History of St. Gertrude the Great
Roman Catholic Church
The story of the Catholic Faith in the Northern Cincinnati area goes back to the 1800s. In 1874 Father John Kress established Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church to serve the English-speaking Catholics of Reading, Lockland, Wyoming and Sharonville. The cornerstone was laid on August 15, 1874 by Irish-born Bishop Edward Fitzgerald of Little Rock, Arkansas. Because many of the original parishioners were Irish immigrants or their descendants, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart became known as the “Irish Church.”
When the so-called Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) attempted to destroy the Catholic Faith and Traditional Latin Mass, many Catholics in America and elsewhere saw Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) as the preserver of the true Mass and the true Catholic Faith. Among the first generation of traditional priests trained by Archbishop Lefebvre was Detroit-born Daniel Dolan (b. 1951). He had studied for the priesthood first in the Sacred Heart Minor Seminary in Detroit, and then in the Cistercian Order. A key role in his vocation as a traditional priest was the pastor of the parish of St. Lawrence in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Father Hugh Wish (1911-1979), who had continued to say the Tridentine Mass in his parish even after it had been banned by the conciliar hierarchy. Another young man whose vocation Father Wish tutored was Anthony Cekada, who also had been a member of the Cistercian order.
Daniel Dolan entered the SSPX Seminary in Écône, Switzerland, in January 1973. He was ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre on June 29, 1976. After his ordination Father Dolan first worked a year in England, helping Father Peter Morgan. After he returned to the USA, he joined the priests of the SSPX Northeast District, headed by Father Clarence Kelly. Father Dolan was made the District Director of Missions, and his principal apostolate was founding and organizing traditional Mass centers throughout the USA.
Father Dolan had visited Cincinnati for the first time on Michaelmas 1976 as a Seminarian. He knew Mr. & Mrs. Hanna from his Detroit Seminary days, and since their daughter lived in Cincinnati, he was called to say Mass in the area. From the Hannas Father Dolan inherited the devotion to St. Gertrude the Great, and after two years of Masses in different locations, he established the Cincinnati mission in January 1978 and named it in honor of St. Gertrude the Great. From Mary Hanna Father Dolan also learned of the efficacy of St. Gertrude’s Golden Salutation, which the church still recites every Friday in the Perpetual Novena to the Sacred Heart. The mission got its own church in Sharonville in 1980.
In 1983 Father Dolan and eight other priests left the Society of Saint Pius X, for the reasons explained in the article The Nine vs. Lefebvre: We Resist You to Your Face. “The Nine,” as the priests were called, formed a new group which they named the Society of Saint Pius V (SSPV).
In 1989, Father Dolan left the SSPV, and functioned as an independent priest from then on. That year he called Father Anthony Cekada, who had been ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1977, to be the assistant pastor of St. Gertrude the Great. Father Cekada, who also had recently left the SSPV, functioned as the pastor of the Milwaukee St. Hugh of Lincoln Roman Catholic Church, which was dedicated in July 1989, as well as of St. Clare’s in Columbus, Ohio.
In 1989 Father Dolan first met Father Tarcisius (Mark) Pivarunas of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (CMRI). Besides both of them believing that the vacancy of the Papal See was the best explanation for the post-Vatican II crisis, they were both in agreement on a number of various practical points: the importance of adhering to Canon Law’s requirements on how to train candidates for the priesthood; the necessity of distancing from bizarre or schismatic clergy and organizations; and the danger of elevating, cult-like, the particular policies and opinions of one’s own traditional group to the level of dogma.
In 1991 Father Pivarunas was consecrated Bishop by Mexican Bishop Moisés Carmona (1912-1991). Bishop Carmona had been consecrated in 1981 by Pierre Martin Ngo Dinh Thuc (1897-1984), the former Archbishop of Hue, Vietnam. When Bishop Carmona suddenly died in a car accident few weeks after the consecration, Bishop Pivarunas became responsible for confirming and ordaining in Mexico. This was in addition to his trips throughout the USA, Canada, and New Zealand, as well as to his duties as a Seminary teacher and pastor for the CMRI missions. That a portion of this burden could be lightened, Bishop Pivarunas asked Father Dolan to consider receiving episcopal consecration.
Father Dolan was consecrated Bishop by Bishop Pivarunas at St. Gertrude the Great on November 30, 1993. By that time he had founded about 35 Mass centers throughout the USA. After his consecration, the founding of a Seminary became topical. Father (later Bishop) Donald Sanborn, who had been the SSPX Seminary rector until he left the organization together with the other Nine, started Most Holy Trinity Seminary in 1995, and Bishop Dolan agreed to do ordinations of the Seminary graduates. Father Cekada joined the Seminary faculty teaching Liturgy and Canon Law. Besides priests for Most Holy Trinity Seminary, Bishop Dolan ordained Father Carlos Ercoli on October 12, 1997, for the Seminary of St. Peter the Martyr, run by the Institute of the Mother of Good Counsel (IMBC) in Italy. In the same year, on December 8, he also ordained Father Jaime Siordia of Mexico.
On Wednesday, June 9, 2004, the last Mass, which was the sung Mass of St. Gertrude the Great, was celebrated in the old church. The first Mass in the new West Chester church was sung on Corpus Christi, June 10, 2004. In 2009 the parish was joined by Fathers Charles McGuire, ordained by Bishop Dolan, and Julian Larrabee, ordained by Bishop Sanborn, both graduates from Most Holy Trinity Seminary. Father McGuire also functioned as pastor of St. Hugh and St. Clare. In 2012 Father Larrabee moved to California to join the apostolate of Father Thomas Zapp. That same year the St. Gertrude parish clergy were joined by two priests ordained by Bishop Dolan: Father Vili Lehtoranta, a graduate from Most Holy Trinity Seminary, and Father Stephen McKenna, trained by Father Kevin Vaillancourt. Father Lehtoranta was assigned to help at the parish and the school, while Father McKenna was given charge of the many growing missions around the country. In 2013 Bishop Dolan ordained Father Bede Nkamuke, who took charge of the Nigerian missions in 2014.
Father Cekada died on September 11, 2020. Because of the global lockdowns of that year, Bishop Dolan searched for a candidate to take over his many missions in South America. In 2018 he and Father Cekada had met Father Rodrigo Da Silva, who had been ordained a priest in 2017 by Bishop Richard Williamson, and afterwards joined Bishop Dolan’s South American apostolate. Bishop Dolan consecrated Father Da Silva as Bishop on the feast of St. Michael, September 29, 2021.
At the unexpected death of Bishop Dolan on April 26, 2022, Father Charles McGuire took over the duties of pastor of St. Gertrude the Great and her missions. Bishop Da Silva ordained four of St. Gertrude’s Seminarians on May 11, 2022: Fathers Thomas Simpson and Anthony Brueggemann for St. Gertrude the Great parish, and Fathers Thomas Ojeka and John Okerulu for the Nigerian mission. On May 18, 2022, he gave episcopal consecration to Father McGuire. To ensure the growth of the Nigerian mission, Bishop McGuire consecrated Father Nkamuke on May 1, 2023. For the training of traditional priests in America, Father Ercoli in 2023 opened the Seminary of St. Charles Borromeo, whose graduates will be ordained by Bishop McGuire.
