The following article first appeared in the August 2000 Boost-A-Month Club Newsletter.  For more information about becoming a Boost-A-Month member, call 1-800-935-0975 or contact Father Dominic Duggins.

Father Gerry Peterson—Winfield, Alabama
Evangelization Key to Mission’s Growth

Father Gerry Peterson joins two volunteers at the Winfield Christian Center for Concern. Four centers provide emergency assistance, food and furniture to those in need.

A welcoming attitude and home visits are just two ways Glenmary Father Gerry Peterson has located and evangelized inactive Catholics. In the 11 years he has led the Winfield, Ala., Holy Spirit mission, the congregation has doubled in size, in no small part due to Father Gerry’s persistence. Some people have moved into the parish, but the majority of the “new” people are inactive Catholics who had fallen away from the Church and have now returned.

“I’ve really gone after the inactive Catholics pretty strongly,” he says. “I have visited those I know about two or three times. After the third time, I tell them I don’t want to bother them any more and that they know where they can find me.”

Sometimes they do seek him out, beginning the process of learning about the faith they have not practiced in many years and being welcomed into the Catholic community in Winfield or Holy Family Church in Fayette, which he also pastors.

He guesses there are the same number of inactive Catholics as there are Catholics attending church in the three counties he serves.

In the past, he has used various programs to get lay persons involved in reaching inactive Catholics too. This September he will implement “Invite a Friend,” a program designed by the U.S. bishops to encourage Catholics to invite someone to attend Mass with them.

“Glenmary is out there to evangelize,” Father Gerry said, “and that’s what I’m trying to do and trying to get others to do.”

Because of the increase in parish numbers, Father Gerry is currently getting bids to build a new church in Winfield, which would increase seating capacity from 100 to 200. So far, he has been given $50,000 toward the new church and the parish has saved $50,000. He estimates the new building will cost at least $200,000. “It will be a stretch for us,” he says, adding that he is sure they will manage one way or another.

Helping people “manage” in their daily lives is a large part of the extended ministry performed by these two Alabama missions. Father Gerry was instrumental in expanding a small clothing center into the ecumenical Christian Center for Concern. Four such centers are now located in Winfield, Fayette and two neighboring towns. The centers provide emergency assistance funds, clothing and furniture for those in need.

“In a year,” Father Gerry says, “we distribute about $80,000 in aid.” The volunteers who staff the centers are from Father Gerry’s two parishes as well as other congregations in the towns.

“There is always more that could be done if we only had the funds,” he says.

While funds are scarce for the two small northwestern Alabama parishes, generosity isn’t. The parish donates “when we can” to a new chapter of Habitat for Humanity that has just been formed in the area. Father Gerry tried twice, several years ago, to start a chapter, but couldn’t rally enough volunteers.

In addition to the outreach to inactive Catholics, Father Gerry is trying to reach out to Hispanics in the three-county area. After an informal census, he surmises that there are only about 125 Hispanics in the area with five to 10 attending Sunday Mass.

Each weekend, he celebrates a Spanish Mass in neighboring Haleyville at a diocesan parish. Never, in his pre-Vatican II years as a priest, did he think he would eventually celebrate Mass in English, let alone Spanish! He thought knowing Spanish would be helpful, so he studied Spanish during a sabbatical in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

“Learning Spanish wasn’t as easy as I had anticipated. I thought it would be more like Latin than what it is,” the 70-year-old priest laughs.

The sign outside the Winfield church is now also in Spanish. He hopes when Hispanics see the Spanish on the sign they will know “we are doing something in their native language and that will entice them to visit the church.”

Becoming part of Glenmary’s work in the rural areas of the South, Southwest and Appalachia was a perfect fit for Father Gerry, a self-described “farm boy from Loretto, Ky.”

Community was very important to him during the discernment process which led him to investigate religious orders serving foreign missions. That investigation led to the decision that he wanted to stay home.

With Glenmary, he got the best of all worlds: a missionary community that worked at home in rural areas.

The Winfield and Fayette missions are growing both physically and spiritually under Father Gerry’s leadership. A lot has been accomplished and there is still more to be accomplished. But, keeping the faith, Father Gerry firmly believes, “We’ll manage one way or another.”

Father Gerry, now a senior member, is presently living in Pontotoc, Miss., lending a hand to the Pontotoc and New Albany missions. The new pastor of the Winfield and Fayette, Ala., missions is Father Mike Kerin.