It is believed to be the first Catholic church in both the state and Cincinnati Archdiocese that was built and paid for by black people for their use.
Orr was raised in St. John the Baptist Church, as was his mother and grandmother. “Each parish once had its own school and was ethnic — Hungarian, Irish, German; during migration from the South, blacks were told to go to St. John’s,” said Orr.
When it closed in 1962, for the construction of U.S. 35, his family went to St. James on Edgemont.
Orr married a member of Resurrection Church, and the couple then attended that parish. When it was learned that St. James and Resurrection were to share a priest, members decided to merge.
“The number of priests had diminished, not the congregations,” said Orr. “We decided to be proactive when the process began in the 1990s, instead of waiting for changes to be made.”
To Orr, the prospect of the merger was not daunting. “My family had gone to St. John’s, then St. James, and I married into Resurrection. There was a lot of intermarriage among the parishes, so they all seemed like family to me.”
Orr was Resurrection’s council president, and he met with St. James’ president and the priests. “Both churches were expensive to maintain, and neither was large enough to hold both congregations, so we decided to build a new church and made a request to the bishop.”
A new name and site were selected and approved. “When we had the funds and ground was broken, we moved into Resurrection while the church was being built,” Orr recalls.
The new church — St. Benedict the Moor, located at Liscum Drive and U.S. 35 — held its first mass on May 1, 2005. “Most members of both parishes came, but our services varied, since one had been more traditional gospel and the other more charismatic,” Orr said.
Eventually, Orr noted, members stopped thinking of one another as “St. James” or “Resurrection” members, organizations and systems within the church were merged and new members joined.
As the congregation prepares for its 10th anniversary, it continues to grow and celebrates more diversity, with Filipinos, Hispanics, whites and Africans from Ghana, Nigeria and Rwanda, as well as African-Americans.
The anniversary celebration, with the theme We’ve Come This Far by Faith, includes a banquet at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 9, and an 11 a.m. Sunday, May 10, Mass presided over by a bishop of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. That Mass will be followed by a reception.
“Father Freddy Washington, St. James’ pastor from 1995 and the first pastor when we combined, will be the keynote speaker at the banquet,” Orr said. “He helped make the merger a reality.”
For information on banquet tickets and anniversary events, contact the church office at (937) 268-6697.
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