The End of Holy Rosary Parish

Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Parish in Tacoma is being suppressed as of August 31, 2020. This parish began through the hard work and vision of German immigrants, who gathered in the Fall of 1890 to persuade the Bishop to grant them a new parish. Over the next year, they pooled their money and resources and purchased the land and built the first wooden church on the site. They arranged for Benedictine monks from Minnesota to provide spiritual leadership, which they did for the next century. The current brick church – a monument in Tacoma and a beacon of light in the darkness – was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day, 1921.

That church building, and other buildings on campus, remain in a state of suspended animation for the foreseeable future.

I’m heartbroken and grieving, and I don’t know where Francine and I will land. Our parish family, which had been left bereft of a spiritual father for years, will now all become homeless orphans.

Click below for the full letter and a short Q&A.