The Church of the Blessed Sacrament is a diverse Roman Catholic community, serving the Monroe and Park Avenue neighborhoods and beyond since 1901. The People of Blessed Sacrament seek to provide a welcoming environment for spiritual growth, service for those in need, and prophetic witness to the gospel in faithfulness to Jesus Christ as we move from the table to the world. Blessed Sacrament Parish was formed from the rapidly expanding population of southeast Rochester. As the city’s new industries grew and attracted increased numbers of workers, people were spreading out from their downtown neighborhoods into the surrounding countryside. Bishop McQuaid founded Blessed Sacrament parish primarily to relieve the overcrowding of worshippers at St. Mary’s Church, but parishioners were drawn here from St. Boniface Church and Corpus Christi Church as well. As the population continued to spread out Monroe, East, and University Avenues, Blessed Sacrament parish was, in turn, split up to form the parishes of St. John the Evangelist in 1914 and Our Lady of Lourdes in 1926. Blessed Sacrament Church was the nineteenth Catholic Church to be established in Rochester. At that time, to implement Bishop McQuaid’s vision of the integration of Catholic schools with parish life, the first structure built for the new parish was a two-story building, with one story for the church and the other for the school. The cornerstone of our original red brick church-school building was laid on November 3, 1901, in a grand ceremony attended by 5,000 people. The completed building, dedicated on April 13, 1902, stood on the site of the present parking lot. Then on September 19, 1911, the cornerstone was laid for our current church building. The original building served as a school until 1930, when it was demolished to make room for a parking lot, as more and more parishioners were coming to church by the increasingly popular automobile. The new school building was immediately constructed and served as our parish school until it was closed in 1990 as part of a diocesan re-structuring of Catholic schools. In the 1990s, the building was used by Corpus Christi School until its eventual closing in 2008. Today, the school is used for numerous church and faith formation events, as well as being a resource for our Upper Monroe Avenue neighbors.
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