Church #24 - St. John Paul II, Pawtucket

Depending on how you look at it, St. JPII is a new parish - the result of a merger between Pawtucket's St. Leo the Great and St. Cecilia. Since St. Cecilia's address and school are still listed separately on the diocesan web site, I'm including St. Cecilia as a separate church in my 150 count, and I'll be visiting it at some other point.

The church building where I went to Mass is the former St. Leo. It doesn't strike me as particularly old or particularly new - I'm guessing that the old church wasn't rebuild or renovated, but there's been some work done on making the interior look newer and nicer.

The way the new parish works is that both church buildings remain open, and Mass is more or less alternated between the two. Presumable there is only one parish's worth of staff, which is where the merger would make sense from a financial standpoint. JPII makes perfect sense for the patron saint of a newly created parish, especially when people might be upset about the closing of their old one.

There are six St. Leos, but the old parish was dedicated to the first one, Pope Leo the Great. He lived in the 5th century, during the waning days of the Roman Empire (or after the Roman Empire had already ceased to exist, depending on how you look at it). Besides being a doctor of the church, he's best known for being awesome enough to face down Attila the Hun and convince him to turn back from invading Italy.

Sadly, the balcony was locked up. I feel lucky that this doesn't happen to me more. There appear to be two levels to the balcony - an upper one for the musicians, and a lower one without a door to it where people aren't meant to sit and stand. The lower one has statues, speakers, and flags for decoration.