edict to its Gary parishioners on how the city’s new church configuration was going to look and feel now that its consolidation into only three parishes is complete.
It chose instead to invite them to a super-sized mass and sending-off celebration for the Franciscan Fathers at Cathedral of the Holy Angels and let them experience the vision themselves Sunday morning.
The youth mariachi band from St. Joseph the Worker, on the city’s near southeast side, played their hearts out while a gospel choir filled in the other spaces with cacophonous joy.
The Rev. Father Michael Surufka, one of the Franciscans who is leaving and Holy Angels’s pastor for the last five years, told the nearly 400 parishioners that he was thrilled to present them to the honored guest and officiant Bishop Robert McClory.
“I don’t fix things until they’re broken, and my two sisters started nagging me to go get my heart checked, so I had an echocardiogram. My brother, who was a technician, told me to watch it as it was happening if I could, so I did, and there it was, working, working, working like an old Buick in the garage,” Surufka said. “The cathedral is the heart of the diocese, and we’ve been called to that.”
McClory said the mergers don’t make the Gary community a melting pot, which becomes bland and one-note after a while. For him, the blending of parishes makes a tapestry.
“The revelation of a day like today, we see the vibrancy of coming together,” the bishop said.
It’s also about renewal, because people can see what a parish can offer them or remind them if they’ve forgotten. “There are growing pains, of course, but we’re seeing real signs of success, and we’re loving people through it,” McClory said.
One parishioner who belonged to Sts. Monica and Luke, which closed last month, came up to Surufka to wish him well. She said she was going to miss him, but she’s not ready to be part of another parish yet. He understands her trepidation because he doesn’t want to leave, either.
“I never thought I’d be assigned to Northwest Indiana, and then to be a pastor at opposite corners of the county for two years. They’re worlds apart, and it was fascinating,” Surufka, who grew up in Munster, said. “Every Franciscan who’s here wanted to be here, and the people of Gary aren’t used to that. And I don’t want to leave.
“The most important thing we did was to minister in the suburbs and turn the tables on ‘Scary Gary.’ The attitude of the parishioners toward their parishes changed the connection to it, and now there’s renewed hope, and we were part of it.”
The Franciscan Fathers will be in Lake County until June 30 and then will head to St. Louis to determine their next assignments, Surufka said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
