Catholic church gets some Mennonite help

St Joachim Roman Catholic Church in La Broquerie got a bit of help from its Mennonite neighbours for its 125th anniversary restoration project.

The D. F. Plett Historical Research Foundation board unanimously decided to give the church’s restoration committee $5,000 on Friday, June 13.

Plett Foundation chair Royden Loewen said the board came around to the idea that donating to their Catholic neighbours fell within their mandate of supporting and promoting history research projects related to the cultural background, the migration and settlement, and descendant communities of the conservative Mennonites who came to Manitoba from imperial Russia in the 1870s.

“This is the first time that we ever got an application from a Catholic organization,” said Loewen.

“At first it was ‘No, no guys, this is completely out of our mandate.’ But then we said hang on, Delbert (F. Plett) had a relationship with these people.

“Mennonite history is also the history of Mennonite relationships with their neighbours,” explained Loewen.

Church committee president Lucien Grenier said there definitely was a close kinship between the predominately French Catholics and Mennonites.

“This place is strongly [tied] with Steinbach,” said Grenier.

Loewen, a retired University of Winnipeg History professor and author who wrote about Mennonite histories, is from Blumenort. He recalls his own personal history with the La Broquerie Catholic community.

“I first heard of the La Broquerie Catholics when I was eight years old. The reason, my dad was a bit of a model farmer and he was asked by the University of Manitoba to host some foreign agronomists, and they were Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists.

“He was an evangelical man, and he said ‘Oh, if they’re coming to visit the farm, then I’ve got to give them New Testaments. Where do I get New Testaments?”

“And I remember him running in from the barn one day. He said, ‘Men are coming in two hours and I don’t have any New Testaments…”

“So he’s on the phone and there’s a Mrs. Margaret (Loewen) calling, turns out to be my wife’s grandmother many years later… He says, ‘OK, you’ve got New Testaments? I’ll get out of my barn clothes, I’ll rush to Steinbach and I’ll be there in 10 minutes,’” described Loewen.

He described his father’s conversation with his mother.

“He walks into the house, he says ‘Gertie, that Mrs. Loewen, she is a prayer warrior. She told me when I knocked on her door that she had been on her knees praying for the salvation of these men,’” he said.

The woman’s response to his dad stuck with him ever since.

“She says, ‘Oh, we Mennonites don’t know how to pray. The Catholics, they know how to pray,” laughed Loewen.

The hope is La Broquerie Catholics can continue to pray in the historic church built with bricks built just down the road in the late 1800s. There is a lot of work to be done, and the committee has just passed $400,000 on its way to its $1-million fundraising goal.

First will be improvements for accessibility, making it easier for seniors and anyone in wheelchairs to get up a new ramp and renovated entrances. That work is set to start Monday, June 23.

Loewen Windows will be helping by giving a good price on improved windows outside of the 18 stained glass windows that will be refinished. There is also insulation, HVAC, floor, wall, and foundation work that needs to be done over the next four years.

Raffle tickets are available by contacting the parish with a free trip through Sunseekers, a weekend golf getaway for four at Granite Hills, and a $500 Thermea Spa Village gift card as the prizes.

People can also donate by clicking the donate now link to Canada Helps on the top right of the website pstjoachim.ca.

Anyone curious can visit the church during its French mass on Sunday at 10 a.m. as part of Fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste weekend in La Broquerie.