St. Joseph Catholic Church hosts milestone celebration | Community Spirit

Saint Joseph Catholic Church in Huntsville will host a huge celebration September 9, 2012 to mark two major milestones.  Saint Joseph is celebrating its 60th Anniversary and the Knights of Peter Claver is celebrating its 25th Anniversary.

The celebration will start at 3:00 with a Mass of Thanksgiving at Saint Joseph Catholic Church.  The celebrant and homilist for the Mass is Most Reverend Martin D. Holley, D.D. Holly, a native of Pensacola and the Auxiliary Bishop of Washington, D.C.  He also serves as the National Chaplain of the Knights of Peter Claver.

Saint Joseph Catholic Church was founded in 1952 by the Salvatorians as a mission to the black community of Huntsville, Alabama.  In 1979 Saint Joseph Mission was established as a canonical parish of the Birmingham Diocese and was renamed Saint Joseph Catholic Church.

The Knight of Peter Claver was founded in Mobile, Alabama in 1909. The Order is named after St. Peter Claver, a Jesuit priest from Spain who ministered to African slaves in Cartagena, Colombia in the 1600s.  The Knights of Peter Claver is a faith based fraternal order with units in over 400 Catholic parishes in the United States and South America. The Order engages in a variety of national service projects and is a major supporter of the United Negro College Fund.  Saint Francis of Assisi Court 286 and Sir Knight Charles Smoot Council 286, we established in 1987 in Huntsville.

Following the Mass, the celebration will continue at the Von Braun Center North Hall with a Jubilee Dinner.  The event starts at 5:00pm. The keynote speaker for the evening is Dr. Joseph Leahy, one of the survivors of the UAH shooting. Tickets for this event are $50.00. 

Dr. Leahy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biologicial Sciences at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.  He has been with the University since 1997.  Dr. Leahy suffered critical injuries during the 2010 shooting.  He will talk about his faith before and after the tragedy and how it helped get to where he is today. 

For more information, call St. Joseph Catholic Church at (256) 534-8459 or Holy Family School at (256) 539-5221.

Visit their website: www.saintjosephofhuntsville.org.