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St. Francis de Sales
Roman Catholic Oratory

DESCRIPTION: St. Francis de Sales Church, built at the turn of the last century, is known to locals as “the cathedral of South St. Louis” because of its elegantly designed exterior and its 300-foot spire. It is the only church in the St. Louis area of German Gothic architecture and is based on the design of a church in Germany. St. Francis de Sales has been an anchor of its neighborhood throughout the years since its founding after the end of the Civil War (1867). The campus includes the church, a rectory, former convent, and two former school buildings. The church is on the National Registry of Historic Places.

ADDRESS: 2653 Ohio Ave., St. Louis, MO 63118

LOCATION: South City, St. Louis

PHONE NUMBER: 314-771-3100

WEB SITE: www.institute-christ-king.org/stlouis2/splash.html

GETTING THERE: From downtown, take Tucker (12th Street) several miles south to Ohio. Turn right on Ohio. The Church will be immediately on the left.

HOURS: Tours are by appointment only. Holy Mass is offered daily at 8 a.m. The Sunday sacrifice is offered at 8 a.m. Low Mass, and 10 a.m. Solemn High Mass. Tuesday night Mass at 6:30 p.m. followed by Our Mother of Perpetual Help devotions. Thursdays Adoration at 7 p.m. First Fridays at 7 p.m., and Holy Days at 7 p.m. Confessions 30 minutes before all Masses.

HANDICAPPED ACCESS: St. Francis de Sales is handicapped accessible.

ANNUAL ATTENDANCE: 52,000

WHAT’S NEW: The church is operated by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. This is the home of the Indult Latin Mass apostolate. The parish’s former school houses a day care center. The former convent, now known as Villa Maria, is a residence for women and their children.

HIGHLIGHTS:

• St. Francis de Sales church’s buff-colored exterior features large, pointed arched windows, decorative columns and ornate trim.
• In the tradition of the European Gothic churches, St. Francis de Sales is adorned with a magnificent array of stained glass windows.
• The church’s 130-foot long aisle, one of the longest of the churches in St. Louis, and its beautiful interior has made it a popular place for weddings.
• The church has four bells including one from the original church.
• Gothic or pointed arches used inside the building create tall, open spaces and directs the eye skyward and giving the interior a grand appearance.
• The interior features multiple apses, and richly carved wood, statues and details.
• The church’s interior was designed as a German hall church with ceilings over the side aisles almost as high as those over the main aisle increasing the open feeling and spaciousness.
• The High Altar and the reredos, the ornate screen behind the altar, are in a large apse.
• Smaller apses on the sides of the main apse feature altars to the Blessed Mother and to St. Joseph.
• The transept projects from the side of the nave, feature altars to Our Mother of Perpetual Help to the North, and the Infant of Prague to the South.
• The Baptistery features Byzantine-style glittering mosaics. It is the same artists who worked on the mosaics in the (new) Cathedral Basilica. Lapis Lazuli stone from Persia was used for the blue sky mosaic in the vaulted ceiling.
• The reredos, altars, pulpits, communion rail, pews and confessionals in the church are of carved wood. The 52-foot high reredos features a series of pinnacles with niches depicting different scenes and is framed by carvings of angels. It was made by E. Hackner Co. of La Crosse, Wisconsin.
• The church’s stained glass windows were created by Emil Frei, Sr., considered to be St. Louis’ premier stained glass artist. Frei and his wife had emigrated to San Francisco from Germany but were so homesick for the Old Country, they decided to return there. On their way across the country, they stopped in St. Louis to visit some German friends. They were so taken by the German community of South St. Louis, they stayed. Emil Frei, who had studied at the Munich School of Arts and Crafts, went on to design the stained glass windows of several St. Louis churches.
• Also in the church are statues of St. Francis de Sales, St. Nicholas, St. Henry, St. Teresa, St. Catherine, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Aloysius, St. Ann, St. Anthony and St. Francis of Assisi.
• A smaller altar includes statues of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen.
• The altar of the Blessed Mother features statues of St. Rose and St. Cecilia.
• The elaborate interior frescoes were painted by Fridolin Fuchs, another German immigrant. Fuchs said he based his ceiling frescoes on the artwork in the Gothic churches of Germany.
• Clock faces were added to the steeple following the 1917 anniversary celebration.
• A shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes is on the church’s front lawn.

HISTORY: St. Francis de Sales parish was formed in 1867 by seven German immigrant dairymen who had been members of Saints Peter and Paul Church, located at Eighth and Allen streets. At the time, the area west of Jefferson was not very populated but the dairymen purchased a tract of land at Gravois and Ohio with plans to build a new church there.

Plans were made to build a new brick church at a cost of $12,850, a pricey amount in those days. The church was named for St. Francis de Sales, a French Jesuit missionary who was instrumental in combating Calvinism. He brought back over 50,000 Protestants to the Church. He later became bishop of Geneva and was canonized as a saint in 1665. In 1923, St. Francis de Sales was designated patron saint of the Catholic press.

A cornerstone-laying ceremony held Sept. 15, 1867 was marred when a stand collapsed. No one was seriously injured, but it was determined that vandals had sawed some of the timbers supporting the stand the night before.

The first Holy Mass was celebrated at the church on Christmas 1867 while the building was still under construction. Three babies were baptized at the Church that morning.

In 1883, the parish’s third pastor, Father John Peter Lotz, enlarged the church by adding a new sanctuary and bell tower. Five years later, he built another three-story school. In 1894, Father Lotz began to make plans to build a new church. He traveled to Berlin to consult with German architect E. Seiberts and came back with plans for a grand church of cut stone with a 300-foot center spire, two large supporting towers, two smaller towers over the transepts, two additional spires and elaborate finials. But it soon became clear the cost of so elaborate a building would be far more than the $135,000 earmarked by the parishes building committee. After excavation on the basement begun, it was decided that the cost of so grand a church was beyond the means of the parishioners. Parish leaders decided to finish the basement, put a roof on it and use it as a church until a final decision could be made on what to do about proceeding with plans for the new building.

Before the basement of the new church could be completed, the devastating tornado of 1896 destroyed the original church. Over 300 persons died in that storm. A few years later Father Lotz died and a year after the arrival of his successor, Father Frederick G. Holweck, plans were underway to build the new church but with some changes. Instead of cut stone, the church would be brick and terra cotta; the transept towers and twin steeples were eliminated and the exterior trim streamlined. A 12-foot iron cross weighing 900 pounds, topped the 300-foot tall steeple. In 1952, the rusting cross was replaced by an 18-foot gold leaf cross.

By early 1907, construction on the new church had begun. It was dedicated on Nov. 26, 1908. Even with the changes, the building had a grand, elaborate look to it. A parish newsletter a year after the Church was dedicated proclaimed,

“The portal of the front entrance is an exact copy of the famous Gothic portal of the Cathedral of Munich.”

After construction was completed, Fridolin Fuchs, a German immigrant, was hired to paint the interior frescos, and a

Benedictine Monk from Arkansas did the drawings for the two large paintings in the Church’s transept.

By 1917 when the parish celebrated its Golden Jubilee, it had grown into one of the largest in the city. Twenty years later plans were made to build a new grade school and open a parish high school.

During the 1930 growth years, it became popular to refer to St. Francis de Sales Church as “the cathedral of South St. Louis.”

For many years Holy Mass was said in German, and classes at the school were conducted in German. As late as 1930, half of the parish’s publications were written in German.

In 1939, after razing the school built in 1872, a new school was built. Plans were also underway to establish a high school as there was a shortage of Catholic high schools in St. Louis. In the fall of 1939, a junior high school was established in the parish and later it was expanded to include a high school. The first class was graduated in 1947.

In 1964, an elevator was installed at the church’s Lynch Street entrance to accommodate older parishioners. At the time only two other churches in St. Louis had elevators.

In 1966, as the parish’s 100th anniversary approached, a restoration of the building was undertaken, and two years later St. Francis de Sales was named one of the 62 “significant historic buildings and sites” in St. Louis by the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

As suburbs developed and the population shifted away from the city neighborhoods, the parish’s numbers began to decline. In 1973, the elementary school was consolidated with three others, and St. Francis de Sales High School closed in 1974. And as urban blight became an issue for the neighborhood, a Parish Community Development Office was opened the next year. It evolved into the DeSales Restoration Corporation, and the parish became a center for many social service agencies. The DeSales Community Housing Corporation, independent of the parish, has spearheaded improvements in the area. As the parish celebrated its 125th anniversary, it continued to serve parishioners of more than a dozen nationalities.

As population shifts continued into the 1980s and 1990s, St. Francis de Sales served a large Hispanic population until 2005. Today St. Francis de Sales Oratory serves the indult Latin Mass community operated by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest is a “society of apostolic life” erected by the Roman Catholic Church on September 1, 1990. Today it maintains Houses and apostolates on several continents including North America. The goal of the Institute is the honor of God and the sanctification of priests in the service of the Church and souls through a spiritual formation in Roman Catholic doctrine and piety, Its specific aim is missionary, to spread and defend the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ in all realms of human life. Dedicated to Christ the King Sovereign Priest, the Institute venerates Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception as main patroness. At the same time, it has as co-patrons St. Francis de Sales, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Benedict. The Motherhouse and Seminary of the Institute is situated in Gricigliano, Italy, in the beautiful countryside of Tuscany, only ten miles from Florence and 170 miles from Rome and the Vatican. There the seminarians are educated in a faithful Roman Catholic spirit indicated by Holy Mother Church through Scripture and Tradition in the light of papal teaching. All the Houses of the Institute in the USA and elsewhere show the same orientation. The priests of the Institute are prepared for an apostolic life and strive to create, in our Houses and Apostolates, isles of faith where the traditional, supernatural, and natural values of a true Roman Catholic civilization are realized in a profound harmony between faith and culture. With papal indult the Institute follows the liturgical Rite of 1962 promulgated by Blessed Pope John XXIII. The classical Roman Liturgy and the Holy Office, in the language of Holy Mother Church, are important pillars of the Institute’s spirituality. Our community life generally follows the traditional example of the secular canons.

In 1990 a church preservation fund was established to raise funds to maintain the building, and a capital campaign was started in 2007 to restore this beautiful house of God.

WHERE TO GET LUNCH: There are several restaurants in nearby Lafayette Square and the Soulard Neighborhood a little north of the church on Gravois.

WHAT’S NEARBY: Nearby are the Miniature Museum, the historic Soulard neighborhood with blues clubs and a wide variety of restaurants, historic Lafayette Square and the Grand South Grand neighborhood with an array of ethnic restaurants.

PUBLIC RELATIONS CONTACT: Father Karl W. Lenhardt, 314-771-3100, sfds@institute-christ-king.org

Readers should call 1-800-916-0040 to request a free copy of the Official St. Louis Visitor Guide or point, click and explore St. Louis at www.explorestlouis.com