Parish adds significant facilities to its campus to better serve the congregation
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It was first located in Chevy Chase in the mid 1940s when there was only a scattering of houses in the neighborhood; the site was considered to be out on the “edge of town.” The Catholic parish has come a long way since then and is now called the Cathedral of Christ the King. It is the seat of the Lexington Diocese.
Today, Christ the King is finishing an ambitious $5.3 million building phase that includes a new perpetual adoration chapel for the Eucharist, a new altar tabernacle, a baptismal font and a rectory building.
“I’ve always felt that this was God’s will. It’s scary, especially in this economy. Any time you try to follow Him, it’s scary,” said Fr. Mark Dreves, the parish rector, with a mixture of both joy and nervousness.
“When we believe something is God’s will, He doesn’t always give us all of the instructions. He just says, ‘This is what I want you to do.’ The community took a leap of faith and we’re almost finished with it now,” he explained.
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Speaking of leaps of faith, Monsignor Richard O’Neill built the present-day church in the late 1960s for 100 families, praying the parish would grow –– today it has 3,000 families supporting it. In 1988, Pope John Paul II established the Diocese of Lexington, and Christ the King became the cathedral for the new diocese.
Christ the King’s leaders had discussed making improvements to the facility for years. When they gained approval from current diocesan leader, Bishop Ronald Gainer, they never looked back. The bishop recently visited the church to inspect the improvements, preside at a special Sunday mass and to consecrate the new tabernacle and baptismal font.
Fr. Dreves says the fundraising campaign has been proceeding “with a lot of prayers and the generosity of the parish.” The church has had a line of credit to sustain it during the construction phase because pledges will be coming in over a four-year period. But he is comfortable with the financing arrangement.
“We always pay things off here so fast because people are kind and generous,” Fr. Dreves said.
Sal Nalli, chairman of the church building committee, says the parish is answering the call for donations. The campaign, nicknamed “Honoring Our Past, Building Our Future,” has raised about 80 percent of the needed funds.
“It says that many of the parishioners came together as good stewards of the Catholic faith and want to add these wonderful facilities to the cathedral to make it even better for worship. I attribute a lot of that to the Holy Spirit,” Nalli said.
“It will be there for the benefit of our children and their children for many years to come,” he added.
As would be expected, the construction phase, which began in January 2011, has impacted the surrounding neighborhood. Felix Spittler, of Messer Construction, is project manager; his greatest test was to manage a crew of workers and bulky machinery on church property located in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
“The biggest challenge was the interaction with a very active campus. There is always something going on in the church or the hall or the school that we needed to deal with; all the different people and functions going on. We tried to coordinate the work around the activities so it would not be too inconvenient,” Spittler related.
Indiana limestone was used to construct the exterior of the church’s new features, the same famous stone found in monuments in Washington D.C. as well as downtown Lexington, where it can be found in the new Fayette Circuit and district courthouses.
“It is a good looking stone and it looks the same as the old stone. The church was built 45 years ago, and we just built this part in 2011 and you can hardly tell the difference. We’re trying to make it look seamless,” Spittler said.
Fr. Dreves is a native of Illinois but grew up in the town of Ludlow in northern Kentucky. He attended seminary at St. Thomas More in Crestview Hills. He is completing his fifth year at Christ the King church. Prior to this assignment he was full-time in the diocesan office as vocational director and vicar general, the bishop’s second-in-command for diocesan executive matters.
“He entrusts the church to me and I have to know when he would want me to come to him with certain matters,” said Fr. Dreves. Obviously the construction idea and financing plan were two of those important issues to be discussed.
As the final touches are being put in place within the new rectory, and work construction continues on the perpetual adoration chapel for the Eucharist, Fr. Dreves continues to be humbled by the surrounding neighborhood community’s patience in enduring the construction process.
“I’d like to thank the people of the parish and of the Chevy Chase community for their patience. Construction is not a fun time, but I think we’ve been pretty good neighbors,” he said. “It’s a church and a community with a lot of people. We create traffic congestion on Sundays and construction noise every day. I appreciate all the people of Chevy Chase as we grow as a parish.”