This tells how the story is the same, the people have just changed from German 150 years ago to Latino now. DP
By James J. Divita
indystar.com: For nearly 150 years, St. Mary's has been a church for Catholic immigrants: Germans in the 19th century and Hispanic (60 percent of the congregation) in the 21st.
The United States admitted Germans no matter what their peculiar political or religious beliefs. Everyone welcome. Nativists considered them inassimilable and organized the Know Nothings in the 1850s.
German Catholics preferred a German-speaking priest and did not want to worship with Irish. St. Mary's opened on East Maryland Street exclusively for Germans in 1858. All priests who headed St. Mary's were German-born or German-American until 1949. Germans who lived south of McCarty Street were assigned to the new Sacred Heart Parish in 1875. A quarter century later, one in five residents of the city was German-born or had two German-born parents.
German gradually gave way to English. In church records Fisch on Fridays became "fish," and parishioners drank beer at a "piknick." Immigrants' children became bilingual because their neighborhood schools taught both languages.
For the convenience of parishioners, the present neo-Gothic, limestone structure of St. Mary's was built at Vermont and New Jersey streets. Inspired by the Cologne cathedral and designed by architect Hermann Gaul, this Germanic national monument opened in 1912. It is one of Indianapolis' few churches on the National Register of Historic Places.
Parish men served loyally in the military against Germany in World War I. When the legislature prohibited teaching German in Indiana, churches were also expected to drop German entirely. After the war, monolinguals drifted away from St. Mary's.
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.
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