Name of Church Sacred Heart
Address 150 Fleury Avenue, Prescott, AZ 86301
Phone number (928) 445-3141
Website www.sacredheartprescott.com
Mass times Saturday vigil 5 p.m. Sunday, 7, 9, 11 a.m., 1 p.m. (Spanish) & 5 p.m. Weekdays, 7 a.m. Wednesdays, 8:30 a.m. (for the school)
Confessions Saturdays, 3-4:30 p.m. or by appointment.
Names of priests Father Darrin Merlino, pastor. Father Raj Irudayaraj, associate. Father Gerald Caffrey, VA Chaplain, Father Quyen Nguyen, visiting. Father Daryl Olds, convalescing. All are Claretian Missionary priests. Father Merlino is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville and a faithful, orthodox priest. He is active in social media, and has been featured on EWTN.
School Yes, pre-K through 8th grade.
Special parish groups Knights of Columbus, St. Vincent de Paul Society, Legion of Mary, Perpetual Adoration, Serra Club, Young Adult Ministry, Padre Pio prayer group.
Fellow parishioners Mostly English-speaking community.
Parking The parish is on a hill. There is a large lot up near the parish, but on weekends you may have to park below.
Acoustics Fine.
Cry room No, but the 5 pm Sunday Mass offers child care beginning at 4:30 p.m.
Parish bulletin Available online.
Additional observations Sacred Heart is a historic parish in the Diocese of Phoenix. It was founded by a 37-year-old Irish priest in 1877, who died of tuberculosis only two months after establishing the parish. The original parish church building was completed in 1894, and due to its small size, was sold and converted to a performing arts center. The current church building was constructed in 1969.
Worth driving to?? What is this place supposed to be it is simply ghastly!! Somebody actually was paid to construct this mess???
Janek, what makes a Catholic Church Catholic? Look at the pictures again. The altar is the central point of the church, as it should be. ‘The ambo is prominent as it should be as the table of the Word of God and from which the Gospel is proclaimed. This particular church has a prominent place for the Tabernacle behind the altar, where enough hosts are kept for emergency use for sick people or hospital visits. It has the appropriate statues in the walls. Those are the architectural elements needed for Mass. The real church, of course, is the people of God. Middle-ages architecture is no longer a popular style. As long as we have the Altar, we have a place for Mass, the summit of our worship life.
I have looked at the altar if that’s what one would call it and like I stated simply ghastly sir!!! This is not what a Roman Catholic Church should look like a meeting hall sure a Catholic Church not in your life!
Cal-Catholic has some old information here, because Fr. Darryl Olds passed away April 3rd (2015).
Yes, Janek, you are right: these are the “meeting hall” churches the then-young Phoenix diocese (founded 1969, the year the new church pictured was built). They were specifically designed to focus on the horizontal and the congregation (you can contrast that with the graciously beautiful Gothic-revival original chapel from the 1890’s, which still survives as an arts/theater, a beautiful little historic gem that was discarded in the 1960’s). There are a lot of graceless buildings called churches like this one in Phoenix diocese—it is as though they were trying to run away from their history and be something other than what they were.
I realize it’s a tough sell to get one to go to the Phoenix area in any case. But in case you’re stuck there on a weekend…
To me, [seeing only two small photos] the Church looks like a nice, simple House of God. Yes, probably not built on the biggest budget. But perhaps the good Fathers convinced the parishioners to contribute any available funds to the missions, where the temporal needs are likely much greater.
I’ll leave it to God to decide which gives greater glory.
If you are ever in Phoenix, be sure to go to St Mary’s in downtown—a phenomenally sharing example of Mission Revival architecture with German Romanesque elements, built in 1916 by the immortal Fr. Novatus Benzing, OFM. It is untouched by the wreckovaters, thanks to then-pastor Fr Warren Rouse, OFM, who obtained national historic registry status. The mind, like St Bonaventure’s great work is directed upward in an ascent to God.
That should have been “soaring example”. The architect was the amazing Franciscan brother, Br. Adrian Wewer (sometimes, sp. “Weber”), an immigrant from N. Germany escaping Bismarck, who also built St. Boniface here on SF, and many surviving churches and chapels on the mid-west. Br. Wewer was a genius and even would lay bricks and work the foundations himself to make sure it was done right. He died fairly young, worn out by his exhausting work.
You can tell by looking that this church was built in the late 60s. Surely what recommends it as a “church worth driving to” has nothing to do with architecture and more to do with the spiritual solace offered by the priests and parishioners there.
Why? It looks like a ghastly 1970’s version of N.O. inspiration. In reality, it seems that Spanish is taking over much of the Catholic Church (because it is likely that most Catholics that actually go to church will be Hispanic soon).
If you want to see what a true Catholic Church should look like, so to Phoenix and see the new SSPX Catholic Church, Our Lady of Sorrows. It makes your heart ache. Oh, no “Spanish Mass” here, only Latin, where you can assist in the Mass like virtually all — All — the Catholic saints did before.
“Table of the word”, “Bob One”? Is that to distinguish it from the “table of the meal”? Or, the “table of the cards”? And, how is it that the article can suggest that the N.O. priests there are “orthodox”? It would be interesting to hear what they believe about homosexual marriage, or communion for divorced/remarried (no annulment) Catholics, or contraception, or abortion, or fornication.
St. Christopher, actually the Hispanics are leaving the Catholic Church in droves. Many of them are now going to Hispanic Evangelical Protestant churches.
You are correct, “John Feeney” but an even larger percentage level of non-Hispanic Catholics are leaving, too. No one, it seems, wants to “gather around the table of the meal” while a feminized priest misses the point entirely concerning what the Mass is supposed to be about.
Evangelicals provide certainty, and a sense of the divine, in their “services”. While they have an incomplete view of God, evangelicals are Christ-driven, meaning “Christ crucified”. They truly believe in “taking up your cross” and they do so with vigor and even joy.
Hispanics are confused by the present Catholic Church, and likely repelled by its pro-homosexual, pro-sexual license attitudes. Little is ever taught about sin, the devil, Hell and repentance. Evangelicals must seem like angels.
St. Christopher is most correct about Our Lady of Sorrows in Phoenix, the S.S.P.X. truly are building a gem of a real Roman Catholic Church as it should look like in all aspects including the “cruciform” style. Funny how every language in the world is used for Mass yet the Novus Ordo elites ban the Official language of The Church Latin! Time is on Our Lords side and the silly “man made” Novus Ordo will die a sad death, how can one be saved by dancing nuns, altar girls, priests dressed like clowns, hand holding, kiss of peace, dinner table, felt banners, polka, rock, mariachi, folk music, liturgical dancers in leotards that look like the vestal virgins right out of a MGM Roman movie, lay lectors, Teen Life Mass, the Saints would not even recognize the Novus Ordo service, how can any grown man or woman really sit in a pew at a “Novus Ordo show” and not help but thinking how simply childish it all looks????? But
for the Novus Ordonarians it is all about them and not Our Lord and by the way as St. Christopher states in the TLM we do have “active” participation assiting the priest as he offers our sacrifice to Our Lord Jesus Christ.
If you look at the website for Our Lady of Sorrows in Phoenix AZ, you could easily mistake this for a Catholic parish. They call it a Roman Catholic Church. Unless you knew that the SSPX has no canonical status in the Catholic Church and that it’s priests are all suspended and exercise no legitimate ministry in the Catholic Church (Pope Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops 10 March 2009), you could be seduced into attending Mass there and receiving communion with them.