26th Week in Ordinary Time
Riverton, OH
Free · All are welcome
26th Week in Ordinary Time
Riverton, OH
Free · All are welcome
Who we are
St. Patrick's is the oldest Catholic church still standing in downtown Riverton. We sit on Market Street between two banks and a parking garage, and on any weekday noon you will find bond traders, bus drivers, nurses from Good Samaritan and people who slept outside last night in the same pews.
We are a small registered parish and a very large congregation: most of the people who pray here live somewhere else and work around the corner. That suits us. The church was built by canal diggers who were far from home, and it has been keeping its doors open for people far from home ever since.
From the archives
Irish labourers digging the Miami and Erie Canal raised the first St. Patrick's, a brick chapel, in 1851; the limestone church went up in 1874 on the pennies of the same families, now grocers and aldermen. The flood of 1937 put four feet of the river in the nave — the high-water mark is still cut into the pillar by the baptistry. As the families moved out to the suburbs in the sixties the parish nearly closed twice. It was the office workers who saved it: the 12:10 Mass started in 1971 with nine people, and the pantry in the basement in 1983 with one shelf. In 2009 the Spanish Mass began for the families who were moving back downtown, and it is now the fullest Mass of the week.
The staff
Msgr. Thomas Keane
Pastor
Pastor since 2011 and a Riverton native. Monsignor says the 12:10 most days and still keeps a paper route's sense of time.
Rev. Andrés Vélez
Parochial Vicar
Born in Medellín, ordained in 2016. Padre Andrés celebrates the Spanish Mass and runs the young adults' Theology on Tap.
Denise Carter
Director of Outreach & Food Pantry
Denise has run the pantry for nineteen years and knows most of its 900 families by name. She will find you a shift.
Michael Brennan
Director of Music & Organist
Michael plays the 1888 Koehnken organ and leads the Old St. Pat's Choir. Rehearsals are Thursday nights, all voices welcome.
Notices
St. Patrick's Food Pantry
Groceries for 900 families a month, no questions asked. Volunteers needed Tuesdays and Thursdays, even for an hour at lunch.
pantry@oldstpatricks-demo.org
Theology on Tap
Young adults, 21–39. First Thursday of the month at the Tavern on Fourth: a speaker, a pint, and a lot of good questions.
Old St. Pat's Choir
Sings the 11 AM Sunday Mass, the Lessons and Carols, and the St. Patrick's Day Mass for the whole city. No audition.
Ministerio Hispano
Grupo de oración, catequesis familiar y la fiesta de la Virgen de Guadalupe. Nos reunimos los viernes a las 7.
Lunch-Hour Bible Study
Wednesdays at 12:50 in the rectory parlour, after Mass. Bring your sandwich; we read next Sunday's Gospel.
Downtown Walkers
Hand out socks, sandwiches and bus passes on Saturday mornings with the Sisters of Charity. Meet on the church steps at 8.
In pictures