(Adapted from One Hundred Years of Growth and Grace)

It was a few years after the bells pealed for peace in 1945. Mendon boys and girls had exchanged khaki and navy blue for denim and gray flannel and Rosie had traded rivets for a rocker. At St. Catherine of Siena Church parishioners were stripping paint from pews as they began refurbishing for the upcoming Golden Jubilee in 1952. A new furnace, using bottled gas and equipped with blowers, had just been installed. This replaced an old stove which Pat Enright, who lived in the present rectory, stoked each week before Mass. Since St. Catherine’s was a mission of St. Paul of the Cross Church in Honeoye Falls then, Mass and confessions were held only on Sundays. Father Joseph L. Hogan, who would eventually wear the Bishop’s miter, alternated with Father William Killackey and later Father Howard Geck, both pastors of St. Paul’s, in serving the spiritual needs of the Mendon Catholics.

The most Reverend James E. Kearney, the fifth Bishop of Rochester, celebrated Mass on May 25, 1952. This was almost exactly fifty-two years after Father John J. Donnelly from Victor said the first scheduled weekly Mass in Mendon on May 18, 1900. Since there was no Catholic Church, vestments were donned in Finucane Hall.   By the turn of the century, Mendon boasted mills, a coal and lumber company, a produce company, two general stores and three hotels where traveling men stopped and local folk danced to violins and a parlor organ. In 1888 a Union High School with a nine member school board was established together with several Protestant churches. St. Catherine’s was a late arrival to the church scene. The Baptist Church, located on a hilltop north of the Mendon Cemetery on the Mendon Ionia Road, opened its doors in 1826 although four families held their first service as early as 1809. The Church was struck by lightning, rebuilt and again razed by another bolt. It was finally torn down in the early 1900’s. Mendon Presbyterians also prayed in their new church in 1826 and two years later, area Quakers met in their Meeting House near the intersection of the Rush Mendon and Quaker Meeting House Roads. In 1829 Brigham Young, accompanied by 30 Mormons, moved to Mendon. Although Young built the back of the house on the southeast corner of Cheese Factory and Mendon Ionia Roads, no temple was erected. The group moved west in 1833 after they were attacked and stoned by some area residents. St. Mark’s Lutheran Church was completed three years after the first organizational meeting was held on November 7, 1901.

Once Bishop McQuaid put his imprimatur on the establishment of the Mendon church, area Catholics lost little time in laying its cornerstone. Parishioners raised $2,920.75 from hundreds of towns people and friends from other communities, both Catholic and non-Catholic. Founding fathers, John Quinn, David O’Connor and William Furlong, collected $1,650.00 alone; Patrick and Mary Culhane, who resided in the present rectory, donated a building lot valued at $150.00 on May 18, 1901. The Culhanes contributed more to the St. Catherine story than a parcel of land though. Their son, Jim, was the first child baptized in the new church and his twin sisters, Annabelle and Isabelle, were the first twins to be christened there. Father Donnelly served St. Catherine’s for 11 years as it's first pastor.  Reverends Louis Edlelman, Cornelius Silke, Victor Hurley  Weilliam Killackey, and Howard Geck would succeed Rev. Donnelly until Msgr. Albert Schnacky made his home here as its first resident pastor in 1970.  

Msgr. Schnacky and his beloved german shepherd Heidi were a staple in the parish until 1986.   Resident pastors Rev. Charles Latus and  Rev. James Lawlor faithfully served St. Catherine's parishioners int the years following, bringing us to the pastorship of our current priest, Rev. Robert S. Bourcy.