Kevin Kelly/Key photo Bishop Raymond J. Boland celebrates Mass Oct. 22 to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of St. Therese Little Flower Parish, Kansas City.

"Bishop Lillis actually purchased the land for this parish a few years before he asked Father Maurice Coates to bring this parish together," Bishop Boland noted.

There is no diocesan record to indicate why it took those few years to form the parish, he said, "but my suspicion is that times were so difficult that he would not put the onus of a new parish on a willing priest."

Father Coates celebrated the parish's first Mass in a private home, drawing 70 families, Bishop Boland noted. Then he moved into the chapel of the Little Sisters of the Poor's home for the aged which was then located nearby at 55th Street and Woodland Avenue, until Thanksgiving Day, 1926, when the parish dedicated its first building, a school with space for worship in the basement.

Bishop Boland noted that diocesan records indicate that the parish received an interest-free loan to build the school. What the records do not indicate, he said, was whether the loan came from diocesan funds or from Bishop Lillis' own pocket.

Bishop Boland said he suspects the latter.

"Father Coates had to depend on the bishop a great deal," he said. "Bishop Lillis and his family were wealthy, and Bishop Lillis used his family's wealth to endow this diocese with many parishes."

In 1927, Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary arrived from Dubuque, Iowa, to open the parish's school with 50 students. In two years, enrollment tripled and the parish began to flourish. But with the Great Depression and World War II intervening, "it was not until 1948 that construction of the new church had begun."

At the same time, "a new word crept into our lexicon - the suburbs," Bishop Boland said.

"People wanted more space, so these tight-knit parish communities began to disintegrate," he said. "The tax base began to decline. Fewer people meant fewer services, and fewer services meant an aging infrastructure.

"Nevertheless, you as a parish community persisted. You kept the faith," Bishop Boland said.

The bishop said that in his travels around the diocese, many people have made it a point to tell him, "I was once a member of Little Flower Parish."

"Obviously something happened here that stamped their soul," he said. "The grace of God touched the lives and hearts of the families of this parish, and that is the purpose of a parish."

Bishop Boland said the parish has honored its patron, St. Therese of Liseux, who was canonized only a few months before the parish was established.

He recalled her famous saying, "I will spend my heaven doing good on earth."

"That motto can be reversed," he said. "We can spend our earth doing good, so that like Therese, we can gain heaven."

Bishop Boland also had special praise for the people of the parish and its administrator, Sister of St. Joseph Helen Flemington, for proving that a parish can succeed without a resident priest-pastor. The parish has worked under the pastoral administrator model, with Father Don Farnan, pastor of nearby St. Louis Parish, serving as sacramental minister, since 1995.

"There have been parishes throughout this land that have rebelled at the notion of alternative leadership," Bishop Boland said. "You have proven them wrong."