As you are aware, the St. Andrew Community has been waiting
for a land purchase for many years, while the growth of the
Barrhaven and Ottawa South area has far exceeded
expectations. What was once open countryside 20 years ago is
now built up. If we consider the Barrhaven and Ottawa South
area, 20% of the 160,000 people living there are Catholic. On
any given weekend, many of the churches in our area are filled
to capacity, and new Masses have been added to address the
needs of the Catholic community. At the same time, our retiring
priests outnumber the new men getting ordained, and it’s
unrealistic to expect individual priests to celebrate 8 Masses
per day in a parish that holds 250 people. A large 1000 seat
capacity church would only require 2 Masses to accommodate
the same number of people. If 160,000 is a realistic number of
the people currently living in the Barrhaven/Ottawa South area
and 20% are Catholic, that means that roughly 32,000 Catholics
live in the area. If 10% of Catholics are attending Mass, that
means we have 3200 people attending our parishes every
week. Having a new regional church built on our new River Rd.
property does not mean that the active parishes in the area will
close. Having a regional church will ease the burden of all the
parishes in the area, while encouraging a greater number of
new Catholics moving into our area from around the world.
During the summer of 2025, the Archdiocese purchased a
9-acre parcel of land in Ottawa South (located about a
kilometer south of the Vimy Memorial Bridge at 838 River Rd.,
close to Nichols Island Rd.). The goal of this land purchase was
to finally establish a foothold on which a large capacity regional
Catholic Church can be built. By December 2025,
environmental assessments for animals and trees were done,
trees were cleared and a temporary road access was created
(photos of the work will be on our new parish website). Two
wells have also been dug, and monitoring of the spring water
levels will be studied. While the city services are not yet on site,
they are getting closer every month.
Early last week, the ‘New Parish Building’ group got together to
discuss the various skill sets needed and a strong governance
model as we move forward. At the present time, the people in
the group includes skillsets in the area of contract law,
construction, engineering, project management, and
procurement. We have also had a couple of representatives
from the Archdiocese and clergy from St. Monica, St. Andrew
and St. Leonard present.
While we don’t have signage on the land yet, we have
permission from the Archdiocese to have a “future home of a
Catholic Church” sign put on the property. When the snow
disappears and the weather warms up, I think it would be good
idea to celebrate a community Mass on the property with food
and fun activities.
While God has answered our prayers for land, we’re still at the
early stages of planning for a new church. The most important
thing we can do now is to re-direct our prayer for revitalizing
our local parishes and seeing more parishioners stepping up to
build the community spirit!
Fr. Pierre
