About

St. Ferdinand Mission church in Cranberry Township was raised to the status of parish on May 31, 1961. The congregation was originally a mission of St. Alphonsus Church in Wexford. At that time, Cranberry Township was a rural farming community. In the beginning, Mass was celebrated at Hartner’s Restaurant on Route 19, and afterward at the Cranberry Fire Hall. Upon completion of the rectory, Mass was celebrated in the rectory basement beginning in May 1962.

Groundbreaking for the original church took place in March of 1964 and the first Mass was celebrated in the new church on Easter Sunday, 1965. In 1986 planning began to build a new, larger worship space and on December 23, 1990, Bishop Donald W. Wuerl dedicated the present church.
In January 2002, the boundaries of St. Ferdinand Parish were reduced and those parishioners living East of Route 19 became members of St. Kilian Parish.

St. Gregory Church was founded by seventy families in 1906 on land donated by the Zelienople Land Company. The first Parish School was built and opened in 1911 and has continuously thrived as a center of Catholic education in this region and continues to do so to this day.

In 1939 St. Matthias Church in Evans City became a mission church of St. Gregory Church in Evans City. The Churches grew and flourished through the 1990's but in 2017 St. Matthias was merged with St. Gregory Church once again, primarily due to the decline of the Catholic population in Evans City, and so became part of St. Gregory Parish. Saint Matthias Church was struck by lightning in 2019; the damage was extensive, and the Church was soon after demolished. Much of the contents that were recoverable have been incorporated into the life and liturgy at St. Gregory Church.

Holy Redeemer Parish is the product of several prior parish mergers. In 1989, St. Joseph Church, founded in 1926, merged with Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish. In 2000, Saint Agatha Parish, founded in 1895, and Purification Blessed Virgin Mary, founded in 1916 were officially merged as Holy Redeemer Parish.

Queen of Heaven Parish was established in 1992, from the merger of two parishes, Saint Monica in Wampum, established in 1902, and Saint Teresa in Koppel, founded as a mission in 1871 and raised to a parish in 1962.

In August of 2005, the Saint Monica Church building was irreparably damaged in a storm and in April 2011, the Queen of Heaven Parish church building was damaged by fire. Estimates to repair the buildings were cost prohibitive, and so in 2011 a decree issued, merging Queen of Heaven Parish with Holy Redeemer Parish.

In 1908, Zelienople, Ellwood City, Evans City and Cranberry Township were all linked by the Pittsburgh, Harmony, Butler and New Castle Railway, an interurban trolley line. Although the line closed in 1931, our communities have remained linked by three major tributaries of the Beaver River: Breakneck Creek, Brush Creek and Connosquenessing Creek.

Like the waters of these tributaries, we are joined together by the Grace of God as one people of God, one Parish, illuminated by the one light of Christ.