Cardinal George to help parish celebrate 150 years
In what could be one of his last suburban public appearances, Cardinal Francis George will help St. Mary of the Annunciation Church near Mundelein celebrate its sesquicentennial Sunday.
The ailing cardinal, who will retire as head of the Chicago Archdiocese in November, is scheduled to appear at the 11:30 a.m. Mass at the Catholic church, 22333 W. Erhart Road in unincorporated Fremont Township.
Church officials aren't sure to what extent George, who has cancer and is using crutches due to an infection in his right foot, will participate.
“We hope and pray that he can physically be here,” said the Rev. Jerry Jacob, the church's lead pastor.
Sunday's Mass will be the church's final 150th-anniversary event in what has been a year of celebrations.
A dinner and dance, outreach programs and a harvest festival were among the other sesquicentennial activities.
A bell from the original church was installed in a new bell tower at the current church in August 2013 to kick off the celebration.
The church even had a float in Mundelein's annual Community Days parade.
“We won third prize,” said Fred Vipond, the church's music and liturgy director.
The parish was founded in the 1860s by German immigrants. Lake County records indicate a church stood near what is now Route 176 and Fremont Center Road as early as 1861, but the parish doesn't appear in official archdiocese records until 1864.
As a result, that's the year that's accepted as the parish's creation.
In those early years, services were led by mission priests from other communities. The parish received its first resident pastor in 1888, and the following year it relocated to a new building that remained in use as a church until the current facility opened in 2002.
Dubbed “the little church,” that white, frame building still stands.
The parish was a relatively small one for most of its history, with just a few hundred families attending services for most of that time.
A population boom during the past 20 years, however, led to unprecedented growth. About 1,600 families now are part of the parish, Jacob said.
“It's an exciting time for us as we move to the future,” he said. “We look forward to the next 150 (years).”
Although many of the church's parishioners come from the Grand Dominion retirement community in Mundelein, Jacob said he is “happily surprised” by the number of young families involved in the church.
For many years, the parish was known as St. Mary Fremont Center. St. Mary of the Annunciation was the parish's original name, however, and the congregation went back to that moniker in 2002.
Sunday's Mass will be George's third visit to the parish. He dedicated the new church building in 2002.
Four years earlier, he blessed the ground for the building before construction.
A reception with refreshments will follow Mass.
For more information, call the church at (847) 223-0010 or visit the parish website at stmaryfc.org.
• Daily Herald photographer Steve Lundy contributed to this report.