Saint Patrick’s Catholic school in Elkhorn, Nebraska is one of the busiest churches in Omaha. It was so busy that they had to build a brand new church for the public so there could be more room and more parking.
“The new church was built in order to accommodate the growing population of the area and to provide additional meeting space for the many programs supported by the parish,” educator for Saint Patrick’s Church, Marty Cordes said.
The parish planning began in 2019 and the official disruption began on June 4, 2023. Building a whole new church takes a lot of time, work, and money.
“The money to build the new church was donated by parishioners and over 900 families have donated,” Cordes said.
Many parishioners helped with the donation as well as Frank Krejci who helped donate the land years ago.
“This was done through ‘capital campaign’ which continues to raise funds for the project,” Cordes said.
Though building a new church is great for the community, the church is built right by the neighborhood, Indian Point. There are some complaints about the new church, because of the building process.
“I know that some people are upset about the new building,” Cordes said. “I don’t think they mind that it is a church, they just don’t like all the noise and dust that is created by the building process.”
The Elkhorn and Bennington Archdiocese helped with the plan of the new church, so the planning of the church was harder due to short staff/priests.
“We have a shortage of priests so new parishes are hard to establish,” Cordes said. “This makes the need for existing parishes to be able to accommodate a larger parishioner base.”
Although Saint Patrick’s has a church connected to the school, they will use that for other things and not for the public anymore.
“The existing campus will continue to be used as a school and the existing church (soon to be Chapel) will continue to be used for school mass, and other masses such as small weddings, extra masses at Christmas and Easter, children’s adoration, youth group adoration, etc,” Cordes said.
The church is supposed to end in the month of March 2025, there will also be some work done to the landscaping and touch ups to the church while in use and hopefully fully done in May.
“We will need to schedule the blessing of the building with the Archbishop. Hoping to open for Mass summer of 2025,” Cordes said.
