Abundant Blessings
St. Mark, Wilmington
The road leading into the parking lot of St. Mark Church in Wilmington is named John Paul Drive. It isn’t named for the last pope, however, but for his predecessor, John Paul I, who died suddenly after 33 days in office in 1978, the year the first St. Mark Church was dedicated. “We had already received permission to name the road when he died,” recalls St. Mark parishioner Gloria Brown, “so we just went ahead.”
Mrs. Brown and her husband, Jerry, were among the founding members of St. Mark, which began as an offshoot of St. Therese Church in Wrightsville Beach. “The first idea,” Jerry Brown explains, was to relocate St. Therese to Windemere, a fast-growing suburb of Wilmington. “But studies showed right away that a new parish was needed.” Money was raised, a rectory purchased, and construction was started in 1977. Meanwhile, St. Mark parishioners attended Mass in space provided by the nearby Episcopal Church.
When the new church and an eight-room religious education wing were dedicated in 1978, Father Francis Moeslein, the pastor of St. Therese who had been named administrator of St. Mark in 1976, became the first pastor.
The 1978 building would serve as a sanctuary for nearly 20 years, while growth in the surrounding community – and the Catholic population – exploded. The current sanctuary, with a capacity of 1000 and a Blessed Sacrament chapel seating an additional 100, was dedicated in 1996, and the old church became the parish hall. In 1999, St. Mark was assigned a mission, Christ the King (Christo Rey) in Riegelwood, NC, to serve a growing Hispanic population.
From the beginning, St. Mark was distinguished by its involved parishioners and widespread outreach. In fact, its school, which now serves 343 students (A Montessori pre-school serves 30 more.), was conceived as a result of the parish’s lending a helping hand to the wider community. Msgr. Matthew Hendrick, Pastor of St. Mark since 1991, explains:
“Hurricane Fran hit Wilmington in September, 1996. There was incredible destruction. The Wrightsville Beach Elementary was flooded; there was four feet of water and fish in the classrooms. So we offered our parish hall classrooms and parish office areas to their staff, and this space became the elementary school, with 200-some students, for six months.”
That gesture proved to be a multiple blessing. The St. Mark community realized that it enjoyed having a school, could support a school and, in fact, felt called to this ministry. After years of planning, data-gathering and fundraising, that dream became a reality when a gleaming new school building opened its doors in August, 2002.
Today, according to the parish History & Mission Statement, St. Mark has over 2300 registered families and single adult parishioners, triple the number in 1990. Something that hasn’t changed is the St. Mark tradition of outreach and sharing: Parishioners participate in more than 50 different ministries, many of them benefiting people outside the parish, from needy families in the greater Wilmington area to missions in Africa and Latin America. Clearly, the seed planted in the “Year of Three Popes” has borne – and continues to bear -- abundant fruit.
- Rich Reece