"100 YEARS OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT CATHOLIC CHURCH
I wonder if any of you have ever lived in a parish when it was starting from scratch. If so, you can appreciate some of our difficulties. There were no millionaires, nor people of great affluence amongst us, we were only a handful of ordinary folks who were willing to work and make any sacrifice in order to have a church of our own.
-Helen Weldon, Reminiscences of Blessed Sacrament Parish, 1937
“I hear lots of babies crying at Mass—and that’s a good sign in a 75-year-old parish,” Father Leo R. Horrigan reported to Thomas Noel in 1987, for Noel’s book, Colorado Catholicism. Father Chris Hellstrom, the current pastor, could easily say the same as Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church celebrates its 100th anniversary in June of this year. The Blessed Sacrament community has been on another growth curve in this last decade, as evidenced by both the babies crying at Mass and the 154 children in the school’s early childhood education program.
In June 1912, Father J. Frederick McDonough, “a rosy-cheeked, shy young priest,” according to Helen Weldon, rode his bicycle around the Park Hill neighborhood and organized 34 Catholic families into a parish. Thanks to the kindness of Park Hill Methodist Church, he held the first Catholic services in their building at 23rd and Dexter – now our beloved Cherry Tomato Restaurant.
Respecting Father McDonough’s special devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, the pioneer parishioners chose that name for their new parish and purchased six lots at Elm and Montview from Lawrence Purcell. The Altar & Rosary Society was quickly established and began to raise funds to build a church. One year later, on June 29, 1913, Bishop Matz dedicated the $25,000, two-and-a-half story building, which today houses the elementary classrooms.
In 1915, Blessed Sacrament launched its famous Easter Monday Ball at the Brown Palace Hotel, and the Altar and Rosary Society reported net proceeds of $458.60. From its humble beginnings, the Easter Monday Ball grew into a much-anticipated social event for the entire Denver Catholic community. Over the next several years, the annual fundraiser helped pay for the construction of a rectory and a school staffed by the Sisters of Loretto, which opened in 1922. The Easter Monday Ball was celebrated for over 50 years and was “recreated” at this year’s Big Event: A Centennial Celebration on March 24, 2012. This year’s auction had over 400 people in attendance and raised over $150,000.
Our “new” church was dedicated in 1935, but funds ran out before it could be completed as planned. Monsignor McDonough supervised the construction, but died shortly after the church was built in 1936. Rather than spend money finishing the church, new pastor Father Campbell concentrated on expanding the school. In 1942, the parish completed a convent at 1901 Eudora for the ten sisters teaching in the grade school. In 1944, Campbell dedicated the Our Lady of Fatima Shrine at the corner of Montview and Elm.
During the post-World War II population boom in Park Hill, Montclair and Aurora, Blessed Sacrament and the Archdiocese built the first unit of a secondary school in November 1949, naming it in honor of Colorado’s first missionary and bishop, Joseph Machebeuf. Blessed Sacrament helped complete the second stage in 1958 (the building which now houses our preschool, middle school and religious educations classrooms), expanding it from a junior to a senior high school. The original 1949 structure has our gymnasium, cafeteria, elementary computer lab and the fourth and fifth grade classrooms. The convent was expanded to house 40 sisters in 1959. In 1971, the congregation bought the bungalow at 1912 Eudora as a parish center.
Monsignor Edward Leyden served as pastor of Blessed Sacrament from 1964 to 1970, guiding the parish through the difficult years of integrating Park Hill and its schools. According to Mr. Noel, Monsignor Leyden joined with ministers of St. Thomas Episcopal, Park Hill United Methodist, Montview Presbyterian and other neighborhood churches to pursue peaceful integration and spearheaded the creation of the Greater Park Hill Community Association – the forerunner of the Greater Park Hill Community, Inc.
Father Ken Liuzzi became pastor of Blessed Sacrament in 1999. Father Ken grew up in Park Hill and attended Blessed Sacrament grade school. His decision to keep and lease rather than sell the Machebeuf High School building after their relocation – first downtown and then to their current site in Lowry – was visionary. With the development of the Stapleton neighborhood and the revitalization in Park Hill, the need for early childhood programs grew rapidly. Blessed Sacrament was able to expand its preschool program into the first floor of the Machebeuf building during the summer of 2009 and went from serving 54 children in 2008-09 to serving 145 in 2009-10. During the summer of 2010, we also moved our middle school classrooms to the Machebeuf building in order to take advantage of the former high school science lab, and the space has become a great place for teachers and students.
Father Chris Hellstrom became the new pastor of Blessed Sacrament in July 2011. He grew up in Denver and attended Bishop Machebeuf High School in the buildings that are now part of Blessed Sacrament’s elementary school.
This year, we have over 600 families registered in our parish and, in the last decade, Blessed Sacrament Catholic School has grown from 116 families with 260 students to 335 families with 488 students.
And the ministry started by Father Fred 100 years ago continues… "
By Lucy O’Shaughnessy, Blessed Sacrament’s Director of Development & Communications (from (
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"During the prosperous 1920s, when Park Hill emerged as one of Denver's most prestigious neighborhoods, Blessed Sacrament had Denver architect Harry James Manning design a $250,000 neo-Gothic cruciform church with twin spires soaring over Montview Boulevard. This cathedral-sized fantasy, frosted with Art Deco and Tudor elements, was to remain only a beautiful drawing in the parish files. The crash of 1929 and depression decade of the 1930s shattered the dreams of Blessed Sacrament parish. Manning died in 1933, and his associate, William E. Andress, was asked to scale down the project. The basement and ground floor of the church were completed on September 15, 1935, and consecrated by Bishop Vehr. ...
Although never completed, Blessed Sacrament remains an interesting example of perpendicular Gothic, a phase of the English Gothic style. Despite several remodelings, including two updatings of the sanctuary for liturgical purposes, surviving original elements include the Gothic grand entry (which was to be crowned with a glorious rose window and two spires), a narthex, and exquisite stained glass windows from the studios of Franz Mayer of Munich. The $60,000 Indiana limestone church seats 400. Instead of being 164 feet long with eighty-six-foot-wide transepts and eighty-nine-foot-high towers, it measures 122 feet by fifty feet and is thirty-two feet tall." (excerpted from (
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