Photo by Alan M. Dumoff
Father Piotr Szamocki, administrator, prays at the altar following an outdoor procession at St. Anthony Parish, Waterford, on Saturday, June 13. The parish celebrated the feast of their patron saint and the 80th anniversary of its church building.
St. Anthony Parish in Waterford on Saturday, June 13, celebrated the feast of their patron saint, and the 80th anniversary of its church building.
Father Piotr Szamocki, administrator, presided at the 4:15 Mass and led a procession around the church grounds. There was also a blessing of St. Anthony bread, an offering made in thanksgiving to God, for blessings received through prayers to St. Anthony.
In the mid 1700s, three brothers, Sebastian, Ignatius and Xavier Waas immigrated from Germany to New Jersey to escape military service. The log cabin that they built, known as “Shane’s Castle,” was well-known throughout the area, and became a place for foreign priests to celebrate Mass.
After the “castle” was taken down, a wooden church was erected on Church Road, near the site of the current St. Anthony’s Church, built in 1929.
The wooden church, known as Holy Family Church, and its Catholic community were a mission of St. Joseph Church in Hammonton, in the early 1900s. Before 1925, it was transferred to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Berlin, before reverting back as a mission of St. Joseph Church in 1940.
In the late 1940s the mission, named St. Anthony’s in 1929, when the current church was built, became a part of the new Assumption Parish in Atco.
On May 23, 1966, St. Anthony’s was named a parish, and Father Pasquale M. DiBuono became its first pastor.
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