Jubilee celebration

This year is the 50^th anniversary of the Church of St. Peter in Fort Yates, but the faith of the Indian people worshiping there dates back nearly a century before that.
 
The Catholic Indian Mission on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation consists of the Church of St. Peter in Fort Yates and the mission oratories of St. Elizabeth in Cannon Ball, St. James in Porcupine, St. Philomena in Selfridge and Sacred Heart in Solen, as well as the St. Bernard Mission School in Fort Yates. 
 
The Catholic presence on the reservation is traced back to 1877 when Abbot Martin Marty, a Benedictine from St. Meinrad Abbey in Indiana, first visited the area, bringing the Gospel to the Catholic soldiers at the fort and to the Sioux Indians. Marty soon became the bishop of the Dakota Territory and sent two Benedictine monks to Fort Yates to minister, Fr. Jerome Hunt and Br. Giles Laugel. The monks and the Indians put up a simple church in 1879, the brick for which they made in a kiln by the river. A year earlier, four Benedictine nuns had arrived to start a girls’ school. The monks taught some of the boys. By 1883, they had erected a two-story brick school.
 
The history of the Catholic Indian Mission and the Benedictine monks of Conception Abbey in Missouri are intertwined. The first monks arrived on the reservation in 1884 and ministered there for the next 111 years. The two with the longest tenure were Father Bernard Strassmaier, who arrived in 1886 and remained as pastor until his death in 1940, and Father Francis Gerschwyler, who served there from 1890 to 1942. Another longtime pastor was Father Alfred Meyer, OSB, who served from 1940 to 1964. During his pastorate, a convent was built in 1957, and the rectory was constructed in 1961.
 
The monks raised funds to construct a fine brick school building in 1926. It was named St. Bernard’s in honor of Father Strassmaier and is the true bedrock of the Catholic Indian Mission. Students in grades one through six were instructed by Benedictine sisters from Yankton, S.D. and Watertown, S.D., and later by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Mankato, Minn. and St. Louis. Around 2010, the school had about 100 students in grades one through six. Enrollment was expanded to include up to grade eight a few years ago. Current enrollment is around 30 students.
 
In 1975, the parishioners at Fort Yates realized that a new church was needed. From a distance, it looks like a teepee. The intent, however, was that the long sloping roofs were meant to blend harmoniously into the surrounding terrain, blending in with the natural surroundings of the place God has given them. The bell from the original church was placed near the modern church, forming a link from the past to the present. A statue outside the front of the church serves as a special tribute to St. Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk/Algonquin Catholic saint and virgin born in 1656 in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon. Canonized in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI, she is the first Native American to be recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church.
 
In 1995, Conception Abbey recalled their priests, and the Bismarck Diocese took over the operation of the mission. The grounds include the school, church rectory and convent. The first diocesan pastor to serve there from 1995 until 2001 was Fr. Cas Paluck. Other diocesan priests who served there were Fr. John O’Leary, Fr. Leonard Savelkoul, Fr. Bill Cosgrove, Fr. Terry Wipf, Fr. Basil Atwell, OSB, Fr. John Paul Gardner, Fr. Biju Antony and Msgr. Chad Gion. Currently, Fr. Jolly George serves as the parochial administrator. For the past 30 years, our diocese has been bountifully blessed by the service of Br. George Maufort, a deacon and a member of the Salvatorian Society of the Divine Savior based in Wisconsin, at the Catholic Indian Mission and the Church of St. Peter in Fort Yates. Also serving there and residing in the convent are a few members of the Sisters of the Congregation of Teresian Carmelites of India.
 
Jubilee Mass with the bishop
The parishioners are marking this special occasion with community events in November such as bingo and a turkey dinner. There was also a 40-hour adoration event offering Mass, adoration, reconciliation, speaker presentations and a healing service. Bishop Kagan is scheduled to travel to Fort Yates on Sunday, Dec. 7 for a jubilee Mass celebration. All are invited to attend this Mass with the bishop at 10:30 a.m. at the Church of St. Peter in Fort Yates.

—Staff report