A Full House
St. Bernadette, Fuquay-Varina
When St. Bernadette pastor Fr. Mark Betti is asked about his parish's biggest challenge,
he has a one-word answer: "Space." At weekend Masses, the 600-seat church doesn't begin to accommodate the congregation, which fills the foyer and spills back into
the parish hall.
The population growth in Fuquay-Varina in the last decade only partially explains
this full house. St. Bernadette parishioners love their church. One parishioner,
recently arrived from the Northeast, says, "The people at St. Bernadette are outgoing
and warm. They've welcomed us from the moment we moved here." She also cites Fr.
Mark's homilies: "He's down to earth, friendly and makes me laugh. I look forward
to hearing what he has to say." Another parishioner, a resident for a dozen years, mentions the homilies as well: "He tells stories, and says things that my family
can talk about long after Mass is over." She mentions "an emphasis
on reconciliation.
Not just the sacrament, but the message that the church accepts you and wants you
here."
Fr. Mark mentions preaching, too, in the course of praising his parish's extensive
faith formation efforts and its "first-rate" parish music ministry. "One parishioner,"
he says with a smile, "told me she got more out of the music than she did from the
homilies."
Catholicism came to southern Wake County around a century ago,
when North Carolina's
first native born priest, Fr. Thomas Price, bought land in Holly Springs for the
Small Church of St. Mary. Mass was celebrated once a month there by a priest who
traveled by horse and buggy from the orphanage in Raleigh.
After the First World War, most of the Catholics in the area moved away in search
of jobs, and St. Mary's closed. Early in 1987, though, Fr. Albert Todd of St. Mary
in Garner began saying Mass at Fuquay-Varina's Trinity Episcopal Church. This new
mission was christened St. Bernadette. Thanks to donations of land and money by
church members, a multipurpose parish center was built in 1990. Sr. Elizabeth McNeill,
R.S.M., was appointed Pastoral Administrator of the mission parish. That year also
marked the beginning of the Raleigh Deanery Hispanic Ministry, which was headquartered
at St. Bernadette.
A woman who did migrant ministry there in the early '90s remembers the area as "like
a jungle, all trees and narrow roads and camps." Development and population growth
was rapid, though, and in less than a decade, St. Bernadette was a full-fledged
parish with a new church building.
Now expansion is necessary again. Like more than one Catholic parish in North Carolina,
this one has gone in just a few years from a tiny mission to what Fr. Mark wryly
calls "a two-priest church with one priest." Plans have been drawn up for a new,
larger parish hall, and for eventual widening of the church. Meanwhile the vibrant
and burgeoning Catholic life of St. Bernadette goes on.