New St. Joseph Church dedicated in Lincoln

For more than 20 years, building a new Catholic church in Lincoln was an architectural design on a drawing board, a dream that simply hadn’t happened.

Located on 6th and D Streets in the heart of the city, St. Joseph Church had been the spiritual home for generations of Catholics for more than 80 years.

But a population explosion in the city, triggered in 2000 by housing developments such as Del Webb’s Sun City Lincoln Hills retirement community, had an immediate impact on the town’s only Catholic church.

St. Joseph Parish’s 600 families in 1996 grew to include 2,000 families by 2007.

By the time Father Polycarpo Gumapo, pastor, arrived at the parish in 2002, his mission was clear. It came from Bishop William K. Weigand.

“He said to me, ‘I want you to go to Lincoln and build a church,’” said Father Gumapo, adding that at that time there were only two weekend Masses and seats for just 175 people. “People were leaving. It was just too crowded.”

Adding four more Masses to the church’s weekend schedule was not enough to alleviate the problem.

Even in recent months, parishioner Gerold Voigt said he has found “arriving at the 10 a.m. Mass on Sunday after 9:30 a.m. leaves you without a seat.”

In response to local growth, five years ago 60 parishioners became members of a building committee.

Generous donations of property from parishioners assisted the parish in developing a phased master plan beginning with construction of a church.

A 14-acre parcel was sold to assist in funding the project, and a donation of 15 acres of land on Oak Tree Lane by the Paul Ferrari family was designated as the building site.

“We wanted to donate the land in memory of my mother and father,” said Paul Ferrari, who was just a child when his parents moved to Lincoln and became members of St. Joseph Parish in 1929.

Ferrari, whose wife Alice also grew up attending Mass with her parents at St. Joseph Church, said that they felt the old church was simply “getting up in age and deteriorating.”

All the years of planning and generous support from parishioners came together as a new St. Joseph Church was dedicated on March 18 with a Mass celebrated by Bishop Weigand.

Ray Calmes, the parish’s building project coordinator, said the vision for the new church focuses on “carrying the history of the old St. Joseph Church into the new one.”

“We wanted a building that reflected St. Joseph as a family man, a carpenter. It needed to be a place that was warm and inviting,” he said.

The $10 million California mission-style church and adjoining administration building was built by Reeve-Knight Construction of Roseville and designed by architect Paul Jeffrey of Bahr Vermeer Haecker, based in Omaha, Neb.

Octagonal in design, the church features 18 arches and will seat 1,000 people.

Primary liturgical elements inside the new church include:

• Five-foot carved relief artwork depicting the Holy Family, located in the narthex.

• Four niches devoted to St. Joseph, Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and Mary. Statues in three niches were restored by Benicia artist Beate Bruhl. The Our Lady of Guadalupe niche contains a mural painted by artists at Evergreen Painting Studios in New York.

• Two stained glass windows, images of St. Joseph and the Blessed Sacrament, removed from the old St. Joseph Church and reframed by an artist at Hogan Studios in Crescent City.

• Stations of the Cross, circa 1938, removed from the old St. Joseph Church and refurbished by Bruhl.

• The tabernacle, removed from the old St. Joseph Church and restored with funding from the Knights of Columbus.

• A baptismal font faced with terra cotta by Lincoln-based Gladding McBean features images designed by parishioner Dianne Calmes.

• Four 24-foot high pillars funded by the Knights of Columbus.

Father Gumapo said the images and statues will inspire love and devotion to St. Joseph among parishioners.

“From the moment you walk inside, you see the Holy Family,” he said.

Future parish plans call for a series of building projects, including a rectory, parish hall and school.

Dario Ferrari, one of Paul Ferrari’s two sons living in Lincoln, said additional projects will continue “making the church available for future generations.”

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