120 Years of Faith
St. Mary, Goldsboro
Like many Catholic parishes in North Carolina, St. Mary in Goldsboro began with a few Catholic families served irregularly by circuit-riding clergy who celebrated Mass in private homes. One of these priests was the Servant of God Fr. Thomas Frederick Price, who in the 1880s brought Mass and the sacraments to Catholics from Raleigh to Wilmington from his base in New Bern. It was Fr. Price who began raising funds for a church in Goldsboro and probably named the parish; St. Mary Catholic Church was dedicated in 1889.
At that time the parish consisted of five families. In 1915 one of their descendants, Msgr. Arthur Raine Freeman, would become its first resident pastor. Msgr. Freeman built mission churches in Wilson, Kinston and Mt. Olive, and in 1927 built St. Mary’s School, staffed by three Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) from Scranton, Pa., who taught 45 students in grades 1-7.
The parish and its school thrived. In the early 1950s, Msgr. Edward T. Gilbert purchased additional property, on which a new school and convent were built in 1956. In 1962, Bishop Vincent S. Waters split the parish, erecting the new parish of St. Bernadette on the grounds next to the recently built St. Mary’s School. At this time there was a third Catholic parish in Goldsboro, Sacred Heart, which served black Catholics. Two mergers, between St. Mary’s and Sacred Heart in 1969, and St. Mary’s and St. Bernadette in 1977, resulted in the current St. Mary Parish, with church, school, rectory and convent situated on the land purchased by Msgr. Gilbert.
Today, St. Mary is an interestingly diverse parish. Pastor Fr. Tom Norris, O.S.F.S., describes it as an unusual combination of suburban and rural church. Its members include active and retired military personnel associated with nearby Seymour Johnson Air Force Base; Hispanic immigrants; families who have lived in Goldsboro for generations and commuters with jobs in the Raleigh area. The parish has been in the care of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales since 1990, and Fr. Tom has been in ministry there, as a parochial vicar and then as pastor, for 11 years. Fr. Paul Brant, S.J., also resides at St. Mary, ministering to Hispanics there and in surrounding communities.
Fr. Tom sees his parish’s most important challenges as evangelization and, where Catholics have drifted away from the practice of their faith, re-evangelization. Adult faith formation is one means to that end, and the pastor is hopeful that a 30-member Bible study group begun last year will produce leaders who will in turn evangelize others. Another major evangelizing force, he points out, is the parish school, which enrolls 225 students, many of them non-Catholic, in grades pre-K-8. The IHM Sisters departed in 2008 after 80 years with the school, “but their legacy is still strongly felt,” Fr. Tom says. He has seen more than one instance where non-Catholic students and their families have joined the Church. Fr. Price, the Tar Heel Apostle, would be pleased.